The historic enrollment decline in Detroit Public Schools will continue to worsen, leaving the school district with about 13,000 fewer students and 28 fewer schools by 2016, while financial cuts could eliminate the deficit by then, according to a revised deficit elimination plan released Wednesday to the Free Press.
Chastity Pratt Dawsey reports the plan projects enrollment in 2016 will be 38,448 students, a decline of 12,896 students. The reduction in students will mean reduced funding -- from $750 million this year to $569 million in 2016 -- and result in cutting 470 support services positions and 542 teaching positions between 2014 and 2016.
With the transfer of 15 DPS schools to a state reform district this school year, DPS’s enrollment has fallen to about 50,000, about a third the size of the district a decade ago. If the 2016 enrollment projection becomes reality, it will mark the smallest DPS enrollment in more than a century, according to information compiled by Jeffrey Mirel, author of “The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-81.”
