Sweet Juniper’s photos show the ruins of the Detroit Public Schools Book Depository.
This is a building where our deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day apparently walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste. The interior has been ravaged by fires and the supplies that haven’t burned have been subjected to 20 years of Michigan weather. To walk around this building transcends the sort of typical ruin-fetishism and “sadness” some get from a beautiful abandoned building. This city’s school district is so impoverished that students are not allowed to take their textbooks home to do homework, and many of its administrators are so corrupt that every few months the newspapers have a field day with their scandals, sweetheart-deals, and expensive trips made at the expense of a population of children who can no longer rely on a public education to help lift them from the cycle of violence and poverty that has made Detroit the most dangerous city in America. To walk through this ruin, more than any other, I think, is to obliquely experience the real tragedy of this city; not some sentimental tragedy of brick and plaster, but one of people:
Pallet after pallet of mid-1980s Houghton-Mifflin textbooks, still unwrapped in their original packaging, seem more telling of our failures than any vacant edifice. The floor is littered with flash cards, workbooks, art paper, pencils, scissors, maps, deflated footballs and frozen tennis balls, reel-to-reel tapes. . . . All that’s left is an overwhelming sense of knowledge unlearned and untapped potential. It is almost impossible not to see all this and make some connection between the needless waste of all these educational supplies and the needless loss of so many lives in this city to poverty and violence, though the reality of why these supplies were never used is unclear. In some breathtakingly-beautiful expression of hope, an anonymous graffiti artist has painted a phoenix-like book rising from the ashes of the third floor.
I toured Detroit about 15 years ago with a bunch of Detroit Free Press reporters. So many neighborhoods had abandoned houses turned into crack houses or vacant lots where houses had been burned or torn down. It wasn’t worth anyone’s while to use the land.
I went through all the photos in the collection and it was really amazing. A powerful metaphor.
Wall-to-wall wreckage with an uninvited, unwelcomed sign of life that owes nothing to its surroundings other then drawing sustenance from it’s rotting remains; yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty good metaphor for the Detroit Public School district.
Amazing photos–evidence of a once-vibrant school system nurtured by a thriving, world-dominant auto industry. Also evidence of what happens when fat and complacent systems are unwilling to look down the road, see change ahead and adapt.
Some of my educational heroes work in Detroit, teachers and educational leaders who are unwilling to abandon the kids there to the same kind of treatment as those piles of workbooks. It’s easy to be shocked and horrified at the careless waste, devastation and mismanagement–but I am saving my energy for solutions and support for the good teachers who work there every day, planting hope in the rubbish.
“…but I am saving my energy for solutions and support for the good teachers who work there every day, planting hope in the rubbish.”
Instead of trying to prop up a system that’s consistently failed for many decades, perhaps you could throw your support behind something that might work – like full vouchers and firing the teachers, administrators, janitors and anyone else connected to the public schools? Oh yes, and maybe recalling Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick?
But that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?
If it were so easy, Ragnarok, someone would’ve done it by now. I do agree that it seems like we need to just start over from scratch… and it needs to start at the top. There is so much corruption in that city, though, I know of no “clean”, electable person who could be responsible to do the work.
I live in a Detroit suburb.
[It’s easy to be shocked and horrified at the careless waste, devastation and mismanagement–but I am saving my energy for solutions and support for the good teachers who work there every day, planting hope in the rubbish.]
One could argue that these outrages persist because too many people rationalize them away and consequently fail to be shocked and horrified. Continuing calamities like that don’t do much for “hope”, in fact they detract from hope, irrespective of how much one devoutly and piously hopes for hope.
“If it were so easy, Ragnarok, someone would’ve done it by now.”
Quite.
I don’t delude myself by thinking any of this is going to change. The entrenched interests are well dug in, and they’re mostly corrupt, incompetent, and unemployable elsewhere; on top of that they’ve been told they’re dedicated professionals.
They’ll fight like mad for the status quo + more money, and people like Nancy Flanagan will help them.
To someone raised in California the concept of abandoned property is hard to swallow.
They’ll fight like mad for the status quo + more money, and people like Nancy Flanagan will help them.
Sure they will. For good reasons and bad. There are plenty of folks who sincerely believe that if only the funding levels were reasonable then all sorts of wonderfulness would emerge as well as the folks who know they’ve got a sweet deal going.
But look at the spread of charter schools, the passage of NCLB and continued interest in vouchers. There’s pressure, and momentum, for change and it doesn’t come from a fringe group. Forty states and a federal law indicate there’s widespread support for substantive change and Soviet Union-like, when some critical point is reached the entire edifice will shatter.
A few years ago the voters passed a construction bond issue. I don’t recall the exact figure but it was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. What gets me about this and a lot of what I’ve seen from the city’s government generally, is not so much the corruption–although a recent newspaper story indicated the school board in the last year spent $1.5 million on travel, and they weren’t staying at the Motel 6–but the sheer, unmitigated waste.
“There’s pressure, and momentum, for change and it doesn’t come from a fringe group. Forty states and a federal law indicate there’s widespread support for substantive change and Soviet Union-like, when some critical point is reached the entire edifice will shatter.”
There’s also this highly-motivated and well-endowed little organization called the NEA, which will NEVER allow their less endowed by equally motivated AFT brethren (Detroit school employees are represented by the latter), to be challenged by anything so “unfair” to their dues-payers as accountability.
Remember Sputnik? When the Soviets orbited Sputnik over our heads, people completely freaked it – it may as well have been an atom bomb going around up there. In the ensuing hysteria and panic, math and science education got a major kick in the pants. The aftershocks of that kick were still around when I was in grade school in the 1960s.
I think it will take an event of even greater magnitude to stir up significant change today. Since that event will have to be catastrophic, it may be that we “have to destroy the village to save it”.
Grim, I know.
Suffer the children…
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080120/NEWS01/801200604/1001/RSS01
Detroit Public Schools 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.
From time to time you learn it isn’t that they can’t afford textbooks. It’s that they aren’t organized enough to get them from the warehouses to the classrooms.
[allen] They’ll fight like mad for the status quo + more money, and people like Nancy Flanagan will help them.
Sure they will. For good reasons and bad. There are plenty of folks who sincerely believe that if only the funding levels were reasonable then all sorts of wonderfulness would emerge as well as the folks who know they’ve got a sweet deal going.
[Nancy] Not sure how what I originally wrote turned me into an apologist for a corrupt and dysfunctional school system. I never said that more money would help in Detroit, nor did I defend the DPS teacher union. God forbid. I’m not even sure what Ragnarok means by “people like Nancy Flanagan”–and I’m Nancy Flanagan.
What I do know is that every year we wait around for market forces to solve the problem of how to educate all kids in Detroit is another lost year for tens of thousands of them. Teaching in Detroit is hardly a “sweet deal;” I was tipping my hat to a handful of hard-working and highly skilled teachers and principals who have proven that (to quote Karin Chenoweth) it can be done. Kids can learn at high levels, in the right classroom, with the right leadership, even in a system as out of whack as Detroit. It gets harder and harder every year to do it, however.
Policy-makers are always looking for ways to get teachers with demonstrated instructional competency into high-needs schools. We could start by honoring the ones who are already there.
> We could start by honoring the ones who are already there.
“Honoring” good teachers does nothing to reduce the damage caused by bad ones.
We’ll know that you care about education when you help get rid of the incompetents and worse.
A good start would be to stop defending them.
Nancy Flanagan said:
“Policy-makers are always looking for ways to get teachers with demonstrated instructional competency into high-needs schools.”
Nonsense!
For the most part “policy-makers” are interested in kowtowing to the unions and feathering their own nests.
Rob,
The next sputnik will be met with some sort of response resembling
“Great technological accomplishments don’t equal happy lives, nor living skills. This so-called successful educational system only focuses on the children’s academic achievement, but dismisses the happiness of the children.”
Our kids will be flipping burgers while the Chinese or Koreans wow us with technological advances, but that’s okay, our burger flipping kids will be creative and happy.
Nancy Flanagan done said this here stuff:
“…demonstrated instructional competency into high-needs schools”
That be crool and unusual punishment, Nancy. What did the English language do to you to be treated so?
Is there a reason to not say, “…[good teachers] into [schools that need them]“?
Getting back to the DPS, would you support the dismissal of the current denizens of the DPS? All I need is a simple Yea or Nay. What say you? Yea? or Nay?
Would you support the dissolution of the Ed schools?
Would you agree that teachers’ unions are venal, corrupt, self-serving, and utterly willing to sacrifice the children to serve their members?
I look at the blogs of several teachers, and almost without exception they can’t spell, their grammar stinks, their logic is non-existent, but their alms cups gleam. And they’re the majority, Ms. Flanagan, do you think that perhaps they shouldn’t be loosed upon the world?
What’s your point here, Ragnarok? That I used “demonstrated” (correctly) as an adjective, rather than a verb? To get me to engage in a fruitless, snarling argument about your pet educational gripes? An opportunity throw out a few more unsubstantiated verbal bombs at teachers?
Sorry. Not playing.
Good for you, Nancy.
Ragnarok, your pointed sarcasm reminds me of the 4th grade bully down the street.
Everytime someone promotes themselves as Grammar Police, they leave us with a glaring grammatical error of their own (Murphy’s Law?)
NF: “Policy-makers are always looking for ways to get teachers with demonstrated instructional competency into high-needs schools.”
Can you name the Michigan policy-makers who are “always looking for ways to get teachers with demonstrated instructional competency into high-needs schools”?
hi folks, I’m the original photographer here, as well as a resident of the city of detroit (with kids).
it’s fascinated me how so many ideologues have taken these photos I took and used them to make some “point” that is aligned firmly with their extremist views and so different from mine. I have seen the pictures linked to from white supremacist message boards talking about “how a book is more useful to a tree to take root in than for any little niglet’s education” to libertarian types using the photos to argue that giving money to public schools doesn’t solve anything. I see the way some of you in these comments have taken the photos and used them, for example, as some kind of evidence for the same anti-teacher union screeds I’ve heard for years. I feel it necessary to point out that these books were abandoned more than 20 years ago, and the reason is unclear. as corrupt and incompetent as our current school board and city administration may be, these people had nothing to do with the abandonment of these books. The building is currently owned and left open to the elements by an extremely wealthy suburban white man named Matty Maroun who also owns the dilapidated train station next door as well as the functioning ambassador bridge. the story goes that there was a fire that rendered many of the school supplies unusable, though history is incomplete with regard to why the rest were abandoned. it is possible that the school collected a large insurance settlement and had no choice but to leave the outdated school books there to rot. I should have investigated further before I wrote this or published them on flickr, though in my defense, I never expected 200,000 people to see any of it.
I’m not an education policy expert, but I did want to come to the space to remind everyone that there is some truth out there about why these books were abandoned that may support our biases or ideologies as much as we might like.
Thanks, jdg, for your clarifying remarks. The dustup over these photos led me to your very beautiful flickr collection of Detroit architectural shots. Impressive.
Lucy–the State Board of Education in Michigan has a strong focus on improving instruction in high-needs schools. Their recent work with a committee to gut and reshape teacher education in MI yielded some good, change-the deal thinking about how to improve instructional skills of novice teachers, especially those willing to take on the challenge of working in urban and rural areas. The Network of Michigan Educators (which is not connected to either union) recently put out a survey/report on performance assessments for teachers (they’re in favor of them). Ever heard Superintendent Mike Flanagan’s take on what we need to fix high-needs schools? Good teaching, first and foremost.
There are weak, ineffective, and self-protecting policy makers everywhere–problems arise when leaders’ politics are cast in concrete.
Nancy: Mike Flanagan has been a Godsend to Michigan schools. From holding firm (against the unions & their pals in high places) on the urgent need to establish meaningful high school graduation requirements to raising the bar for teacher-training & performance expectations, he’s been a leader in every respect.
While Granholm’s been a disaster for Michigan, his appointment has helped to ease our pain a bit.
Still, I don’t see many other Michigan policy-makers busting their chops to get good teachers into classrooms that need them. Reams of rhetoric, but far too little action for a needy state like ours.
Would you agree that teachers’ unions are venal, corrupt, self-serving, and utterly willing to sacrifice the children to serve their members?
Ahh the evil teacher’s union boogeyman. Here in Texas, as I have explained repeatedly, teachers lack the right to collective bargain or strike, so teachers’ unions do not exist.
We DO have the longest running experiment with high stakes testing and the 2nd to worst SAT/ACT scores in the country, so there’s at least one exception to your supposed rule.
Do you have proof of all your other assertions? I’ll be the first to admit spelling is a weak point for me, ditto grammar but last time I checked neither were required for writing a blog on your own time.
As always Rags, when you can’t produce the proof you throw the insults.
A quick search of the Web and I found two teacher unions operating in Texas. The Texas Federation of Teachers, affiliated with the AFT, and the Texas State Teacher Association, affiliated with the NEA.
You can debate the level of influence they may have in the state but to say they do not exist is not correct.
“Affliated with” but not actually unions.
Did you miss where I mentioned we do not have the right to collective bargain or strike?
If a union can’t call a strike it hardly can be venal, corrupt and utterly self-serving can it?
I noticed you didn’t address the low SAT/ACT scores our supposed unions are causing.
“What’s your point here, Ragnarok?”
I should have thought it was obvious: The public school systems are a mess, and the teachers are as much to blame as the administration.
If the teachers put into teaching a fraction of the effort they put into subverting any attempt at improving schools, whether by blocking charters, or campaigning against vouchers, or wasting time on AAVE (aka Ebonics), or supporting a tenure system that protects even horrendously bad teachers, the schools would be in much better shape.
A good first step would be to give up the constant refrain about needing more pay in order to attract the “best and the brightest”, and accept the fact that you are in the bottom GRE quartile. And that’s fine, teachers don’t have to be particularly bright; it’s much more important that they be good with kids and have a reasonable grasp of the stuff they’re teaching. There are exceptions, HS math teachers among them, but by and large all you need is average intelligence, coupled with a good attitude.
A good second step would be to acknowledge that the current system is a disaster, and that most of its members should be dismissed.
Too much to ask for? Probably – but please, no more pious speeches about the “dedicated professionals” in the PS systems.
Just because they do not have the right to collective bargaining does not make them powerless. And part of the dues paid at the state level are transferred to the national organizations, which do have a lot of influence on what happens in education, including Texas.
But Mike in MN, you keep avoiding this question.
How can they have so much influence when they cannot call for a strike? Even slow downs and sick outs are illegal.
And don’t forget the question about Texas’ low SAT/ACT scores. How did the evil teachers’ unions cause that?
Mike’n'Taxes said:
“Here in Texas, as I have explained repeatedly,…”
I suggested that “…teachers’ unions are venal, corrupt, self-serving, and utterly willing to sacrifice the children to serve their members…”. Your claim that you cannot bargain collectively is orthogonal to my position. Not so?
Surely you can see that someone can be venal etc. even if he/she/it can neither bargain collectively nor call a strike?
Come on, Mike, you can do better than this! This is elementary logic.
“I’ll be the first to admit spelling is a weak point for me, ditto grammar but last time I checked neither were required for writing a blog on your own time.”
I think teachers, whether they teach English or Math, should have mastered English to a reasonable extent; they should be able to form clear, concise sentences and be able to spell.
Is this asking for too much? I don’t think so, but observation indicates otherwise. And that’s rather distressing, don’t you think?
“How can they have so much influence when they cannot call for a strike? Even slow downs and sick outs are illegal.”
Mike, please read what IronMike wrote!
Sigh…. So you are saying that the Texas teacher “associations” have no power to affect your working conditions or any other educational issue in Texas? If that is the case I would ask for my money back.
My point is that there are other ways to exert influence over working conditions and educational policies other than by strikes and other similar activities. Have the teacher associations ever donated time and money to a school board candidate? Or is that also illegal in Texas?
I agree that it is very likely that the Texas teacher “associations” have less influence in the state than teacher “unions” have in states like Minnesota. However I am not convinced that they have NO influence.
I never intended to address the question about the low SAT/ACT scores in Texas. But if you insist I’ll venture a guess, perhaps there are a lot of ineffective teachers in Texas. (I know, snarky comment, I’m sorry)
With that I am taking my dog out of this fight. Perhaps we will meet again on another issue.
Sorry, I meant “Mike in MN”, not IronMike.
You (Rag) sound just like the pompous liberals out there who want to make excuses or even worse romanticize the condition of urban public schools only you take the opposite (and just as ridiculous) position. Flanagan on the other hand has a much deeper understanding of the problems (she might be smarter than you Rag) and hence takes no luxury at lambasting one group for the problems of urban ed. I’d be careful Rag messing with the likes of Nancy Flanagan – she’s way out of your league.