Students again get lost between lines of contracts
June 8, 2007
There is a big difference between fraud and incompetence.
But if the Detroit Public Schools' canceled contracts next year with 14 community groups and churches because some of their schools for dropouts existed in name only ...
And if the more than $9 million the district paid over two years for those schools to educate 1,200 children ($9 million for 1,200 children. H-m-m. That sounds like another story) has been squandered and isn't returned to the district, well then ...
Somebody might need to go to jail.
The other side of that coin is just as ominous: If DPS, as contractors contend, allowed them to open the schools without any guidance or oversight and paid them less than what their contracts were for and actually directed contractors to a Web site to get curriculum and course requirements to teach our most vulnerable children, as Free Press education writer Chastity Pratt reports in today's editions, well then ...
Somebody needs to be fired.
Like hidden garbage
I get so sick of people taking advantage of Detroit children by trying to make a buck off the school system. Everybody wants a contract with the district. Everybody wants a job.
In this case, the district may be equally at fault. DPS earned 20% of the $7,459-per-pupil state expenditure for each student in these so-called contract schools, while vendors got $6,000 per student. Yet DPS treated the programs, and the students, like hidden garbage -- out of sight, out of mind.
Every group that seeks a contract with the district isn't crooked. But so many have been in the past that the administration and the school board should be wary.
It is common knowledge that everybody and their dog tries to get paid with district money, seeking to earn money or get hired. In the past, our children's money has been used to pave driveways, to pay for wining and dining, who knows what else? The money has been so poorly managed that the school district has been in the red for three of the last four years.
In this case, it sounds as if the district dumped its kids into unmonitored programs and didn't look back. And the contractors didn't even have to write education plans to get paid. What kind of plan was this for kids who gave up the first time around and summoned up the courage to try again?
A third chance to make a difference
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick declined to return phone calls yesterday to discuss whether the contract school debacle might bolster public opinion that the city schools need a different kind of leadership to oversee a $1.3-billion business whose clients aren't happy, or whether the controversy might strengthen his argument that Detroit kids and their parents need more choices, such as public charter schools.
But I can't help but wonder whether children who already felt helpless the first time around, and may or may not have been learning the second time around, might not be better served in a different environment a third time around.
Might they succeed in a themed school with an actual curriculum and certified teachers who deal in liberal arts instead of trades and who offer a real chance at making a true difference in their lives?
If that school existed, would the kids try it? And if that school existed, could the district and some of these vendors try to create schools that, in some cases, appear to be empty warehouses?
I. Don't. Think. So.
Contact ROCHELLE RILEY at 313-223-44743 rrriley99@freepress.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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