Muskegon Heights Emergency Financial Manager Donald Weatherspoon will add the title of emergency financial manager of Highland Park Schools on Monday.
Editor's note: MLive readers and hubs chose 13 Michiganders to Watch in 2013. You'll see mini-profiles of the choices all this week. For the entire list, which we'll update every day with profile links, click here.
Donald Weatherspoon, 69, of Haslett
Emergency financial manager
Donald Weatherspoon was appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to tackle the $16 million deficit at Muskegon Heights Public Schools that its elected school board couldn’t figure out.
His mission was to deal with the debt and find a way to keep delivering educational services to the community’s children. He hatched a plan that involved turning the district into the nation’s first charter school district, enabling it to tap into a different source of state funding.
He wasn't exactly popular after he laid off the entire public school staff and privatizated the district. But Weatherspoon's moves were viewed as visionary, and he was subsequently appointed emergency financial manager of Highland Park Public Schools by Gov. Rick Snyder.
With both districts’ finances figured out, Weatherspoon said he will spend 2013 monitoring the for-profit charter school companies contracted to run them. Weatherspoon said he will focus on student achievement data from the districts, and keep a close eye on enrollment figures.
Five things to know about Donald Weatherspoon
• He played defensive tackle for the Michigan State Spartans when they shared the national football title in 1966. He went on to play semi-pro ball with the Indianapolis Capitols.
• He’s a “do-it-your-selfer.” His latest project, which he said he started in April and still hasn’t finished, is building wooden potted plant containers for his wife. “It didn’t meet her specifications, so I have to go back and modify it,” he said.
• He comes from a family of nine children who grew up on a farm in Cass County, a key stop on the Underground Railroad, where his family traces its roots back to the mid 1800s. “We were self-sufficient for food,” he said of the farm where they grew fruits and vegetables and raised chickens and cattle.
• With all that time driving from his home to both sides of the state, Weatherspoon has plenty of time to listen to Sirius radio in his car. He has broad musical tastes, ranging from jazz, blues and rock ‘n’ roll to opera, classical and country. But he won’t listen to rap. “It expresses a great deal of anger and that might be appropriate for the younger generation, but it’s not for me.”
• His resume is extremely long and diverse and includes working as a police officer in California. He’s served on the Liquor Control Commission and as assistant to the director of the Michigan Department of Corrections, chief deputy director of the Family Independence Agency, assistant state superintendent of schools, deputy director of the Department of Natural Resources and deputy director of the commerce department. And that’s only part of his long and varied work record.
Tomorrow: Democrat Gretchen Whitmer and Republican Lisa Poshtumus Lyons, both rising stars in the Michigan Legislature.