My parents were the ultimate example. They worked in midtown [[still do) and bought a house in the late 80s in the first block of Grosse Pointe [[still there). Reason for them: public schools. Can't blame them whatsoever. And as it turned out, that area turned out to be more dense and urban than across the way in East Side Detroit, which turned to half-prairie and offers no walkable commercial strips of value, whereas you can walk Kercheval, Mack, etc. in GP, and can get there via lanes of absolutely beautiful houses.

They often dreamed of buying in Indian Village especially when the market was so accessible and you could get absurd SF/$. But that meant paying for a private school-- not for any invidious reason, but solely because we had started off on the fast track with great teachers and resources in GP and would be derailed if inserted into DPP. The GP schools situation, with great resources in exchange for your tax dollars and a concerned/collaborative parent environment was truly ideal as far as they were concerned. When I have kids, I'll look for the same thing in a public school, though preferably with much more diversity [[hey, that is increasingly GP though).

I'm no expert on DPS as it stands today and would love to know more. I would go with DPS if I knew that there were at least a couple excellent primary schools that you can aim for, and a way to get your kids into them even if you don't live within the geographic zone [[is this a thing?). If Detroit can accomplish this much, and make it a well-known fact, then it will be on the right track to retaining families. I know it has some solid upper schools that you can aim for. Ideally, eventually, all of the schools get up to par, but even NYC hasn't figured that out-- in fact, this is one of the areas of the greatest stratification in NY [[which I'd love for Detroit to avoid long term), with clear winners and losers based on achievement tests.