The Detroit Public Schools’ elected board has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate numerous allegations, including mishandling funds and a “general pattern of discrimination,” against Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and the emergency managers running the schools.

According to the board’s complaint filed with the justice department, the state, which has largely run the district for 12 of the last 15 years under the direction of Snyder’s appointed “emergency managers,” is engaged in a pattern of discriminatory conduct aimed at ultimately privatizing the district.

The 162-page complaint sets out a series of troubling charges. According to the plaintiffs, Detroit’s students, parents, and taxpayers have suffered as a result of sustained state “mismanagement” by these emergency managers. While under state control, the district ran up most of its current $2 billion in debt, which the plaintiffs allege was mostly spent on no-bid contracts to upgrade facilities that were later abandoned or given away to the state-run Education Achievement Authority, not the schools.

The district is currently under its fourth emergency manager.

The complaint also accuses Gov. Snyder of using the state’s emergency manager law as a means to strip voting rights and power from local elected officials in some of the state’s majority-Black school districts. Under emergency management, decisions that elected school board members normally would make, such as how to spend district funds, are instead made by appointed “managers” with little accountability, according to the plaintiffs. The effect, write the plaintiffs, has been to create “two separate and unequal school systems” across the state—those run by unelected emergency managers and those that are not.

Five school districts, including DPS, are currently under some form of state oversight. According to the plaintiffs, the mismanagement is forcing some area schools to close, leaving residents without anywhere to send their children. In the case of one district, Inkster Public Schools, mismanagement was so bad the entire district was forced to dissolve.

The plaintiffs also allege these actions are part of a larger effort to “dismantle and privatize” DPS and other districts under state control, in addition to helping to destroy neighborhood life in Detroit.

“The Governor has, in a pattern of discrimination and retaliation, insulted and offended the rich history and culture of the people of Detroit,” the complaint states. “Although people can travel downtown, there has been a rapid decay of aspects of neighborhood life in Detroit, which the Governor has completely destroyed.”

The complaint asks the justice department to investigate whether these actions amount to racial discrimination in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits educational entities that receive federal funds from discriminating.

The federal civil rights complaint is just the latest of Synder’s woes on education funding. In April, 18 Detroit schools canceled classes as hundreds of teachers protested his plans to overhaul the district, including splitting the district in two as a way to eliminate its debt. Once split, one entity would become a brand-new public school district, run by a seven-member school board appointed by Snyder and Mayor Mike Duggan, while the current board would be left to manage the “old” district and pay off its debts.