Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts unveiled a plan Thursday to reverse a longtime enrollment slide and stabilize the district's precarious finances.
The approach includes preschool for every 4-year-old child in Detroit, more arts and music for younger students and better community service, Jennifer Chambers writes in The Detroit News. It's all part of a new strategy to fill 28,000 empty seats at DPS over three years.
The underlying goal, Roberts said, is to help the state's largest school district retain more Detroit families and attract new ones. That's one of the district's only hopes for long-term survival as it loses students by the thousands and funding by the millions every school year.
The plan, titled "Neighborhood-Centered, Quality Schools," calls for expanded preschool, the return of art and music programs to elementary-middle schools and a community-schools model where families have access to school buildings 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
