(ROMAIN BLANQUART/DFP)
Agnes Hitchcock, head of the Call 'Em Out Coalition, throws grapes at Detroit Board of Education members Wednesday and later is escorted out of the meeting.
34 Detroit schools to close
8 others could be shuttered
April 5, 2007
After three months of heated public meetings, rallies and protests, the Detroit Board of Education voted 6-5 on Wednesday night to close 34 school buildings by fall -- a wave of closings believed to be unprecedented nationally.
The closings will displace tens of thousands of students, and another eight buildings could close in 2008 if enrollment and performance do not improve.
The initial closings will save the district a projected $18.6 million a year, which district officials called a crucial step toward remaining solvent.
But, as is often the case with Detroit school board meetings, the evening did not go smoothly. Audience members disrupted the meeting by humming in unison and shouting. One person threw grapes at the board, striking Vice President Joyce Hayes-Giles.
The board managed to finish voting as security officers dealt with the mayhem. Some audience members did not even realize the vote was over when board President Jimmy Womack adjourned the meeting amid the disruption but before the scheduled public-comment period.
Womack, Hayes-Giles, Marvis Cofield, Paula Johnson, Tyrone Winfrey and Carla Scott all voted for the closure plan. Johnson cast the deciding vote, having voted last month against a different closure plan.
She could not be reached for comment after the meeting.
Jonathan Kinloch, Ida Short, Reverend Murray, Annie Carter, who was out of town but voted by phone, and Marie Thornton, who was in the audience during the disruption and had to submit a vote after the rest of the board, voted no.
Some audience members were upset Carter was allowed to vote by phone. But there is precedent for it. Former state Board of Education member Eileen Lappin Weiser regularly voted by phone while her husband was working overseas.
DPS police officers arrested Agnes Hitchcock, leader of the Call 'Em Out Coalition, a local advocacy group known for harsh political comments. As she was being arrested, she was asked what she had thrown, and Hitchcock yelled, "Grapes! I hit her right here," and pointed to her forehead. It was unclear whether Hitchcock was released from custody Wednesday night.
Hayes-Giles said she was struck in the chest and plans to press charges.
"It was hard. It startled me because quite frankly, I didn't know what it was," Hayes-Giles said of the incident. "It was unacceptable behavior. You can disagree with the vote someone takes, but that gives her no right to assault anyone."
Clarissa Meriwether, who has a child who attends Fairbanks Elementary, which will close, and another at Northwestern High School, said she is angry that the board voted to close her son's school.
Noting the school has made strong improvements on the MEAP, she said, "They are closing a high academic school. I've made up my mind already. If they close my son's school, I will put my son in a charter school."
Meriwether predicted other parents would do the same. As for the meeting mayhem, she said, "Parents are tired. Womack is not for us."
The list was scaled back from 52 building closures proposed in January but is thought to be the largest wave of closings by a single school district. It is the largest downsizing of schools in the city since 2005, when 30 public schools and nine Catholic schools closed.
The plan, called a realignment plan, also calls for the creation of 23 theme schools, such as schools focused on technology and college preparation, as well as an all-boys high school and an all-girls high school.
While it preserves Communication & Media Arts High, which sends nearly all its graduates to college, and creates two K-12 campuses, the plan calls for closing four traditional high schools -- Northern, Mackenzie, Murray-Wright and Redford -- and Millennium and Barsamian alternative schools.
Unless schools are leased or sold, by fall the city will have about 64 empty public schools and 11 empty Catholic schools. The closures are a result of declining birth rates, the city's population decline and the loss of students to charter and nearby suburban schools, which receive the state funds for each student they lure away.
School officials have often said the district has as many schools today, for 119,000 students, as it did a decade ago for more than 180,000. But many parents and teachers have objected to the closings, saying they like smaller schools.
At the center of the closures issue is the district's state-mandated deficit-elimination plan. The lengthy document calls for budget cuts and school closures through 2009.
The plan was authored in February 2005 by former Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Burnley after the district incurred a $48-million deficit for 2003-04 and faced a $150-million deficit in 2004-05.
The state allowed the district to refinance a $213-million short-term loan over 15 years, but in exchange required the district to come up with the plan. It calls for closing 95 schools from 2005 to 2009, cutting jobs and other expenses as revenues fall.
Not following the plan could lead state officials to appoint a manager to control the district's finances. But the penalty school officials fear most is the prospect that bondholders could call in the $200-million debt, making it due and payable short term.
"We'd go broke. Immediately," interim Superintendent Lamont Satchel said. "We'd have to lay people off."
Next year, spending will have to be cut by $118 million to avoid a deficit, according to a report from April Royster, executive director of DPS's office of accounting.
Contact CHASTITY PRATT at 313-223-4537 or
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
Grape-thrower misfires at school board meeting
Antics bring Detroit national negative spotlight - again
April 5, 2007
The phone rang at 6 this morning, and a friend in Kentucky, laughing heartily, asked: “That wasn’t you throwing grapes at the school board meeting, was it?”
And there you have it. Detroit looks silly in America again.
So-called activists disrupted the school board as it voted to balance its budget by closing schools to keep its costs in line with its declining student population. One audience member threw grapes, hitting a board member in the chest and getting arrested.
Detroit is so mired in the past - the way the auto industry works, the way the state legislature doesn’t, the way race relations stymie our progress – that it is possible that some activists still believe that it’s 1968.
But the type of antics that occur at most board meetings accomplish nothing – except to provide entertainment for news-watchers across America.
Agnes Hitchcock, the Grape-Thrower, could have offered the board suggestions on how to continue to serve steak on a hamburger budget. Instead, she became the Grape-Thrower, a national laughingstock
Problem is, she made Detroit a laughingstock as well. And that ought to be a crime.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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