What To Know And Where To Go In Southeast Michigan
It could be years before Detroiters see significant improvement in their struggling city schools, but Detroit’s new schools boss says there are some very specific ways that he expects to see some progress by next year. Among them: improvements on test scores, attendance rates, teacher hiring and the amount of money district grads receive in college scholarships. Those …
Three months after taking on one of the most daunting tasks in American education, Nikolai Vitti was having a fit over pizza — $340,000 worth of pizza. Vitti, Detroit’s new school superintendent, had just discovered that the district had set aside that eye-popping sum of money last year to pay Domino’s Pizza for what he assumed were hundreds of thousands of slices for parties …
The education ratings site Niche.com has come out with their top teachers in Michigan, and many of those schools are in Metro Detroit. For the purposes of this post, we're going to call Metro Detroit the tri-county area of Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties. The data speaks directly to public schools. They came to their rankings through a combination of publicly …
A lawsuit filed nearly a year ago over the conditions in Detroit schools had its first day in court Thursday, but it could be a month before a judge rules whether it can proceed. The suit, filed in September on behalf of seven Detroit students, argues that Gov. Rick Snyder and state education officials have deprived city students of their right to literacy by not spending …
Marygrove College, which has been facing a steep enrollment decline over the last three years, announced today that beginning in January of 2018, it will offer Master’s degree programs and close their undergraduate programs. According to the college, Marygrove enrollment peaked in 2013 with more than 1,850 graduate and undergraduate students. In Fall 2016, total enrollment …
[smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/dailydetroithappyhour/DD-23-Happy_hour_Schantz_mixdown.mp3" social_gplus="false" social_linkedin="true" social_email="true" twitter_username="TheDailyDetroit" ] Drew Schantz is the founder of Venture School, a nonprofit charter looking to get their doors open in the fall of next year. It's concept is a "micro charter" …
Furious teachers at a recently shuttered Detroit charter school were notified Wednesday that they won’t be paid thousands of dollars they earned during the last school year. Teachers at the Michigan Technical Academy had contracts that required the school to pay them through the summer for work they did during the school year. But the school’s management company, Matchbook …
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is getting ready this morning to announce a major effort to lure teachers and other school employees to the city of Detroit: Offering them half-priced homes. According to a press release that’s expected to be released at an event this morning, the mayor plans to announce that all Detroit school employees — whether they work for district, charter or …
Rosie the Riveter is such an iconic image, that sometimes people forget that it was more than just one woman that worked on the home front providing aid during World War II. Sure, there are books about the women behind the war time effort and Detroit becoming the Arsenal of Democracy but they are mostly stuffy hard to read books. Let's face it, none of them are really …
It’s been more than a year since the tearful, emotional night when a divided state legislature blocked a major effort to bring order to Detroit schools. Now some of the parties involved in last year’s fight are regrouping and looking for new ways to improve city schools. Only this time, they’re less likely to look to Lansing for laws that would force schools to report to …
As soon as Quincy Stewart started teaching music, he realized that harmonies and melodies would never be enough — not nearly enough for a man determined to connect his students with their history and culture. “I’m a black man and these are black children,” said Stewart, 59, a music teacher, band leader and choir director at Detroit’s Central High School. “These children have …
LaWanda Marshall and Candace Graham both teach pre-kindergarten at the Carver STEM Academy on Detroit’s west side. Both have colorful, toy-filled classrooms, computers for students to use and assistant teachers to help guide their four- and five-year olds as they learn and explore. But Marshall’s classroom has other things too — lots and lots of other things that regularly …
Detroit schools have been buzzing these last two weeks with what feels like a fresh start. A new superintendent — Nikolai Vitti — has landed in the city and started his job as the first new leader of what is officially a new district. He uses words like “transformation” and “vision” and “hope” to describe a future when Detroit schools will begin to address the intensive …
When folks talk about Detroit, we hear the same words used over and over again: poor, broken, abandoned, blighted. But our experiences in the Motor City have shown us something completely different – a community that, in the face of overwhelming challenges, maintains a profound commitment to making Detroit a better place. This juxtaposition of resilience and adversity, …
The Sean Anderson Foundation has donated $15,000 to benefit Wayne State University’s HIGH (Helping Individuals Go Higher) Program to provide short-term support to Wayne State students experiencing homelessness or precarious housing situations. Students in the program receive short-term assistance with the goal of returning students to long-term stability and helping them …
As Khali Sweeney travels to represent his beloved Downtown Boxing Gym, one thing always remains on his mind: That education is a keystone to moving Detroit forward. Actually, it’s the only thing Sweeney thinks about as he and Downtown Boxing Gym Executive Director Jessica Hauser move through the crowds on Mackinac Island. They’re here to listen to the conversations about …
The creation of a new school district last year gave Detroit schools a break from years of crippling debt, allowing the new district to report a healthy budget surplus going into its second year. It’s the first time since 2007 that the city’s main school district has ended the year with a surplus. But a report released this morning — just days after Superintendent Nikolai …
When new Detroit schools chief Nikolai Vitti arrives in Detroit as soon as next Monday, he plans to make daily school visits with an early focus on some of the city’s most struggling schools. Those visits will include trips to the schools in the state-run Education Achievement Authority, which are set to return to the Detroit district this summer amid deep …
Last night more than 700 people gathered at Cobo Center to attend the City Year Detroit's Red Jacket Gala. The money raised from the gala will help City Year improve the educational outcomes of students in Detroit. City Year Detroit is part of the national City Year program. Locally, it is currently made up of 71 AmeriCorps members that have been selected to go into …
Stefanie Kovaleski loves teaching kindergarten at Detroit’s Bethune Elementary-Middle School. “I love this building. I love the kids in it,” she said as she doled out hugs and high-fives to her young students while they lined up to get their backpacks at dismissal. “I love that I have autonomy and that I’m treated with professionalism here.” She hopes to stay in her …
When Pershing High School opened in 1930, it was designed to serve more than 2,200 students in what was then a fast-growing part of the city’s east side. Today, the school serves just 314 kids. That means Pershing is more than 85 percent empty. It’s a similar story at Southeastern High School, Davis Aerospace High School and scores of other schools across the city that now …
College is a time of growth. New experiences. Learning new things. For people... and now, for puppies. Leader Dogs For The Blind has a new partnership with Rochester College, located in Oakland County. They have created the RC-Campus Puppy Program, as a way to help the organization get more volunteers to raise and train puppies. The program will pair up six students and …
At least three Detroit-area charter schools will close in June after years of low test scores, leaving hundreds of families to scramble for new schools — including some who haven’t yet been notified. The schools set to close include Woodward Academy, one of Detroit’s oldest and most established charter schools. It opened near downtown Detroit in 1996. Also closing are the …
As a former Western High School teacher I’ve watched the selection process of the new superintendent from afar and, at times, chuckled to myself. I’ve read the stories about the candidacy of Alycia Merriweather and her supporters — all well deserved. I thought all of that ended in March when she was not included in the final pool of candidates, but now in the post “What …
The Portal View is a shipping container repurposed to provide an education experience about the Great Lakes and the maritime industry's past and future. It opens to the public on May 22 (that's National Maritime Day) and is located right outside of the Port of Detroit, between Hart Plaza and the Renaissance Center. The container will be home to Great Lakes maritime …
Nikolai Vitti, the Florida school leader selected this week to run Detroit schools faces many steep challenges. Among the most daunting: He’ll be working with people who wanted someone else to get the job. “Educators wanted Alycia Meriweather,” said Andrea Jackson, a college advisor at Osborn Collegiate Academy of Mathematics, Science and Technology, an eastside high …
None other than Snapchat and music star DJ Khaled is getting into the encouraging Detroiters to graduate high school. We've embedded the video above. It's all part of a push by Get Schooled and the Detroit College Access Network (DCAN), a pair of nonprofits aimed at improving college access and success to push the new Get Schooled Detroit, what they're describing as a …
There is something special about listening to someone tell their story, and storytelling events have become pretty popular in the past few years. Every month The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers holds an evening of storytelling at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. The next evening of storytelling is this Friday, March 17. The theme for the …
Some of Detroit’s most celebrated selective schools saw their standings plunge on the state’s most recent school rankings. Renaissance High School was one of the highest ranked schools on Michigan’s 2014 Top to Bottom schools list, scoring in the 98th percentile, better than 98 percent of state schools. But when the state in January released its latest ranking, based on 2016 …
The 38 Michigan schools that were threatened with closure in January could now have a way to stay open. State superintendent Brian Whiston sent letters this week to eight school districts that have schools on the closure list inviting them to participate in a “partnership” to fix the schools instead of shutting them down. “Once an agreement is reached,” the letter says, …
Looking for a loud, family-friendly event to watch this weekend? Pack the car, and take the kids to Willow Run Airport just outside Ypsilanti for Thunder Over Michigan. You may want to bring ear plugs, too. On Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 29 and 30, the U.S. Navy Blue Angels will take to the skies as …
