Robert Bobb, the emergency manager of Detroit, said Thursday that he will send layoff notices to 5,466 unionized employees. This is in line with their attempt to regain the public school system’s financial stability.

Bobb which is a temporary head in the district announced that in order to match Detroit’s declining enrollment rate, he will send notices to all the members of Detroit Federation of Teachers. He added that they somehow need to reduce their number of teachers since there is also a significant decline in enrollees.

He, however, said that not all teachers will be laid off. They are just required to send the notice under the union’s current contract. 2,200 notices were also sent last year but only a portion of them were actually laid off. He assured the teachers that any layoffs will only take effect around the end of July.

The Public Act 4 says that Bobb, as the emergency financial manager, has the power to do whatever means necessary to make sure that the financial emergency in the district be resolved; even if it means they need to layoff a few teachers, and even throw away current union contracts.

Robert Bobb was appointed the position for Detroit’s schools about two years ago by Governor Jennifer Granholm after a long-standing budget deficit due to the decline in the number of enrollees per year. Since then, he has laid off workers and closed schools and yet, Detroit still faces a whooping $327 million deficit.