An October 27, 2013 Detroit Free Press article writes:
Of all the 87 empty DPS buildings, the district spent the most bond money on Cooley High —
$12.8 million in bond funds to turn a wing into a special school, replace the roof and update the
auditorium. Cooley, built in 1930, is an elegant brick building on the city’s west side. Blue and
yellow bricks intersperse to embellish the facade. Gargoyles, flowers and birds are carved over
doorways and windows.
An October 13, 2014 Metro Times article explains:
Neighbors and then-current students around the school thought it strange that DPS would close
Cooley, commenting to local media at the time that it had been renovated just a few years
earlier. DPS said the building was falling apart. Cooley students, many of whom were third- or
fourth-generation attendees, were stuffed into other westside schools, including Mumford High
and Henry Ford High — the former of which would receive a new DPS-built building and later
be taken over by the controversial Educational Achievement Authority.
Both Mumford and Henry Ford are EAA schools. If the students are to be put under so much stress, they need
an outlet cries another complainant:
They could make an app to help kids know if buses will be on time, or if the bus is close, the kids
are 80% black, but instead the money is going to help white billionaires who don’t live here. So
because the kids take the buses and they are late for school they miss class, they miss breakfast,
and this harms the opportunities that any of these kids have. It hurts me because I am a tax
payer. It is hurting me if you are using my money in order to do things that are hurting me, and
I don’t know if a cop will show up on time to help a kid who is passed out on the street because
the bus never came. Today it is hot out, the kids today are diabetic, they become sick waiting,
now the bus doesn’t come, they are in a strange neighborhood, which can harm a child. I am a
mentor and I see kids fighting who did not fight before because there are no after school
programs any more. DPS used to have so many creative classes, we need a case study. Crime
is much higher now in our neighborhoods then. It keeps the kids mobile and active. Now there
is little to no art classes, music, gym or ways to get them occupied and creative, they closed
down all the Rec centers. The State created a culture where kids are stressed and upset and
they made the child crime rate go up and that is one of the main problems in the City of Detroit
which hurts me as a resident and tax payer. They can’t say they don’t have the money; they
don’t have the money because they misspent money for schools and misallocated it to
billionaires and to construction programs for luxury buildings. The billionaires get so many
tax abatements for their business while in the neighborhoods African American kids are
allowed to suffer. 133
Teachers chime in to the awful situation where students throughout the district are moving about like musical
chairs, making no childhood alliances of old, but oppressed by unhealthy amounts of stress with no outlet. One
witnesses and complainants state:
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