Mind-boggler: In the last six years, 80 percent of schools in Detroit have either opened or closed–or both, according to Mayor Mike Duggan’s office. There’s no central list of schools to peruse when you need a new place to send your child. There are 50–yep, 50–different enrollment processes.
And with a near-total lack of accessible services, what to parents in other cities would be a small hiccups–getting a copy of a birth certificate, say, or records from a past school–are nearly insurmountable obstacles.
What Detroit does have is a small but determined army of mothers who have survived the system’s many gantlets. This year, they set out to knock on every door in the city to help families find decent school placements. The stories they collected are illuminating.
My latest, via The74Million.