Sick-out closes most Detroit schools for second day

DETROIT – While schools across the nation celebrated Teacher Appreciation Day, hundreds of Detroit Public Schools teachers packed the sidewalks outside the Fisher Building Tuesday to demand guarantees that they will be paid for their work.

“If I do go in to work, I don’t know if I’m going to get paid,” said Mike McGowan, a music teacher at the Blackwell Institute, who protested outside the school district headquarters in Midtown. The protest came on a day when 94 schools in DPS were closed because of teacher absences.

Sick-outs closed schools across the district on Monday also.

The district is projected to run out of cash by June 30. Without funds from the state, teachers who have opted to receive their pay over 12 months instead of the course of the school year will not get checks this summer.

The Legislature is considering a $715 million rescue package for DPS.

Randi Weingarten, national president of the American Federation of Teachers, attended the rally.

“It’s gotten to the point where they don’t have money to pay us for the work we’ve done,” said Tracy Ortiz, a sixth-grade teacher at Clipper Academy.

“It is wage theft, it is illegal,” Weingarten said through a bullhorn to the crowd of teachers, parents and students. “What has happened is an appalling indifference to the precept that children and their teacher are important.”