The urban school district, whose 1,800 students are 92 percent black and 81 percent economically disadvantaged, has staggeringly low academic achievement and has been ravaged by years of declining enrollment.
There are important issues to consider here, but:
The prospect of disbanding the high school and sending hundreds of black students to finish their education in overwhelmingly white suburbs has put a decidedly racial tinge on what is unfolding as the first crisis of Whitmer’s governorship.
It certainly sounds like there is more trouble ahead, but is it all racial?
Herrera said the school district has made poor financial decisions for years, such as purchasing property that has lost value and investing in a school building and then closing it.
"It's gotten to the point now where the district can't pay back its deficit. It's called bankruptcy in the real world," Herrera said.
Just 3% of Benton Harbor's third-graders — four of the 127 students tested — read at grade level on the 2018 state evaluation test. The state rate was 44% proficient. Zero of the district's 11th-graders were deemed college ready, according to tests in the last five years.
It has also has lost millions of dollars in revenue every year with 2,782 students attending schools outside district boundaries. School officials say the district lost out on $22 million in the 2016-17 school year as students fled to other districts or charters. The district gets around $8,000 per student from the state in its annual budget.
Having taught in an "urban" school district for 29 years, this is what happens. Parents who want their children to get a good education move them to other districts, which they hope won't have the same problem that they're leaving behind. I bet Benton Harbor also has attendance issues at all of their schools, and most of the students probably live in single parent families. These are not racial issues.
Herrera blames the Michigan Department of Education, saying it would send in inexperienced educational consultants to drive reforms that either were never implemented or never brought change because the people on the ground in Benton Harbor did not have the expertise to carry them out.
This is probably true. Educational initiatives come and go, most with very little effect. And sometimes the initiatives themselves are poorly thought out. Sadly, the people at the top, inflicting this educational malpractice upon teachers and students have no idea how to improve things. Currently the big fixes involve money and technology. Between local problems and the ineffective teaching practices insisted upon by the state, Benton Harbor really doesn't stand a chance.
But, according to this article, from Capcon, there is more to the story. (There is always more to the story.)
As always, it is the children who suffer. They will grow into poorly educated adults who don't know how to teach their own children or what to do when their children struggle in school. There are other hand-wringing editorials in the Detroit Free Press, but the central issues that lead to this abysmal failure are never addressed.The notes auditors included in their reports from 2011 to 2018 depicted a school district that appeared incapable of managing its own finances, with leaders having little idea of where taxpayer dollars were going.“The district did not prepare its own financial statements,” the auditing firm said in both 2015 and 2016, and its employees then completed them. By not preparing the statements, the notes said, the district had put the auditing firm’s independence at risk.The local school administration was incapable of completing basic financial reports, according to the auditors. “There was no person available in the Business Office with the skills and knowledge to apply governmental auditing standards in recording the entity’s financial transactions or preparing its financial statements,” the firm said in 2015.In 2011 and 2012, the accounting was so sloppy that district officials could not say how much cash they had on hand, according to the auditor.
Nothing new with that. It's been a generations long-pattern in education.
