As I read the Wall Street Journal article bemoaning the Bloomfield Hills, Michigan school system's loss of 250 students over the last two years, which necessitated the recent unfortunate announcement that the district is planning to close two schools in the future, I kept waiting for any mention--even an acknowledgement, even the slightest hint of awareness--of the scale of financial, educational, and human devastation that is just down the road, in the Detroit Public Schools.
As Jim Griffioen of Sweet Juniper--and many others, I'm sure--have long documented, DPS has been literally hemorrhaging money and students for years. The system closes dozens of school buildings at a time, and when Aramark, the institutional food and facilities management service contracted to secure and empty the closed schools fails to do so, swarms of scrappers strip the building of every bit of resalable metal and leave books, supplies, furniture, and the irreparably damaged shell of the school itself, to rot.
Speaking of which, Jim has some awesomely depressing photos of Detroit's decaying public schools in this month's Vice Magazine.
Detroit's Pain Begins to Spread Into Wealthy Suburbs and Schools [wsj]
School's Out Forever [viceland.com]
