The city of Detroit is attempting to institute austerity programs that are stripping the budget down to skeletal levels. Late last year, Mayor Bing chose to no longer provide public services to nearly 20% of the city, and now the council is placing education on the cutting blocks.
Good thing too, as one private school is in danger of closing simply because the they cannot afford to pay its utility costs.
In an article from Detroit News.com via The Blaze on Monday, the city issued a report that if they do not receive federal funding for their education needs, within 2 years over half their public schools will close, and classes could swell up to 62 students per room.
A report from the Detroit News Monday suggested that without government aid, the city of Detroit will be forced to close down nearly half of the city’s public schools in the next two years. Additionally, the paper warns that average high school class sizes will swell to 62 students by the following year.
These startling statistics were laid out in a deficit-reduction plan filed with the state of Michigan by the city’s Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb. Bobb’s role is working to slash the $327 million deficit the Detroit school district has accrued over the years.
Detroit appears to be one of the first municipalities to finally be addressing the education problem, and debt hole it has become. With teacher pensions and union contracts continuing to grow as the economy slides downward, this department must be addressed in every city, otherwise the alternatives are massive cuts, or city bankruptcy.
As for federal funds, the government already supplements hundreds of billions of dollars each year to the cities and states for education, so the chances of more tax payer dollars being infused is highly unlikely. We are at a turning point in America when it comes to education, because it has been proven by testing and world statistics that all the money given over the past 30 years for education has in fact, been a virtual waste as America has fallen into the lower rankings of the top 20 in world statistics.
With the internet, online schooling, and the fact that home schooling brings much higher literacy and learning, the public school system is no longer the proper paradigm for teaching children, and perhaps now that a crisis has surfaced in America, the entire education system can receive an overhaul.
It must, or for many cities, it will be forced upon them.
Comments
Wow not cool. Schools should be the priority to bail out.
Wish there was a quick cure-all answer to this, but sadly there is not...
The public school unions will never give up their lucrative monopoly on education without a brutal fight. They'll fight tooth and nail to preserve their salaries, benefits and pensions, and the kids be damned.
The problem for them is that neo-socialist liberalism has killed the industrial heart of the Midwest, and with it has gone all of the money. When there's nothing else to steal, thieves need to find another vocation - or starve.
How can one school rack up a utility bill that high with so few students? It is a shame that schools have to close - it cramps others when too many kids are in attendance. The bail out seem to go to those who can afford to lose the money and not to those that really need it to exist, keep running or survive.
Only until issues on many front are address-Then possibly a change as they resent the following; Employment, Parenting, excessive waste of utilities ; nonstop outdoor lighting, nonstop indoors- exerbating heating temps, why can't we get on the same agenda?
since most parents refuse to take responsibility for their children, public schools have simply become child care centers. and since most students simply attend schools to pass time rather than learn, closing schools will be insignificant. let them eat cake as marie antoinette said about the French peasants.
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