Greg Bowens
A report by a New Jersey nonprofit, which advocates for education funding reform, finds that the nation’s most economically disparate school district boundary is the one separating Grosse Pointe and Detroit.
EdBuild’s report,“Fault Lines: America’s Most Segregating School District Borders,” says nearly half of the households in Detroit Public Schools — 49.2 percent — live in poverty, compared with 6.5 percent in Grosse Pointe Public Schools, according to a report in The Detroit News.
Greg Bowens, president of the Grosse Pointes-Harper Woods branch of the NAACP, says that EdBuild's report simply doesn't tell the real story.
Bowens, a public relations specialist, and a former Detroit News reporter and press secretary for then-Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, writes in an opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press:
One of every eight students in the Grosse Pointe Public School System gets a free or discounted lunch because their family can’t afford to pay the full price.
Think about it.
Here, in one of the wealthiest communities in the wealthiest country on the planet, one in eight kids can’t afford to buy their lunch. You wouldn’t know that if you read “Fault Lines – America’s most segregating school district borders.” . . .
The report uses a piece of civil rights history to make its point, but leaves people with the dominant stereotype that rich and suburban equates to white and poor and urban equates to black. And it serves to stoke long-standing racial animosity that has been exacerbated by the charter-school debate in Michigan. It's worth questioning the nonprofit's intentions considering its chief executive has ties to the charter movement, and the group counts the Walton and Broad foundations among its funders.
If EdBuild was truly interested in correcting the racial segregation of the past, they would acknowledge migration patterns, include all minorities and include the numbers on suburban student poverty. But the damage is done. For the next few years, articles will reference “Fault Lines” as a way to pit city verses suburban districts. Comment sections will light up as the bigots come out and social media will glow all atwitter with hashtags. People love a good white verses black fight. “Fault Lines” gives it to them.
