How a WSU doctoral candidate came to lead Farmington’s school board

Wayne State doctoral candidate and Farmington school board president Donald Walker stands beside an opening keynote sign. "If you're going to be about the people, be about the people," Walker said.

When Wayne State University doctoral student Donald Walker Jr. went to see his daughter's principal about an issue at her Farmington elementary school, he was focused on one classroom, one incident.

He had no idea that it eventually would lead to him overseeing the entire school district.

Walker got involved with the Farmington school board after visiting his daughter's school to address social and cultural issues with the principal.

A classmate had tried to touch his youngest daughter's natural hair against his child's wishes, and Walker needed the principal to understand why what may have seemed like a harmless gesture was such a sore point for many African Americans, even little girls.

"I wasn't mad at her classmate," recalled Walker, who is pursuing his Ph.D. in education. "The little boy wasn't trying to hurt or disrespect my daughter. But it's a violation of boundaries. You don't touch people without permission. And you don't touch Black people's hair just because it's 'different' to you."

Receptive to his concerns, the principal engaged Walker about how the adults could handle the situation to ensure that the boy learned sensitivity and that his daughter never had the problem again.

That conversation, Walker said, showed him what could happen when a school listened to a parent. Other experiences his children had in Farmington schools made him wonder how often Black families had to speak up to be heard. Rather than just add his voice to the chorus, though, he decided he'd rather listen from the other side of the table.

So he ran for a seat on the school board.

And he lost.

After losing his first race for school board, Walker was appointed to fill a vacant seat and later won an election to the board. He was named president in June.

"It's one of the first few times in my life where I put some energy behind something and I didn't get it," Walker said. "So that was a very humbling experience."

But not long after, a seat opened on the board and Walker interviewed for the post. He was appointed. He later ran again and, this time, was elected to a six-year term. After serving as vice president, he was chosen as president of the Farmington School Board by board colleagues in June 2026.

Now Walker finds himself balancing his duties as leader of the suburban Detroit school board with his Ph.D. studies at WSU, where his academic efforts center on how federal funding for career and technical education benefits Black students.

"I have professional anecdotal experience in career technical education, but I want to do the scientific research and gain data to support whether what I've experienced and seen is just Donald's experience or is there any validity that I can say is backed up by research and steps to what I've seen," Walker said.

Walker's personal experience stems from the early interest in communications he gained while working at the student radio station at Southfield High School. On Monday nights, he hosted an hourlong show segment called "A Table for Two," where he played slow jams by artists like Luther Vandross and Anita Baker and developed a smooth patter on the microphone.

"Going on the radio was the coolest thing, and it was the only time I felt whole in high school," Walker said.

After leaving college during his first semester, he trained at the Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts and worked on the air in Grand Rapids. He returned to college part time and took a job as a lab assistant at Specs Howard, where he went on to teach and eventually became director of education. He spent 21 years with Detroit Public Schools Community District, working in communications and, in his last four years there, overseeing digital media at Detroit School of Arts. Later, he trained career and technical education instructors in other states and saw how decisions about outreach and program design could influence who enrolled.

A fellowship for emerging leaders in postsecondary career and technical education helped him see how doctoral research could build on that work. At Wayne State, he was drawn to a particular area of study, curriculum and critical social inquiry, because it gave him a way to examine how race, disability and other factors shape students' experiences in school.

"I believe in my heart I was doing that kind of work, and my pursuit of my doctorate has helped bring scholarliness to what I've been doing professionally and anecdotally," he said.

Walker's doctoral research centers on how federal funding for career and technical education benefits Black students.

Walker has completed his coursework and qualifying exams and is developing his dissertation proposal. He plans to examine the language of the federal Perkins legislation, which funds career and technical education, and ask how that language shapes where the money goes, how schools use it and whether Black students benefit. He wants to test what he's seen in his own career against what he finds in the research.

After earning his doctorate, Walker hopes to advise school districts, education programs and employers on connecting classroom learning to careers. He also wants schools to bring families into those conversations earlier, especially when parents and students are navigating college and career decisions for the first time. A student might need help comparing a degree program with a technical credential or figuring out how one could lead to the other. Walker wants counselors and families to have the time and information to talk through those choices together.

Walker knows what can come of finding a direction early, even when the route takes a few turns. Back at Southfield High School, he didn't know there was a name for the kind of education he was getting in the radio booth. Looking back on the training that led him from broadcasting into education, he puts its value simply.

"It gave me choices," he said.

Now, he's trying to grade a smoother path to higher education for students in the Farmington district.

"I am someone who wants the best for everybody," Walker said. "Recognizing that we all have to give grace to each other and have accountability to ourselves if we want to get to where we want to go in our educational systems and in building our communities. I believe that starts with the leader modeling that."

Walker still thinks about how he and his daughter's former principal handled a conversation that could have gone differently. He says the two understood why the incident mattered and treated each other with respect. That's the kind of exchange he wants to make possible for families across the district.

"If you're going to be about the people, be about the people," Walker said. "And being about the people doesn't mean just your people. I started off just worrying about my own child. Now, I'm thinking about everyone else's."