THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

According to the Detroit Commissar appointed by Governor Rick Snyder to pillage the public assets of that sad city for the benefit of his friends, no fucking way. So when the school cuts were imposed, one of the most successful schools in the city was closed.

Catherine Ferguson's mission was to provide a good public school education to both parents and their kids, and it did so for close to three decades. Unlike a traditional high school, Catherine Ferguson offered on-site day care and early elementary education. In return, it had a daily attendance rate of 97 percent. Ninety percent of students graduated.

"When I was hired in here, it was made very clear to me that we offered the full high school curriculum," said Nicole Conaway, who taught at the school for six years. "The line here was your brain didn't change when you got pregnant."

But in 2011, the Detroit Public Schools' emergency manager slated a number of schools for closure as a cost-saving measure, including Catherine Ferguson. At the time, DPS defended the move, saying the school's students could enroll in the city's traditional high schools, which educated other teen moms. But facing protests and sit-ins by angry students and teachers, the district drew up a compromise: it would re-open Catherine Ferguson as a private, for-profit charter school. Students and teachers rejoiced that the school had been saved.
Catherine Ferguson

School management was handed over to the charter network Blanche Kelso Bruce Academy, which runs several alternative, disciplinary academies in Detroit geared towards students who had behaviorial issues in mainstream schools. It instituted a new, non-traditional curriculum focused on independent projects and work-oriented skills.

According to Joyce Schon, a Detroit attorney who helped file the lawsuit against the school, the new set-up was "a disaster."

"They ended up telling teachers not to teach. They renamed the teachers advisors," she said. "[The students] were told to find their own externships… Who wants a high school student running around their office? And they were supposed to be doing that two days a week, and they had to have transportation to get their kids to the school for child care, and then find their own transportation to the non-existent externship, and back to the school to pick up their kids at the end of the school day."

Under the new rules, Conaway said she was only allowed to teach two days a week.

Like many of her peers, Beaty dropped out. And within two years, the school's enrollment plummeted from nearly 300 students to less than 100. Citing shifting demographics, the school board declared in a statement that the wilting student body made it "fiscally impossible to continue to operate." In June, the once-model school was shut down.

"Look, all these resources sitting in this boarded-up building," said Conaway, peering through the window into her old classroom. "It's wrong, it's just wrong."

A group of students and parents have filed a federal lawsuit against the school, alleging that teachers were not allowed to teach the state-mandated curriculum and failed to employ certified teachers in key subjects. They say that as a charter school, Catherine Ferguson violated the federal civil rights law Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education, including discrimination against students who are pregnant or parenting.

Jeez! These foolish blahs, and most of the students were blah, think school money was for their education. Have they no concept of "charter schools" and the need for them overpay their management and profit for their owners?