The Detroit system has $483 million in operating debt and an additional $1.54 billion in bond debt. The current district, with the emergency manager and current school board, will take on the operating debt and make sure it is paid off through a tax levy that collects about $72 million a year. Meanwhile, under the plan, a new district called the City of Detroit Education District would be created and would rely on additional funding from the state of up to $72 million a year to operate. The bond debt would go to the new district, to be paid down by a tax that is currently being collected.

The new district would be overseen by a seven-member board that initially would be appointed by the governor and Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit, before a fully elected board is phased in by 2021. The plan also would create a financial review board that would oversee how the new and old districts manage their money, and a five-member commission that would appoint a manager to make sure that schools meet legislatively mandated academic standards. That manager would oversee universal services like security and performance review, and would create timelines for improving or closing underperforming schools.

The manager also would oversee a universal enrollment system.

“It’s just layer after layer of bureaucracy and playing funny with the money,” said Steve Conn, the president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. “We can’t have that.”

Mr. Snyder’s plan should have focused on issues like reducing class sizes and invigorating class curriculum with things like art and music, Mr. Conn said. Instead, he said, the governor was trying to create a city in which all of the schools would become charters, similar to what has happened in two other Michigan cities, Highland Park and Muskegon Heights, in addressing their financial problems.

By any metric, Detroit schools are failing. Only 6 percent of high school students are proficient in math, 4 percent in science and about 33 percent in reading, according to the governor’s office. Charter schools in the city generally perform poorer than traditional public schools. The state recently took over the city’s worst schools, but that has yet to show positive results.