(Editor's note: This article has been updated to include a quote from State Superintendent Michael Rice.)

The State Board of Education approved a resolution on April 9 calling for increased state control of charter schools, but a charter school advocate says the resolution wrongly describes the independently operated public schools.

On a 6-1 vote, the board called for the Michigan Department of Education and local school districts to have more oversight over charter schools in the state. The resolution calls charter schools “a threat to democratically governed community-based schools.”

The education agency says 285 charter school districts statewide are responsible for 363 charter schools.

In an April 9 meeting, State Superintendent Michael Rice responded to a question about whether charter schools provide better academic opportunities than traditional public schools.

“The research on charter schools does not reflect that [charters are uniformly better than traditional public schools and districts],” Rice said. “There are some studies that suggest that they [charters] have likely improved. There are others that say not. There are some people that argue that the methodology around some of those studies is flawed. I’m one of those people.”

Buddy Moorehouse, vice president of public relations and media at the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, composed of charter schools, told CapCon the discussion included inaccurate information.

“There was a lot of inaccurate information that was said at the meeting, particularly statements by Superintendent [Michael] Rice that research does not show that charter schools outperform traditional public schools,” Moorehouse wrote.

Moorehouse pointed to two studies, one from Stanford University and one from MIT conducted by a researcher from the University of Michigan. Together, he said, they conclude that charter school students have better academic outcomes and achievements than children attending traditional public schools.

The advocate group says charter schools serve over 150,000 Michigan students, of which more than 75% face socioeconomic disadvantages.

Board member Mitchell Robinson, a long-time critic of charter schools, sponsored the resolution.

“While the original notion of charter schools as laboratories for innovation came from teachers unions,” Robinson said at the meeting, “that purpose has now largely been lost to predatory for-profit charter management organizations, education reformers, and politically motivated special interest groups.”

“I’ve studied the effects of the unfettered proliferation of charter schools in Michigan over the last ten-plus years,” Robinson continued. “I see no evidence of innovation in the charter sector and I believe it is time for much stricter oversight and accountability measures for the existing charter schools in our state.”

On May 15, Robinson reposted a social media post saying in part that “charters bleed public schools dry, proudly announcing that they have ‘saved’ one child even though they had to poke holes in the boat that still carries ten other children.”

MAPSA President Dan Quisenberry questioned why the board was targeting charter schools.

“They’re open to any student in the state without qualification and they serve a far higher population of minority students and students living in poverty,” Quisenberry said in a statement. “Charter schools are among the highest-performing schools in the state, particularly in Detroit.”

Charter schools are already subject to state oversight, said Michael Van Beek, director of research at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. State law defines them as public school districts, which, he said, means any law that applies to school districts also applies to charter schools.

The Detroit People Mover's financial management is susceptible to inaccuracies, misappropriations and even theft, according to an audit of the transit system's operator.

The Detroit Transportation Corp. had ineffective or deficient policies and procedures in various areas, including accounting and human resources, Detroit’s Office of the Auditor General concluded last year.

The corporation showed “deficiencies in accounting, human resources, and information systems controls due to management not maintaining, revising, and monitoring the internal control environment," concluded the January 2023 report, which analyzed a six-year operational history, spanning from July 2015 through June 2021.

“The internal control deficiencies contributed to informal practices and irregularities in the performance of operations, the lack of defined accountability and performance measurement for critical operations, and the potential for DTC operations to become misaligned with business objectives,” the report said.

The auditor found that the corporation, a component unit of the city created in 1985, lacked "defined credibility for critical accounting operations." It also lacked effective methods of tracking vendor accounts and vacation accruals.

Four general managers led the Detroit Transportation Corp. during the period audited.

The city of Detroit gave subsidies to the corporation in several years: $6.5 million in fiscal year 2018, another $7 million in 2019, and $6 million in 2020.

The Detroit Transportation Corp. manages the People Mover, a 2.9-mile-long transit system in Detroit. The system has faced criticism since its inception, with the head of the Federal Urban Mass Transportation Administration calling the People Mover a “pork-barrel project gone wild” in 1985. More recent reviews have found further problems with the corporation’s management.

“My gut reaction is that the severity of the findings and the lack of available staff (several unfilled positions), mean many of the recommendations proffered by the audit will go unresolved,” Robert Daddow, a former deputy Oakland County executive, told CapCon.

Daddow said the problems may be even worse, pointing to infrequent audits, a small staff, limited controls over financial checks and balances, and failure to follow basic accounting principles.

The audit should have been done earlier, Daddow said, given the Detroit Transportation Corp.'s history of problems. A triennial review by the Federal Transit Administration found deficiencies in eight of the 20 areas examined, including financial management and procurement. The administration had reported these same problems in previous reviews, Daddow said, noting that correcting cited deficiencies would normally be a high priority for management.

Daddow also pointed out problems with bank reconciliations, which are designed to detect errors and inappropriate transactions. The auditor requested 21 bank reconciliations from July 2019 to March 2021 but received only eight.

The People Mover's management also neglects to document transactions properly. Half of the payments did not have completed purchase order documentation, Daddow said, and there were 20 “doubled-up payments to vendors” that totaled $53,000.

Daddow pointed to duplicate tracking numbers and a failure to obtain board approval for a half-million-dollar contract. The operator is required to have board approval for expenditures over $25,000.