Erin Einhorn

A Mold-Infested Detroit School Will Be Closed For The Rest Of The Year

A water-damaged, mold-infested elementary school building in northwest Detroit will be closed for the rest of the school year while crews replace the roof and make other repairs. District superintendent Nikolai Vitti notified the school board about plans for the Palmer Park Preparatory Academy during a board meeting Tuesday night that became so raucous, the board called a recess for nearly an hour before voting to end the meeting without addressing most of the items on its agenda. The meetin...

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan Is Looking For Ways To Impact Schools

After largely steering clear of education during his first term, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is now looking for ways to become more invested in the city schools. City Hall is already leading an effort called the Detroit Children’s Success Initiative that will put more social workers, therapists, and family support staff into schools. But the mayor is also having conversations with education and civic leaders about ways he can have a more significant impact on the state of education in the city....

Elite Detroit High Schools Like Cass Tech & Renaissance Move Beyond Test Scores For Admittance

Detroit’s main school district is changing the way it decides which students gain entry to the city’s elite high schools. Students applying to Cass Technical High School, Renaissance High School and two other selective high schools will no longer be judged primarily on the results of a single exam. Instead, an admissions team comprised of teachers and staff from the schools, as well as administrators in the district’s central office, will use a score card that gives students points in variou...

$50 Million Effort Aims To Improve Lives Of Detroit Kids

The two major foundations behind the creation of a ten-year plan to improve the lives of Detroit’s youngest children are putting up $50 million to help put the plan into action. As they unveiled the new Hope Starts Here framework Friday morning, the Kellogg and Kresge foundations announced they would each spend $25 million in the next few years to improve the health and education of children aged birth to 8 in the city. The money will go toward upgrading early childhood education centers, in...

Detroit schoolseducationMichigan

Dozens Of Detroit Schools Added To State's List For Low Test Scores, But Forced Closure Not A Threat For Now

More than two dozen struggling Detroit schools will likely be added to the state’s “partnership” program after posting years of rock-bottom test scores. That will bring to 50 the number of Detroit schools in the program, which requires schools to meet certain improvement targets or face consequences. Those consequences could include closure or a staff shake-up but, for now at least, decisions about the schools’ fates will rest with local school boards. State officials say they currently have...

The Pizza And Prizes Michigan Schools Use To Lure Students On Count Day Are ‘Unfortunate.’ But Is There A Better Way?

Schools across the state brought out donuts, dinosaurs, smoothies and all manor of special events on Wednesday to lure as many students to school as humanly possible. It’s all part of a school funding system in Michigan that determines how much money schools receive from the state based on the number of students in class on “Count Day.” “It’s not the best way to count students,” state Superintendent Brian Whiston told Chalkbeat. “But I just don’t know of a better way of doing it.” Michigan...

Detroit schoolsDetroit Teachers

The Prospect Of A $30,000 Pay Cut Pushed This Teacher Out Of Detroit Schools And To The Suburbs

When the school year began at Detroit’s Central High School last month, a beloved teacher was missing. Quincy Stewart, who was featured in a June Chalkbeat story about his innovative use of music to teach students about African-American history, had been determined to stay at Central. “I do this is because I’m a black man and these are black children,” he told Chalkbeat last spring. “These children have been robbed by this system from the cradle until right now … And when they walk in my cla...

Here’s What Detroit Schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti Says He Can Do By Next Year

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 goals are spelled out in the documents that the Detroit school board plans to use to evaluate the new superintendent, Niko...

DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS COMMUNITY DISTRICTeducationEducation in Detroit

Inside Nikolai Vitti’s Early Effort To Transform Detroit’s Battered Public Schools

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 in schools. He was asked if he wanted to do the same for next year.   “Do you really think for a minute I’m goin...

Charter SchoolsClosingDetroit

Their Charter School Was In Debt, So Teachers Won't Get Paid

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 Learning, alerted teachers in an email Wednesday that the money would instead go to pay off the school’s debts. “Last Fr...

Detroit Land BankDetroit Public Schools

Detroit Educators To Get Half Off Houses Auctioned Through Land Bank

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 parochial schools — will now get a 50 percent discount on houses auctioned through the Detroit Land Bank Authority. Tha...

ChartersDetroitOversight

Advocates Trying Again To Bring Order To Detroit's Disorganized Public And Charter School Situation

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 a powerful school oversight commission. Instead, early discussions appear to be centered on bringing together the his...

A Detroit Teacher Uses Music To Expose Students To History, Politics & Power. "They Walk In Here And They Don’t Even Know Who They Are."

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 been robbed by this system, from the cradle until right now. They’ve been miseducated, undereducated and misused …. They...

Detroiteducation

A Tale Of Two Pre-Ks In Detroit Shows Gap Between Classrooms That Get Private Donations And Those That Don't

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 arrive like gifts from the pre-K gods. “The office calls and says you have a package, and we’re like ‘Yay!’ and the ki...

DetroitDetroit Public Schoolseducation

No Music, No Art, No Gym, Overcrowded Classrooms And Teacher Shortages: The Journey Of Detroit's New Superintendent Starts Here

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 challenges that have contributed to some of the lowest test scores in the nation. He sees Detroit becoming “a mecca of imp...

Detroiteducation

Looming Financial Threats Could Undermine ‘Fresh’ Start For New Detroit District, Says Report

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 Vitti took over the district — warns of looming financial challenges that “could derail the ‘fresh’ financial start that...

ChalkbeatDetroit schoolsDr. Vitti

Here's The 100 Day Plan For New Detroit Schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti

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 uncertainty. Vitti will also meet with a long list of Detroiters as he tries to develop what he says would be the district’s first “strat...

ChalkbeatDetroitDetroit schools

Is An Exodus Of Detroit Teachers On The Horizon?

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 classroom and remain a part of her students’ lives, she said, but she’s actively talking to banks and credit unions about worki...