Fifty Years Later. In Detroit the End of Brown: Separate and Unequal
This guest post, written by Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman, was originally printed in On the Edge, the Detroit Catholic Worker paper. (http://issuu.com/ontheedge-detroit/docs/ontheedge_winter2014_issuu/0). It offers a history of the loosening of Detroit Public Schools from democratically elected, publicly accountable local control. Please read it while keeping two things in mind: 1. Martin Luther King’s dictum, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” 2. Wherever you are, this extraction of education from what we now refer to as “public” and for the common good is on its way to you.
The Detroit Public Schools are being dismantled by design and effectively looted. Though Detroiters and the elected school board are consistently blamed for their demise, for twelve of the last fifteen years DPS has been under state control.
Mother Helen Moore, an attorney who heads the Education Task Force has become notorious for her fight on behalf of the schools, and tells the story over and over in community meetings. It’s well documented.
When the Detroit schools were first taken over in 1999, enrollment was stable (at 200,000 students), test scores were middle range compared to state averages and rising, an “Afro-centric” curriculum developed by the district over a number of years was in use, there was a $93 million budget surplus, and $1.2 billion from a bond issue intended by residents for building improvements. It was the latter, not any financial emergency, which drew the takeover. Then Governor Engler was determined that those improvement dollars not go to local minority contractors, but to suburban and outstate builders. Follow the money.
When control was returned to the board seven years later, the fund deficit was $200 million, enrollment had dropped to 118,000, the curriculum was gone, as was the bond money spent at shamefully inflated prices. One hundred million simply disappeared without audit or indictment. This is the background of Fifty Years Later. In Detroit the End of Brown: Separate and Unequal | educarenow: