Roy Roberts, the Detroit Public Schools emergency manager, is gambling that DPS can rehabilitate its image and improve academic achievement by slashing enrollment -- and thereby, the budget -- by about 25%, according to Chastity Pratt Dawsey of the Detroit Free Press.
He said he hopes the payoff in the fall will be a "new" DPS, one that is on its way to becoming a smaller district with less bureaucracy and is stocked with "first-rate" schools that attract students.
The $755-million budget for 2012-13 projects enrollment to drop to 49,852 students, a number not seen in Detroit since 1912. DPS will eliminate 1,889 jobs, extend a 10% wage cut set to expire this month for most employees and increase class sizes in grades four through 12.
"This district will not only look different, it is different," Roberts said.
His message was challenged by several of the roughly 100 employees and observers at the meeting, which he ended because of a woman yelling during the public comment period.
