Reconstruction: 40 Acres and a School

• In Event: After the Locusts: Just Education Renewal for Black Communities After Racial-Capitalist Predation and State Dissolution

Abstract

State takeovers of public school districts in predominately Black communities have proven to be wholly ineffective government experiments and tools for ruin, both academic and fiscal. The resulting disfiguration leaves students deeply disadvantaged while educators, community leaders, and elected officials are left scrambling to restore districts and find impactful remedies in the wake of the state’s years-long wave of incompetence, at best, and intentional deeds at worst. Although the decline and demise of many of these districts while under state control is rarely, if ever, acknowledged or repaired, reparations to aggressively reconstruct districts just as aggressively as they were dismantled is an absolutely necessary redress for the failures of the state which has long collected taxes and extracted capital from Black communities only to provide substandard and unequal services.
This paper examines mainly financial methods community leaders, educators, and elected officials can use to remedy and repair majority Black school districts damaged and/or dismantled under state control. Evidence of this possibility is examined in the context of Inkster Public Schools which, while under state control, implemented innovative programs that resulted in positive gains towards remedy and repair. While this did not discourage the state from its mission of eliminating the district, stakeholders continued to advocate for innovative methods such as legislative changes, debt elimination, and additional resources such as land that would provide the foundation for district restoration. Through an analysis of primary and secondary resources such as school board budgetary and meeting documents, state legislative budgetary and meeting documents, as well as peer reviewed research, monographic resources, and news articles, the possibilities of legislative changes, debt elimination, and resources to reconstruct districts is made clear.
In the face of state takeovers of school districts in predominately Black communities continuing as a national trend, methods of resistance are critical to ensure the dismantling of this racial injustice. It is clear that the state must be viewed as less capable of navigating academic and financial obstacles than those elected to lead these districts, and redress for the damage done is nonnegotiable. This research serves as a beacon of hope for the many majority Black communities across the nation whose school districts have been destroyed against the will of those who need them most.

Author

• Dana Hart, University of Detroit Mercy