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The L.A. Times reports:
The mostly poor and black students enrolled in Detroit Public Schools have been exposed to lead, have endured crumbling classrooms, and have some of the lowest literacy rates in the country. They've also seen one neighborhood school after another shut down.
Then this month they had to endure something else. For two days, most of them had no school to go to.
On May 2 and 3 — the start of Teacher Appreciation Week — scores of teachers called in sick, shutting down 97% of schools. The action came about after the teachers union said it learned that the district was running out of money, and that teachers' paychecks might not be guaranteed past June 30.
Most teachers went back to school after the union secured a promise that they would be paid through the end of June.
There's more:
The problems paralleled Detroit's overall downturn as it lost population and jobs as industry declined.
"The district is starved for cash," said Mike Addonizio, an education professor at Wayne State University. "That brought them to where they are today."
A major driver of that loss in revenue has been the loss of students. In 2002-2003, Detroit Public Schools counted 164,496 students in its ranks — by this year, that number was down to 47,000. And with each student that leaves, so do several thousand dollars. The district has responded by closing schools, but still retains empty buildings.
The number of K-12 students overall in Detroit — those in private schools and charters as well as public school — dropped from 201,774 in 2002 to 119,758 in 2012.
Imagine that.
