Robert Bobb's biggest challenge: Create a new Detroit Public Schools
This has been nominated for the Journalism Pimp Award.
This over-the-top prose is a cross between a romance novel and Readers Digest Most Unforgettable Character. . . and obscures any semblance of reality in Detroit.
Interesting revelation: What does it mean to be an "awesome team"? They are like little robots."
Jeff Seidel's recent articles include:
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By Jeff Seidel
He is constantly in the public eye as the emergency financial manager of Detroit Public Schools, but few people really know much about Robert Bobb.
He is a snazzy dresser, but he doesn't own a pair of dress shoes.
He is making $260,000 a year, but he searches the Internet for deals.
He talks tough, but he's really a momma's boy.
He loves to plan every single detail so there will be no surprises, but he has a tendency to make last-minute changes, especially in speeches.
He is an introvert, but friends say he has learned how to be comfortable holding a microphone and speaking to large groups.
He seems intense and serious, but he is surprisingly funny.
At times, he is walled off from the public behind a security detail. But he goes out of his way to talk to kids, poses for pictures and returns just about every e-mail.
Many people view him as a savior. Others say he is a villain.
But no one can argue that this complicated, decisive man is making changes that affect every child in Detroit.
A man on a mission
"Now remember, things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean, I mean plumb, mad-dog mean."
-- A line from the 1976 Clint Eastwood movie, "The Outlaw Josey Wales," one of Robert Bobb's favorite films.
It is an hour before daylight and the streets of Detroit are still snoring. This city doesn't sleep like a princess. It snores like an old dog sprawled across the carpet.
At 5:31 on a warm winter morning, Bobb gets up and barges into a fitness center, wearing blue shorts and a blue tank top. He puts on headphones and turns on a television. CNN. A serious station for a serious guy.
One of his New Year's resolutions was to get healthier. He has gained about 8 pounds since he arrived in Detroit 11 months ago because he stopped doing yoga and started eating on the run.
He will lose the weight. It's certain. Resolutions are important to him. They offer a plan, a conviction and purpose. He is all about plans. That's his mantra, which he repeats often to his staff, especially when a meeting gets out of control: "Order. Discipline. Structure." Deviate from the plan and he gets frustrated. Get in his way and he gets "pissed," IN ALL CAPS, messages sent via his BlackBerry to his staff or principals or parents, which he will do at any hour of the day or night -- 1 a.m., 2 a.m. -- it doesn't matter. If he's awake, he's working.
Bobb is the Guy the Governor Brought in to Save the Worst School System in the Country. And if he fixes the district, a colossal mess, that might be the first step toward fixing the city. Not that there is any pressure on him.
He's 64 years old, but he has the energy of somebody at least 20 years younger. His upper body is thick and muscular. His eyes are focused, deep, dark eyes that survived the ugly images of the segregated South. When he was a child and went to the movies, he had to sit in the balcony because he is black. And that still ticks him off.
Everything is a challenge for Bobb. It's always been that way. Everything is a win or lose, knock-down, bloody-nosed battle -- against the weights he's lifting on this particular day, against the Detroit Board of Education, against anyone who has stolen money from the district, against low reading scores, against anyone in his way -- and he has to be stronger than the opposition.
He starts running hard, sweating. He grabs a pair of 30-pound dumbbells and lies on his back. Bench press. Butterflies. Curls. Wrist curls. After about 45 minutes, the adrenaline is flowing and his heart is pounding and he is ready for the day. As the sun struggles to climb over the Detroit River, he walks toward an elevator.
"Hey, you are the guy from the news," says Sharon Moore, 27, of Detroit. She can't quite remember his name, though his face is on TV almost every night talking about a bond proposal or academic problems or budget problems or starting an all-city band.
A man sitting next to her perks up.
"You are great for Detroit," says George Mathis, 26, also of Detroit. "Keep doing what you're doing."
Bobb waves and smiles. It happens to him all the time. He's become a local celebrity, a source of hope for many.
A villain to some.
As the elevator closes, the man and woman smile in disbelief.
"He's so good for Detroit," Mathis says. "Robert Bobb is the man! We needed him a long time ago."
The face of change
Bobb's office on the 14th floor of the Fisher Building is small and sparsely decorated. A framed photograph of the Detroit skyline sits on the floor, propped against the wall. He hasn't had time to put it up. A quote from abolitionist Frederick Douglass is handwritten in marker on a white board. Bobb repeats it often in speeches: "Once you learn to read, you will forever be free."
A map of Detroit plotting all of the district's schools -- before he started closing them -- is stuck to another wall. Bobb glances at it several times a day to keep himself oriented.
Above his desk, at which he rarely sits, is a thank-you card with a Superman cover: "We have been waiting for you for a long time," wrote Sister Mary Ellen Howard, from Detroit's St. Frances Cabrini Clinic in Corktown. She shook his hand once at a party but she has never talked to him. "God bless you for all you are doing for our kids."
Bobb could have come into the district, locked himself in a room, crunched some numbers, slashed the budget and returned to Washington, D.C., where he owns a consulting business. But he didn't. Instead, he has become the face of a school system dubbed by the nation's top education official as ground zero for academic failure and compared with New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
And it is Bobb's job to clean it up. He has his finger on every aspect of Detroit schools. Every program. Every dollar. Every major decision goes through him, and that is clear, as he sits in his office at a small, circular table with Deacon Joseph Adams from Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, a large, historical and influential church on the west side of Detroit.
Adams is proposing an after-school program that will pair African-American men from area churches with African-American boys. Bobb looks at Adams and never breaks eye contact. Bobb loves the idea. He asks several pointed questions. How will this be organized? How much will it cost? How will they measure success? What about the girls?
As Adams answers the questions, Bobb's eyes grow soft and he smiles. His body language seems to change when he's talking about children.
In a matter of minutes, Bobb makes a decision. They will start the program, and he assigns someone from his staff to follow up. Just like that, it's a done deal.
The terminator
In his 30-year career, Bobb has fired hundreds of people, including his best friend, for "nonperformance."
"We are still friends to this day," he said. "I fired him, but I helped him find another job."
In 2005, when Bobb was the city administrator of Washington, D.C., the headline of a newspaper profile said: "The Robert Bobb Management Method: speak softly and carry plenty of pink slips."
He's used the same technique in Detroit.
Bobb has, in essence, fired 685 administrators by not renewing their contracts. He has closed 29 schools, plans to close 40 more this year and lowered operating costs by more than $115.2 million, according to Angela Joyner, the deputy chief financial officer for management and budget. And the work is not done yet -- more layoffs and cuts are coming.
"If you walk around with your feelings on your sleeves, I'm not the guy to work for," Bobb said. "I'm not here to love you. I'm not here to hate you. I'm here to make sure you get your job done. We don't have to be friends. We don't have to go out for a drink. All I care about, are you going to be productive? I'll back you. I'll fall on the sword for those doing well. But I've fired my very best friend."
The candidate
The great-great-grandson of a slave, Robert Bobb has been breaking stereotypes his entire life. He was the first black city manager in Kalamazoo, and the movement for him to come to Detroit started on the day the nation swore in its first black president.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm was dressed to the nines in a blue, floor-length ball gown when she met Bobb for the first time at the Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C., on the night of President Barack Obama's inauguration.
Usually a dapper dresser, Bobb was wearing a sweater and corduroy pants, and to this day, he said, "I felt a little underdressed. It was a little early. I hadn't put on my attire."
Granholm was impressed with Bobb's credentials. He had come to her attention after a recommendation from the Broad Foundation, where Bobb was a 2005 fellow in the Urban Schools Superintendents Academy, a 10-month executive management program.
Bobb had spent most of his life in public service, climbing up the ranks to become city manager in Kalamazoo; Santa Ana, Calif.; Richmond, Va., and Oakland, Calif.
He was also the city administrator and deputy mayor of Washington, D.C.
"We went after him with great gusto," Granholm said. "I wanted to see him personally, so he would know how much we value the turnaround efforts in Detroit Public Schools."
He didn't agree to the job right away. It took some arm-twisting. "I wanted to know she was very serious about education reform," Bobb said, "and she was."
Granholm put on the full-court press. She called on one of Bobb's best friends, Moses Walker, a former Kalamazoo city commissioner who was in office when Bobb was cutting his teeth as city manager in the late 1970s and early '80s.
"Since I am probably his closest friend, she asked me if I could persuade him to come to Michigan," Walker said. "As far as I'm concerned, Robert is one of the premier public administrators in the country. Given the state of affairs in Detroit and the needs there, I wanted him to give it every consideration."
Bobb built his career on an ability to look at a budget, see through the numbers, rip it apart and try to find savings. In 1983, while city manager in Kalamazoo, he combined the police and fire departments, creating a Public Safety Department, an innovative idea for the times. The program is still a success and saves an estimated $6 million a year, according to Jeff Hadley, chief of public safety.
Bobb researched DPS from afar, reading news stories and looking at financial statements. He thought it would be a "piece of cake" to turn around the struggling district. He figured he would come in, put together a budget team, balance the budget and move on.
When Bobb took over on March 2, it was reported that the district had a $136-million deficit. But as he settled in and started working in Detroit, "we found the issues were much deeper than what even I had anticipated," Bobb said.
He found a school system stuck in the Stone Age. "It still is," he said, with troubles in almost every department, at every level. The computer system. Personnel. Accounting. Transportation. Security. Everywhere.
His staff found invoices stuffed in desks in various departments and offices. After Bobb demanded that all department heads report to his office with all invoices, a longtime department head came into the meeting wheeling a large box on rollers with invoices in it.
Four months after arriving, Bobb's team found the deficit was actually $306 million.
Day after day, he has tried to apply bandages with one hand, while creating an entirely new district with the other.
The whirlwind
Bobb works almost nonstop, often starting at 7 a.m. and ending his day after midnight. The pace is frantic.
Bobb "is an extremely private person. He is kind, considerate. He's fair and he genuinely has the kids at heart," says Sally Jay, his executive secretary.
Bobb's wife of 36 years still lives in Washington, and he goes home every other week to spend time with her. Bobb has three children.
When he's in Detroit, almost every waking minute is spent working on DPS.
"His vacations are not vacations," Jay says. "He's e-mailing and calling all the time."
He is scheduled. Regimented. And demanding.
"He can be as stern as anybody I have ever seen," said John E. Bell Jr., the district's inspector general.
At one of Bobb's first cabinet meetings, one member showed up about two minutes late.
Bobb said, "The next time you come up two minutes late, you will find the door locked and you'll be standing on the outside looking in."
Bell was surprised.
"I guarantee the message got through to all of us," Bell said. "Don't be late. He knows how to send a message."
If there has been one criticism about Bobb, it has been about hiring several outside contractors for prominent, high-paying positions, at the same time that he was laying off people in the district.
"That was the only hiccup," says Detroit Mayor Dave Bing.
But Jay has a different view: "The team he has brought on board, they are awesome. They are like little robots."
Bing and Bobb talk at least once a week. When they see each other, they slap hands and smile like old friends from the neighborhood. It's as if they look at each other and share an unspoken thought: Man, that guy is the only other person in this room who has a job just as hard as mine.
As Bobb walks down a hallway to a small public lobby -- where upset parents sometimes wait -- a big, beefy security guard walks in front of him. Another walks closely behind. They have earpieces and talk into tiny microphones in their cuffs. It's like a mini Secret Service.
Bobb stares straight ahead and walks quickly. Why the sprint?
"It's to make sure no one shoots at us," he says and smiles, and it's hard to tell whether he's joking.
Maybe, it's the pace, or maybe it's the schedule, or maybe it's the sense that something big is happening, but more than one of his staffers says working for him is like living in an episode of "The West Wing."
The villain
Growing up in the Deep South at the height of segregation taught Bobb how to take a hit.
"You just have to learn people are going to attack you, no matter what," he said. "Sometimes, the attacks come from all angles. You just have to withstand it."
Make a decision and somebody is going to be happy.
And somebody else is going to be upset.
Angry parents have threatened to bash his head in, and he's in a battle with the school board for control of the school system's academics.
But everybody agrees on one thing: Robert Bobb makes decisions.
"I have so many scars on my back there is not another place to puncture," Bobb says and laughs. "I've made good decisions and I've made bad decisions, whether it was Kalamazoo, Santa Ana, Richmond, D.C. I've been involved in billions of dollars of decisions."
The man making billion-dollar decisions came from humble beginnings, growing up on a sugar plantation in Louisa, La. Bobb's father, Isaac Bobb Jr., drove tractors and worked 12-hour days during the sugar production season.
"He worked 60 years and never missed a day of work," Bobb said.
His mother, Corita Bobb, was a maid. "She had an inner quiet and strength," Bobb said. "She was very, very Catholic. She had a quiet way of seeing issues and problems."
His mother meant everything to him. Even as an adult, Bobb would call his mother when he was upset about something and her words would calm him.
"It's like when a kid falls and hurts himself," Bobb said, "and an adult puts his hands on and says, 'You'll be OK.' "
His father, who died at age 82 in 2006, completed only the sixth grade but stressed the importance of education to his five children. All of them graduated from high school and college.
"Robert is the mentor to all the grandchildren in the family," said his cousin Dale Bobb, 53, of Houston. She looked up to him. "He was just a real strong person."
He was raised to be a leader, she added, noting: "The Bobbs are strong-minded people, not lackin', not slackin'."
He was the oldest child, and grew up in a three-bedroom house. He was always reading a book when he wasn't playing baseball or stickball.
"Robert was always a special child, a sweet child from day one," said his aunt Levora Bobb, 84, of Houston. "He never caused anybody any problems. He took care of himself, my parents. He was very neat and clean and loved reading. He was always smart, good in school, a real honest-to-goodness kid."
Money was tight for the Bobbs.
"I remember one year, my mom brought home some clothing," Bobb said. "I remember putting on an old shirt. I went to church and a kid said, 'He's got on my shirt.' "
He vowed never to wear somebody else's clothing again. Appearance is important to him. It shows power and achievement for a man who climbed from the sugar fields to the boardroom.
At times, Bobb carries himself with an icy formality. He rarely loosens his tie or rolls up his sleeves, even around his staff. He owns about 35 suits and about 100 ties. Many shirts are monogrammed and he is apt to wear cuff links, but he doesn't own any dress shoes. All he wears are cowboy boots made from ostrich skin. He has a pair for every occasion, eight in all, not counting the pair made from lizard skin. "They are very comfortable," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
In March 2009, just one month after Bobb took the job in Detroit, his mother died of a heart attack. It devastated him. After returning to Detroit from the funeral, Bobb went to church on Palm Sunday with Steve Wasko, his public relations chief.
At that moment, Bobb might have shown his only vulnerable side in Detroit. He broke down, sobbing in grief.
"Even now," Bobb said, almost 10 months after his mother died, "it's something that is unbelievable to me."
The warrior
Bobb's most contentious battle to date might be with the Detroit school board. He acts as if he has full control of the school system. He controls the money and, in his mind, money is everything.
This has infuriated the school board, which sued Bobb in Wayne County Circuit Court last August, saying he has no power to make academic decisions. The case still is working through the judicial system.
At the root of the debate is the chicken-or-the-egg argument: How can you make any financial decision in a school system that won't affect the classroom? Everything costs money: teachers, books, programs and buildings. To spend money, you have to have an academic plan. So what comes first, the money or the academics?
"We don't know how he's spending the money," said Otis Mathis, president of the Board of Education. "What is the deficit? I don't know. I don't know what he's done."
Granholm said she believes that Bobb should have full academic control. "Absolutely, I do," she said.
But some parents and activists say Bobb is making decisions in a vacuum, closing schools, reassigning principals and changing policies without detailing his academic plan. They say he has too much power and not enough transparency, awarding no-bid contracts without oversight.
More than anything, they don't trust one person to make all these decisions.
"We thought he was coming for the finances; instead he came here for a takeover," said Helen Moore, 73, of Detroit, who graduated from the district in 1954. Her four children graduated from DPS and she now has a grandchild in the district.
A group of parents strongly opposes Bobb and the work he's done so far in the district, although it is difficult to gauge their numbers. Several have been to Lansing over the last few weeks to tell lawmakers about their concerns.
Sandra Hines, 55, of the Coalition to Restore Hope to DPS, is one of the most vocal.
"Now, you want to give one person total control over the district," said Hines of Detroit. "Why would you want to do that?
"I'm going to fight, fight, fight. I'm going to be fighting, fighting, fighting. We can't let one person be over the entire district. The district is too big and complex. There are too many different departments."
The dreamer
But Bobb believes that he's on a mission.
The biggest problem facing Detroit's schools, he says, is "the adults. People who don't really care. The adults who are responsible for this school system owe every child and parent an apology and an act of contrition."
He doesn't blame the teachers, but adds, "I'm blaming their leadership."
Why can't Detroit have a great school system? Why can't each child read at grade level? Why can't children in Detroit raise their test scores to the national level? There are many brilliant children in Detroit. There are many brilliant teachers. What's holding them back?
If President John F. Kennedy could make a goal and put a man on the moon, "date certain," as Bobb has said in several speeches in recent weeks, why can't Detroit Public Schools make a dramatic change for the better over the next five years?
The message is clear: Anything is possible.
As he talks about the future, Bobb's eyes are focused and direct. He wants to challenge the kids, challenge this district.
"As we put together an academic plan," Bobb begins, "I want so much rigor that kids are screaming like hell when they come home at night and the parents are beating down my door saying, 'It's too harsh.'
"I'm saying, that's great that it's too harsh."
He wants every child to take an advanced placement class.
He wants each child to read at grade level and raise his or her test scores to the national average.
Now, those goals have been incorporated into the district's master plan, which is being vetted and will be released within a month.
The czar
Robert Bobb never stops moving. In a cabinet meeting, his feet bounce up and down. Maybe, it's nervous energy. Maybe, it's because he feels like he's running out of time. There is a clock on the DPS Web site, ticking down the days he has left in Detroit.
After telling his staff about the gains the district has made to retain kids, Bobb says: "Now, here's the bad news. My grandmother would say, 'Lord, have mercy.' Here's the bad news. The bad news is we have a budget for 84,000 students. But we are educating 87,000 students. Now, what do we do? Do we tell the rest they have to leave? I'm going to send someone else out to deliver that message."
Bobb often quotes his grandmother during staff meetings.
As a teenager, after his grandfather died, Bobb moved in with his grandmother, Ethel Bobb, and lived with her for seven or eight years.
Bobb says that his grandmother, who died at 85 of heart failure, used to repeat a slogan constantly: "Once a job has begun, never leave it until it's done. Be the labor great or small. Do it well or not at all."
Bobb smiles as he remembers her voice. "I have no idea where that line came from or who said it."
He remembers another one: "Momma tells you she loves you. Check her out."
He laughs: "Because people give you so much bull----."
In meetings, Bobb tells his staff they can balance the budget today, but the cost would be extraordinary.
"If somebody pushes me up against the wall, as some are trying to do, I'll balance the budget," he says. "Show you what it is. Approve it. Implement it. Take my hits. But you know what? Your high schools may be lecture halls. Maybe, that's what it will take to make people believe."
When he walks into a school, principals and teachers come up to him like he is royalty. They bring their prized students to meet him.
When he walks to his vehicle, surrounded by security, somebody down the sidewalk always seems to scream, "Robert Bobb! Robert Bobb!"
At almost every stage of his career, rumors have swirled around his political aspirations. Last year, there was speculation that he was going to run for mayor of Oakland, Calif.
But all of that is talk, Bobb says. When his contract in Detroit runs out in March 2011, he says, he'll return to Washington to run his consulting business. He said he has no plans to run for public office in Detroit.
His ability to rally metro Detroit behind the school system might be Bobb's greatest achievement, getting so many to believe that change is possible. "We can win the battle for our children," Bobb said in January at a rally for thousands of volunteers who have signed up for his Reading Corps, a program that aims to provide tutoring for prekindergarten students. "Failure is not an option."
As the program ended, Bobb stood onstage, singing and dancing with children. Then, he took a seat in the front row and went through the tutoring course like everyone else. He is going to volunteer, too.
"Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?"
-- From "The Outlaw Josey Wales."
Bobb loves the Eastwood movie because it is more than a Western to him. It's more than gunfights and battles and blood.
"It's an odyssey," Bobb says, his eyes growing reflective. "It's one guy faced with a tragedy. His family was destroyed and killed. He became an outlaw. He went on an odyssey."
Is that what you feel like in Detroit? Like you are an outlaw? Like you are fighting, day after day, to right the wrongs of others?
"I've felt like that," he said, "through my whole career."
--jseidel@freepress.com
— Jeff Seidel
Detroit Free Press
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