Some Detroit schools closed again due to teacher absences

Rats and roaches run through the halls of Moses Field School and pieces of ceiling have fallen on the heads of students at Palmer Park Preparatory Academy.

It is not the teachers who are using students as pawns, Pam Namyslowski, a 4th grade teacher at Mann Elementary School, fired back.

On Monday, 60 Detroit Public Schools were closed by teacher absences and another two dozen closed Tuesday. The mushrooms were scraped off at those schools while classes continued as normal.

No child should have to spend time in these conditions, nor staff, and Duggan was right to be upset.

The sound of silence in the halls of the district’s schools this week was heard loud by the city’s mayor.

Unlike most mayors, Duggan has little control over Detroit schools, which have been under state oversight for the past seven years, The Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday.

The mayor, who also saw youngsters wearing their coats in a chilly classroom, said his building visits spurred him to seek immediate solutions to problems in the schools he described as “deeply disturbing”. Those are concerns the state and city must take seriously. “They all still need to be in the classrooms teaching and learning, though”. The plan includes a reorganization that could lead to closing independent, publicly funded charter schools, where more than half of Detroit students are enrolled.

“To the extent that areas of concern are called to our attention, we remediate the issue based on the resources available. We have 45 and 50 students in classes”, she said.

A spokeswoman for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said Tuesday that he understands the teachers’ frustration but that “the best thing for Detroit children is to be in school”.

Spain Elementary School in Detroit has been without a gym for a year, due to a leaking roof that damaged the floor. The district is still $515 million in debt.

“There’s already been some discussion about that in terms of interviews the press has done with legislators, and that could be a outcome of this continuing”, Snyder said.

Steve Conn, the ousted president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, has been calling for teachers to stay home in protest. “The sick-out says ‘enough is enough, ‘” said Russell.

“The community is crying out for help over what is clearly a crisis in our schools”, she said.

Whiston said he plans to invite union leaders to attend Friday’s meeting. The DFT has called for public hearings to fully reveal all of the problems in every school and for Earley to announce how he intends to mitigate the issues.

Tuesday morning, in temperatures pushing 20 degrees, Patrick Bosworth sent his 13-year-old son to school in a short sleeve uniform shirt under his jacket.

“Sometimes it would be cold and then after lunch it would be warm”, DPS student J’Sean Sackleford said.