This post was written by Lakia Wilson, a guidance counselor at Spain Elementary School in Detroit.
She describes the horrifying physical conditions in the school, experienced daily by 500 students and the staff.
The predominant smell in the school is mold and mildew.
“The gym is closed because half of the floor is buckled and the other half suffered so much rainwater damage from the dripping ceiling that it became covered with toxic black mold. Instead of professionally addressing the problem, a black tarp simply was placed over the entire area like a Band-Aid. That area of the school has been condemned.
“The once beautiful pool sits empty because no one has come to fix it. The playground is off-limits because a geyser of searing hot steam explodes out of the ground. What do our kids do for exercise with no gym, playground or pool? They walk or run in the halls. Seriously. Our pre-K through eighth graders move like mall walkers.
Exposed wires hang from missing ceiling tiles. Watermarks from leaks abound. Kids either sit in freezing classrooms with their coats on or strip off layers because of stifling heat.”
Blame it on the kids? No. Blame it on the parents? No. Blame it on the teachers? No.
No, this falls into Governor Rick Snyder’s lap. Detroit is under state control.
Governor Snyder, tell your Emergency Manager to fix the schools so they are in tip-top shape. You will be judged by what you do–or fail to do–for the children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Greedy Old Love Of Money Party (GOLOMP) created this mess and they aren’t going to lift a finger to fix it.
But Hey, maybe the kids can go to school in the new hockey rink.
LikeLike
“The Greedy Old Love Of Money Party (GOLOMP)”
Here is some perspective. You can now decide if it is the GOP that is responsible.
The population has collapsed in the past six decades.
Detroit was America’s fourth largest city in 1950, when it had 1.8 million people. In the 2010 census, the city had fewer than 702,000 residents — an astonishing decline of 60 percent in 60 years.
Detroit has the highest unemployment rate of any major city in the nation.
This is both a cause and an effect of the population situation. Detroit is caught in a vicious cycle. There are few jobs, so people leave to find work elsewhere. Meanwhile, the high cost of the city’s government (more on that in a second) drives employers away and makes other less willing to relocate there. That means fewer jobs, which further erodes the tax base and causes more people to leave the city.
Detroit has $18 billion – yes, billion — in general-obligation debt.
That’s a lot more than some of the other high-profile municipal bankruptcy cases in recent years. When Central Falls, R.I., declared bankruptcy in 2011, it had only about $80 million in debt. Jefferson County, Ala., had about $4 billion in debt when it declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy that same year.
A lot of that debt is the result of public pensions.
According to Moody’s, Detroit has about $3 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. But Orr says those numbers are understated. And it didn’t take long for the pension funds to sue the city in an attempt to stop the bankruptcy proceedings.
Why is the city buried in pension costs? Because it has too many public workers.
Though Detroit’s population has caved in the past several decades, the public sector just keeps on growing. In 2011, the city had more than 12,000 employees — more than any other comparably-sized city in the country, according to an analysis from The Detroit News.
And the guys running the pension funds aren’t exactly helping.
In April, Reuters reported that four of the men charged with running the city’s broke pension funds were on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii for a conference. The final tab was $22,000.
But they are hardly the only corrupt public employees in town.
Former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a Democrat, was convicted in March on 24 federal felony offenses, including mail fraud, wire fraud, tax evasion, racketeering and extortion. Prosecutors said he doled out jobs to friends and family, wasted city tax dollars on fraudulent contracts and pocketed more than $1 million in illegal kickbacks.
Crime is up and the police have no way to respond.
While much of the city’s financial trouble is due to the public pension it must pay to retired teachers, city employees, cops and firefighters, that leaves little money on the table to pay actual cops to keep actual people safe in Detroit. The average response time for an emergency call was 58 minutes, according to Snyder’s letter, compared to a national average of 11 minutes. And only 8.7 percent of crimes in the city are solved, compared to a statewide average of 30.5 percent in Michigan.
There are 78,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit.
This is a result of all of the above. Fewer people, fewer jobs, less economic activity and tons of crime have created a city-sized collection of abandoned buildings. We only had room for a few photographs here, but Snyder says there are 78,000 such structures in Detroit.
http://watchdog.org/96532/10-reasons-for-detroits-historic-failures/
LikeLike
Raj, Snyder is in control now.
In fact, he pretty much begged for the chance to be governor.
So it’s his job to fix it, not to complain about how tough it is. He knew the problems going into the job. No whining.
These are CHILDREN. How much are Snyder’s Emergency Managers making? Cut their salaries and eliminate their staffs (no one associated with a public school system should make over $100K a year) and start fixing these schools.
LikeLike
Raj, I came to Michigan in the summer of 1967 and anybody who’s paid attention to what’s been going on at the ground level in this State knows more about what caused its current condition than all the Stratos City Dwellers put together.
Just for starters, the main reason the tax base changed is not because the population changed but because the tax structure changed. It’s the same thing that’s been happening all across the country since Reagan at least — Those who benefit the most from living in a democratic, educated, productive society have fallen under the delusion that they can keep on privatizing the rewards while socializing the costs forever.
LikeLike
Jon Awbrey: don’t bring up facts; it’s confusing for some.
And, dontchaknow, pensions forced the appointment of former emergency manager of Flint, MI, Mr. Darnell “It’s All For the Kids—Poisoned Water That is!” Earley, to head up Detroit PS. All this while the governor and others in authority were helpless to intervene.
Rheeally! And it occurred in the most Johnsonally sort of ways, lazy LIFO retired teacher thugs Trumping good sense and decency.
Although on Planet Reality, it unfolded in quite a different manner.
😎
LikeLike
KrazyTA and Jon Awbrey
Yes, Snyder (R) is in control now, but Democrats were in control before him for a long time.
My ten points can be verified, they are all facts. It is not confusing to me and should not confuse anyone. It took 60 years to reach this hopeless condition. People who could see the writing on the wall left long ago, employers left and Detroit simply failed. Crime increased driving many out of the city.
The points I made did not ever say “lazy LIFO retired teacher thugs,” but public sector employees. Please don’t put words in my mouth.
Some old cities, like Pittsburgh and Cleveland became smaller and reinvented themselves and survived. Detroit is a lost cause.
Attempts to make Detroit smaller as a survival measure have been thwarted by many blaming the republican administration. When the population reduces by half one does not double the taxes on the remaining and keep all the public sector employees. It does not work that way. May be the tax structure changed a little, but look at Pittsburgh, it is thriving. People run away from disasters. Look at all the other major cities in this country, none is facing Detroit situation.
LikeLike
Raj, a person who says something like, “May be the tax structure changed a little”, simply does not understand the dimensions of the problem.
I have seen what happens to the schools in a city when some of the largest property owners, its major industries, blackmail the mayor and city council into granting them 20-year tax abatements. It is not “whitle flight” or the other mythological causes, unless you count corporations that move their PO Box HQs overseas in order to avoid paying for the infrastructure and social base they exploit to make their profits.
That problem is not just a Detroit problem, it’s not just a Michigan problem, it’s U.S. tax structure (= lobbies and loopholes) problem.
LikeLike
To interpret my remarks as somehow favoring or covering up for Dems at the expense of Repubs is not simply a clumsy distortion of my POV as expressed numerous times on this blog—
It is a “grossly ineffective” [see! I used the sacred rheephorm phrase from the Vergara Trial!] attempt to create a straw man argument. And only for the purpose of manufacturing out of whole cloth a debate punching bag that can be freely pummeled regardless of intellectual integrity, decency, or honor.
My position is clear: hold everyone’s feet to the fire. Period. No matter the political labels or philosophical coloration or what part of the human rainbow on which an individual is found.
Let me make this clear for the umpteenth time: I don’t like bullies. I don’t like liars. I don’t like those that demand servile obedience to their POV but can’t stand the give-and-take of genuine discussion because they have to actually explain and justify their own self-serving and contradictory assertions.
I stand with a genuine American hero on limits:
“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.”
Frederick Douglass was right then. He’s right now.
😎
LikeLike
This is beyond sickening. Those poor kids. Who is standing up for them?
Governor Snyder and his totally incompetent Emergency Manager need to be in jail.
LikeLike
I know the teachers who walked off were demonized, but like the “opt out” parents, I don’t think ed reformers can deny that no one did anything about their complaints until they refused- refuse to show up, refuse to test.
I think we can ask our political leaders why nothing happens until people take such extreme measures. To me it indicates a certain “out of touchness”. They literally had to STOP GOING TO WORK before anyone listened to them.
And it isn’t like ed reformers weren’t in Detroit! They were there! They had a big nationally promoted ed reform push in 2012. All the superstars were there, everyone from Michelle Rhee to Eli Broad to Arne Duncan. There were forums and think tank meetings and tens of thousands of words written about Eli Broad’s Detroit ed reform.
No one asked if the schools had functioning boiler systems? Instead they spent tens of millions of dollars on “blended learning” computer programs that were absolute rip-off garbage? I saw in the paper that the “tech academy” doesn’t have a functioning internet connection. How did the “blended learning” platform they were all touting work out in that school? Couldn’t have worked real well.
LikeLike
Lest we all forget, Duncan announced that Detroit was “ground zero” for ed reform way back in 2010.
“U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave the Motor City a homework assignment Thursday.
“Can Detroit become the fastest-improving urban district in the country?” Duncan asked Detroiters packed into the auditorium of the Charles H. Wright Academy of Arts and Sciences. “I see no reason why that can’t happen.”
It was a challenge, and a less scathing message than the one Duncan gave during his last visit here, in 2009. Duncan admitted branding the city as “ground zero” for education reform, may have angered Detroiters.”
Two years later, Eli Broad was running the “recovery district” and they all flocked in to promote his plan. I didn’t hear a peep out of anyone about the infrastructure and operational collapse that was apparently ongoing, right under their noses.
LikeLike
A piece was just written about our high school, that pointed out deteriorating conditions. We have trailers which mean students are often outsideduring the day. The wooden ramps are not safe in cold and wet weather, the trailers all smell of mildew and have buckling floors. Our students are unsafe in this arrangement. This year we finally got an intercom system, which is a step out of the dark ages.
The inside of the building is not any better. Buckling floors (including the gym), ancient boiler with 2 settings – on or off, windows that are stuffed with rags and covered with make-shift blinds, bathrooms out of some Dicken’s novel, and freezing cold eating area. It has actually been 90 degrees when I open my door in the morning.
Our state cuts have been severe, and will continue as long as Kasich is governor.
LikeLike
This guy has the nerve to present himself as presidential material.
LikeLike
This deserves a photo essay/expose. Perhaps tailored for the tabloids, no extra sensationalism really needed. The problem for the teachers and other is they could lose their jobs for insubordination or some such. Maybe the health department, if one is functioning in the state or city can be called in. Black mold is not a trivial matter.
LikeLike
A Detroit kindergarten teacher was interviewed by a local news station on her last day on the job. She quit because of concerns for her own health. As the reporter was leaving, she was accosted by a school department official who insisted the teacher had no right to allow her inside the classroom:
http://www.wxyz.com/news/fix-my-schools/detroit-teacher-takes-new-job-to-get-out-of-classroom-she-says-is-making-her-sick
LikeLike
I was thinking the same thing. Every teacher could take pictures of the insides of their schools and post them online. In fact, Detroit isn’t the only place where such a tactic could be employed. In this case, a picture might be worth a thousand words.
LikeLike
Maybe some Detroit teachers could send photos of the unsafe, unsanitary (tarp over mold!) conditions to Mitch Albom at Detroit Free Press.
LikeLike
For photos, click the link at the top of this post.
The conditions are shameful, especially the geysers of steam shooting up all over the playground. The entire building should be condemned.
Much respect to the teachers who walked off the job to protest these conditions, which are unsafe for students. People wouldn’t know about this if they had not.
LikeLike
For more Detroit PS teacher voices, explaining why they walked out (or chose to support their fellow teachers, while remaining in the classroom):
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2016/01/whats_going_down_in_detroit_today.html
And if you’d like to see just how the conditions in DPS got so bad–a story that includes an amazing infographic explaining how the citizens in the city of Detroit had democratic control over their own school district REMOVED by a governor 16 years ago–here’s another blog:
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2016/01/teacher_protests_unethical_and_union-led–or_evidence_of_professional_courage.html
Think this couldn’t happen to your urban district? Think the union and policy-makers would prevent this corruption of democracy? Think again.
LikeLike
Disgusting!
The same politicians & Billionaires sticking it to teachers at every turn should be paraded through the crumbling halls of our schools, the way Germans were forced to march through concentration camps after the liberation.
How can we ask anyone to work or attend schools like this?
Yet, we look away and give no attention or URGENCY to this.
If we saw videos of such conditions in schools around the world, we would send in volunteers, relief workers and tons of $$$ to improve their plight.
Right at our doorstep, we are able to step over the people in harms way.
I do not understand how this country chooses to operate this way.
Our morals are warped as a nation!
Flint water crisis is another URGENT situation with little urgency.
24 bottles of water per household? Photo-op!
Fire and arrest the bas**rds!
If politicians experienced swift justice, rather than do enormous damage, and then wait to vote them out of office. Too late. What accountability?
Oh, I forgot, they have all worked out…BASH TEACHERS for everything.
LikeLike
So Flint, Michigan is a national disaster and Detroit is a national disgrace. What more can Michigan endure from Governor Rick Snyder and his austerity plans and emergency manager circumvention of democracy?
LikeLike
I’m surprised he isn’t running for President!
LikeLike
Snyder and his lapdog(Earley) are national disgrace.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
This is absolutely disgusting and unacceptable. How can anyone think that it’s okay to leave children in such an environment?
If kids were living in a house with exposed wires, no heat, toxic black mold all over, the CPS would be investigating that home for child neglect.
Or maybe not, if it’s in Detroit. 😦
LikeLike
How about focusing time, energy and resources on FIXING the issue instead of pontificating about who is responsible? How about working together to create change instead of fomenting the us v. them mentality rampant in political discourse? How about infusing some compassion for one another into the dialogue and decision-making for a change, regardless of who we are, where we reside, or what political party we associate ourselves with? Maybe, just maybe, we’d see some actual progress towards solutions…
LikeLike