Highland Park Schools Emergency Manager Plans To Close, Demolish School Buildings

On Monday, his first day as Highland Park Schools emergency manager, Jack Martin met with parents at the city's Barber Focus School to brief them on some of his plans for the struggling school district.

Martin has broad powers to run the city's schools as he sees fit, including the ability to sell off district assets and renegotiate contracts. His appointment as the district's emergency manager came as the result of a negative assessment by a state financial review board that found Highland Park's school system was struggling with large deficits and a shrinking student population.

Martin told parents at the Monday meeting the Barber Focus School for children in grades K-8 will close this week and the school's 222 students will relocate to the Henry Ford Academy, the Detroit News reports.

During the event, Highland Park Schools Superintendent Edith Hightower also mentioned the district's plans to demolish three currently empty school buildings: Willard, Ferris and Midland.

According to Hightower, the district will also seek private investment to shore up its finances. She announced the establishment of alumni fund, headed by former Seattle Seahawk's defensive end J. Douglas "Doug" Hollie, that already has raised nearly $250,000, MLive reports.

While the investment may be welcome, parents and community groups are upset about the school closure and building demolition. Rainbow-PUSH Detroit announced on its Facebook page that it would hold a public meeting about the Barber School closing Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Greater St. Matthew Baptist Church in Highland Park.

"I think the announcement is a bit insensitive," said Rev. D. Alexander Bullock, the pastor of the church and president of Rainbow-PUSH Detroit and the Highland Park NAACP. "Switching schools is hard for children. It's hard adjusting to a new school in the middle of school season. This isn't moving around books around in a library or groceries around on a shelf. We should be delicate in our decision making when it involves children."

The local branches of Rainbow-PUSH and the NAACP are part of a new coalition of community groups, the Financial and Academic Reinvestment Commission, that opposes the emergency manager and is trying to develop alternative strategies to cope with the school district's financial debt.

State Sen. Ernest Johnson, another member of the coalition, said in a Monday interview with The Huffington Post that school closings were part of the problem that led to the Highland Park district's financial troubles.

"When you close schools ... you decimate the district from a population standpoint; there is a heavy erosion of the tax base," he said. Johnson added that weaker funding had in turn led to declining enrollment and more structural problems.

Highland Park School Board Secretary Robert Davis on Monday filed for a temporary restraining order before Ingham County Judge William Collete against the financial review team, Gov. Rick Snyder and state Superintendent Mike Flanagan for violating the open meetings act, the Detroit News reports.

Comments

[J R M]

04:35 PM on 02/03/2012

If the buildings are usable and there is any demand for them, why demolish them? When I lived in Princeton the school district went through a shrinking enrollment period. They closed 2 of 4 elementary schools and only partially occupied the high school building. They rented the schools out as offices as well as nurseries / preschools. One of my daughters went to "sandbox tech" at one of the closed schools. As enrollment grew once again, they gradually reclaimed the leases and the schools were filled with students once again. If they had demolished the no-longer needed schools, they would have had to build new schools. They saved a LOT of money.

[garystartswithg]

12:13 AM on 02/02/2012

I live in Atlanta, and I am not trying to say my city is perfect, but a number of old schools have been converted to condos -- the school system makes a buck off selling off their old property instead of tearing it down like an idiot with an mba. This emergency manager should lose his job tomorrow.

[Ablecynic]

10:29 AM on 02/02/2012

True. Like Gary, I live in Atlanta and have watched this over the past 25 years while the demographics of the city (inside I-285) have shifted. By selling the buildings it allows the school district to get rid of the old property and build new schools where the people with children live. But having read the Detroit articles for a while now, it is clear that some of the school buildings are not even usable for renovation into condos due to their age, deterioration, or vandalism.

[pcs5141]

10:03 PM on 02/01/2012

Then in a year or two;"Oh we need 20 million to build a new school".

[garystartswithg]

12:09 AM on 02/02/2012

you got it -- emergency management is just another mba. So many mbas, so little intellect.

[Bigmonkey1237]

05:37 PM on 02/01/2012

If they have no cash and have to bring in this man how ar they going to pay to tear own schools?

[MDean]

04:52 PM on 02/01/2012

All of south east Michigan has suffered population loss, and schools in turn have lost student population. While I agree that moving children between schools in the middle of the school year is difficult for the children, the school district showed poor judgement trying to keep the school open for this school year with such a low student population. Our school district, not that far from Highland Park, closed several schools at the end of last school year, and consolidated students into the remaining schools, changing some from K-6 into K-8. Tough decisions need to be made when funding, which is based on student enrollment, is declining and you are facing operating deficits.

[eceresa]

06:18 PM on 02/01/2012

The school board probably showed poor judgement. Certainly the DPS board has shown lots of poor judgement. But they were elected by the people, not installed with dictatorial powers by a Governor who should be thrown out of office for the damage he's done to the state.

There's an avenue for the people in those communities to get rid of bad elected officials. It's called an election. Snyder and the Republicans in the legislature should not be allowed to take away people's democratic rights.

[MDean]

06:37 PM on 02/01/2012

You are making an argument against the emergency managers and their authority.

But, per your argument, Snyder and the Republicans in the legislature were elected, and the avenue to get rid of them is to vote them out in the next election.

Regardless, we are all seeing population declines and our school systems must downsize accordingly.

[frycat44]

01:32 PM on 02/01/2012

when the naacp helps do they only help blacks

[Chazz280V]

05:08 PM on 02/01/2012

No, but that is their core mission. Just look at the name.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

[ElleKaye]

09:59 PM on 02/01/2012

Uhh, I'm beige.

[VA Jill]

12:55 PM on 02/01/2012

I guess this is how EFMs "create jobs"...."here, you can work for 6 months demolishing this school."
and then, "Whaddya mean, where will your kids go to school?"

[george1la]

06:04 PM on 01/31/2012

Another right wing "Tea Party" bit of foolishness. Total "Khan" dictatorial powers is not our way of governing. This is all a part of the planned destruction of public education. This is all about privatization and corporatization and the maximumization of profits for the 1/10 of 1%.

There is $700 billion in K-12 general fund dollars in the U.S. This does not include the construction money. At LAUSD alone there is $27 billion and I can show that over 1/2 of that money was never spent building a school. When the average cost per sq/ft in the county is $280/sq.ft. and they are at $700-1,100/sq./ft. what does that tell you?

LAUSD superintendent Deasy was on the radio saying that they only had $5,500/student/yr. I corrected him and asked "Is that your name on the budget?" It says you have $10,433/student/yr. How do you balance your income and expenditures when you do not know your income? Go on Google and enter John Deasy, University of Louisville and see what you see. Then look at who hired him. Questionable, at the least.

Of the 328 charter schools in L.A. County 245 are at LAUSD. What does that tell you?

[Ablecynic]

10:33 AM on 02/02/2012

When people leave a school district, and property values drop, the school budget shrinks and so does the school age population. If you adjust the band on your tinfoil hat and stop blaming someone else who has nothing to do with a demographic issue, you could see that nothing is going to change in that district that would require that those schools remain open.