Even after closing schools and reducing its work force, the Detroit Public Schools have $3.5 billion in outstanding debt, much of it from pension liabilities, according to a report this month from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonpartisan public affairs research organization in Lansing.

The appointment in 2009 of an emergency manager to take charge of the struggling district has not turned the finances around. (The appointment predates the election of Mr. Snyder in 2010, but he has elected to maintain the arrangement.)

“We’re on our fourth emergency manager here,” said Craig Thiel, a senior research associate for the Citizens Research Council. “They each seem to be borrowing from the same playbook: figure out a way to get through the current year, end the year without going insolvent, and then push costs onto the next year in the hopes that things will improve in some way. They’re dealing with these debts that should have been paid off years ago that have instead been put on future budgets.”

Academically, the district’s performance is also alarming. Among big-city school districts, Detroit has come in last every year since 2012, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam. Only 27 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading; 36 percent are proficient in math.

In response to the sickouts, the mayor of Detroit, Mike Duggan, has ordered a districtwide inspection of each school. Last week, while touring the schools, he came upon a dead mouse in an elementary school.

Mr. Snyder has pushed a plan to create a new school district to run the existing schools, spinning off the old one as a subsidiary that would exist solely to pay down debt. In his speech Tuesday, he urged lawmakers to pass that legislation.