Since 1994, Detroit voters have approved billions in bonds to renovated or build new schools. A good chunk of that money has been spent on facilities that have been shuttered or demolished following renovations.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Detroit Public Schools spent $78.6 million on shuttered school buildings the district is attempting to sell or lease, $27.4 million on schools that have been demolished, and $295.4 million on facilities now in the hands of charter operators or the state-run Educational Achievement Authority.
Freep: Robert Moore, the senior deputy CEO for DPS during its construction boom from 2000 to 2005, said the district needed to renovate the schools because the buildings on average were more than 60 years old — some older than a century. Later, he said, DPS had no choice but to close schools it invested in because more and more Detroiters began to enroll in suburban and charter schools. Detroit has the second highest percentage of charter school students in the nation.
“In U.S. history, I don’t know if there’s been a K-12 decline of the magnitude you saw in Detroit. ... No one saw it coming — no one,” he said. “School choice and charter schools have consequences as much as they may have benefits. ... This is certainly one of them.”
No one "saw it coming," he says. Literally no one had the foresight to recognize that a poor-performing school district in a city with a shrinking population would need significantly less building space as public policy made it easier for Detroit parents to send their kids to non-DPS schools. Fantastic.
It's like the old maxim: Those who can, do. Those who can't, become educational administrators...usually with generous grants from the Broad and Skillman Foundations.
