Every public school teacher in Detroit, Mich., will be laid off in July if severe fiscal issues aren't resolved soon. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Every single public school teacher employed by the city of Detroit is being laid off, as well as all administrators. Starting July 29, no educator employed by the Motor City will have a job because of the deeply troubled finances of the city. People have been fleeing Detroit steadily for the past decade.

Motor City schools $327 million in debt

The public school system in the city of Detroit, Mich., is so plagued by financial problems that the city is being forced to lay off every single one of its teachers and school administrators, according to CNN. The Detroit School District has a $327 million deficit and issued emergency bonds in March to raise more than $230 million to keep itself functioning until August of this year. Though it was able to raise half a year’s budget, it was not sufficient, forcing drastic measures to be taken. First on the firing line was staff salaries. All 5,714 teachers in Detroit are receiving layoff notices as well as all school administrators. Effective on July 29, the city of Detroit will not employ a single teacher nor principal.

Urban decay writ large

Detroit, once a sprawling metropolis and industrial powerhouse, has been losing people steadily for more than a decade. Nearly 25 percent of its population has left the city in the past 10 years, leaving Detroit with the same number of people there were in 1910. A third of the city, according to MSNBC, sits vacant. The school district has 10,000 fewer students than in 2001. In March, when the Detroit School District went into crisis mode, a law titled Public Act 4 was passed by the Michigan legislature that granted broad powers to emergency financial managers hired by state and local governments. The law is being utilized by Robert Bobb, the emergency financial manager of Detroit’s public schools, as an emergency measure.

Not many will lose their jobs

Not all teachers who receive a layoff notice will actually end up being fired. Bobb, the emergency financial manager, is said to be restructuring Detroit schools in order to bring them in line with declining enrollment. However, he is also going to restructure the collective bargaining agreement that exists between the city and the Detroit Federation of Teachers. The district and the union reached an agreement in 2009 that cut back on teacher salaries and health benefits, which the union suspects Bobb of trying to circumvent. Detroit also is facing the possibility of a state takeover, according to Reuters, if it cannot get its fiscal issues under control. Detroit already has a $155 million deficit, which could grow to $1.2 billion by the fiscal year of 2015, which begins in July 2014. An emergency financial manager could be appointed by the state, who will take the city under direct control just like Bobb has done with Detroit schools.

Sources

CNN

MSNBC

Reuters

Art inspired by an actual abandoned book depository for Detroit Public Schools.

“At what point will America’s public schools turn the corner?” is something many of us wonder – and Detroit Public Schools are a prime example of what has gone wrong. Children deserve a quality education, but too few families can afford to send them to private schools because they a) do not make enough money, or b) are so mired in debt due to bad credit decisions that they live from pay day to pay day. As recent news out of the smoldering crater that is Detroit Public Schools indicates, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get … even worse. The children of the once great but now recession-riddled city of Detroit deserve more.

Closing 45 Detroit Public Schools a $1 billion plan?

Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb says closing 45 Detroit public schools is a $1 billion plan. But how do Detroit Public Schools expect to be able to assimilate the discarded children, teachers and staff into the schools left standing?

Overcrowding and inferior, aging facilities are already a problem –- then there’s the problem of discipline in the classroom. Stuffing more kids in may finally blow the top off the pressure cooker. Associated Press reports indicate an expected drop of 30,000 students over that time (preschool through 12th), but where will they go? Can their families actually afford to move without money loans? People in Detroit are stretched to the limit financially; it’s that way in many Michigan cities, including Flint.

Detroit has lost half its population in the past 50 years

Crain’s Business Detroit brings us that sobering statistic, something typically heard about small towns that depended upon dying industries for their lifeblood. Once Detroit Public Schools has dropped 45 more schools, the automobile capital of America will be that much closer to being either a) a ghost town, or b) being bombed off the map to avoid an “Escape from New York” scenario from spreading. Merging schools won’t address the quality of education troubles that plague Detroit Public Schools and every other public school system from Honolulu to Rhode Island.

Detroit Public School closures to be finalized by mid-April

Until then, read this list and reflect on a dream for a better Detroit that might have been. Without the capital – without the hope – Detroit will fall, strangled, in the dust. These schools will close in the next few years.

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanegorski/ / CC BY-ND 2.0)

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