Schools Get Upgrades, but Still Could Get the Ax (MI)

April 28, 2010

The 55 Detroit public school buildings proposed to be closed beginning in June will be leased, sold or demolished, but taxpayers still will be on the hook to pay off millions in renovations to the buildings. Property taxes will go to repay more than $65 million through 2033 for the improvements, district data show.

Detroit Public Schools officials say closures are necessary and that the cash-poor district will save more than $35 million a year when the last of the schools close in 2012.

Most buildings received upgrades from a $1.5-billion bond measure approved in 1994. Four buildings were upgraded as recently as last summer.

The schools’ conditions run from poor to good, but officials say they need millions in additional repairs. The district is caught between investments and a hard place — bond money was spent on repairs, but enrollment does not support keeping so many buildings open.

District spokesman Steve Wasko said the recent repairs were essential "to ensure students and staff are in safe conditions and suitable environments."
Bond money funds repairs but can’t be used for operations

The Ferguson Academy for Young Women in Detroit has an award-winning urban farm complete with gardens and animals.

Last year, it got wireless Internet capabilities.

And the school has had $1.2 million in major structural upgrades since 1999, according to Detroit Public Schools records.

And the shelf life on each upgrade is about to expire.

Ferguson — for students who are pregnant or have small children — is one of 41 city schools set to close in June; others are to follow by 2012.

Many parents and staff who have pleaded for the past month at public meetings to keep their schools open have voiced confusion and anger about the closures, noting that their schools, too, were recently updated.

The confusion, said one national expert, is understandable and stems from the fact that the bond money that pays for school repairs operates separately from the funds in a district’s operational budget.

"That’s why you have this really unfortunate situation where you’ve put money into a school out of one pocket and you’re closing it because you can’t afford to keep it open with money from the other pocket," said Mike Griffith, senior policy analyst who focuses on school funding at the Education Commission of the States in Denver.

Griffith said DPS can prevent this problem in the future.

"The first thing they have to do is get a grip on where the student population is heading," he said.
Most upgrades are recent

More than $65 million in taxpayer bond funds have gone into renovations at the 55 Detroit buildings proposed for closure in June and through 2012, district data show.

Most upgrades were ordered in the past five or 10 years. Indeed, four schools slated to close this summer — Bethune, Hughes, Sherrill and MacDowell — received $1.3 million in upgrades just last summer.

The bill to Detroit property owners — stemming from a $1.5-billion bond issue in 1994 — runs through 2033, regardless of what happens to buildings in the shrinking district, according to state Treasury officials.

Marvin Franklin, principal at Bunche Elementary, said his school has a new floor in a kindergarten room, a repaired roof and an arboretum full of plants.

"If it’s just down to the facilities, it makes no sense to close Bunche," said Franklin.

The school’s enrollment is about half its capacity.

And that’s the issue, district officials said: Declining enrollment and budget constraints must guide decisions.

DPS has lost half its student population in the past decade, with enrollment down to about 85,000.

Closing the schools will lead to more savings in the long run, officials said.

The district — now facing a de ficit of more than $300 million — could save $29 million a year after closing the 41 schools listed to close in June. The savings rise to more than $35 million a year if all 55 buildings close by 2012, data show.

"In many ways, the situation is not all that different from the owner of an older-model vehicle who continues to face the question of how many additional major repairs to make on his car," DPS spokesman Steve Wasko said.

Wasko also noted that some schools on the list will likely remain open as a result of input from the community and the City of Detroit.

"We want to support those neighborhoods which are struggling where the school is the only building left standing," he said.

The new $1-billion DPS facilities plan proposed by DPS emergency financial manager Robert Bobb calls for closing 55 schools by 2012, demolishing some of the 100 schools already closed since 2005 and building about two dozen new facilities.

Last November, Detroit voters approved a $500-million bond to build new schools and improve others.

Demographer Kurt Metzger, director of Data Driven Detroit, said while schools must be kept in working condition for students, major investments should not be made in facilities that the district should be able to predict will close.

"Residents need a clear vision of what plans are going forward," he said.

Griffith agreed, saying DPS could find itself wasting future bond money unless the decisions are based on good data.
Charter school contention

District data show roughly $6.5 million has been invested at Southwestern High. State Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, a 1994 graduate, said that’s only part of the story.

The school has a state-of-the-art clinic including dentistry and visual services; renovated auditorium and pool, and new windows and athletic fields. Former NBA player Jalen Rose, a Southwestern alum, donated $100,000 for gym upgrades, she said.

In a letter to Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Tlaib wrote that closing Southwestern in 2011 would leave the only swath of the city with a rising birth rate with just one high school, Western International.

Bobb has said that he is open to the idea of selling closed buildings to charter schools. It’s an idea that incenses some DPS parents, activists and board members who say those sales would be "feeding the enemy."

Chris White, an organizer with the Coalition to Restore Hope to DPS, which has been critical of Bobb, pointed to the sale of Winship Elementary on the west side as an example.

DPS closed Winship in 2007 and sold it this year for $440,000 to a charter school company. A new charter school will open in the building in the fall.

The district will save money by no longer having to maintain and protect the property. The building received about $1.1 million in upgrades over the past decade, data show.

"If you sell a building to a charter school for less than the funds that went into it, then we’re subsidizing your competitors," White said.

Rep. Bert Johnson, D-Detroit, cosponsor of a education reform law, said he is working on a bill to protect buildings improved with bond money.

" Why is there a process where the emergency financial manager can sell schools paid for with public dollars, and why would those schools be arbitrarily sold to charters coming in?" he said. "That is the equivalent of taking paper money and watching it burn in a fireplace. For what? So taxpayers can be on the hook?"