Dive Brief:

• Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has appointed Darnell Earley as the new emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools. Previously an emergency manager in Flint and city manager in Saginaw, he will be the district's fourth emergency manager since 2009.
• Under Michigan law, a person can only serve as emergency manager for 18 months, at which point the district can ideally be turned back over to the school board. Snyder, however, argued that the decision for another new emergency manager is tied to the city's economic recovery and "about making sure we have a great city.”
• Critics argue that emergency management is impractical and undemocratic, and that things didn't improve under the first three emergency managers.

Dive Insight:

“We don’t walk away from problems that took decades to get there,” Snyder was quoted in the New York Times, later adding, “These issues didn’t come about in the course of several 18-month periods. These conditions came about because of decades of challenges.”

While there are definitely systemic, long-standing issues that have resulted in the current situation, it's hard to fully see Snyder's point. Not much has changed since the emergency managers have been in charge, and some argue many things have even become worse. Take, for example, enrollment. In 2009, when former emergency manager Robert Bobb stepped in for the job, DPS's schools had a K-12 enrollment of 96,000 students. Today, that number is less than half, lingering at a low 47,000 students. In terms of finances, DPS had a $219 million deficit when Bobb came in, which ballooned to $327 million during his first year in 2009. While it currently stands at $169.5 million, any improvement is overshadowed by the fact that emergency managers have actually added to the deficit.

The 18-month limit on emergency managers was put in place so issues could be resolved and the school board could be looped back in — in other words, to make sure emergency managers aren't the final solution. Snyder's revolving door of emergency managers ignores this, leading some to question his end goals. In the same speech, Snyder alluded to forthcoming changes that would reshape the way Detroit's schools work together. Since June, Paul Pastorek, Louisiana's superintendent of education from 2007 to 2011, has been spending time in Lansing, leading some to wonder if the New Orleans charter model could be on its way in.