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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...

ChalkbeateducationStorytelling

An Evening Of Stories: "School Days" With The Secret Society Of Twisted Storytellers & Chalkbeat

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 evening is “School Days.” The education news organization Chalkbeat reached out to Twisted Storytellers to put together an...

ChalkbeatDetroiteducation

Podcast: A Deep Dive On Detroit's Schools With Erin Einhorn And Julie Topping Of Chalkbeat

“If they don’t fix the schools, the rest will be meaningless.” – Erin Einhorn [smart_track_player url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/dailydetroithappyhour/DD-5Happy-Hour-Chalkbeat_mixdown.mp3″ social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_email=”true” ] Subscribe to the Daily Detroit Happy Hour podcast for free on iTunes Detroit’s schools seem to be constantly in flux, and keeping up with it is a lot of work. Thankfully, Erin Einhorn and Julie Topping do that work for Chalk...

Campaign SpendingCandidates for Detroit School BoardChalkbeat

Most Campaigns For The New Detroit School Board Are Running On Shoestring Budgets

More than 60 candidates are running for seven seats on the new Detroit school board — and most are running their campaigns on a shoestring. A Chalkbeat review of state and county campaign finance records shows that just 15 candidates seeking seats on the crucial new board reported receiving campaign contributions as of Oct. 23, the most recent date for which numbers were available. That includes several candidates who dipped into their personal savings, spending thousands of their own dollar...

ChalkbeatDetroit schoolsEllen Degeneres

Spain Elementary, Once A Symbol Of Detroit's Troubles, Gets A Chance To Show Off

Three weeks into the school year at Spain Elementary-Middle School, the teachers are starting to get used to their new classes. Students are starting to get back into the swing of things. And now it’s time for something unexpected: A PR blitz. The school in Detroit’s midtown neighborhood last year became a symbol of everything that was wrong with Detroit Public Schools. Photos of its dangerously buckling gym floors ricocheted around the world when teachers throughout the district starte...

ChalkbeatDetroit Public SchoolsDetroit schools

Most Buildings Repaired, But School Starts With As Many As 200 Teaching Jobs Unfilled In New Detroit Public District

Eight months after hundreds of Detroit teachers made national headlines by calling in sick to draw attention to deplorable conditions like rodents and buckling floors in public schools, city officials today announced that they’ve spent $2.5 million to get most city schools into tip-top shape ahead of the start of classes next week. At a press conference at the elite Bates Academy in northwest Detroit, Mayor Mike Duggan and school officials said that all but eight of the 94 school buildings in...

ChalkbeatDetroit schoolspoverty rate

A Block Away, But A World Apart: Detroit And Grosse Pointe Schools Have Largest Poverty Divide In Nation

School district borders often divide students by income — and in Detroit and many other places across the U.S., that gulf is especially wide. That is the conclusion reached in a report released Tuesday by EdBuild, a nonprofit dedicated to overhauling the way states fund education. The report looked at neighboring school systems and found that the poverty rate can be eight times higher from one district to the next. “You’re talking about, really, haves and have-nots that are living across an...