Gang Fight at East English Village Prep!

[JBMcB]

I heard an interesting interview with a charter school guy a few years ago. Even if you are against charter schools, his philosophy was interesting.

The city he lived in [[I think it was in Indiana) had just built a $30 million dollar high school. State-of-the-art, with a pool, multiple cafeterias, a coffee shop, multiple gyms, media labs, computer labs, etc...

So, he spun up his charter high school for $2 million. No cafeteria, students ate lunch in classrooms. They had hot lunches catered in - so no kitchen. No gym or pool - they rented one from the local YMCA, which was empty most weekdays. They signed a deal with a computer company and gave every student a laptop - no computer lab. For a stage they rented the local masonic hall - again, empty during weekdays.

The end result is that facilities maintenance and utility payments on the charter school were 1/10th the cost of public high school, even given rental costs. The charter school rolled all of those savings into paying for a lower student-teacher ratio, and more parapros and social workers.

Guess which school had better grades and more graduates going to college? The one that spent more on a nice building, or the one that spent more on teachers and staff that directly interacted with students?

[softailrider]

This situation was not in a classroom. It was a full-blown, chair throwing brawl in the lunchroom. On solution proposed by the administration was to have the teachers police the lunch room.

Uhh... no thanks!

Well that's fine. Hopefully there's good video of that brawl. Whoever instigated that brawl should get there ass thrown out with very limited opportunity to return, not the kids who were defending themselves.

I went to public school my entire life, in Detroit and in the suburbs, never once did I see a lunchroom brawl or anything resembling one.

[hybridy]

I heard an interesting interview with a charter school guy a few years ago. Even if you are against charter schools, his philosophy was interesting.

The city he lived in [[I think it was in Indiana) had just built a $30 million dollar high school. State-of-the-art, with a pool, multiple cafeterias, a coffee shop, multiple gyms, media labs, computer labs, etc...

So, he spun up his charter high school for $2 million. No cafeteria, students ate lunch in classrooms. They had hot lunches catered in - so no kitchen. No gym or pool - they rented one from the local YMCA, which was empty most weekdays. They signed a deal with a computer company and gave every student a laptop - no computer lab. For a stage they rented the local masonic hall - again, empty during weekdays.

The end result is that facilities maintenance and utility payments on the charter school were 1/10th the cost of public high school, even given rental costs. The charter school rolled all of those savings into paying for a lower student-teacher ratio, and more parapros and social workers.

Guess which school had better grades and more graduates going to college? The one that spent more on a nice building, or the one that spent more on teachers and staff that directly interacted with students?

Curious, how many students is the charter serving vs the district that built a new school building? Scale is absolutely key here. Additionally, how was the new school built? Inevitably, it was built through voter-approved referendum in a state with school-choice voucher program.

[bust]

Anyone who thinks a lunchroom brawl is proof kids today are worse must not know about the mayhem that went on years past. For example, 60 years ago at the Catholic all-boys prep school in the very same neighborhood.

I've held in my own hands the letter sent to parents explaining how graduation was called off because of a series of extreme problems of student disobedience. The detonation of explosives in a hallway locker was the last straw. It warned the ceremony would not occur until the responsible student[s] were identified. One member of that class became Detroit's crime boss.

A little more than 25 years later someone tried to light a pipe bomb in a crowded stairwell at a Grosse Pointe high school. It didn't go off. Did you hear about that?

Some kids today are shamefully lacking in good morals -- I prefer the term ethics -- and proper respect. They are not the majority, and it's nothing new.

Our perspective on kids today and older generations says a lot less about kids today and older generations than it does about our biases and selective memories. What are yours?

Let's fix the problem, not make it worse by blaming an entire generation. Sometimes that's just an excuse to write people off instead of coming to terms with who owns the shared responsibility for so many of the problems they've inherited.

By far most kids today are good and we should invest in them. As was I. As were you?

[GPCharles]

The detonation of explosives in a hallway locker was the last straw.

Bernie the Bomber?

[GPCharles]

Update - No classes today or tomorrow. Administration is meeting with the students trying to get some control over the situation.
The balance of the football season has been cancelled as a number of players were involved in last Tuesday's mayhem.

[bust]

Bernie the Bomber?

It seems you have more a story than I do to [do] tell.

[jcole]

Would that school have been Austin? I don't think I knew anyone from that long ago, but 10 or 15 yrs later. I'm surprised one of the Brothers didn't pop a gasket and kill someone.

It seems you have more a story than I do to [do] tell.

[GPCharles]

School legend. Very rare event at the school.

[oldtvsandtoys]

Amen

Discipline is rasist.

No discipline no respect.

Bring back discipline and get off the woke train!

[GPCharles]

Finally back to classes today.

[Hermod]

Old enough to remember some one-on-one fights, but never a multiple battle.

[softailrider]

Old enough to remember some one-on-one fights, but never a multiple battle.

Same here, and not that many one on one fights. Never anything like like this.

[mikefmich]

I sure do... I can still picture him... the disciplinarian at the school. Back when I went we had Catherine E. Kelley as principle. Of all the teachers that were there eons ago, my brother-in-law regularly runs into math teacher Mr. Beraducci [the one who carried a yard stick around class, like "the Penguin" in Blues Brothers). He's about 80 year old now and frequents the same golf course in Macomb County.

Beraducci! I think that was the guy I had for math at summer school in'67. Thanks for reminding me of the name I had long since forgotten. I thought he was a pretty good guy. What was his first name?

[jcole]

Should have done what the nuns at Regina did to us when there was a "cattle call" or "surfs up" in the lunch room; they just locked all the doors and left us in there.

[Richard]

Old enough to remember some one-on-one fights, but never a multiple battle.

I went to a burb public school,never any fights on school grounds,it was after school,extremely rare at that.

Elementary school there was always,that teacher,with a ruler that would smack you knuckles if you got out of line,secondary and high school it was a paddle with holes drilled in that you got smacked on the butt with.

Last weekend in Philadelphia,a woman was raped on a public transit train,nobody called 911,tried to assist her or even pushed the emergency button on the train,they pulled out their cell phones and filmed it.

Society as a whole has gone to crap and because it has become the norm,it is no surprise that it rears up in the classroom.

In a lot of schools that have adopted the do not call the police standard when rapes and violent crimes happen on school grounds,because they do not want students graduating with a record,is doing more damage by hiding the bigger picture of what is happening.

[K-slice]

I heard an interesting interview with a charter school guy a few years ago. Even if you are against charter schools, his philosophy was interesting.

The city he lived in [[I think it was in Indiana) had just built a $30 million dollar high school. State-of-the-art, with a pool, multiple cafeterias, a coffee shop, multiple gyms, media labs, computer labs, etc...

So, he spun up his charter high school for $2 million. No cafeteria, students ate lunch in classrooms. They had hot lunches catered in - so no kitchen. No gym or pool - they rented one from the local YMCA, which was empty most weekdays. They signed a deal with a computer company and gave every student a laptop - no computer lab. For a stage they rented the local masonic hall - again, empty during weekdays.

The end result is that facilities maintenance and utility payments on the charter school were 1/10th the cost of public high school, even given rental costs. The charter school rolled all of those savings into paying for a lower student-teacher ratio, and more parapros and social workers.

...Guess which school had better grades and more graduates going to college? The one that spent more on a nice building, or the one that spent more on teachers and staff that directly interacted with students?

You must be paid by a charter school, that story is the same BS charters have been pushing for decades.

In reality charters do three things very well:

1. Funnel tax-payer money to the rich.
2. Ensure teachers are all paid minimum wage.
3. Guarantee students have no pride in the school they attend.

Your story really examples #3 perfectly.

Would you take pride in a bare bones school building where you are forced to eat at your desk and have to take a school bus to gym class?

How would that feeling effect your learning knowing the community basically is focused on cost savings over quality education?

[ABetterDetroit]

You must be paid by a charter school, that story is the same BS charters have been pushing for decades.

In reality charters do three things very well:

1. Funnel tax-payer money to the rich.
2. Ensure teachers are all paid minimum wage.
3. Guarantee students have no pride in the school they attend.

Your story really examples #3 perfectly.

Would you take pride in a bare bones school building where you are forced to eat at your desk and have to take a school bus to gym class?

How would that feeling effect your learning knowing the community basically is focused on cost savings over quality education?

“Funnel tax money to the rich” you forgot to mention that vast sums of our tax dollars are getting shipped out of state with the charters. They are LCCs that are not based in Michigan. Try that trick in Rochester Hills and see how far it goes…

[Richard]

You must be paid by a charter school, that story is the same BS charters have been pushing for decades.

In reality charters do three things very well:

1. Funnel tax-payer money to the rich.
2. Ensure teachers are all paid minimum wage.
3. Guarantee students have no pride in the school they attend.

Your story really examples #3 perfectly.

Would you take pride in a bare bones school building where you are forced to eat at your desk and have to take a school bus to gym class?

How would that feeling effect your learning knowing the community basically is focused on cost savings over quality education?

In Canada the children are required to leave school at lunchtime,seems to work well for them.

My granddaughters who are entering high school have always attended charter schools,they are active in school functions,eat at school and there is a lot of school pride when you attend events there.

They always maintained A and B report cards,but then again,their parents are also involved in their education and did not just dump them off in school in order to get rid of them during the day.

Through the years they have attended 4 different ones with the same results.

If there are charter schools that function well,maybe it is time to re evaluate the ones that are not.

They seem to work well in 3/4 of the rest of the country.

[Zacha341]

I attended Murray-Wright HS now closed [back in the day], an excellent school with strong broad spectrum career-tech courses and it was notorious for rolling lunch room brawls and fights [with higher population numbers], until then principal Robert Boyce stepped in literally and put them down. But there was a bit more civility then [even in the context of the fights].

One the other hand EEVPA's principal was severely injured trying to put down a melee when school opened this school year... and then we have this!

...I went to public school my entire life, in Detroit and in the suburbs, never once did I see a lunchroom brawl or anything resembling one.