At just five years old, Jaylon Wakes of Flint was suspended 50 times in a single school year in 2015, the year that the Flint water crisis hit the headlines. When he was in school, his mother, Nakiya, told Daily Kos, at one point three adults restrained him rather than follow appropriate behavioral interventions to help Jaylon de-escalate when having issues with his ADHD, a condition that worsened after he was exposed to lead in the family’s water.
After finding out about three adults piling on her 5-year-old and another incident where a teacher “put her hands on my son” and left marks on the child, Nakiya said that today she homeschools 10-year-old Jaylon. “I just don’t feel safe with him in the Flint schools,” she said.
The Wakes family is far from alone in fearing what will happen to their special needs children attending Flint schools in the wake of years of lead poisoning. The situation is so dire that in October 2016 the ACLU of Michigan and the Education Law Center filed suit to stop what they say are ongoing violations of federal law by the state of Michigan and local education authorities.
Relief can’t come too soon. An August report in Education Week says that the Flint school system is “overwhelmed” by the number of special needs students in the wake of the water crisis. According to the report, “The percentage of special education students has increased by 56 percent, rising from 13.1 percent in 2012-13, the school year before the water crisis began, to 20.5 percent last school year.”
In an August report by a local news station about Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s proposed school budget, Flint Community Schools superintendent Derrick Lopez said that his district had double the state average of students who have individual education plans to deal with learning and behavioral disabilities. The school system’s public relations firm did not respond to Daily Kos’ requests for an interview with Lopez.
But while Flint parents are justifiably upset and the ACLU’s lawsuit names the Flint Community Schools district (along with the Genesee Intermediate School District and the Michigan Department of Education), ACLU of Michigan education attorney Kristin Totten told Daily Kos that the point of the lawsuit is to help educators in the Flint schools, not punish them.
“I think some of the people within the Flint community understand that this is a lawsuit against the Flint community schools to help the Flint community schools and get them the resources that they need,” Totten said. Several families, including the Wakes, are named plaintiffs in the class-action complaint.
Karen Christian, president of the United Teachers of Flint, said that her union is working with the ACLU to try to make sure that students and educators alike receive the resources they need. “We've been very helpful with them so far. They come and give us updates at our union meetings,” she said.
While the ongoing crisis in Flint is shining a light on that district, though, both Totten and Christian agreed that there are glaring issues with special education—and education in general—throughout the state of Michigan. They also agree on the source of those issues: a lack of funding from Lansing. “We have not been adequately funding our public schools here in Michigan,” Totten said.
“That’s our biggest issue, is funding,” Christian agreed. The advocates aren’t alone in urging more spending on the state’s schools and its special education programs. In January, a study by researchers with Michigan State University found that funding for Michigan’s schools had dropped more sharply than funding in any other state during the past 25 years—and dropped by 30% since 2002 alone. That lack of funding is demonstrated by a lack of results for students throughout the state. A July 2019 report by WalletHub ranked Michigan’s schools a sad 37th in the country.
“They [Republican legislative leaders] want to say it’s [funding] gone up in the last three years, but what actually happened was at the beginning when [Republican Gov. Rick] Snyder first came in, he whacked all of state aid budgets” for education, and funding is now just starting to be equal to the levels it was at when Snyder was elected, Christian explained.
While overall education funding has been stagnant, teachers’ incomes have actually gone backward. A Sept. 2019 report by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan states that, adjusted for inflation, the average teacher's salary in Michigan has fallen 10%.
Not only that, but teachers are actually doing more work for that lower pay "given the increased demand to improve student academic performance (e.g., as measured by standardized testing) and the heavy emphasis placed on student performance in teacher evaluations," the report says.
When it comes to funding for special education alone, a special education task force committee headed by former Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Calley found in 2017 that Michigan’s special education programs were underfunded by approximately $700 million.
"Students with developmental disabilities and learning disabilities should have access to the specialized services they need to learn," Calley said in a Detroit Free Press report on the findings of his commission, adding that “we have a long way to go to give students with special needs the resources they deserve.”
Even Donald Trump’s Department of Education agrees that the state is failing its special needs students. In July 2018, the department rated Michigan as “needs intervention” for failing to meet federal special education requirements.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is trying to do something about the shortfall. In her March budget Whitmer proposed a “weighted formula” for school funding that would give increased support to schools in low-income districts (like Flint’s) and to students in need of special education services. A Republican-led state House committee ignored the recommendations.
Lack of funding, along with lawmakers’ disrespect for educators, is also leading to a second issue that will make it more difficult for Flint—and schools across the state—to hire teachers, including special education teachers and behavioral specialists. In 2017, the nonprofit Bridge news service did a study showing a radical decline in the number of college students entering the state’s colleges of education.
The University of Michigan reported a decline of enrollment of 41.8% from 2010-11 to 2014-2015. The decline at Wayne State University was 34.1%, the decline at Western Michigan University was 62.1%, and the decline at the University of Detroit-Mercy, formerly known for the robustness of its school of education, was 85.7%.
“We have been attacked so much by the Republican-led legislature here in Michigan that nobody wants to come into this profession to be disrespected as we have been,” the United Teachers of Flint’s Christian said.
Whatever the source of the problems and whatever the solutions may prove to be, Nakiya Wakes says that her family is among many people in Flint who have already waited for far too long. “They're not providing the special education needs these kids need. And with this lead exposure, we really need a lot more than just somebody saying all, yeah, we're going to change,” she said.
Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.