Students, teachers brace for new reality
By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY and LORI HIGGINS FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITERS
When the school buses roll this morning, it will be the beginning of a crucial year for Michigan because stringent, systemic changes are headed to all 800 school districts and charter schools.
A financial crisis means many students will head back to schools where class sizes are larger, programs have been cut, their favorite teacher may have been laid off and where services are being privatized. Some children may have to walk farther to catch the bus — if bus service is offered at all. Some are paying more to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities.
Some teachers have taken pay cuts and are paying more for health insurance. All are faced with higher standards under a new evaluation system whereby student test scores will soon weigh significantly in their performance evaluations.
And, this year, it will be harder to earn a passing score on the MEAP test and Michigan Merit Exam.
“We need to do a better job getting all students prepared for 21st-Century careers,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan. “Recent reforms, combined with those under consideration, will transform the way teachers instruct, students learn and schools perform.”
Budget cuts cloud 1st day for students
New schools are opening in Detroit
By LORI HIGGINS and CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITERS
This school year is expected to bring the kind of change that marks the start of a new era — with widespread budget cuts that will be felt in the classroom and parents’ wallets, legislative changes that have teachers feeling demoralized, a more intense focus on the worst-performing schools and several new schools opening in Detroit.
“There’s a lot going on at every level,” said Judy Pritchett, chief academic officer for the Macomb Intermediate School District. It’s the kind of transformative change happening in one year that Pritchett has never seen before.
Much of it is bringing anxiety, but Pritchett said despite that, she expects school staff to walk into buildings today for the first day of school with renewed excitement.
“Those kids are going to come … and all those rituals and traditions we go through — that’s exciting. The staff will be there, and they’ll be waiting.”
But the journey to the beginning of the 2011-12 school year hasn’t been easy.Teachers in many districts are heading back to the classroom making less money and digging deeper to pay for health insurance. The challenges have attracted the attention of Randi Weingarten, the national president of the American Federation of Teachers, who will be in Detroit today to tour schools and meet with officials. In Detroit Public Schools, unions are fighting a 10% pay cut imposed on employees by the state-appointed emergency manager, Roy Roberts.
The financial pinch also will be felt in Northville Public Schools, where teachers agreed last month to an overall wage cut of 4% and where the average teacher will go from paying $350 annually for health care to paying $3,500.
The contract will mean sacrifices all around to maintain the quality of the school district, said Nick Nugent, a middle school math teacher and president of the Northville Education Association.
“People are going to have to rework their family budgets … just like every other family has had to do in the metro area,” he said.
Cuts and sweeping changes to the state’s teacher tenure laws — which make it easier to get rid of ineffective teachers, strengthened evaluation systems for teachers and principals and restricted unions from bargaining over some things — have left many teachers feeling put upon, said Doug Pratt, spokesman for the Michigan Education Association.
“They feel so attacked and vilified,” Pratt said. “It’s sad because this is normally the time of the year that educators look forward to every year. It’s a new beginning.”
Kids are heading back to classes that will be more crowded than ever, Pritchett said.
“Will it be off the wall — with 30, 40, 50 kids in a classroom? That’s an individual issue with districts. But generally they’re going to see class sizes increase,” Pritchett said.
The budget crunch won’t end there. Many districts that didn’t have pay-to-play fees for students who participate in athletics and some other extracurriculars have instituted those fees. Some districts increased the fees.
Busing took a hit, too.
More districts outsourced busing service to private firms. And some cut back on the amount of busing they offer. Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, for instance, cut noon busing for kindergarten students.
The impact? Parents have to pick their kids up from morning kindergarten classes, or get their kids to school for afternoon kindergarten classes. The move saved the district nearly $500,000, Jim Larson-Shidler, assistant superintendent for business services for the Plymouth-Canton district, said recently.
In an effort to hold onto students and funding, Detroit Public Schools has allowed parents for the past several years to send their children to any school they wanted.
Not this year.
Parents who want to transfer their students from one building to another within DPS will find that they have to stay put through the first week of October. DPS is requiring students to attend their neighborhood school or stay in their current school.
DPS is losing thousands of students each year — 100,000 in the last decade — and that has left officials scrambling to shift teachers each fall to school buildings where they are more needed. If everyone stays put, it will be easier to assign teachers and track students for the Oct. 5 statewide student count day, said Karen Ridgeway, the DPS interim superintendent. “We need to stabilize the enrollment,” Ridgeway said.
The student enrollments at schools statewide on that day will determine 90% of each district’s state aid per-pupil funding for the year, up from 75% in past years.
Skeptics predict the change could push parents away from DPS.
“When you make it difficult for a parent to get a child into a school, they’re going to take their kids elsewhere,” said Annie Carter, vice president of the Detroit school board. “You’re saying to some parents their child has to stay in a failing school. This can end up in court.”
Three new high schools will open today in Detroit that were launched with the help of grants from Michigan Future a nonprofit organization — Detroit Collegiate Prep and Ben Carson School of Science and Medicine in DPS and the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, a charter school.
Lou Glazer, president of Michigan Future, said the group will announce this month three more high schools that will open in 2012. “At least at the high school level, Detroit parents are actively looking for alternatives,” he said.
DPS is unveiling some improvements designed to make the district more attractive. For instance, today is the largest rollout of construction under the $500.5-million DPS bond with 10 new and renovated buildings opening. DPS also will become the first in the nation to use an airport-style concealed weapons detection system in all its high schools.
And for the first time, parents will be able to access student assignments, attendance records, textbooks and other information via an online database.
“If anyone believes that the new Detroit Public Schools will operate like the old, you will see otherwise this year,” Roberts said.
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