The Detroit Public School District refused to allow environmental inspectors hired by a teachers union to investigate its schools, according to a news release from the Detroit Federation of Teachers.
“All we’re trying to at the DFT is to work with the district to get the answers that the members are asking for,” Ivy Bailey, the union’s interim president, said at a news conference Wednesday.
Bailey told CNN affiliate WDIV that her union wants their own people to participate in inspections to make sure that the repairs instituted are “long-term” solutions.
“We don’t want to put Band-Aids on this anymore,” she said.
The school district said that having more teams of people in buildings would “complicate” their efforts, according to a statement from the district obtained by WDIV.
“Further, the DFT/AFT [the teachers’ unions] were seeking to have teams of unknown individuals come into our school buildings without proper or reasonable prior notice to administration and staff,” the school district said.
This current row is part of a bigger fight between the school system and teachers. Detroit schools are hundreds of millions of dollars debt, and many of its facilities are falling apart.
Teachers are fed up with, among other things, working in conditions they say are unsafe, and have protested by calling out sick en masse.
Last week, they filed a lawsuit against the district calling for the removal of its emergency manager and accusing officials of allowing the conditions at schools “to deteriorate to the point of crisis.”
