From an article earlier this week...
A Detroit elementary school is asking for donations of toilet paper and light bulbs to continue functioning.
The principal of the Academy of Americas sent a letter to staff, parents and partners asking for donations of items "that are of the utmost importance for proper school functioning and most importantly for student health and safety."
In the letter, Principal Naomi Khalil cited budget constraints within the district as the reason that the school could no longer stock the items.
The district is grappling with a more than $400 million budget deficit and is on the verge of being assigned an emergency financial manager by the state.
The letter asks for toilet paper, paper towel rolls, trash bags and 60-, 100- or 150-watt light bulbs.
Public schools in Detroit have been reduced to that? Remember the former Detroit school teacher who later made a fortune in the construction business and wanted to donate $200 million of it to the school system there? Switching to an editorial in the Detroit News.
With the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) near disintegration, it ought to be noted that it's been five years since Plymouth philanthropist Bob Thompson was told to take his $200 million and get back to the suburbs.
Thompson, a retired road builder obsessed with spending his fortune to get urban children a high-quality education, ran into a political buzz saw when he offered to open 15 charter high schools in the city that would guarantee to graduate 90 percent of their students and send 90 percent of those graduates on to college.
Community activists denounced Thompson as a white meddler out to steal their children. They were joined in their absurdity by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who threw their lot in with the teacher union.
The unions are more important than the children. FYI, Mayor Kilpatrick, who is now in jail, sent his kids to a charter school.
...instead of a network of alternative schools that would have rescued roughly 5,000 students from the sinking DPS, look what Detroit has today:
A school district that fails to graduate 70 percent of its students; a school board that's fired two superintendents and an interim superintendent in four years; 18 of its 19 high schools on the failure list; and a fiscal meltdown.
Five years after Thompson was given the boot, Detroit is officially the worst big city school district in the nation and still sends more children to welfare and prison than it does to college.
Think about how different things might have been. Had the Thompson schools been built, they would be preparing to graduate their first class in the spring. Two thousand Detroit seniors would be making college plans. And Detroit's fast-fleeing middle class would have a reason to stay.
The student population in DPS has plunged...from 157,000 six years ago to 94,000 today. Meanwhile, the city's charter school system is up to 54,000 students. The DPS budget this year is $1.3 billion, which is over $13,800 per student. Last year with 105,000 students and a budget of $1.2 billion, the figure was about $11,400 per student. But of course, nowhere near that amount makes it through the bureaucracy and corruption to finally help the students...or ensure they have enough toilet paper and light bulbs.
DPS wants a half billion to get itself back on firm financial footing. Right...with the all the corruption and incompetence there? Here's a tiny example from last June.
(Superintendent) Calloway, who started on the job last year, said that even though the proposed budget called for 1,400 layoffs, she was surprised to find that DPS does not have a reliable seniority list needed to legally cut 1,100 of those workers from the 16,000-employee pool.
It was who Calloway brought in outside auditors that uncovered most of the deficit. Presuming those layoffs have occurred, DPS still has 14,600 employees who support 94,000 students...a ratio of 6.4 to 1. Yet, it's got class sizes in some places topping 30 students.
Suppose anybody will be held accountable for failing the children, much less the taxpayers? With the power the unions have there, a ceremonial sacrifice or two will be about it.
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