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In a crowded race for a new majority on the Detroit school board in the November election, five candidates are banding together as a slate based on political ideology.
The self-described “militant,” “anti-fascist” activist group By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, is seeking five seats on the Detroit Public Schools Community District’s seven-member board. The entire slate wants to oust Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, citing the recent closures of four small schools as their main motivation. Most of the candidates told Chalkbeat they would use their platforms as board members to garner more attention for the activism and organizing they are already doing.
Liana Mulholland, Nicole Conaway, Tabrian Joe, and Elizabeth Ann Williams are running against 30 other candidates for the four full-term seats on the ballot. Shawn Vaughn will face two others in the running for the one partial-term seat.
Mulholland said she wanted to run in this election – which could drastically change the district’s future – in part because there will be the most turnover in membership at one time since DPSCD was created in 2016.
“This presented a real opportunity,” Mulholland said.
School closures continue to be a sticking point for BAMN
Over the years, BAMN has led multiple protests and school walkouts in Detroit. Its activism in Detroit public schools first focused on the end of emergency management and opposition to widespread school closures.
After DPSCD was created in 2016 and Vitti was hired in 2017, BAMN’s focus shifted from opposing state emergency managers to challenging the superintendent and his policies.
Vitti did not respond to a request for comment on the slate’s criticisms of his administration.
BAMN spoke out against the district’s June closures of Ann Arbor Trail Magnet School, J.E. Clark Preparatory Academy, Catherine Blackwell Institute, and Greenfield Union Elementary-Middle School.
The schools were identified to be phased out in 2022 because of low enrollment and high operating costs. Their closures were accelerated due to budgetary concerns.
Thurgood Marshall Elementary-Middle School will close at the end of this school year for the same reasons.
Mulholland, Conaway, Joe, and Vaughn told Chalkbeat they want to stop Marshall’s closure. Williams, an Osborn High School graduate, did not respond to a request for comment.
“Vitti’s been using the same excuses as emergency managers, that we need to right-size the district,” said Conaway. “We need to grow and invest in our schools.”
There are currently about 50,000 students in the district and around 72,000 seats.
All four candidates who responded said they believe there is enough money to keep the schools open. When asked where the funding would come from, they said the money is owed to DPSCD by the state because of the debt created during emergency management that Detroit Public Schools is still paying off. (DPS remained solely to collect taxes to pay off historical debts when DPSCD was created.)
The candidates said they would try to secure the additional funding by organizing in Lansing and using their platforms as board members to put pressure on legislators.
BAMN candidates want Vitti out
The four candidates who responded told Chalkbeat they want to fire Vitti or push him to resign.
The board can vote to hire or fire the superintendent, but the Detroit Financial Review Commission must approve the termination.
When asked whether they would work with Vitti to accomplish the day-to-day business of the board, the four candidates varied in their answers.
“I don’t have an answer for that right now,” said Joe, a UPS handler who previously worked as a paraprofessional and reading interventionist.
Joe added that the BAMN slate would “make decisions to best provide a quality education for Detroit students.”
Vaughn, an Osborn High School graduate employed as an organizer for BAMN, said he would do “whatever work is necessary for the district.”
“But if you’re asking if I will be kind to him, no,” Vaughn said.
Mulholland, a Cass Technical High School graduate who works at organ tissue recovery program Gift of Life Michigan, said she would be able to perform regular business, such as requesting information and data from Vitti.
“But if it’s around a fundamental disagreement, then no,” she said. “If he’s saying there’s not the money to keep Marshall open, I could not.”
Conaway, a longtime DPSCD teacher who was fired by the district after challenging its in-person work requirement in 2022, said she didn’t like the question.
“To me, that means be nice and accept what he’s saying,” Conaway said. “This is the time for leaders to step up and challenge what’s been going on instead of rubberstamping and accepting at face value.”
BAMN is the only ideological slate in the DPSCD board race
Sheila Cockrel, CEO of nonpartisan civic education group Citizen Detroit, said other candidates are receiving endorsements as slates. For example, Dr. Jameel Smith and Terry Whitfield were endorsed by 482Forward Action, the political arm of the local education justice nonprofit, as the “Detroit Kids Deserve Better Slate.”
But Cockrel said BAMN is the only one that began the race together on the same political platform.
Some research has shown that school board politics have become more influenced by national politics since the pandemic and more ideological slates have popped up across the country.
Kevin Deegan-Krause, a professor of political science at Wayne State University, said that is likely because of the increasingly polarized politics in the country today.
“The mood in America right now in general is that institutions aren’t working,” Deegan-Krause said.
The board election is an at-large race, meaning the top four vote-getting candidates will win the four full-term seats. The highest vote in the partial term race will go to one of the three in the running.
“It’s the most unpredictable and chaotic of all electoral systems,” said Deegan-Krause, also a former board member in Ferndale Public Schools. “It’s the hardest to predict who is going to win or lose.”
Running as a slate can either have a big pay off in the “winner take all” electoral system, Deegan-Krause said, or it can mean none of the candidates are helped.
“The risk is that if voters don’t like one or two people, then a good candidate is put at a disadvantage,” he said.
Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.
