Detroit 2005 article: School closures & background: Bing in from the beginning

When the Detroit School Board announced that 34 schools would not reopen in September 2005, students at Chadsey High voted with their feet. They walked out. Students at Communication and Media Arts (CMA) reinforced that message the next day by walking out in even larger numbers. Chadsey and CMA are the only two high schools to be closed. Elementary schools with high academic performance are also in jeopardy.

The closings are part of an announced "Deficit Elimination Plan" required by and submitted to the Michigan State Depart ment of Education on Feb. 4. But what right does the current School Board have to close schools?

The current board is the unelected remnant of a take-over board installed five years ago. In the November 2004 election, the Black community overwhelmingly demanded and won its right to elect its school board.

How can this rejected body overrule the students, community, unions and parent-teacher organizations who want to keep their schools open?

This take-over board ran through a $1.5-billion construction bond issue and a Detroit Public School (DPS) District budget surplus, creating the current deficit, which exceeds $200 million. They are responsible for laying off teachers and support staff. Aramark, a high cost anti-union company, was brought in to replace school custodians with more than 20 years of experience.

A "deficit elimination plan" proposes to reduce Detroit school spending by more than $560 million over the next five years, with the closing of 60 to 75 additional schools. According to the Detroit Public Schools website (www.detroit.k12.mi.us), the plan includes eliminating 4,000 jobs. The plan claims to adjust for an anticipated 25.2-percent decline in revenues and a drop in student enrollment from 140,000 to 100,000 by 2008/2009.

The severity of cuts the district is proposing is "pretty much unprecedented in Michigan, even during the Depression," said Jeffrey Mirel, a University of Michigan professor and Detroit schools historian. (Detroit News, Feb. 10)

Taking advantage of this latest public education crisis, proponents of privatizing education through charter schools have revived a plan that was beaten back last year. Former paving contractor Bob Thompson, who is famous for giving the bulk of the profits from the sale of his company to the workers, is again offering $200 million for Detroit charter schools.

In a new twist, the money will be handled by African American business owner and former basketball player Dave Bing. His participation is a ploy to make the plan more palatable to the majority African American community, which highly values educational opportunities and has thus far resisted the charter school movement...

http://www.workers.org/2005/us/detroit-0303/


So what's happening now has been planned for some time. The Skillman Foundation is the org that originally pushed charter schools INTO Detroit in 2005 in the first place:

Foundations Team Up to Create Charter High Schools in Detroit

In 2003, Robert Thompson offered to donate $200 million to build 15 Detroit charter high schools and promised that his schools would graduate 90 percent of their students and send 90 percent of those on to college. He withdrew the offer in the fall of that year, amid opposition from the public schools, unions and others.

Now, the Thompson Foundation is partnering with the Detroit-based Skillman Foundation to bid for the first urban charter high school in the city, under a 2003 law allowing up to 15 of them in Detroit. The two foundations have been talking about collaborating on new charter high schools in the city for more than a year but only recently formalized their partnership. "We went into this saying, 'How can we get these dollars back into the city of Detroit?'" Skillman President and CEO Carol Goss said. “The Thompson Foundation has committed their $200 million to this effort; it's definitely back on the table."

Source: Crain's Detroit Business, (08/03/2005)

http://www.uscharterschools.org/cs/n/view/cs_bmsg/4070.


This is the same damn plan they had back in 2003 & 2005, & the same players pushing it.