Archives for category: Budget Cuts
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Pennsylvania: Bethlehem Superintendent Speaks Out Against Harm of Privatization

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2019 //
7

Take five minutes and watch as Superintendent Joseph Roy of the Bethlehem Area School District explains how private charters are harming the public schools and the unfairness of the funding formula, which is rigged on behalf of the charters.

This year, private charters will subtract $1.8 billion from the budget of public schools in Pennsylvania.

Governor Tom Wolf has proposed revising the charter law to prevent the defunding of the state’s public schools, which enroll the vast majority of students.

Please take action and show support for Governor Wolf.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Jan Resseger: Tax Cuts in Kansas Produce Civic Disaster

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2019 //
14

 

Jan Resseger describes the after-effects of former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s crash program to cut corporate and income taxes and expect an economic boom. The boom never came, but public services were strained to the breaking point.

Jan quotes liberally from Governing magazine:

Governing Magazine just published an extraordinary profile of Kansas state government—what was left of it after Sam Brownback’s tenure.  Last November when a Democrat, Laura Kelly, took office, the new governor found herself assessing the damage from two terms of total austerity. Reporter, Alan Greenblatt describes a state unable to serve the public:

“To students of state politics, the failed Kansas experiment with deep cuts to corporate and income tax rates—which GOP Gov. Sam Brownback promised would lead to an economic flowering, and which instead led to anemic growth and crippling deficits—is well known.  What is not as well understood, even within Kansas, is the degree to which years of underfunding and neglect have left many state departments and facilities hollowed out…. All around Kansas government, there are stories about inadequate staffing…. Staff turnover in social services in general and at the state prisons has led to dozens of missing foster children and a series of prison uprisings… During the Brownback administration, from 2011 to 2018, prison staff turnover doubled, to more than 40 percent per year, while the prison population increased by 1,400 inmates, or 15 percent.  Guards have been burned out by mandatory over time and by pay scales that have failed to keep pace with increased insurance premiums and copays, let alone inflation. With inadequate and inexperienced staff, the prisons began employing a technique known as ‘collapsing posts,’ meaning some areas were simply left unguarded.”

The consequences for other states that tried to cut their way to prosperity were equally calamitous.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Kansas, Privatization

Steven Singer: Charter Schools Are Gobbling Up My School District

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2019 //
2

Do you want to understand why Pennsylvania’s charter school law needs to be reformed?

Let Steven Singer explain.

Singer teaches in Pennsylvania. In this post, he describes the dangers that privatization poses to his school district.

I work in a little suburban school district just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that is slowly being destroyed by privatization.

Steel Valley Schools have a proud history.

We’re located (in part) in Homestead – the home of the historic steel strike of 1892.

But today it isn’t private security agents and industrial business magnates against whom we’re struggling.

It’s charter schools, voucher schools and the pro-corporate policies that enable them to pocket tax dollars meant to educate kids and then blame us for the shortfall.

Our middle school-high school complex is located at the top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill in our most impoverished neighborhood sits one of the Propel network of charter schools.

Our district is so poor we can’t even afford to bus our kids to school. So Propel tempts kids who don’t feel like making the long walk to our door.

Institutions like Propel are publicly funded but privately operated. That means they take our tax dollars but don’t have to be as accountable, transparent or sensible in how they spend them.

And like McDonalds, KFC or Walmart, they take in a lot of money.

Just three years ago, the Propel franchise siphoned away $3.5 million from our district annually. This year, they took $5 million, and next year they’re projected to get away with $6 million. That’s about 16% of our entire $37 million yearly budget.

Do we have a mass exodus of children from Steel Valley to the neighboring charter schools?

No.

Enrollment at Propel has stayed constant at about 260-270 students a year since 2015-16. It’s only the amount of money that we have to pay them that has increased.


The state funding formula is a mess. It gives charter schools almost the same amount per regular education student that my district spends but doesn’t require that all of that money actually be used to educate these children.

If you’re a charter school operator and you want to increase your salary, you can do that. Just make sure to cut student services an equal amount.

Want to buy a piece of property and pay yourself to lease it? Fine. Just take another slice of student funding.

Want to grab a handful of cash and put it in your briefcase, stuff it down your pants, hide it in your shoes? Go right ahead! It’s not like anyone’s actually looking over your shoulder. It’s not like your documents are routinely audited or you have to explain yourself at monthly school board meetings – all of which authentic public schools like mine have to do or else.

Read the rest of the post.

 

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Pennsylvania: Governor Wolf Proposes Charter Law Reform, Charter Lobby Cries Foul

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2019 //
3

Three years ago, the Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale declared that the state’s charter law was the worst in the nation. The scandals and frauds were frequent, and many public school districts teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. But Republican Governor Tom Corbett and the Republican Legislature had no interest in reforming the charter law. A major charter owner was the single biggest contributor to Corbett’s re-election campaign and leader of his education transition team.

Democrat Josh Shapiro is now the state’s Attorney General, and the current Democratic Governor Tom Wolf announced that he intends to issue executive orders and propose legislation to reform the charter law to require accountability and transparency.

Unfortunately, the Legislature is still controlled by charter-friendly Republicans, who betray the families who elected them, whose children go to public schools.

Gov. Wolf announced a plan on Tuesday to improve financial accountability and academics among Pennsylvania’s charter schools, focusing on cyber charters and charter management companies, through executive actions and new legislation.

“Charter schools, like traditional public schools, should be high quality and they should be held accountable,” Wolf said. “But the laws currently don’t allow us to hold charter schools and their operators to the same standards as traditional public schools.”

Wolf called the state’s charter law “irresponsible” and “flawed.” He described the original intent of the law as “creating new and innovative educational opportunities” and said that some charter schools are doing this and doing it well.

“Unfortunately, this is not the case for all charter schools, especially among cyber charter schools,” he said.

On average, Pennsylvania charter schools have not improved student test scores in reading compared to public schools and have done worse in math, according to a study from Stanford University cited by Wolf. It also found that the academic situation was worse among the state’s cyber charters, which dramatically underperform compared to public schools.

The charter lobby was outraged! How dare the governor demand accountability! They think they should be unregulated and unaccountable. Their spokesperson said the governor’s efforts were nothing less than a “ blatant attack” on the charter industry. Never mind that the founder of the state’s biggest cyber charter is serving jail time for tax evasion on $8 million that were spent on personal luxuries. Never mind that the state’s cyber charters have never met academic standards.

Why reform failure and fraud?

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Laurene Powell Jobs: Another $10 Million XQ School Fails

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2019 //
31

You may recall that Laurene Powell Jobs decided to reinvent the American high school by creating a design competition for new models. In 2026, she offered prizes of $10 million each to the ten best plans. Over 700 proposals came in. She called it the XQ competition. She hired leading lights from the Obama administration, including Arne Duncan and Russlyn Ali, to advise her. She bought airtime on all three major networks to bring together celebrities to proclaim the failure of U.S. education and the need for Mrs. Jobs’ XQ Initiative.

The awards were announced. Earlier this year, an XQ school in Delaware closed. It was called the Design Thinking Academy.

About 5he same time, an XQ project in Somerville, Massachusetts, was killed by the School Committee, the Mayor, and the superintendent, who were once enthusiastic about it. 

The Boston Globe tells the story, which is behind a pay wall. I will try to summarize it briefly and hope to do it justice.

It begins like this:

ALEC RESNICK AND SHAUNALYNN DUFFY stood in Somerville City Hall at about 6:30 on March 18, a night they hoped would launch the next chapter of their lives. The two had spent nearly seven years designing a new kind of high school meant to address the needs of students who didn’t thrive in a traditional setting. They’d developed a projects-driven curriculum that would give students nearly unprecedented control over what they would learn in a small, supportive environment. Resnick and Duffy had spent countless hours shepherding this school through the political thickets that all new public schools face. Approval by the teachers union, which became the most time-consuming obstacle, had finally come through in early January. Tonight, the School Committee members would cast their votes.

Resnick had reason to be optimistic. Mayor Joseph Curtatone sat on the School Committee, and he had been the one to suggest Resnick and Duffy consider designing a new public school in the first place, back in 2012. Mary Skipper, Somerville schools superintendent, had been instrumental in keeping the approval process moving forward when prospects looked bleak. She wouldn’t be voting, but she planned to offer a recommendation to elected officials. And then there was the $10 million. Resnick and Duffy had won the money in a national competition to finish designing and ultimately open and run their high school, and the pair knew it had helped maintain interest in their idea. Voting against them would mean walking away from a lot of outside funding.

The two had met as students at MIT. THey became interested in how children learn. They began making plans and trying them on a small scale in 2012. They called their school Powderhouse Studios. At full capacity, it would enroll 160 students. They intended to match the diversity of the district. The heart of their plan was “ambitious, self-directed, interdisciplinary projects focused on computation, narrative, and design — unheard of in a typical high school. Their work would be driven by goals laid out in individualized learning plans geared toward real-world concepts and would be supported by faculty serving more as mentors than as teachers. The school day would last from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the academic calendar would stretch year-round.”

In 2016, the pair had worked with middle-schoolers, trying out their project-based ideas. That year they applied to the XQ Project and had the support of the mayor and the superintendent. And they won. What could go wrong?

Finances. That’s what went wrong. Despite the initial enthusiasm of the school officials, they realized that the Somerville High School would lose $3.2 million each year to the new school when it had 160 students. The budget for the entire district is $73 million. The district’s comprehensive high school has 1,250 students. The new school planned to enroll about 13% of the existing high school’s students.

On the night of the decisive vote last March, the superintendent told the School Committee that “opening the new school would force the district to cut at least 20 teacher or counselor positions and to eliminate most before- and after-school programs districtwide. “As someone who believes in and has championed the power of new ideas my whole career, it pains me deeply to not be able to solve this problem,” she said. “In this case, the investment to create something that may only add an unknown amount of benefit to 2 to 3 percent of students, at the expense of the remaining 97 to 98 percent, is one I cannot recommend making at this time.”

The School Committee voted unanimously not to open the school. The Jobs grant of $10 million was alluring, but when the startup money ran out, the district would have to absorb the ongoing costs.

And a second XQ project died.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Innovation, Massachusetts

Florida: Principal Doubles Salary When Public School Turns Charter

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2019 //
10

 

What a payoff!

A principal in Florida doubled his salary when his public schools converted to a charter, which is what the rightwing governor and legislator want to happen.

Meanwhile teachers In the state are raising money to pay for basic school supplies for their students.

Lincoln Memorial Academy principal Eddie Hundley, the subject of a federal investigation, earned more than twice the average salary of middle school principals in Manatee last year.

Former Lincoln Memorial Academy principal Eddie Hundley, who is currently the subject of a federal investigation into fraud, bribery and embezzlement, earned roughly $204,000 last year, according to Manatee County School District general counsel Mitch Teitelbaum.

Hundley’s salary nearly doubled overnight when Lincoln converted from a traditional district middle school to a charter on June 30, 2018. Before the conversion, school district officials say Hundley was earning $105,560, but as of July 1, 2018, his base pay increased to $174,990 plus a supplement of $2,450 per month.

“This may not be the entire compensation received by Mr. Hundley,” Teitelbaum said in an email.

Hundley’s salary had been a mystery, as school district officials have sought more details about Lincoln’s finances. The school was declared in “dire financial condition” in May. Lincoln was found to have missed roughly $60,000 in payments to the Florida Retirement System, and the city of Palmetto has threatened to turn off the school’s water twice due to unpaid bills…

Hundley’s base salary and monthly supplement, not including benefits, puts his earnings well above middle school principals in Manatee, who on average earned $83,200 in 2018-19, according to the school district.

However, Hundley’s salary it is not out of the realm for charter school principals in the district. In 2017 the Herald Tribune compiled salaries of the highest paid employee at all charter schools in Sarasota and Manatee. At that point, Manatee School for the Arts principal Bill Jones earned roughly $184,000. Fred Spence, the founder of Bradenton’s Team Success, earned $237,000 in 2014, the last year of salary data available before management of the school was handed over to his management firm. The highest paid employee at a charter school in Sarasota in 2017 was Vickie Marble at the Student Leadership Academy, at $143,175.

Local officials said the school’s administrative costs had tripled beyond what was expected..

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, Funding, Privatization

Charter Schools and Enrollment Decline in San Antonio

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2019 //
14

 

Texas Public Radio reported on the devastating effect that charter expansion is having on the public schools of San Antonio. The city leaders, in their ignorance, decided not to improve the public schools, but to create a parallel private system to compete with them. Both sectors are funded by the public, but the charters choose their students and some do not offer transportation.

The city’s population is growing but enrollment in its public schools is shrinking.

The main reason for the apparent contradiction is an exponential growth in publicly-funded, privately-run charter schools. Charter school enrollment in the San Antonio metro area has grown by more than 200% since 2009, according to a Texas Public Radio analysis of a decade of enrollment records obtained through public information requests. 

In the past two years alone, charter networks in the San Antonio metro area gained nearly 11,000 students. For traditional school districts, that meant a corresponding loss in funding. State funding is based on attendance.

The big charter networks, like IDEA and Great Hearts, have selective enrollment practices. IDEA has received more than $200 million from Betsy DeVos and the federal Charter Schools Program.

Some local parent groups are fighting back, but they are vastly outspent by the charter networks and undercut by state policy, which favors privatization.

Charter favoritism guarantees that the local public schools, which enroll most children, will be underfunded and will serve a disproportionate number of students with the highest needs.

Some parents have organized to fight back:

Standing in the neighborhood next to Oak Meadow Elementary in the North East school district, Cameron Vickrey said her daughters’ school “experienced a kind of mass exodus” a few years ago to go to Great Hearts. Great Hearts is a charter network that uses a classical curriculum similar to private schools.

“When all of those people left there was a volunteer vacuum,” Vickrey said. “That was when I came to the school, and as a new kindergarten mom I was put on the PTA board… because they pretty much had to create a PTA board from scratch.”

Vickrey’s neighborhood is mostly one-story, ranch-style houses a short walk or drive from the elementary school.

Trimmed yards are sprinkled with white signs that say “Proudly RootEd in NEISD.”

Vickrey and a few other Oak Meadow parents started making the yard signs after hearing other parents say that nobody in the neighborhood goes to the traditional public school.

RootEd yard sign in the Oak Meadow neighborhood of North East ISD.
CREDIT CAMILLE PHILLIPS | TEXAS PUBLIC RADIO

“And we stopped and thought about it, and we were like, ‘That’s not true! Of course people go to that school.’ They just don’t know those neighbors, right, because maybe they’re not in their clique or whatever.”

From there, RootEd grew into a nonprofit with a mission of spreading positive stories about district schools — both by word of mouth and on social media using the hashtag RootEd.

“RootEd just wants to say, ‘Wait, hang on a second. Remember that these schools are here. And there are awesome things happening in them still,’” Vickrey said. “Make that your first stop, the first thing that you look into and if it doesn’t work for you for whatever reason, nobody’s going to fault you for that. You have a right to do that but we just want to make sure that people don’t discount their public schools.”

Vickrey said she also wants parents to consider the “unintended side effects” of choosing charter schools: less money and volunteers for the traditional public school, and a tendency to choose a school where people look like you.

“Our middle school that we’re zoned for here is a Title I (low-income) school, Jackson Middle School,” Vickrey said. “And it’s fabulous, but so many start choosing their school path for elementary school based on trying to avoid Jackson Middle School.”

Jackson Middle School is 80% Hispanic and 72% economically disadvantaged. San Antonio’s Great Hearts schools are less than 20% low-income and almost 50% white.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, San Antonio

West Contra Costa Public Schools Lose $27.9 Million Annually to Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2019 //
10

 

According to a study by the watchdog group In the Public Interest, The public schools of the small West Contra School School District in California lose $27.9 million each year due to charter schools, a loss of nearly $1,000 for each student in the public schools. The majority of students suffer budget cuts so a small proportion can attend charter schools that may be no better and may close mid-year.

As of 2016-17, the school year for which the costs in this report were calculated, 28,518 students attended WCCUSD’s traditional public schools, while 4,606 students—14 percent of the total student population—were enrolled in 12 charter schools within the district’s physical boundaries. More recent data indicate an explosion in charter school enrollment. The proportion of WCCUSD students attending charter schools has more than doubled in four years, from 8 percent of the district total in the 2014 -15 school year to 17 percent this year.


The costs of charter schools


When students transfer to charter schools, funding for their education follows—but costs remain. Because charter schools pull students from multiple schools and grade levels, it’s rare that individual traditional public schools can reduce expenses enough to make up for the lost revenue. While WCCUSD schools have 14 percent fewer students to serve, a school cannot adjust expenses by, for example, cutting 14 percent of its principal, heating bill, parking lot paving, internet service, or building maintenance. The district also cannot proportionately cut administrative tasks such as bus route planning, teacher training, grant writing, and budget development. Because these central costs cannot be cut, districts are forced to cut services provided to traditional public school students.


Even if such cuts were possible, districts are legally responsible for serving all students in the community and must maintain adequate facilities to reabsorb students when inherently risky charter schools fail. During the 2016 -17 school year alone, 51 California charter schools either closed or were converted into traditional public schools.3

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Anna Clark: The Public Schools of Benton Harbor, Michigan, Deserve Support, Not Closing

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2019 //
0

 

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is poised to close the high school of Benton Harbor instead of giving it the resources and support it needs. Perhaps it is time to review the state’s funding formula, created by a generation of Republican legislator, Gov. Engler, Gov. Snyder, and Betsy DeVos.

In this article, journalist Anna Clark describes what the public schools of St. Joseph, the twin city of Benton Harbor, meant to her.

It begins:

Over on Court Street in St. Joseph, Michigan, one mile from the little bridge to Benton Harbor, my hardworking family struggled to make do. We poured milk over broken Saltines and called it cereal. I tried, in a thousand obnoxious ways, to persuade my parents to buy food they couldn’t afford, not least in a choreographed song-anddance routine with my siblings titled “The There’s-No-Food Blues.”

We had one big advantage: terrific public schools.

For all the separateness between St. Joseph and Benton Harbor – one whiter and richer, the other poorer and mostly African American, with the St. Joseph River curving between them, doomed to be a perpetual metaphor – these are small communities. For many of us, our roots span both sides. I grew up in St. Joseph, but Benton Harbor is where my mother was raised, where relatives live, where our family church is, where I worked part-time jobs in high school and college, and where I run a 5K on Thanksgiving mornings. It, too, is home.

Yet the differences between our so-called “Twin Cities” grow ever more serious. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has proposed closing Benton Harbor High School for at least a few years, to get the distressed school district out of the death spiral of debt, following a consent agreement that gave the state oversight of the schools for years; it was lifted last November in favor of a financial plan that has, apparently, been scrapped. Benton Harbor’s enrollment may be lower than it used to be, but the prospect of shuttering the community’s single public high school – one that many still take pride in – is a blow.

St. Joe schools gave me the chance to thrive. Besides classes with experienced teachers, I edited a newsmagazine, performed in plays, went out for speech competitions, and failed to make many, many athletic teams. The first time I traveled out of the country was on a class trip for fourth-year Spanish students. I worked constant extra hours to pay the bill, but I got to spend two wide-eyed weeks in Spain.

I didn’t have a conversation with someone my own age from Benton Harbor until I was a freshman at the University of Michigan, leading creative writing workshops at a juvenile detention center. He was in the workshop. We traded joyful memories of the beach at Jean Klock Park and brown bag lunches at Henry’s Hamburgers, while the gulf between us loomed. We had grown up as veritable neighbors, both in working- class families, and here I was, a college student, and there he was, incarcerated.

I began to see how segregation is not only bizarre but sinister. If you grow up on the St. Joe side of the river, even in a family that is poor, you have opportunities your peers in Benton Harbor don’t have.

I’ve often heard people in St. Joe blame Ben- ton Harbor parents for the school system’s woes: “They could have fixed it. They just don’t care,” they say, pointing to empty seats at PTA meetings and sporting events. I understand the value of loving parents, but I had a great public education because my schools were supported by the taxes of people far richer than my family. Until the passage of Proposal A in 1994 (most of my student years), property taxes were the main source of school funding. Unequal schools were a matter of policy.

Even now, in the era of per-pupil funding, schools with a disproportionate number of poor students must meet disproportionate needs, but with few resources.

Michigan ranks 50th for funding growth in public education, with total revenue declining 30% since 2002. Not coincidentally, it also ranks low for math and reading proficiency. But in St. Joseph, millages help. In May, my hometown renewed a millage for support services, technology, transportation and maintenance. The levy only applies to second homes and commercial properties, but it’ll generate $5.8 million.

Poverty is concentrated in Benton Harbor. Second-home millages aren’t an option. It’s a challenge to keep teachers, when salaries are among the lowest in the state. Average annual pay was $34,761 for the 2016-2017 school year, and fell during a statewide teacher shortage. In St. Joseph and nearby Stevensville, average salaries increased to more than $63,000.

I’m proud that I come from a community that prizes public education. But it is outrageously painful that some look across the river and suggest that Benton Harbor’s children don’t have the same advantages because their parents love them less.

It also misses the obvious: Inequality perpetuates itself. It can’t be forgotten that in living memory, segregation was law. Through redlining and racially restrictive deeds, enforced by every level of government and private enterprise, we designed a system where homes owned by African Americans were worth less. Then we tied school funding to property values.

Open the link and read the rest.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Funding, Michigan

Benton Harbor: Residents See Possible Closing of Beloved High School as Racism, Despite Low Test Scores

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2019 //
10

 

Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitme campaigned in Benton Harbor, promising to invest in schools and to reverse Republican Rick Snyder’s ruinous policies of state takeover and school closings. Once elected, she offered Benton Harbor a deal: the state will forgive your debts if you close the high school to cut costs. If you don’t take the deal, the whole district may be closed. The residents felt betrayed.

And rightly so. Poor communities can’t raise as much revenue as rich districts. The state has a responsibility to step in and assure equal educational opportunity, especially for the neediest communities.

 

BENTON HARBOR, Mich. — In Benton Harbor, a small city beside Lake Michigan, the high school binds generations and strangers. This is a place where basketball games are a highlight of the social calendar, where signs celebrating state championships are placed at the edge of city limits, where residents say what year they graduated when they introduce themselves.

For years, Benton Harbor’s school system had faced dismal fiscal conditions, miserable academic rankings and intense scrutiny from the state. But when Michigan voters chose a new governor last November, it was seen as a hopeful sign in Benton Harbor. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who won more than 90 percent of the vote in this city, presented herself as a supporter of investment in struggling places, a defender of public schools, someone who cared about Benton Harbor.

But in May, Ms. Whitmer brought a grim message: Benton Harbor should close its high school and the state could forgive the district millions of dollars in debts. Otherwise, the entire school district was at risk of shutting down.

The proposal was seen as a betrayal in Benton Harbor, a predominantly black city where the high school has operated since the 1870s. What would it say to the children, residents asked, if their hometown was deemed unfit for a high school? And without Benton Harbor High School — without Tiger football games and the robotics team and the marching band — what would be left of Benton Harbor?

“It would kill the whole community,” said Greg Hill, 18, who graduated from Benton Harbor High this month and said he hoped to eventually return to the school as a history teacher. He called Ms. Whitmer’s plan “educational genocide.”

Michigan has a uniquely troubled history of state intervention in financially struggling cities with mostly African-American residents. In Inkster, where 72 percent of residents are black, the school district dissolved six years ago after the state deemed it financially unviable. In Detroit, where the population is 79 percent black, the state seized control of the school system and took the municipal government through bankruptcy. In Flint, 54 percent black, a state-appointed emergency manager changed the drinking water source and touched off the city’s water crisis.

So in Benton Harbor, where 86 percent of the 10,000 residents are black, many people saw Ms. Whitmer’s proposal not as an unavoidable end to longstanding academic and fiscal problems with the high school, but as the racist result of years of state meddling and disinvestment.

Categories Budget Cuts, Closing schools, Michigan, Racism
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »