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Bessie Harris, a retired special education teacher and principal, is the newest member of the Detroit school district’s board.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the Detroit Public School Community District’s board formally announced Harris to loud applause from the audience. The board voted to appoint Harris to fill a seat left vacant by Sherry Gay-Dagnogo earlier this month. Harris, a grandmother of a student at Cass Technical High School, spent decades as an educator in the district and said she’ll use that experience to serve students, families, and staff in her role on the seven-member board.
Harris was the runner-up in a selection process to fill another vacancy this summer.
During a monthlong search to fill Angelique Peterson-Mayberry’s open seat, the board interviewed 14 candidates. They were scored on their resumes, letters of intent, answers to survey questions on key issues in the district, and public interviews. The scores were tallied live during a public meeting by a third-party law firm.
Steven Bland Jr. was appointed to fill the seat.
Instead of going through the “time-consuming” process of interviewing candidates again a couple of months later, the board voted Oct. 1 to offer the new position to Harris, who had the highest score after Bland.
Iris Taylor, a board member, said on Tuesday she did not support suspending the district’s policy for appointing new members, saying the move lacked “transparency” and “integrity.”
But the board, including Taylor, voted unanimously to appoint Harris. Bland was not at Tuesday’s meeting.
Harris unsuccessfully ran to be on the board in 2020 and 2022. She was principal of Palmer Park Preparatory Academy until she retired in 2016.
Before that, Harris was an assistant principal at Marion Law Academy, Sampson-Webber Leadership Academy, and Emerson Elementary-Middle School and principal of Chrysler Elementary School, according to the resume she submitted to the board.
She was a special education teacher for 10 years at the former Guyton Elementary School, where she was promoted to be in the first group of special education resource teachers in the district.
During her July interview with the board, Harris said truancy, school closures, and a lack of parent participation are the biggest issues the district faces. In answers to a candidate survey submitted to the board, she added that ensuring there are equitable resources across district schools, retaining staff, and fixing aging infrastructure are also big challenges for DPSCD.
“Students need strong, effective, transparent leadership,” Harris said during her interview.
Harris said at the time that she wouldn’t shape or revise any district policies if she were a board member.
“I can’t think of any that’s not being carried out that I would say, ‘Oh no, that’s not’ – I would just like to chime in and enhance what you’re doing,” she said in the interview.
Harris said targeted training for administrators and staff would help improve literacy in the district.
She suggested that instead of gathering hundreds of teachers for a large early literacy education training, it might be more successful to train teachers within their schools based on the needs of the students they serve.
“Why not take the training to the building, where it’s more personable, more centered around that school,” she said. “Sit me down in my building with my principal and the staff, and let’s dig into it and see where we go from there.”
Harris said she is still actively involved in the district by participating in her granddaughter’s education and mentoring youth at her church.
Harris will serve through the end of 2026. She told the board she would campaign to keep her seat in the next school board election.
Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.
