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Voters will elect a new majority to the Detroit school board this fall, in an election that could shape the future of Michigan’s largest district for years to come.
The race for five open seats on the seven-member board comes as many parents and community members push for more urgency in improving early literacy scores, facilities, and administrative transparency.
The Detroit Public Schools Community District is standing “on the precipice of probably another watershed moment,” said Jamon Jordan, the city’s appointed official historian.
Jordan compared the importance of this election to a number of seminal moments in the history of Detroit’s public school system — from Milliken v. Bradley, a landmark 1974 Supreme Court case that limited busing for desegregation, to the 1990s reform movement in the city that pushed African-centered education, to the 2016 “right to read” lawsuit a decade ago that shone a light on deplorable school conditions.
In the crowded 34-candidate race, only two in the running are incumbents: Steve Bland Jr. and Bessie Harris. Both were appointed to the board last year and are newcomers to governing the district. Many of the candidates are vocal critics of the district’s current leadership, with some calling for Superintendent Nikolai Vitti’s removal. He has been in Detroit nine years.
The school board’s current leaders announced earlier this summer that they would not seek reelection as their terms come to an end. Iris Taylor, a member credited as a longtime force for progress, planned to run again in November but died in July. The two board members who were elected in 2024 and are not up for reelection this fall – Monique Bryant and Ida Short – have become more vocal in their criticism of Vitti.
DPSCD has made progress academically in the last decade, and some observers worry a new board could make changes that could stall or reverse those gains.
After years of financial turmoil under emergency management, DPSCD also has had balanced budgets every year since Vitti took over. There are no longer hundreds of teacher vacancies. Instead of pay cuts, teachers have gotten steady raises.
LaTrice McClendon, current board chair, said she doesn’t want to see the district lose momentum. But she does want to see the next board bring new ideas.
“You want people of different experiences so that they can bring a different perspective,” she said.
A new school board could bring more conflict with district leadership
Vitti has said little about what a new school board could mean for the Detroit district. He did not respond to requests for comment this week, but previously told Chalkbeat the district will “either move forward with greater progress and momentum or backwards” after the election.
It’s not unusual for a change in school board members to lead to heightened criticism, conflict, or even efforts to push out top administrators.
Vitti left his previous job as the leader of Florida’s Duval County Public Schools in 2017 — months after the board president called for his resignation and amid threats that he would sue the district over a hostile work environment.
Some in Detroit wonder if something similar could happen here. At last month’s board meeting, a handful of board candidates and current board members called literacy rates “unacceptable.”
During a heated exchange at the meeting, Bryant said there should be more improvement given the settlement money spent on extra support for early learners.
“The return on investment has been 0% as far as I am concerned,” said Bryant. “You and your staff have got to figure it out.”
School boards’ roles are to hold systems accountable, said Verjeana McCotter-Jacobs, executive director of the National School Board Association and former board president of Prince George’s County Schools in Maryland. In DPSCD, the board can vote to hire or fire the superintendent. However, the Detroit Financial Review Commission must approve the termination.
“It can be an awkward relationship, but it should be a collegial one,” said McCotter-Jacobs of the board-superintendent dynamic.
“I would hope no new board member would say they will fire the superintendent,” she said. “They should be saying they will come in and understand what the district’s needs are.”
Before Vitti took his position in DPSCD, turnover for the city’s public school district leaders was very high, Jordan said. That was especially true from 2000 to 2017, particularly during the years under emergency management.
Many times throughout history, Detroit public school boards have been at odds with superintendents. The last nine years have been relatively calm compared to the years before, Jordan added.
Vitti’s nine-year tenure in DPSCD is among the top 10% among superintendents in the 500 districts across the country included in a recently released analysis by the Superintendent Research Project.
Emily Hartnett, executive director of Women Leading Ed and lead researcher of the project, said superintendents with longer tenure overwhelmingly leave on their own terms or through a “negotiated exit” rather than removal.
Vitti’s current contract expires June 30, 2028. While negotiating his contract extension in 2024, he raised the possibility of his exit from the district for the first time.
Some worry a new direction may put academic progress at risk
Despite fairly steady progress, DPSCD’s performance on state standardized tests and the SAT remain far behind statewide averages. And some critics are dissatisfied with small year-over-year gains in proficiency rates.
At the September board meeting, board member Short suggested changing the reading curriculum because “it isn’t working.”
Part of the community’s frustrations stem from decades of inequitable education for Black children in Detroit, Jordan said. As the 2016 literacy lawsuit documented, Detroit students experienced deplorable conditions in city schools — such as vermin infestations, caved-in ceilings, and mold — that denied them access to education.
This will be the last year the district has to spend settlement money from the lawsuit. Much of the funding has been used to hire hundreds of academic interventionists and contract with out-of-school tutoring to bring students to grade level. When the money is gone, the district will have to find other ways to pay for the positions or make cuts. The collective disappointment many Detroiters express over current early literacy outcomes may be underscored by the end of funding meant to correct historical wrongs, said Jordan.
But researchers say the substantial progress made suggests systemic change is working.
DPSCD also ranked among the best of similar districts in the U.S. for the speed at which students learn in a school year, a recent analysis found. Researchers say it’s important to keep that in mind because students like those in Detroit often start school far behind their peers in wealthier districts due to systemic racism and poverty.
One of the biggest challenges in education is the tendency to change course when immediate results don’t show the desired outcome, said Jeremy Singer, assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Michigan-Flint.
“Even while districts may be showing improvements year to year, the risk is always that people feel it’s not enough,” said Singer. “The risk then is throwing out a strategy that is actually working.”
Recent research also suggests that instability in district leadership can affect student achievement.
Beyond oversight of district leadership, the new board will have a wide range of responsibilities. It will create the district’s new four-year strategic plan. The plan, which concludes at the end of this school year, outlines the vision for the district, as well as specific goals for academic progress.
The new members also will have input on the future of small schools in the district and what happens to the buildings after they are vacated. In the next budget cycle, the new board will likely have to make difficult decisions about which initiatives to keep once the literacy settlement is gone and as threats to federal funding continue.
Board members also will need to decide whether DPSCD’s current efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism are working. Though the rate has gone down recently, about 60% of students still missed 18 or more days in the 2025-26 school year.
School safety remains a key area where parents want to see improvement. The new board will decide how to spend future state funding on safety personnel and equipment.
Detroit parents, community members want change
Many parents in the district and Detroiters with a pulse on local education want to see a new board challenge the status quo.
Parent Jasmine Johnson said though there has been long-term progress in academic achievement, she wants to see faster results and new curricula.
“Everybody wants to see these huge jumps immediately,” she said. “That’s not realistic. But this incremental percent change — that’s not going to make it either.”
Gwen Moore, parent of a former DPSCD student, said she wants a new board to “shake up the district and the parents.”
“I want them to become accountable for supporting their schools, teaching them at home and all working together to make our students the best they can be,” she said.
Georgea Cole, a DPSCD grandparent and founder of nonprofit Act Now Services, wants the district to “stay the course” but be “more vigorous.”
“We need to raise the bar to the standards that I know that we can,” said Cole.
Cyekeia Lee, executive director of Detroit College Access Network, wants the new board to dig deeper and go beyond the concept that graduation is the only measure of success.
“I just remain optimistic that the right candidates will land in the right seats and a change will continue to come,” she said.
Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.
Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit. You can reach her at mwalker@bridgedetroit.org.
