Colleagues:
Sometimes when I write, I use verse to express myself. This is one of those times.
Recently, we learned that the nearly 90,000 children of the Detroit Public Schools once again face some uncertainty. For those of you who live in Detroit or the metro-Detroit area, you are probably more aware of the details of what has happened in and to the Detroit Public Schools in the past decade or more. At least in the far corner of Southwest Michigan, where our TV stations are all South Bend or Chicago, we get more news about Indianapolis or Chicago than Detroit. (I do know that Illinois could learn something from Michigan when it comes to Governors! I will take Governors Granholm and Engler over any last two indicted Illinois governors.)
Having grown up on the east side of our state, I have a deep affection for Detroit if for no other reason than my love of the Tigers, Pistons, and, yes, even the cursed Lions. In addition, my father met my mother during World War II in a Ford plant near Detroit. My father was a foreman and my mother a “Rosy the Riveter.” Before he passed away, Dad talked about seeing Babe Ruth at the old Tiger Stadium and the magician Harry Houdini in downtown. Additionally, I worked for seven years in an urban school district, Grand Rapids Public Schools. Having been at an urban district did not provide me with the answers. What it did is make me aware and sympathetic to some of the problems.
According to information on the CEPI web site, Detroit Schools enrolled 160,000 students in the early 1990’s. Today, Detroit’s enrollment is less than 90,000. I am not here to write about and rehash old problems. They are myriad. As President of MSBO, there is one thing that I do know: the State of Michigan needs the children of Detroit to thrive, to achieve, to hope, to grow, to prosper, and to become productive citizens for our great state.
There is plenty of blame to go around, whether it is in Detroit, in Lansing, in the metro-area, or in out-state Michigan where I regret that we sometimes forget and neglect the importance of the Motor City to our State. With the following poem, I caste no aspersions, I lay no blame. I simply hope to say that we as a State need Detroit and the children of that great city.
The Motown Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, once wrote a song that goes like this:
“R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB…”
Now, my poem ain’t no Aretha Franklin classic, but I ask that we all consider that the children of Detroit deserve what Aretha preached. My hope is that all the stakeholders will work together to make the Detroit Public Schools financially sound. But more importantly, I hope that they all work together for the betterment of educational opportunities for the youth of Detroit.
Prayer for the Children of Detroit
This started to be a poem,
but how does one write a verse
about children forgotten in the vortex
of politics and finances?
Where school administration,
teachers and support staff unions,
board of education,
legislators, governors, Department of Education,
the lobbyists, think tanks,
and the voters of Michigan
all seem to have an agenda.
But is it the children?
The children of Detroit?
Whose school district has declined
in enrollment (and the revenues that follow) by 40 percent
in less than two decades?
Ninety thousand children,
Michigan's children,
our children
each one precious
and in need of a compassionate teacher,
a sympathetic mentor in a guidance office,
or simply a kind word from a bus driver
at the end of the day.
Because each day
the children of Detroit go home
to houses in the most segregated city
in the United States of America
in a State of Michigan
where we too often spend more time berating
our once (and I hope once again) great city
than realizing that
the children of Detroit are
near and dear to
God.
Pray for the children of Detroit.
Ninety thousand children.
Pray that political leaders
and any newly appointed
emergency financial manager
will remember as scripture says to:
"Let the children be fed first,
for it is not fair to take the children's food
and throw it to the dogs."
Amen.