No, the kids are not alright under GOP rule in Michigan.
City fire marshal investigators plan to inspect every Detroit Public Schools classroom after receiving complaints this week about overcrowded classes with more than 50 students.
Detroit Fire Department representatives met Thursday with district officials to determine the maximum number of students for every classroom in the district, said Assistant Fire Marshal Osric Wilson.
The fire marshal issued a violation this week at Nolan Elementary-Middle School after receiving a tip that a kindergarten class had 55 students.
Other complaints followed and investigators visited other schools, Wilson said. “This issue is not going to go away; people are going to continue to complain.”
Best part is you already can see the GOP solution to the problem of twice as many kids in classes because of half the needed teachers and wrecked schools: sharp cuts in fire marshal inspections because of “unnecessary government interference when these societal parasites should be out stopping fires like we pay them to do” followed by taking a orbital cannon that shoots chainsaws at the state’s education budget because “our schools are clearly failing students.”
Besides, if the little drains on taxpayer dollars took up a trade to contribute to the economy instead of wasting time and money pretending like an education would ever get them out of the urban hellholes of America, they’d be better off in the long run or something, right?
Son of Prog
An interesting strategy to bring teachers and firefighters together AND possibly promote the advancement of a pro-public education system…with less standardized tests (okay I’m adding this one for myself).
And how do you fit fifty-five kids in a classroom?
Comrade Mary
I was in a 40 kid classroom once in elementary school (Catholic, Québec, sixties). But I cannot IMAGINE 55 freakin’ kids in a kindergarten. They won’t license day cares with half that adult to child ratio.
Samara Morgan
dude its the system.
charter schools are new segregation academies (inspite of dimwitted suzannes impassioned defense). they are just segregated on SES and parental involvement instead of skincolor.
college mortgages are the new subprimes.
it never ends.
Emerald
@Son of Prog:
Even more to the point: how do you teach fifty-five kids in a classroom?
c u n d gulag
I really hate to say this, but maybe a fire where 20-30 kids die because they can’t get out of a burning classroom might wake some people up!
But, no – after all, these kids aren’t the 1%er’s, safely ensconced it their private, oh soooo exclusive pre-schools and kindergartens, soooo important in gaining a slot in an Ivy League school – but the children of plebe’s and serf’s.
Pity that. But, less mouths to feed.
Maybe it’ll be a leg-up for the parents finacially with the child gone, or encourage them the next time they’re forced to have a child to get that 4th job each, so they can afford something better than a public school for their little serf’s.
The revolutions won’t be televised – maybe because we’ll be too busy throwing the bodies of the MSM pundits and exec’s into the pyre with the financial scumbags.
The Dangerman
Hey, Republicans, leave those kids alone.
RossInDetroit
I work in a public school system and I’m in a lot of classrooms. Rooms are made to accommodate a fixed number of people. 55 isn’t just way too many for a teacher to handle, it’s crowded, unsafe and probably pretty miserable for everyone.
OTOH, they’ve been saying they would do this. Detroit schools planned to greatly increase the student/teacher ratio due to inadequate staffing. I wondered “where?”. You can’t make the rooms bigger. Apparently now we’re finding out.
J. Michael Neal
In fairness, this isn’t all on the Republicans at the state level. The Detroit Public Schools were almost comically ineptly run, and they really were in a financial crisis. I don’t like the law that the legislature passed to deal with it, but there wasn’t any unpainful way to deal with this crisis, unless you think radical changes to the amount of tax revenue is shared between school districts was possible.
Even then, I’m dubious that you wouldn’t have ended up with classrooms that were too crowded. Detroit may be ground zero (along with Flint, Benton Harbor, . . .), but the entire Michigan economy has collapsed. Unilateral changes in union contracts were necessary. Welcome to bankruptcy: that’s what happens. The biggest problem is that the law arbitrarily protected certain creditors, such as the bondholders, from escaping their share of the shortfalls.
The amount of mismanagement in Michigan has been truly astounding. Thirty years ago, my father was commissioned by the state to make recommendations as to how things should be restructured to keep the auto industry going there. His report was promptly filed away and ignored by all relevant parties: car companies, the UAW, legislators of both parties and every governor that’s been in office since then.
Roger Moore
Moocher kids should be spending their time productively in workhouses instead of wasting time and tax dollars in schools. If they can’t afford to pay for school, it’s clearly a sign that God wants them to remain ignorant.
dcdl
I was at my kids elementary school the other day for their Halloween parties and all I can say is ‘wow’. Their classrooms have around 30 students (the principal is trying really hard to keep it under 30) and I have complete respect for the teachers on controlling the children. Also, the rooms are stuffy, hot, and you can’t really move around the classrooms.
I hardly see any homework and the schools are trying to get as many volunteer parents or whoever to help out with anything. They are also trying to get regular volunteers who want to get trained as reading specialists and math specialists to help out the students.
The schools are doing more fundraisers in general and now classrooms have their own fundraisers trying to get supplies.
El Cid
Couldn’t you just investigate to find out which kids didn’t deserve to be in that class?
Roger Moore
@Emerald:
You don’t, silly. This is just an attempt to warehouse them until they can be moved to a prison where they belong.
Emerald
@Roger Moore: Ah, true. A private prison, of course, which will cost taxpayers upwards of 50K every year–payable to the private prison company.
Said taxpayers being the parents of said kids.
J. Michael Neal
@RossInDetroit:
That’s the thing. Complaining is great, and in this case accurate, but if your argument is that this is unacceptable, you’re going to need to explain how you think they should balance the budget. Good luck with that.
RossInDetroit
My best friend lives in Detroit and has a school age daughter. They had her in a Charter School until a few years ago. One Sept, after they had bought the clothes, books and supplies she would need the school announced that they would not be opening for the school year but would close permanently. All of the parents had 14 days to find other schools and get their kids ready.
That’s the education free market in action.
newtons.third
I teach in Michigan, high school math, and all year I have had classes of over 40. This is after having a school wide initiative to raise our test scores, specifically in math to try and stave off the possibility of a state takeover. The students that I have, 10th and 11th grade, are nearly all entered below grade level, and you do not teach 42 kids, you only try to manage them. Suffice to say it has been a trying year so far.
I would be interested in finding out who called the fire inspectors, as that thought has occurred to me. I have taught in classrooms that were so small that just getting enough seats in the room constituted a fire hazard.
Villago Delenda Est
@c u n d gulag:
No, it won’t.
It won’t change any “minds” amongst the sociopathic garbage that constitutes the modern Republican party. They’d say the kids probably deserved it.
Loneoak
@J. Michael Neal:
Yup, the incompetence in MI has really gone from the top to the bottom. In IL you’ve got the corruption, in CA you’ve got the most bassackwards form of government ever designed by man, and in MI you just have jaw-dropping ineptitude.
Rafer Janders
I say let ’em burn. They knew the risks.
J. Michael Neal
@Loneoak: In fairness, Michigan has had its fair share of corruption, too. Like on the DPS board.
RossInDetroit
One huge problem for Detroit is that the population has gone from 1.8 million to about 720,000. The tax base has disappeared but many of the fixed costs have not. This means far less money to teach each remaining child.
Yes, there has been terrible incompetence and waste but part of the problem is just math. Even the best managers can only cut so much and still keep the lights on.
SiubhanDuinne
@El Cid:
Don’t have to investigate. Just see which kids have granite countertops. Easy-peasy.
PurpleGirl
@Son of Prog: They kids are small, they can sit two to a desk…
/snark
J. Michael Neal
@RossInDetroit: True, but the population drain and the incompetence aren’t unconnected. White flight counts for a large chunk of the drop, but the economic and political mismanagement has done its share, too.
Holy fuck! The Gophers take the lead with 2:48 to go. Iowa has a knack for figuring out how to lose to the most hapless football teams Minnesota fields.
MikeJ
Why are these kids taking up space in clasrooms? Don’t we still have coal mines for them?
La Gata Gris
I cannot imagine the pandamonium of 55 kindergartners in one room. Last year my daughter was in a public school kindergarten in NorCal – only 20 students in the class, a teacher and a helper, and on many days a parent volunteer (I volunteered to help Thurs mornings). And being around 20 energetic 5 and 6 year olds was crazy enough. Trying to imagine doing this with 55…I just can’t. Those kids are being warehoused – inadequately – they sure aren’t going to get much of an education. But, that is the contemporary Repug dream I suppose – don’t want to waste education on the undeserving, after all!! *headdesk*
David Koch
A football team has 50 players on it and they need 10 coaches to supervise the unit.
Of course Michigan would never think of cutting the Wolverine’s staff to a single coach.
Jewish Steel
@Rafer Janders:
Hello, Mr Romney!
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
WingNut Talking Point Update: Not everyone needs
acollegehigh schoolgrade schooldiplomato know how toreadwritecount to 5.RossInDetroit
@J. Michael Neal:
Two words we never forget: Coleman Young.
J. Michael Neal
@RossInDetroit: Kwame Kirkpatrick didn’t turn out too well, either.
J. Michael Neal
MarQuies Gray gets the first down, and the Gophers have a win in the Big 10 conference.
Floyd actually gets to remain in the Bierman complex for two consecutive years.
RossInDetroit
@J. Michael Neal:
Oh, you noticed. Yeah, jail. We know some good stories about both, but not while certain people are alive.
The white (and black) flight that drained the city of so much started under Young. I liked (former MI Supreme Court Justice) Dennis Archer as mayor but he bailed too soon. The Kilpatrick regime was a never ending font of humor and tragedy.
Roger Moore
@J. Michael Neal:
I think that’s pretty straightforward. We should raise taxes on rich people and make sure money for education is shared equally across the state. The hard part isn’t proposing solutions that would work, it’s getting people to adopt the obvious solutions that involve pain for people who don’t want to feel it.
YellowJournalism
Comrade Mary, you’re right. Most times those ratios are very low. And in the age range of 3-6 years, you would probably see ratios as lower than ten kids to a teacher. I’ve often wondered how schools get away with more, especially at these extremes.
How enriching is it to be in a classroom at the age of four with no room to move and minimal teacher-child interaction because you have 54 peers around you?
David in NY
@RossInDetroit: The white flight started far earlier than Young’s administration. Those freeways led out to the suburbs in the ’60’s, and I’ve always thought there was a reason. I left the state, and Detroit, in 1975, and the future was already apparent. My brother still lived there then, and his was about the last family on their block (Prest St. in NW Detroit) when they left shortly after.
David in NY
Some people here actually seem to be defending this situation. Shame.
RossInDetroit
@David in NY:
It’s been happening for 50 years but the last decade was probably the worst in terms of percentage.
From the Wikipedia:
Keith
My vote goes towards “Nowhere in the Constitution is there anything about fire inspections!” or possibly a push to require homeschooling of any of the kids over the initial 50.
David in NY
Also. About two decades ago Michigan opted to incarcerate non-violent drug offenders for life, without parole, if they possessed certain amounts of drugs. See Harmelin v. Michigan. It costs about $25-30,000 per year to imprison a person, an amount that would educate five or more children. The conservative voters of Michigan are not without fault in this.
David in NY
@RossInDetroit: Yes, I understand that the breaking point was when everybody decided to leave. But I think that that development was pretty much entirely the child of the trends of the two or more decades before.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Roger Moore:
That describes my part of the state- Amwayville- and the northern Lower Peninsula pretty well.
Roger Moore
@David in NY:
FTFY.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
The thing to do is convince the GOPers the children are in fact unusually large and active fetuses.
No, that wouldn’t work. They’d declare going into or assisting a woman in labor a form of late-term abortion and try to outlaw it.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
GO DAWGS!
Cacti
Detroit Public Schools also recently teamed up with Wal Mart where students can earn credit for learning to work jobs that don’t pay a living wage.
Waynski
Clearly, this is Obama’s fault. If he hadn’t saved the auto industry, there would be plenty more empty factories to store the gutter snipes in before they qualify for penitentiary. Perhaps this Halloween they’ll have them burn down empty houses again to help with the foreclosure crisis. Just like the good old days. Put them up to something productive, I say and let the market sort it out. Ooops. Channeling Mitt Romney’s speechwriter again. My bad.
Corpsicle
@David in NY
There are always people who defend the status quo, however shitty it is. Maybe they are a teacher, or know a teacher, and they take any criticism of our school system as a personal attack. But, you know, fuck em. Our schools mostly suck, we are fucking over our children and the future of the country.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
Please tell me when I said that charter schools were a fabulous idea. And/or when I said I sent my either of my children to one.
Linnaeus
@David in NY:
Read Thomas Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban Crisis. He makes a compelling argument that you have to go back to the 1950s to find the roots of Detroit’s current situation.
hells littlest angel
Thanks for pointing this out, but if you put quotation marks around words, they should be words that someone actually said. Otherwise, you undercut your own point.
superdestroyer
Maybe the solution, instead of transferring more money from the suburbs to the City of Detroit would be to have the state take over the school system and do a complete financial audit. My guess is that the number of no-show or no-work jobs is massive.
As long as the Detroit schools are allow to function as a jobs programs instead of an institution of academic learning, the situation will not improve.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Cacti:
HOLY FUCK!
FYI: There isn’t a single Walmart located inside the borders of the city of Detroit.
Joey Maloney
@J. Michael Neal: I don’t know any specifics about Detroit’s public schools but if it’s anything like the systems with which I am familiar, you start by firing about three levels of management and selling off most of the admin HQ space.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Joey Maloney:
That’s being done. It isn’t close to enough.
@Roger Moore:
And you intend to give the Detroit school board the power to do this how, exactly? Do you intend to give the rest of the state some assurance that a corrupt school board won’t just swallow up the money again?
Chris T.
@Emerald: Yes, and remember that while in prison they will work (often as call-center people taking credit card numbers, for instance) for just pennies an hour, swelling the profits of those private prisons ever larger!
jwest
What is the ideal class size for kindergarten through 3rd grade?
kay
They’ll be taken over and privatized.
80% of Michigan charter schools are for-profit.
They don’t out-perform public schools, but they’re great for managers, consultants, lawyers and shareholders, and it’s all taxpayer funded.
kay
Jwest, what do you pay a babysitter to watch a 5 year old for 7 hours?
Multiply that by 55 and tell me again how teachers are over paid.
jwest
Kay,
Is English your first language? I’m relatively sure that my question was understandable.
As to teacher pay, I’m also certain that my idea of a fair salary for teachers is far above what you would pay them.
kay
I think the solution to this is to get rid of the fire marshal.
Deregulate and innovate!
Think outside the box and don’t accept the status quo!
jwest
Have you ever noticed that people who bitch and moan most have the least answers?
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: oh, my bad.
you defended your husband bussing your kid to an out of neighborhood school.
segregating on parental SES and involvement.
its the same construct.
kay
@jwest:
I’m all innovated-out, jwest. I’m busy digging a trench to keep corporate school reformers and their well-intentioned liberal allies out of my district in Ohio.
This is taken from testimony before the Michigan statehouse. It’s from a liberal “school reformer”.
Liberal school reformers say the same thing about my state, Ohio, that we’re the “poster child” for failed for-profit “market based” school choice reforms, so I’m not clear how many “poster children” there are out there. Maybe they say this in every state?
The testimony is heartbreaking, because this guy was well-intentioned, but he got into bed with the Walton heirs and conservative lawmakers and look what happened! Corporate schools! No one could have predicted that!
55 kids in a classroom will be just one more reason to privatize these schools.
I love how naive the professor remains: “we need to go back…” he pleads.
There won’t be any going back, fool. The for-profit train will run right over him, and the rest of the liberal reformers. They’re no longer useful to the Walton heirs.
Ohio Mom
@jwest: Best class size for K-3 would be no more than the high teens to low twenties, i.e., around 18-22 students; best size for an elementary school would be about 500 students.
Kathy in St. Louis
55 kids in a city classroom in Detroit. In kindergarten, where children start getting a foundation for the rest of their lives. For a struggling kid, or a child with any type of learning disability, this is educational malpractice. Kind of makes the No Child Left Behind thing a huge lie, doesn’t it? My daughter just chose a private school for her child because there were 18 kids in the class and the other school had over 25. These poor kids don’t have parents with that luxury. Shame on the government, shame on the state of Michigan, shame on us. No one needs to act surprised when the dropout rate is 40 to 50 percent in the high schools of most big cities, if this is the start that kids are getting.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
BECAUSE OUR LOCAL SCHOOL DID NOT HAVE SERVICES.
My point being that ALL SCHOOLS SHOULD HAVE SERVICES.
God. You’re an idiot.