AIM for TRANSFORMATION (Champion)

ROCHELLE RILEY

Where is the outrage over DPS?

BY ROCHELLE RILEY • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • June 24, 2008

This is what doesn't make sense to me.

State regulators are investigating why it took the public utilities Detroit Edison and Consumers Energy days to restore power to 700,000 to 800,000 residents after recent storms. The Michigan Public Service Commission, its director said, "has an obligation to ensure that utilities are providing customers with reasonably reliable service."

The commission is holding public hearings this week across the state.

So, if somebody in Lansing is investigating the utilities, why isn't somebody in Lansing investigating the lost power in the Detroit Public Schools? The lights went out there nearly 10 years ago, and ever since, the district has stumbled around in the dark, fighting over contracts and jobs, while the kids suffer. Are the children not as important as melted ice cream and defrosted steaks?

A whole lot of nots

Dr. Connie Calloway, the new superintendent who has spent her first year digging through dirt and incompetence and traditions that don't make sense, revealed some startling news two weeks ago during an interview:

She confirmed what critics have known for some time, that DPS is not graduating nearly two-thirds of its students.

She confirmed that 22 of the city's 27 high schools did not make required annual yearly progress -- required progress.

She confirmed that DPS has been rife with such incompetence that students did not receive textbooks at the start of the year for 19 years.

She confirmed that the FBI investigation into DPS is not over.

And she confirmed that the district's budget is about the same as it was eight years ago, even though the number of employees and students has dropped by a third. In 2000, the district spent $1.2 billion to pay 21,203 employees to serve 154,648 students. Last school year, the district spent the same amount of money to pay 15,535 employees and serve 105,000 students. What is being done with the extra money?

After those revelations, parents did not march, teachers did not rally, and Detroit legislators did not hold news conferences to say enough is enough.

But when district officials announced that there might be teacher layoffs to offset a budget deficit that is $400 million counting this year and next, folks jumped up then. The teachers aren't wrong to protest. The district has so much fat and gristle it can cut plenty before it gets to teachers, including administrators -- especially administrators.

A call to action

So my question remains: Why is the state not investigating? How can a public entity be allowed to dysfunction for so long, turning out graduates who cannot read, students who cannot last more than a semester in college, or students who do not have the skills to work? I didn't need to read a study. I know some of these students. I worked with some of these students. I cried at night about some of these students.

Since the power outage debacle, I've seen TV commercials apologizing for the letdown. The school district has not apologized to children or parents or taxpayers. But when will elected officials in Lansing who keep throwing good money after bad on a dysfunctional district, stop turning their heads away from the problem -- like a car wreck they can't bear to watch -- and do something?

It just doesn't make sense.

Please join the conversation about this column at www.freep.com/rochelleriley.


ROCHELLE RILEY

Kids are suffering in Detroit Public Schools mess

BY ROCHELLE RILEY • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • June 26, 2008

The e-mail could have been written by any suburbanites who responded to my column about the lack of outrage over the failing Detroit Public Schools.

The writer said there was no outrage because "the chips are all cashed in and there is NO hope left and people have stopped giving a rip. This is DPS -- it's over. Done. Stick a fork in it. Jesus Christ himself would have his hands full with that cesspool of failure, corruption and incompetence. Just need to find a way for the 900,000 left to speed to the exits in order to save their lives vs. being pawns to prop up a long failed institution so we can continue to pay the incompetents."

In my column, I asked why the state would investigate something as simple as a delay in getting power restored after massive storms, but would not investigate the dysfunction of the billion-dollar behemoth known as the DPS. The writer said:

"As for power outages we KNOW if we are outraged it WILL get fixed; even faster. We have hope; we know it will get better. We are way past outrage in DPS and Detroit city government in general. We are on to sickened, embarrassed and just plain tired of it all. We do not care what happens to DPS, we just hope it happens quickly rather than this slow blood loss to death; and that we rescue as many kids as possible from this burning building."

What about the children?

Here's the problem, dear readers, whether your kids study elsewhere or not, whether you think you have a stake in this or not: No one is rescuing the kids from the burning building. As a matter of fact, folks have stopped watching the building burn. It's like wildfires that take the houses in California. You know they're happening, and you're glad they're happening someplace else.

My question -- where is the outrage? -- wasn't meant to ask literally why people aren't outraged, dear readers. It was meant to spur outrage. It was meant to say: Get up! Stand up! These are children, for God's sake! How can anyone who is an advocate for children in Michigan just watch? If these children were puppies, there would be lines of cars and trucks from across the state to take them to safety.

What we would do for animals, we won't do for these children? And all because some Detroiters reject help from people who aren't black, aren't connected or aren't taking from that big ball of cheese known as the billion-dollar budget? Folks, it is time to move the cheese.

We need to act, now

DPS Superintendent Connie Calloway says her plans to reform the district have been hampered by discoveries of ineptitude, possible criminal behavior and the kind of bookkeeping and record-keeping that would require Internal Revenue Service help to figure out. Her critics say any good superintendent can multitask, cleaning up the bad while pushing the good.

While they fight, children suffer.

When these thousands of children leave a school district without graduating, without being able to read, without being able to be employed, they will take one of two roads -- hard lives one step ahead of abject poverty or the sinister methods of pursuing happiness.

Either way, our tax dollars will go to them. We better wake up!

Please join the conversation about this column at www.freep.com/rochelleriley.