Detroit may shut up to 52 schools

[egrguy]

Plan targets 8 high schools, shrinks district by 20 percent; board to finalize list next month.

What kind of effect will this have on the city? I know when Grand Rapids tried to close a few schools a few years back it was a real frenzy.

To me, it seems like they are trying to keep their head above water budgetary wise and seems like the appropiate decision fiscally.

But why Kilpatrick's need to be involved? I mean, let the Superintendent do the job is there to do.

[RustTown]

This is, indeed, a needed (if even painful) thing for DPD. They are bleeding students to the charter schools. At the time, there really isn't anything DPD can do but to continue to cut schools, and it's about time they got ahead of this instead of trying to play catch-up every school year. I really do feel sorry for the kids, though, because this means some ridiculous school bus routes and larger class sizes and such.

BTW, mayors, in any city, often like to be involved in school districts if nothing more than as an advisory role, which is about any power they have of school districts. The same thing that's happening in Detroit is happening in most urban school districts in the country, and city leadership does like to be able to put in their 2 cents.

[illmatic774]

as odd as this may come out, good.

They probably wont close even 40, if they ever do, but i believe at least 50 are on the 'recommended' list. Only 65% of the schools are filled to capacity anyway, so why bother using all of them? People will say that this is catastrophic for a city, but this **** needs to be done.

[RustTown]

It only appears catastrophic to those that have no idea about how much larger the school system is than the population. I don't know why it escapes so many people that Detroit was a city built for 2 million. With less than half its population gone there are A LOT of things in the city that need to be "right-sized," schools and government accordingly.

With that said, ironically, Detroit's primary student population has actually risen over the past few years (I'll try and find the source), so the downsizing of the school district is just as much students moving to charters as it is families still moving out of district. Just as ironically, people seem to have the "grass is greener on the other side" syndrome only to find that many of the charters are not any better, if not worse than, the public district.

It's all just such a mess to try and figure out (i.e. many urban school districts). There are lots of realities, but an equal amount of misconceptions and ignorance involving how to fix the bleeding of these districts. There more often than not we rreally do still have seperate but equal public education.

[RustTown]

Speak of the devil. Here is an article out, today, about mayor's involvement in public school systems:

Mayors seek to take charge of schools

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070107/ap_on_.../mayors_schools

[egrguy]

Ripple effect: Could closing Detroit public school buildings derail the city's revitalization efforts?

This article seems pretty bleak on the prospect of all of the school closings in regards to their surrounding neighborhoods. Is it/will it really be that bad as the article details for these neighborhoods that are losing schools? One thing I didn't understand is the closings of the schools with growing birthrates. Are these really a small proportion to the overall closings that the detroit news just chose to focus on?

[RustTown]

This is the Detroit News we're talking about. They are known for hyping the bad in the city, and that's an understatement. They often try and connects dots, some of which they make up to make a point. It's not that this isn't bad news, but I find them poorly connecting school closings to revitalization efforts. Again, the truth is that most middle class families they stay in the city, or those that move to the city, send their kids to charter and private schools, anyway. For whatever reason more and more citizens are taking the train of thought that DPS is irrelevant.