It's painful to hear about such stories in the city.
Aljazeera TV reports reports on how the Detroit Public Schools, under an emergency manager, ruined the Catherine Ferguson Academy for Young Women, which closed in June. It was founded in 1986.
The TV station reports that by all measures, the school, which taught teens who were pregnant or already parents, was a success. It had 97 percent daily attendance record and a 90-percent graduation rate.
But in 2011, the Detroit Public Schools needed to cut costs and close schools. The academy was on the hit list. People protested and eventually the school system allowed the Catherine Ferguson Academy to be run by a private, for-profit charter school.
But Aljazeera reports that the organization did a lousy job providing an education, and enrollment eventually dropped from 300 to 100. The school board said it became fiscally impossible for the school to operate.
Parents and students are now suing the school district, alleging that teachers were not allowed to teach the state-mandated curriculum and failed to employ certified teachers in key subjects, according to the Aljazeera report. They say also allege that the school violated the federal civil rights law Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education, including discrimination against students who are pregnant or parenting, the news website stated.
"They ended up telling teachers not to teach," Joyce Schon, an attorney who helped file a lawsuit against the school, told Aljazeera. "They renamed the teachers advisers," she said. "[The students] were told to find their own externships … Who wants a high school student running around their office? And they were supposed to be doing that two days a week, and they had to have transportation to get their kids to the school for child care and then find their own transportation to the nonexistent externship and back to the school to pick up their kids at the end of the school day."
