![]() ![]() In 2014, Robert Davis, a former school board member, pleaded guilty to embezzling $200,000 from the beleaguered district. He was sentenced to prison for 18 months and was released in 2016.Ī state-appointed emergency manager, Joyce Parker, handed the school district to a charter school company, the Leona Group, to run Highland Park's high school and two K-8 schools. When schools lose students, they also lose dollars because Michigan districts are funded per student. Budgetary problems were so dire, state lawmakers had to step in so educators could receive their paychecks.Īt that time, the district had lost more than a third of its students in six years, from about 3,400 students to about 1,000. ![]() The state took over the Highland Park City School District in 2012 because of an $11 million budget shortfall. ![]() Kevin Smith, the district's director of operations, said this vision is an outgrowth of the 2020 plan, just "adjusted based on post-COVID realities." Plummeting enrollment, dire finances Chalkbeat reported that the district announced a similar effort in February 2020, but the project never came to fruition - a pandemic did instead. "We have to make sure that they're educated properly, that they're nurtured and that they get what they want at home, in their own environment, in their own city," she said.īut Highland Park will struggle with scale: Part of the reason the city's high school closed in 2015 was because of dwindling student enrollment, a problem that has not resolved in seven years. Shamayim Harris, widely known as Mama Shu to the community and president of Highland Park's school board, said the district wants to be responsible for the education of all students in the community. When the last remaining high school closed seven years ago, one community member called the decision a "tragedy" that uprooted children, no matter how few were left. More than that, Highland Park residents say they are due a complete school system. plant a century ago. Quality schools are a draw for prospective community members, particularly young families with children. Tesha Jordan, a Highland Park mother of 16-year-old twins Cody and Chase Knight, said that when it came time for her boys to attend high school, they "pretty much didn't have any options" in their city.Ĭity leaders and others say a school is necessary to revive the long-struggling enclave, once home to a thriving Ford Motor Co. Since then, older students have had to scatter to high schools outside of their city, in Detroit and nearby suburbs. The city school district's last high school closed under emergency management in 2015 because of financial problems and dwindling student enrollment. "I think everyone has fond memories of what that institution meant for the community and every person that I know in this city wants to redeem that history with a new high school."īarber Prep, a charter school serving K-8 students, remains open, as does another K-8 charter, George Washington Carver Academy, but Highland Park has no high school to serve older students. "Folks are incredibly proud of attending Highland Park High School and being lifetime Polar Bears," said Anthony Askew, chair of the school district's high school subcommittee. So instead, they're trying to rally the community to open one. There are two old high school campuses, one nearly razed with the exception of a faded set of bleachers, and another sitting empty, dandelions growing between the cobblestones of the school's once-grand entranceway.Īnd on a Tuesday night in May, a fire blazed through the building for hours, tearing through what locals feared was the school's grand auditorium.īut Highland Park, where the beloved school mascot was a polar bear, school leaders don't want to be known for their closed school buildings. In Highland Park, the small municipality within Detroit, there are more closed school buildings than open ones. ![]()
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