State Rep. Neeley calling for Gov. Snyder to forgive Flint Community Schools of the Debt

State Representative Sheldon Neeley (D-Flint) calling for Gov. Rick Snyder to forgive the debt of Flint

Community Schools: “In the aftermath of the resignation of Dan Wyant as director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), there remains much to be done in regards to the long-term health and safety of Flint’s children.

“Based on the fact that elevated lead blood levels will diminish the mental capacity of children, it will be expected that those children affected will have a variety of unforeseen and preventable challenges in their lives.

As such, the state and its agents departments are definitely accountable for this tragic circumstance. Therefore, I am stressing that the governor facilitate additional proactive steps to dismiss the Flint Community Schools’ current debt balance so that those dollars can be immediately redirected for development of programs to address the future behavioral and problematic learning difficulties that will certainly be an outcome of this failure of a state government department.

“Children were not protected nor was the general public. But it is our children who will suffer the most. If the governor is serious about his apology, then he most certainly needs to consider the ramifications laid at the door step of the Flint Community Schools, a system which is already overburdened with the ability to provide local residents with a quality education. In the next several years, that same school system will be burdened with providing an education to those students born out of this state government failure to protect them.”