Ypsi School Closings, part V

My friend Maria Cotera, as most of you readers probably know, was quite involved in the recent discussion over the closure of yet more Ypsilanti public schools. Maria, the parent of a daughter at Chapelle Elementary, not only questioned the assumptions on which the findings of the administration were based, but she, along with her husband Jason and others, organized a grassroots campaign to reconsider our alternatives, instead of just closing schools and laying off new teachers in order to save money in the short term. She launched the Ypsilanti Public School Alliance, and, through that organization, lobbied for a more thoughtful approach, which, instead of just accepting declining enrollments (and thus revenues), would seek to create great schools that could compete head-to-head with private and charter schools. And, while it looks as though the fight to save Chapelle has been lost, I don’t think Maria has any plans to stop her activity in this area. In evidence of that, I submit the following note, which she recently attempted to post to an AnnArbor.com thread about Ypsi school closings. (The AnnArbor.com editors removed it, stating that, “While we don’t have a stated limited on comments, we do, in general, ask that people find a way to express their opinion in 350 words or less.” When asked why that was the case, they responded, “The problem with overly long comments comes down to this: People won’t read them.”)

Some of your readers may already know that on Monday, March 22, the School Board voted, in a 5 to 2 majority, to approve the administration’s plan to close Chapelle Community School and East Middle School. While Jason and I are very disappointed that Chapelle did not survive this round of budget cuts, for us this has never been about one school. It has been about whether or not the philosophy/strategy of closing schools is the right choice for our district. We have seen that this strategy has not worked in Willow Run, and has caused significant problems for that district. Many Chapelle parents, and I suspect many Adams parents, are refugees from Willow Run (as is David Houle, our current CFO).

Why did we think that closing schools was a bad idea for the district as a whole? First, we knew that there was already the impression out there that Ypsi schools were either failing schools, or somehow in crisis. We knew this because many of our friends (those cherished “knowledge economy workers” that the district’s own DEP plan says they are trying to attract) chose to send their kids to private schools or out of district charters. They are not the only ones who feel this way, many people have lost faith in the ability of our public schools to provide a safe, creative, and nurturing environment to our children, and this is not just an “Ypsi” problem, but a national crisis. On the other hand, having chosen the public school route for our daughter, we also knew that Ypsi schools were great schools, and we felt that they were on solid ground to continue improving on educational quality. What we saw going on was basically an image problem, complicated by public disinvestment and disengagement in what goes on in our schools.

At Chapelle we became convinced that we could help turn that tide around, and to improve the profile of Ypsi Schools. Why did we think this? Because Chapelle was a very small school, with a very creative and open administration, and a huge amount of parent involvement. Moreover, there were already some amazing parent/teacher initiatives going on when we arrived, and we wanted to add to those. We thought that one way we could address community disinvestment in our schools was by bringing non-profits and community organizations into our schools to run programs. Some of these partnerships we were able to actually get up and running (like the Fly art workshop and the Dreamland puppet theater performance of a puppet show on Ypsi’s history), others were in the works (Growing Hope partnership to build greenhouses, Community Records partnership, Community Blogging workshop, STEP-UP mentorship programs with black sororities and fraternities). Our idea was to build community investment by building bridges between stakeholders in the community and our schools. Indeed, we saw what we might accomplish at Chapelle as a model for what could happen in schools across the district. In short, we approached our public school experience as a challenge to bring the community back into the schools, and make Ypsi schools the best schools in Southeastern Michigan. So yes we are disappointed that this could not happen, mostly because we feel that it would have benefited all Ypsi schools.

Some on the School Board argued that we had “no choice” – that a school had to close – and that Chapelle, being the smallest school, was the logical choice. We felt that this argument had one big flaw: it represented only one side of the strategy for dealing with our economic constraints. All business owners know that in tough economic times, one must address both inflows and outflows (income and costs). In our opinion, the district was pursuing a strategy that addressed one side of this business equation: the outflow (i.e. reducing costs), without doing a thing about the inflow (attracting new revenue through enrollments). The larger issue here is two conflicting approaches to dealing with economic constraints, one involves embracing the challenge and promoting the great things that are happening in our schools (with the goal of raising enrollments), and the other involves retreating, cutting away at our core mission (education) and consigning our district to a future of declining enrollments and “white flight.”

We never opposed any and all cuts, we simply asked that the district restructure their three-year cost cutting plan and postpone the closing of schools until year two or three, giving parents and administration time to promote the district and try to increase enrollments. We had a plan in place for a “recruit 100” campaign in partnership with local businesses who were willing to provide in-kind services at no cost to our district. 100 new students would mean roughly $750,000 in new revenue for our district. And we felt that we could build on the community momentum we had going at Chapelle, as well as the media attention around Michigan’s school funding crisis to create a community-wide campaign in support of Ypsi schools. We even formed the Ypsilanti Public School Alliance to bring community orgs, businesses, non-profits, parents, teachers, neighborhood associations, universities, churches, and other stakeholders together to discuss creative ways to address the crisis (see mission statement below).

In short, this was never about just one school, but about how we, as a community (parents, community orgs, non-profits, businesses, etc) could use this crisis to come together and re-articulate our commitment to public education as a public good that we should ALL care about (just like parks, roads, etc), not just those of us with children in the schools. When we articulated this vision to the administration and to the school board, we were largely ignored. True, Kira Berman actually listened to us, but she always did so with a sense of what was doable, and practical, tempering our “can-do” optimism with numbers and the harsh reality of what would happen if the State did not approve our revised DEP. She was, at least, an honorable and rational partner, which is all we can ask of our community representatives. That is why it was so painful to hear Ms. Devaney insult her in an open forum, calling her (and Fanta’s) reasoned defense of our strategy “naive.” Ms. Devaney also (misleadingly, I believe) discounted the many pages of research presented to her and to the board that did not concord with her rigid position on school closing. We spent many late night hours, after work, studying how the strategy of school closings has worked in other districts, some of which are comparable to ours, and in study after study, researchers have found that closing one or more schools results in a measurable reduction in educational quality for ALL students in the district? Why? There are numerous reasons: first, closing schools significantly diminishes the enthusiasm, investment and faith of parents, students, and community members in public education; second, closing schools results in overcrowding and large class sizes at remaining schools; third, because the schools that are usually on the chopping block are the poorest, most “diverse” schools, and they are usually combined with other schools that have similar demographics, closing schools can result in district-wide racial disparities.

In all our research we did NOT discover a single article that said that closing schools was good for children or that it increased the educational quality in a district. Moreover, we found a host of reputable studies that suggested that, in the long-run, the strategy of closing schools did not achieve the financial benefits that it was meant to achieve (some of this research appears on our site: SaveYpsiSchools.com). We shared this information with School Board members, and met with quite a few of them, including Trustee Bates a month ago, who suggested that Chapelle might remain open provisionally to see if we could raise enrollments across the district (this idea was NOT one that was dropped in the Board’s lap at the last minute by Fanta and Berman, as has been suggested by some of the comments on Ann Arbor.com). This is real research, not journalism or blogging (as Devaney suggested), and it doesn’t take a lengthy written statement to articulate what it means for our schools. As Kira Berman put it succinctly: “If it doesn’t save us money, and it doesn’t help kids, then we shouldn’t be doing it.”

Jason and I, and others made this point time and time again in meetings, blogs, and other fora. Anyone who states otherwise is simply mis-stating our position. As I’ve said before, I think the board’s decision is penny wise and pound foolish. To use the formulation of the administration: closing schools has many, many “cons” and very few “pros.” It increases class sizes in the remaining schools (as Superintendent Martin admitted in a meeting with us), it does not come close to resolving our financial problems (as Devaney admitted last Monday), and may even exacerbate them, it constricts any possibility for growth in our district, it hurts our public image, and it may well undermine our diversity goals by creating one school where all or most of the “at-risk” kids end-up (Adams). Moreover, because Ann Arbor has rejected closing schools as an option and is contemplating opening up grades 1 and 6 to school of choice, closing schools puts us at risk of losing even more kids at two key transitions: from kindergarten to elementary and elementary to middle school. So in the end, once again, Ann Arbor trumps Ypsilanti as the place to live if you want a high quality education for your child.

When we moved here, many, many people, said to us: “but what about the schools?” the implicit assumption being that Ypsi schools weren’t high quality schools. We were committed to changing this impression, and we still are, it’s just that the Board’s decision makes it so much harder. We are therefore saddened by what happened last Monday, not just because our daughter’s wonderful school will close, but because of what it says about our district’s vision, our leadership, and how we value our primary objective: providing a high quality, creative, and safe educational environment for Ypsilanti’s children.

Despite this, we remain committed to Ypsi’s public schools, and to the idea of public education more generally, because the public school classroom is a place where children from all walks of life can come together and learn from each other. To us, this is a deeply meaningful enterprise and central to the health of our democracy. We therefore ask that people who share this belief (whether or not they have children in the district) join us in our efforts to remake our schools into the kind of places that we can all become invested in.

MISSION STATEMENT:
The mission of the Ypsilanti Public School Alliance is to bring multiple stakeholders in the health of our schools together for a conversation on how we might make our schools the best places to learn in southeastern Michigan. In the short term, we are committed to advocating for the schools in the face of budget cuts and to offering sensible alternatives to school closures. We believe that the best way forward is to strengthen our schools, thereby increasing enrollments and enhancing our regional reputation. Many have noted that our school system—at the elementary, middle school, and high school level—lacks a coherent vision. The Ypsilanti Public School Alliance hopes to address this problem by bringing representatives from parents groups, teachers groups, staff groups, city and state officials, community organizations, neighborhood organizations, and non-profits together to bring creative ideas from inside and outside the world of public education to a conversation about re-imagining the future of public schooling in America. We hope that the process of “coming together” will also re-ignite interest in our public schools among the broader community (not just educational professionals or parents of school age children). We see this re-engagement as vital to the survival of our schools, and, conversely as vital to the survival of our communities, since the health of our schools is the most telling indicator of the health of our community.

And, for what it’s worth, I’d never complain about the length of a comment, if it were this focused, coherent and well reasoned.

[note: For background on this issue, check out parts I, II, III, and IV of this series, and the comments that accompany them.]

Posted in Ann Arbor, Education, Media, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

An update on The Ypsi Project

5b4bh2mdeqs70cq33hcx19qho1_500Remember how, a year or so ago, I told you about a young photographer here in Ypsi and her ambitious plan to take a portrait of a different person in the City every day for a year? Well, Erica Hampton’s Ypsi Project has taken a few big twists and turns since then, but it seems as though things are finally heading toward some kind of big conclusion. Erica is planning a public showing of about 100 portraits from the collection at the end of May, in what was the old VG Kids customer service office on Michigan Avenue – a space which is now being referred to unofficially as the XVG Gallery. And, she’s just launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the $2,400 she needs to pay for the printing, mounting, framing, space rental, etc.

If you’ve never been to Kickstarter, follow that link and check it out. It’s really an amazing way to go about raising money for creative endeavors. For this particular project, you can give as little as $1, or as much as $2,500. For that amount, you get a thank you online, an Ypsi Project button, a limited edition Ypsi Project screen printed exhibit flyer, a 40 page softcover photo book, three origami swans made from the Ypsi phone book, two polaroids taken in Ypsi, a 300 page 10×8 softcover book containing all the portraits taken during the project, a signed 16×20 matted print from the exhibition, and a personal weekend-long photo session, regardless of where you might be in the U.S. And, there are about half a dozen different levels of sponsorship between $1 and $2,500, each with their own rewards. Check it out, and pencil in that last weekend of May to see the show.

Posted in Art and Culture, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Glenn Beck says Obama is “poking” teabaggers, hoping that they’ll commit acts of violence

That’s right, if there’s violence, it’s all Obama’s fault… He might as well have been throwing those bricks, yelling the n-word, and making those pipe bombs himself.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a brilliant little piece of Glenn Beck parody served up by Jon Stewart.

Posted in Media, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Breaking: FBI anti-terrorism raids in SE Michigan

There don’t seem to be many details at this point, but WXYZ is reporting that a number of coordinated raids took place last night in the area. Here’s a clip:

The FBI was conducting raids Saturday night at multiple locations in southeast Michigan.

Action News has learned Homeland Security and the Joint Anti-terrorism Task Force is also involved in a major operation.

Federal officials would not say who they were targeting or where, but the FBI has set up a command center at the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department in Ann Arbor, where they have brought in two satellite trucks and a radio tower.

Agents have also obtained search warrants and multiple arrests have been made.

If you have additional information, please leave a comment.

update: Judging from the racist comments on the WXYZ site, most folks seem to think that Muslim extremists are somehow involved. The evidence, however, appears to point toward the Michigan Militia. Here’s a clip from AnnArbor.com:

…The FBI conducted raids Saturday night in the Washtenaw and Lenawee county area in an investigation tied to Hutaree, a Christian-oriented militia group based in Lenawee County, AnnArbor.com has learned…

Michigan militia members say five people were arrested – including one known member of Hutaree. They said the raid occurred at a meeting of Hutaree members in the Ann Arbor area…

Posted in Ann Arbor, Media, Michigan, Other, Religious Extremism | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 61 Comments

Store Closing Art Opening

n421018138288_8632If you’re free tonight, and in the vicinity of downtown Ypsi, there’s going to be an art opening in the old VG Kids storefront on Michigan Avenue. It’s going to run from 7:00 to 10:00, with music, performed by Patrick Elkins and Manhole, starting at 8:00. The show is curated by my friends Jason (Swipple) and Chris (Dirty Brothers), and I’m sure that it’ll be great… For more background, check out this glowing article about Jason and Swipple that ran on AnnArbor.com yesterday… Oh, and those remote controlled primates that ruined the last Shadow Art Fair, will likely be there too.

Posted in Art and Culture, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

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