(SUSAN TUSA/Detroit Free Press)
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick speaks to ninth-graders at University Preparatory Academy in Detroit on Monday after they made pledges to graduate. He criticized how education and city issues are handled separately.
Dr. Ward:
As we discussed in our conversation last week "when a vacuum exists someone or something will come along and fill it." We also agreed it is time for the AIM Program (The Best Kept Secret in Detroit Public Schools) to ascend and take it's rightful position as the "foundational underlayment" for all successful Detroit Public Schools 21st Century educational undertakings. THIS is the moment the AIM Program was conceived for! And as the AIM Progam's creator and paternal nurturer it is your destiny!
Take heart.........you have the true courage and depth of convictions in this "purity of purpose" endeavor necessary to prevail!
You must also carry with you the knowledge that you have an enviable team of "staunch supporters" whom will not allow the AIM Students to be denied their rightfully hard-earned success.
Congratulations...........carry on Sir! We will meet you on the hilltops.
21st Century Digital Learning Environments
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Mayor pursuing more charter, private schools
March 27, 2007
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said Monday that he has been in private conversations for months with educators and community leaders about establishing more charter and private schools across the city.
"We've been meeting quietly so no one would think we were doing something" yet, Kilpatrick said at the University Preparatory Academy charter school. UPA operates three schools in the city, and Kilpatrick said he wants to help Superintendent Doug Ross open four more.
"I'm going to try to help Doug find some places to do that," the mayor said. "There are others who want to open up schools. I'm also talking to some of the private schools to open up satellite places in Detroit."
The mayor's ambitions and planning were news to the president of the Detroit school board and teachers union. A charter school expansion likely would further drain students from the Detroit Public Schools. The Detroit Federation of Teachers successfully has blocked past charter-school expansion plans.
The mayor, who joined UPA ninth-graders kicking off a campaign to help rebuild Detroit, repeated the philosophy that he unveiled in his State of the City speech two weeks ago: that Detroit needs to view the education of its children in total, not just through the Detroit Public Schools. He also decried how education and city issues are tackled separately.
"I tried to take over the schools, and there was a vote, and they voted no. ... It's the craziest thing," Kilpatrick said. "So I can't make decisions about what happens to schools. I didn't make decisions on what schools to close. They didn't even tell me about it.
"It's a really bad situation. We have a new housing community going right up next to a school that was being closed. I had to ... run over to the school system and say, 'Please leave this school open because we have 1,500 houses going up around it.' So we have a really deformed process in the city of Detroit right now."
The district's board voted Friday against closing any schools, despite the district running a deficit and losing a tenth of its student body last year. The mayor said he's looking at what works in all schools -- public, private and parochial.
"There's a lot that we need to do with education," Kilpatrick said. "You can't continue to build a city if you don't have places for people to go to school."
Jimmy Womack, the school board president, said he wasn't surprised by the mayor's efforts but plans to focus on current students.
"If you're going to build a thousand homes, you're going to build a thousand homes. But we no longer can enjoy the luxury of having neighborhood schools. ...We're not going to leave open failing schools with the expectation of growth. We have to educate the children that we have."
Detroit Federation of Teachers President Virginia Cantrell said she wasn't aware of the mayor's talks but that the union was committed to the district that educates all children, not those it can select or choose not to be bothered with.
The mayor did not say with whom he's been talking about new schools. Charter schools, which get tax dollars comparable to public schools, require the backing of a university, community college or other educational entity. There would be no obstacles other than zoning to a private school opening a satellite campus in the city.
The mayor said he also wants to focus education on what the city's needs are.
"Yes we need new schools," he said. "We need career prep schools. Everybody is not going to be a teacher or a lawyer.
"Right now, we have 3,000 vacant nursing positions in the city of Detroit. We need nurses bad," he said. "We've got 5,000 nurses that come from Canada every day. ... I love Canada, but I think those should be jobs for Detroiters. So what are we doing in our schools to prepare people for future jobs?"
Contact ROCHELLE RILEY at 313 223 4473 or rriley99@freepress.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
Students put their success, and city's, in their own hands
March 27, 2007
The children of Detroit have paid the price for years of grown-ups corrupting their school system, damaging their city and leading people nationwide to view them with disdain or fear.
Since the adults can't get it right, the ninth-grade class at University Preparatory Academy plans to fix the city itself.
That was the students' pledge Monday -- and they have invited every other high school freshman in the city to join in.
The 128 UPA ninth-graders pledged to graduate, to go to college and then to return to Detroit to help rebuild the city. Calling themselves Detroit's Greatest Hope, their message was simple: We are the future.
UPA Superintendent Doug Ross asked me to speak to the students, to inspire them as they pledged their lives to Detroit. Instead, they inspired me.
"We are regular Detroit schoolkids. We took no special tests to get into University Prep," Carrie Williams, 15, said to students, teachers and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. "We are very concerned about Detroit's future because it's part of our future, too. ... it's clear to us that Detroit's Greatest Hope -- maybe its only hope -- is the education of this next generation of young people. A city where half the kids drop out and fewer than 10% earn college degrees has no future."
Asia Bonney, also 15, cited a Gandhi quote on a classroom door as inspiration: "We must become the change we want to see in the world."
And with that, these children joined the legions of young people throughout history who have changed the world. Harriet Tubman was 16 when she ran the Underground Railroad. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was just 25 when he helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott. And Mohandas Gandhi himself was 25 when he founded the Natal Indian Congress to help Indians in South Africa fight for their rights.
"Every single one of us pledges to graduate from high school. The UPA class of 2010 will have no dropouts," said MaLia Gaddy, 15. "Every single one of us will go on to college or other postsecondary studies so that we have the skills needed to build our city to greatness."
The pledge is no small feat for these students. Most of them have witnessed or experienced violence. MaLia's mother, Rachel Gaddy, a homemaker and mother of six, said her family is trying to move out of their Highland Park neighborhood, where "crackheads walk up and down the street all the time."
"From my house, you can see the prostitutes on the corner," she said.
Fourteen-year-old Isa Person was a 6-year-old first-grader when his best friend was shot to death as they walked home from school.
Isa, who plans to open a sportswear company and a performing arts school, said he wants to be the first male in his family to graduate from high school. One of eight children, his mission is to do his family, his neighborhood and his city proud.
"The females graduate," he said, "so I want to change that."
And 15-year-old David Miller, who wants to be a mortician, recalls proudly leaving "the block," where he used to start fights, and instead focusing on his studies and football.
The students' new mission grew out of journaling sessions done with their teachers.
"We sit in class and talk about what we see, what we need to change," said Kaellen Wallis, a first-year teacher. "We talk about how violence has affected us. Unfortunately, it has affected pretty much everyone in our class."
Esohe Osai said three of her students come from homes where a parent was killed, so the fact that they attend school at all is a success.
Through their journals, discussions and required parent meetings, the UPA ninth-graders appear to be empowered; and they have decided to do more than watch change. They have decided to effect it.
Mayor Kwame Killpatrick applauded the students as they launched their project Monday and reminded them "there is no revolutionary change that has ever happened in world history without young people being at the genesis or nucleus of it.
"I made a pledge at 13 that I would be part of this city's history, that I would come back to this city no matter where I went to college," said Kilpatrick, who graduated from Florida A&M. "And we need some help, because too many people are dropping out, and we need some more people accepting the responsibility of making this city great. And I think that the right folks are in this 128-member class."
The mayor pledged to sponsor the students' first meeting with their counterparts from across the city.
"I'll even sponsor some food," he said, "not a whole lot of food, but I'll sponsor it."
Contact ROCHELLE RILEY at 313 223 4473 or rriley99@freepress.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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