Struggle to Survive

"We have just discovered the death of the school system, and we don't want to recognize it," Detroit School Board Member Darneau Stewart lamented.

Virtually all of the nation's urban schools are in sad financial shape, but perhaps no major city school system was closer to bankruptcy last week than Detroit's. The fourth largest in the country, with 290,000 pupils, 65% of whom are black, Detroit has already been judged educationally inadequate by state officials. The system suffered a $38 million deficit this year, and if next year's projected $272 million budget is adopted, it would run $101 million in the red.

Some Detroit officials see hope in a consolidation of the urban schools with those in surrounding suburbs. Federal Judge Stephen Roth has ruled that the city's schools are illegally segregated, and he has promised to order that the city and its predominantly white suburbs be linked by busing, which could ensure that no school is more than 20% black. His final decree, which is expected this week, will hardly solve the Detroit schools' overwhelming money problems. "How could we pay for it?" asked one school employee. "The city doesn't own one single school bus that we can use."

The school board considered several "survival plans," including cutting back to a four-and even a three-day week, but, said Superintendent Charles Wolfe, "we know from experience that youngsters forget so much in four days that it takes a day to get reacquainted with their work when they come back." Instead, the 13-man board voted last week to delay the opening of school two weeks in September, to give students a six-week Christmas vacation, and to end the school year on April 19, two months earlier than usual. In all, it plans to operate the schools for only 117 days, one-third less than the state-mandated minimum of 180.

Strike Talk. The cut will reduce the teacher payroll by 35%. "Unmanageable and unthinkable--we can't accept this," declared Mary Ellen Riordan, president of the American Federation of Teachers in Detroit, many of whose 11,500 members began talking about a strike. Besides, she said, the state will not permit an "illegal" cut in the school term. If not, retorted Superintendent Wolfe, "they'll have to come up with the wherewithal."

That hardly seems likely, for the state government is partly the cause of the Detroit schools' money woes. In 1960 the legislature ordered that property tax assessments throughout the state be lowered, but it did nothing to make up for the loss in local revenues. As a result, Detroit schools began running a deficit in 1966. The city's voters grudgingly agreed to raise school taxes by $25 million in 1969, but that was not enough to wipe out the red ink entirely, even though the city's property taxes rose higher than those of most of its suburbs. School officials asked for another tax increase last May 16, but Detroiters voted solidly against it. They are likely to do so again when the proposed tax boost appears on the ballot a second time on Aug. 8.

The only permanent solution would be for Michigan to stop relying on local property taxes as the primary source of school funds. Courts in six states have already ordered such action to equalize statewide school spending, and the Supreme Court agreed last week to review the question in its next term. Michigan Governor William Milliken agrees with that approach, and he has filed suit in the state supreme court challenging Michigan's dependence on property taxes for its schools. The court probably will not decide the case until this summer, however, and even if it rules in Milliken's favor, it may be too late to help Detroit's schools next year. The Governor has promised that the state "cannot and will not" pick up the city's present deficit no matter what the court decides about the future.

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As Detroit braced for Roth's decision, Richmond won at least a temporary reprieve from a similar court directive that its schools (69% black) be consolidated with those of two surrounding suburban counties (91% white). The order by Federal Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr. would have required that 78,000 of the 101,000 students in the Richmond metropolitan area be bused next fall to integrated schools to achieve a racial mix of no more than 40% black.

As expected, however, the conservative-minded Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week struck down the Merhige decision. It ruled that he had gone beyond the judicial authority of the courts and could not "compel one of the states of the union to restructure its internal government for the purpose of achieving racial balance." The appeals judges found Richmond's urban racial pattern to be similar to that of other U.S. cities but said: "Whatever the basic causes, it has not been school assignments, and school assignments cannot reverse the trend. That there has been housing discrimination ... is deplorable, but a school case, like a vehicle, can carry only a limited amount of baggage." The decision will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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