University Prep's Margaret Trimer-Hartley, left, and Shawn Hill will team up on a new science and math charter middle school in Detroit. (Velvet S. McNeil / The Detroit News)
Sunday, January 20, 2008
New Detroit schools bring hope to the city
The Detroit News
Steadily, more high-quality educational choices are coming to Detroit's parents and their children. This development should be celebrated, not denigrated.
The announcement last week that the Detroit Science Center will sponsor a charter school built by Plymouth philanthropist Bob Thompson and operated by Doug Ross -- the team behind the successful University Prep Academy charter school system -- means that Detroit middle school students by this fall will be able to enroll in an intensive program of math and science equal to that anywhere in Metro Detroit.
The middle school will someday feed a math and science high school being planned for the Detroit riverfront, and aimed directly at supporting the new neighborhoods planned along the river.
Thompson and Ross are coming off a major success with U-Prep, which last spring graduated its first high school class. More than 95 percent of the students who started with the program graduated, and 90 percent of them are in college this fall.
The math and science school, using the same formula of providing students with the academic and emotional support in a family-like environment, hopes to equal those results.
On Friday, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick told the Detroit Economic Club that work is moving forward on a graphics art school that will occupy the vacant Argonaut building south of the New Center.
General Motors Corp. owns the building and is giving it to the College for Creative Studies to be used for an innovative program that will start students in middle school and take them through college graduate programs in the same facility.
The concept is unlike anything tried before in the city. And it should encourage students with an interest in art and design with the preparation and motivation they need to succeed in college.
If it works, the same approach could be tried with a variety of other academic fields, including engineering and health care.
As Kilpatrick told the Economic Club, the emergence of these alternative schools does not threaten the Detroit Public Schools. Under the determined leadership of new Superintendent Connie Calloway, the district has a chance to turn itself around.
But the city's children can't wait to see whether Calloway's plan works. They need more choices now.
The new schools announced last week will feed a demand in Detroit for programs that offer a more focused educational experience than currently available in the public schools.
If the schools work, they may even draw students back to the city from suburban districts.
That would help stabilize the city's middle class and make the new residential developments going up in Detroit more attractive.
The new charter schools, like the ones that came before them, are being met by protests. The Detroit Federation of Teachers president wants Gov. Jennifer Granholm to stop these kinds of schools. And there may be more lawsuits.
But the charter schools are just as important to the future of Detroit as the new office and apartment buildings going up downtown, and should be equally celebrated.
DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS
District spent $1.5 million on trips, catering
Funds spent despite pledge to save
January 20, 2008
By JENNIFER DIXON
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Despite promises to scale back travel and other nonessential expenses, Detroit Public Schools spent more than $1.5 million on hotels, travel and catered meals in the year that ended Sept. 1.
That's comparable to what the district spent on food and travel during a similar time frame in 2005-2006. After the Free Press uncovered those expenses last February, school officials pledged they would rein in such spending. The expenses outraged parents and teachers in the cash-strapped district.
Asked about the latest bills, Board of Education member Jimmy Womack said it is "unfortunate the travel expenses increased when the board made it clear we needed to reduce our expenditures in that area, so much that we put restrictions on our own travel."
Womack said the 11-member board could demand an investigation by majority vote.
While the new records show Detroit Public Schools paid hundreds of vendors, they don't show why the money was spent, who spent it, or when. And with few exceptions, the district refused to provide the Free Press additional details on the expenditures.
The district would not explain, for example, why meetings were held at the Doubletree Hotel Dearborn at a cost of about $235,000.
The records also don't indicate why the district spent $75,300 at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, $13,628 at the Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark, and $9,036 at the Hilton New York in midtown Manhattan.
Superintendent Connie Calloway declined to discuss the spending. Her office referred questions to district spokesman Steve Wasko, who said nearly all these expenditures took place before Calloway came on board in July.
In remarks to the Free Press editorial board in December, Calloway said she was shocked at what she called the level of fraudulent and messy accounting in the district's budget and the degree to which employees did not follow procedures. "Every day is a day of financial discovery," she said.
District trying to move forward
Wasko said of the 12 months covered by the new records, Calloway and her administration were in office for fewer than two. He said further investigation into the expenses "has simply not been a high priority" for the district, given the new administration's focus on "moving things forward in the right directions."
The district, he said, "is putting in place systems to ensure that any expenses for travel are the most efficient ones and most suited to promote student achievement."
He did not elaborate.
Last year, school board members made similar vows to rein in expenditures. Board member Tyrone Winfrey said in February: "We just have to do a better job all the way around, being more efficient in spending dollars."
Then-Superintendent William F. Coleman III signed a memo saying that all discretionary budgets "have been reduced to zero" and only emergency purchases would be considered.
Increased expenses
But records show school district spending increased slightly from $1.55 million to $1.56 million. That included an increase of $112,000 in spending on catered meals, restaurants and other food expenses -- from $378,000 in the period ending November 2006 to nearly $490,000 in the latest reporting period.
Records show the district spent $80,891 at Edibles Rex, $16,608 at New Center Gourmet and $11,790 at Ruby's Kitchen, all in Detroit, and $4,759 at Dave & Buster's in Utica.
Tammy Tedesco, owner of Edibles Rex, defended the district's spending. She said her company merely provided continental breakfasts, box lunches and light refreshments for teachers and staff at training workshops and at parent-appreciation events.
"They never do anything lavish," Tedesco said.
The district also spent $815,000 on travel agencies, tour groups and out-of-town hotels in the period ending in September. That's nearly $100,000 more than the $717,000 it spent in 2005-06.
By comparison, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District spent $117,974 on travel in the last six months. Cleveland has a budget of $1.2 billion, almost the size of Detroit's $1.3-billion budget.
Chicago Public Schools is at the other end of the spectrum. It has a budget of $4.6 billion and spent $4.1 million on travel in fiscal 2007.
For DPS, the most significant increase in spending money with travel agencies and tour groups went to two companies headed by Detroit attorney Fallasha Erwin.
In the 2005-06 period, his Alternative Travel Inc. received $123,000. In the latest reporting period, Alternative Travel and a sister company, Fun Time Vacations International Inc., received $217,000 in district travel business.
Erwin said he expects to see business dwindle this year.
"I'm not doing a quarter of what I did in the past two years," he said. "I know they've been much more cost-conscious."
He said people traveling at district expense are choosing cheaper connecting flights over direct flights.
District records also show that some people traveling for the district have stayed in modest hotels such as the Days Inn in Atlanta, Holiday Inn Express in Sacramento, Calif., and Hampton Inn in St. Louis, while some still chose the Hilton in midtown Manhattan, the Hyatt Regency in Miami, the Boston Marriott Copley Place, and the Grand Traverse Resort & Spa near Traverse City. The records, however, don't say whether the district received lower conference rates for the higher-end hotels.
The district cut spending on local hotels and meeting halls from the first period to the second -- from $460,000 in 2005-06 to $256,000 in the latest reporting period. While spending on local hotels, travel and meals is a tiny fraction of the district's budget, critics have said the district must be vigilant about all its expenses.
Being honest about spending
Last year, Detroit Public Schools lost $100 million in state funding because of declining enrollment. Its financial situation is so precarious that Calloway has said making payroll is her most pressing issue.
Board member Reverend David Murray said the administration must to be forthright with the public about spending because "ultimately, the public is going to find out anyway."
Murray said Calloway, however, does not disclose a lot and does not like "too many people to get in her business, not even board members."
The district, with 105,000 students, has seen a decline in enrollment for years and could see more families leave if the number of students dips below 100,000 and more charter schools open in Detroit.
Susan Storey, an English teacher at Cody High School, questioned travel spending when teachers lack basic teaching tools such as books and computers in their classrooms and funding for special projects.
Storey said she is trying to raise $350 to bring in a touring company from Wayne State University's Black Theatre Program for a school event during Black History Month in February.
"It's hard enough to get a bus to take my kids on a field trip," she said. "I have to raise every dime so my kids can do a classroom project."
Contact JENNIFER DIXON at 313-223-4410 or jbdixon@freepress.com. Free Press education writer Chastity Pratt Dawsey contributed to this report.
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