Closure Plan Threatens Standout Detroit School

Students at Carstens Elementary in Detroit; it's one of more than 40 schools on the list for closure. (photo by Mercedes Mejia)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

For the past several days we’ve been looking at school reforms in New Orleans and Detroit. Yesterday, we heard about efforts to close or take over “failing” schools. But the steep enrollment decline in Detroit means even some schools that are doing well could have to shut their doors. As we continue our series Rebuilding Detroit Schools, Sarah Hulett has this look at one of the schools slated for closure this year.

Carstens Elementary is one of those “little engine that could” stories.

The school sits across the street from two houses that are empty shells separated by a weedy vacant lot. Almost all of the students come from poor families. And the school building looks like it hasn’t had many updates since it was built almost a century ago.

But against what look like long odds, the students at Carstens are some of the top performers in the state.

One hundred percent of third and fourth graders were proficient on the math portion of Michigan’s standardized test this past fall. Ninety-seven percent were proficient on the English test.

Abby Phelps handles outreach at Carstens, which she says is more than just a school.

“We are the staple of the community that keeps it alive. Without us, it would be dead here,” explains Phelps. “There’s no recreation centers, there’s nowhere parents can run to get assistance for utility payments, can get emergency food. They’re not gonna get that anywhere. Where they gonna get it? Where they gonna get it? So it’s impossible for them to close this school. It cannot be done.”

But according to the school closure plan announced by Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, that’s exactly what will be done. Bobb wants to combine two schools: Carstens, which is a kindergarten through fifth grade, with a K through 8th grade school about a mile and a half away.

But it’s an idea that has few fans.

In the cafeteria after school, Monique Roddy says she’s not happy about the prospect of her granddaughter being in the same building with middle school kids. She says closing Carstens would devastate the neighborhood.

“It saddens me. It actually breaks my heart, because this is the lifeline for these children in this neighborhood.”

Carstens is just one of more than 40 schools on the list for closure. Some parents will decide to send their kids to the schools picked to replace the old ones. But the danger for the school system is that some parents will leave it altogether – and send their kids to a charter or suburban school.

Because school funding in Michigan is based on student enrollment, the exodus means a kind of death spiral for the Detroit Public Schools: fewer students means the loss of millions of dollars each year. Schools get closed as the classrooms get emptier. But each round of school closures pushes more kids out of the district.

Anita Starks’ story bucks that trend. She took her kids out of the charter school they were attending, and drives them across town every day to go to Carstens. But now, she says, she’s not sure what she’ll do.

“I thought about that this morning, and I don’t even have an idea right now, which direction I want to go in. Because they’re closing so many public schools, where do you go to another public school and find another good one? Where are some of these teachers going to where maybe your child could possibly have the same teachers, same special ed education if you needed it?”

Starks says she hopes Robert Bobb, the state-appointed financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, will reconsider Carstens’ fate.

“I know he has a job to do,” says Starks. “I know he’s trying to do the best job he can, and maybe there are some schools that are not as productive as Carstens, but to me why kill something that’s working?”

Robert Bobb says he’s not killing anything. On the contrary, he says he wants Carstens to do what it’s been doing – but for more kids, in a different building.

“The goal is to take the strong programs and put the strong programs into schools where you have weaker programs so you can get more kids the experience of…you know you can bring more kids into the strong programs.”

Bobb says people need to get over the idea that a school is just the building it’s in. And he says they also need to realize that the school district cannot afford to keep every building open.

Tyrone Winfrey is a member of the Detroit Board of Education. The board is in the middle of a lawsuit challenging Robert Bobb’s school closure and academic plans.

Mr Winfrey, what do you make of what Bobb says about closing schools, that a school is more than the building it’s in.

“I’m a life-long Detroiter other than going away to college,” says Winfrey, “and what I found about people in Detroit is that they hold onto their schools very dear because it’s symbolic of the community, symbolic of the neighborhood. However, my concern is not necessarily with the school closures overall, but the process of how we got to that and then also how can we re-grow the district so we won’t have to continue to close certain schools in certain areas.”

When you talk about re-growing the district, academics are of course an important part of that. Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb has an academic plan, but the Detroit Board of Education has sued Bobb, saying he doesn’t have the authority to handle academics. Setting aside the legal question, how does Bobb’ss academic plan match up with the Board’s?

“Well one of the main things is rigor in the classroom,” explains Winfrey. “Both plans look at, for instance, Advanced Placement. That is very key; there are some high schools that don’t have an AP class within their schools. When that student gets to the collegiate level and they haven’t taken classes like that, they’re at a disadvantage. So both plans look at that. Both plans look at strengthening our middle school curriculum because in order to have a strong high school, you have to have a strong middle school. Some of the differences are basically looking at the overall school closure situation as well as how we select principals and how we select administrators. Those would be some of the differences that I would see, and I think that again we can work these things out and work together on this particular situation.”

During this series, Rebuilding Detroit Schools, we’re taking a look at what lessons – if any – New Orleans might have for Detroit in terms of school reform. We might be talking about more school-level decision making, longer school days, longer school years, allowing for more charters, which certainly New Orleans has done. What kinds of education reforms do you think Detroit needs right now?

“We have talked about even in both plans looking at longer school days and making sure that not only when the school ends that you have quality after school programming, plus making sure that school is pretty much a hub for the community. That’s very important. We had also at one point looked more at a form of site-based management where [it's] basically [a principal's] decision so far as the teachers, so far as the custodians, so far as the support, so far as in the office, or whatever. And it may behoove the Detroit Public Schools to look at charter schools, but chartering our own schools. In fact we charter some of our schools now, but maybe expand that to charter more schools. So I’m open to that.

What most concerns you about sending a child to Detroit Public Schools, and what do you hear most from parents who have their kids in DPS?

“When you put your child in a school, you want to make sure that when you drop them off at school, or they walk to school or ride the bus to school or whatever, you want to make sure that child is safe and that child is being educated properly. But I think we’re turning the tide with the academics, and that we’ve got to continue working on the safety and facilities and making sure our money is managed properly.”

To hear other stories in the series “Rebuilding Detroit Schools: A Tale of Two Cities” and see related photos, videos and information, click here.

Send comments to twocities@umich.edu.

To download this MP3 or listen on a smartphone that doesn’t allow flash, click here.