Detroit-$34M in funds aimed at parks and schools given to stadium instead

[dead0man]

link

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The city is already on the hook for $300M of the $900M stadium, so this is just salt in the wound.  FYI, the owner of the Pistons is worth $3.3B.

[Xing]

Society will always put sports before education. Not saying that sports aren't great and all, but... you know, priorities and all that.

[Virginiá]

Well, citizens can always vote them out of office. Until they start doing that, and consistently as well, this won't stop.

[dead0man]

Detroit has been voting for Dems since.....1962, at least for mayor.  But even cities that are smart enough to go both ways give millions of tax dollars to people worth billions of dollars so they can pay a handful of dudes millions to play a game....for the fans of course.  Oh yeah, fans, your ticket are $87, $20 for parking and another twenty if you want a beer and a hot dog.  For the fans.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Detroit has been voting for Dems since.....1962, at least for mayor.  But even cities that are smart enough to go both ways give millions of tax dollars to people worth billions of dollars so they can pay a handful of dudes millions to play a game....for the fans of course.  Oh yeah, fans, your ticket are $87, $20 for parking and another twenty if you want a beer and a hot dog.  For the fans.

This being Detroit, that's almost enough for a down payment on a house.

https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Detroit-MI/88517056_zpid/17762_rid/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.384748,-82.985595,42.363887,-83.018296_rect/14_zm/

[Santander]

Ban franchise pro sports.

[pbrower2a]

Oakland, California made the same mistake.

Given a choice between losing a sports franchise or being stuck with bad pro sports teams, or having good schools... I'd take the schools. 

[The Chill Moderate Republican]

Oakland, California made the same mistake.

Given a choice between losing a sports franchise or being stuck with bad pro sports teams, or having good schools... I'd take the schools. 

Not considering the 10000+ per student cost, I still think that the money is being spent terribly and in the wrong places in our public school system


Either way they are both terrible. one is a short term investment where you only care about the taxes and sports fan. The other is where you shove more money into the school system and it still suck.

In my opinion, they are both bad options.

[vanguard96]

Detroit has been remade 'on the surface' in the image of the Ilitch family (owner of the Wings, Tigers, and Little Caesar's Pizza chain) and Dan Gilbert (Quicken Loans, Cleveland Cavaliers owner). They have gotten many concessions from local, county, and state government to 'develop' certain parts of Detroit:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/17/billionaire-dan-gilberts-mission-to-rebuild-detroit-as-a-hub-of-muscles-and-brains.html

I personally would not vote for any referendum for stadium financing. Typically though these are not placed to a vote and decided in concert between the elected majority Democrat local government and these local business investors.

The state appointed emergency manager system is a controversial one for Detroit and its mostly failing schools who despite high spending per pupil continue to bleed revenue as residents look for a way out one way or another.

The Q-line has recently started street car service up Woodward Avenue and on the surface there are a lot of nicer things going up, left and right along the People Mover Loop.

The bigger issue though are the under-served neighborhoods. Those are still slow to change. A wrong turn or a short cut to some of these popular destinations will take you into neighborhoods of squatters, high crime, unkempt properties, and poor support from Detroit's police and fire departments who sometimes will not arrive for 30-60 minutes after a 9-1-1 call.

To me it is analogous to what I saw in the cities in Mainland China in the Pearl River Delta. A glitzy veneer on main street but ruin and abject poverty plainly visible when you turn the corner.

[Libertarian in Name Only]

Detroit has been voting for Dems since.....1962, at least for mayor.  But even cities that are smart enough to go both ways give millions of tax dollars to people worth billions of dollars so they can pay a handful of dudes millions to play a game....for the fans of course.  Oh yeah, fans, your ticket are $87, $20 for parking and another twenty if you want a beer and a hot dog.  For the fans.

That's sounds cheap! I've seen as high as $50 for parking.
This is also one of the things that aggravates me most about politics. Tax money funding rich people's projects that should be paid for by private citizens.

[pbrower2a]

Oakland, California made the same mistake.

Given a choice between losing a sports franchise or being stuck with bad pro sports teams, or having good schools... I'd take the schools. 

Not considering the 10000+ per student cost, I still think that the money is being spent terribly and in the wrong places in our public school system


Either way they are both terrible. one is a short term investment where you only care about the taxes and sports fan. The other is where you shove more money into the school system and it still suck.

In my opinion, they are both bad options.

Were I to be put in charge of a troubled school district, my first act would be to commission a merciless audit. The intent isn't to squeeze out savings; the intent is to make sure that money budgeted for education is spend in ways appropriate for education.

Yes, much of the cost is for social services associated with the consequences of broken homes and poverty.  That is one cost that core-city schools are likely to have that wealthy suburbs don't have. It probably costs less to educate the average kid in Detroit than in East Lansing... and East Lansing has demanding parents.  Teacher pay, administrator pay, plant and equipment costs, mandatory transportation, school lunch costs, supplies? Fine.

For the time I will slash expense accounts, including my own. Teachers and administrators will not be going to conferences farther away than the most distant point in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. So forget going to a seminar in California, Florida, Nevada, or Arizona in the winter. What's wrong with going to a conference in Indianapolis or Pittsburgh?

There will be no alcoholic beverages or movies rated in the not-family-friendly R (or worse) reimbursed  on expense accounts.   

You will not get to save money by cutting back on maintenance. I will spend money on measures that save energy, like replacing obsolete HVAC units. There might be some solar panels installed with the savings. But the objective is still to cut costs.  Needless to say there will be upgrades of plant and equipment -- and new books in the school libraries.   

[dead0man]

would ya fire bad teachers and non-essential administrators?

[pbrower2a]

would ya fire bad teachers and non-essential administrators?

Bad teachers? An audit would not find those. Non-essential administrators? An audit might discover financial misconduct (like fraud in expense accounts, embezzlement, or misappropriation of funds).

Firing bad teachers implies having to attract good teachers. I would like to see alternative means of credentialing to attract competent people who might have not considered teaching as a career and might have the 'wrong' college major -- like competent people terribly underemployed. Oh, you took art history and found that it is great for getting a salesclerk job in a store? Of course one must screen such potential teachers for temperament. But that would be a long-term solution requiring changes in state statutes and acceptance by teachers' unions.

There might be some 90-day wonders who do well.

I definitely want teachers' unions on my side.   

[vanguard96]

https://reason.com/blog/2017/06/25/detroit-city-council-dunks-on-taxpayers

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The t-shirts here say 'Detroit vs Everybody' - in this case it should be 'Detroit vs Detroit'

Shameful.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Oakland, California made the same mistake.

Given a choice between losing a sports franchise or being stuck with bad pro sports teams, or having good schools... I'd take the schools. 

Not considering the 10000+ per student cost, I still think that the money is being spent terribly and in the wrong places in our public school system


Either way they are both terrible. one is a short term investment where you only care about the taxes and sports fan. The other is where you shove more money into the school system and it still suck.

In my opinion, they are both bad options.

In my experience--the woman who raised me being a veteran educator in the Pontiac school system, the number would likely be closer to $7,000 per student. I don't recall her viewing that as very much. This is Detroit, though, so spending is probably different.

[vanguard96]

Oakland, California made the same mistake.

Given a choice between losing a sports franchise or being stuck with bad pro sports teams, or having good schools... I'd take the schools. 

Not considering the 10000+ per student cost, I still think that the money is being spent terribly and in the wrong places in our public school system


Either way they are both terrible. one is a short term investment where you only care about the taxes and sports fan. The other is where you shove more money into the school system and it still suck.

In my opinion, they are both bad options.

In my experience--the woman who raised me being a veteran educator in the Pontiac school system, the number would likely be closer to $7,000 per student. I don't recall her viewing that as very much. This is Detroit, though, so spending is probably different.

2015-16 Detroit spending is $16.7K per pupil local revenue sources are 3,825 per pupil. State sources make up the rest.

Flint $15.3K (Detroit gets 20.3% more local revenue)
Pontiac $15.2K (50.9% less local revenue)
Lansing $15K (16.1% more local revenue)
Battle Creek $14.1K (1.1% less local revenue)
Saginaw $12.3K (99.5% more local revenue)

https://www.mackinac.org/depts/epi/fiscal.aspx

DPS does not run things very efficiently. Yes, it would help if local revenues were a higher portion but other cities get even less revenue and still spend less per student.

One wonders about the merits of the M-STEP testing. So much education time is taken up each year for yardsticks of performance. Detroit's testing results here compared with other cities known for urban blight and decay are quite good. It seems the specialist / magnet schools are the bright spots: Cass Tech, Communication and Media Arts HS, Foreign Language Immersion and Cultural Studies, Renaissance HS. Do they teach to the test?

https://www.mischooldata.org/DistrictSchoolProfiles/ReportCard/AccountabilityScorecard2/AccountabilityScorecard2ProficiencySummary.aspx

Detroit 76/96 79.2% OK for all 4 categories overall
Lansing 80/106 75.5% OK for all 4 categories overall
Saginaw 73/98 74.5% OK for all 4 categories overall
Pontiac 67/90 74%, OK for all 4 categories overall
Battle Creek 74/110 67.3% OK for all 4 categories overall
Flint 56/84, 66% failed for all students in Science, OK for Math, ELA, Social Studies

Yet here are some much better school districts in Metro Detroit that did not test as well:
Plymouth-Canton 78/106 73.6%
Troy 79/114 69.3%
Novi 62/96 64.6%
Northville 62/98 63.3%

Perhaps in these areas since they are not seeking as much in state revenue they don't have to focus as much on how the school does during the 3 weeks of testing since they have 3-4K more per student from local revenues.

The report also shows graduation rates and attendance
Detroit 87.02% attendance, 74.28% 4-year grad rate
Pontiac 91%, 66.48%
Flint 89%, 59%
Battle Creek 92.68%, 69.45%
Lansing 95.43%, 61.56%

Plymouth-Canton 96.42%, 89.59%
Troy 96.55%, 91.28%
Novi 96.85% 94.92%
Northville 95.86%, 95.69%

The attendance level which is 3% below the target line is a concern. If the kids don't go to school that hurts. So 'sick ins', teacher strikes, and so forth may get attention for issues that may influence not wanting to go to school but in the end attendance is a factor - regardless of the reason behind the non-school day. It's already bad enough that they have school canceled for pipes breaking or power outages on top of the usual inclement weather issues that will affect all schools. To have further reductions in days of schooling proves detrimental.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

would ya fire bad teachers and non-essential administrators?

Bad teachers? An audit would not find those. Non-essential administrators? An audit might discover financial misconduct (like fraud in expense accounts, embezzlement, or misappropriation of funds).

Firing bad teachers implies having to attract good teachers. I would like to see alternative means of credentialing to attract competent people who might have not considered teaching as a career and might have the 'wrong' college major -- like competent people terribly underemployed. Oh, you took art history and found that it is great for getting a salesclerk job in a store? Of course one must screen such potential teachers for temperament. But that would be a long-term solution requiring changes in state statutes and acceptance by teachers' unions.

There might be some 90-day wonders who do well.

I definitely want teachers' unions on my side.   

The problem with all of this is the difficulty of measuring teachers performance. How would you do that?

[pbrower2a]

would ya fire bad teachers and non-essential administrators?

Bad teachers? An audit would not find those. Non-essential administrators? An audit might discover financial misconduct (like fraud in expense accounts, embezzlement, or misappropriation of funds).

Firing bad teachers implies having to attract good teachers. I would like to see alternative means of credentialing to attract competent people who might have not considered teaching as a career and might have the 'wrong' college major -- like competent people terribly underemployed. Oh, you took art history and found that it is great for getting a salesclerk job in a store? Of course one must screen such potential teachers for temperament. But that would be a long-term solution requiring changes in state statutes and acceptance by teachers' unions.

There might be some 90-day wonders who do well.

I definitely want teachers' unions on my side.   

The problem with all of this is the difficulty of measuring teachers performance. How would you do that?

Good question. As a substitute I have seen my performance go from "Hey, I can really teach!" to "I did a horrible job" in one hour. All that changed was the students.

I can usually see beforehand what class will give trouble. One sign is a high rate of absences. Such may indicate students dropping out or about to drop out. The prime students don't drop out. One class has an assignment on page 279 of the math book and another has an assignment on page 290. Those on page 279 are likely slower. So there may be some informal packing of poor learners in some class hours.

I have typically had more disciplinary problems with students in some classes. That's telling. 

"Transition Math", the pre-algebra course, is taught in junior high in 7th or 8th grade to the more promising students. It's the same course taught in high school,  but by 9th grade the better students are already in algebra and the bad ones are taking Transition Math. You can tell which math class will be more troublesome.

But I can adjust. I am a 'blue-collar teacher'. I do surprisingly little direct teaching; I may lecture for as few as five minutes before wandering about the classroom to determine who is having problems. I hone in on a struggling student like a hawk hones in on a reckless rabbit -- except that I help the student out. It works. I may not be effective in enriching the education of top students, but the regular teacher can do that as needed. I'm not good enough to not focus upon the necessity of classroom management.  But I can be, and I am sure that other teachers consider themselves, brilliant one hour and stupid the next. 

Measuring a teacher's performance comes down to measuring students' performance. What can I do? I can't tell parents that they need to turn off the electronic entertainments so that the kid can do some schoolwork. I cannot inculcate a love of learning in a household that reeks of anti-intellectualism.

As you can imagine I have learned much about school administration. I would try to establish a dress code for teachers. For men that is a sport coat, dress shirt, and tie for anything other than PE or shop. For women... I can't really say.  Teachers who exude the  attitude that they are going off to the golf course or can't wait to go to the night club give the wrong signals. 

[dead0man]

yeah, how are we going to brainwash conformity into the kids if the teachers show a little independence?


We get it though.  According to teachers unions and their allies, it's very much impossible to find out which teachers are bad.  Lets just assume they're all good and pay them more!