In the upcoming November election, five candidates are running as a slate for the Detroit school board, backed by the activist group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). The group is seeking to fill five seats on the seven-member board of the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD).
The slate, which includes Liana Mulholland, Nicole Conaway, Tabrian Joe, Elizabeth Ann Williams, and Shawn Vaughn, is motivated by the recent closures of four small schools in the district. They have stated that they want to oust Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, who they blame for the closures.
Mulholland, Conaway, Joe, and Vaughn are running for the four full-term seats on the ballot, while Williams will face two others for the one partial-term seat. The candidates have said that they will use their platforms as board members to bring attention to their activism and organizing efforts.
BAMN has a history of leading protests and school walkouts in Detroit, initially focusing on opposing state emergency management and widespread school closures. After the creation of DPSCD in 2016 and the hiring of Vitti in 2017, the group shifted its focus to challenging the superintendent and his policies.
Fighting School Closures
The group has spoken out against the district’s June closures of four schools, which were phased out due to low enrollment and high operating costs. The candidates have said that they want to stop the closure of Thurgood Marshall Elementary-Middle School, which is scheduled to close at the end of the school year for the same reasons.
Conaway has stated that Superintendent Vitti is using the same excuses as emergency managers, citing the need to “right-size” the district. However, the candidates believe that there is enough money to keep the schools open, and they plan to secure additional funding by organizing in Lansing and putting pressure on legislators.
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The candidates have also stated that they want to fire Vitti or push him to resign, citing his handling of the school closures. However, they have varied in their responses to whether they would work with Vitti to accomplish the day-to-day business of the board.
Polarized School Board Politics
Kevin Deegan-Krause, a professor of political science at Wayne State University, notes that the increasingly polarized politics in the country may be contributing to the rise of ideological slates in school board elections. BAMN is the only ideological slate in the DPSCD board race, and their candidacy has been noted by observers as a significant development in the election.
The board election is an at-large race, meaning that the top four vote-getting candidates will win the four full-term seats. Deegan-Krause notes that running as a slate can either have a big payoff in the electoral system or mean that none of the candidates are helped, as voters may be put off by one or two candidates in the slate.
The DPSCD has around 50,000 students and 72,000 seats, and the candidates have stated that they believe there is enough money to keep the schools open. They plan to secure additional funding by organizing in Lansing and using their platforms as board members to put pressure on legislators, citing the debt created during emergency management that Detroit Public Schools is still paying off.
Sheila Cockrel, CEO of Citizen Detroit, notes that other candidates are receiving endorsements as slates, such as the “Detroit Kids Deserve Better Slate” endorsed by 482Forward Action.
