Day of Reckoning Near as Detroit Schools Pushed to Fiscal Brink
- State aid payments diverted to debt poised to rise next month
- After teacher protest closes schools, legislation is proposed
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When Roosevelt Bell’s daughter Roshauna left Detroit’s Cooke Elementary for a charter school, she joined an exodus that sent the district’s finances into free fall. Every student that leaves costs $7,434 in state aid. In the past decade, it’s lost 84,000.
“The school was really raggedy,” said Bell, a 58-year-old carpenter who pulled Roshauna out four years ago because of over-crowded classrooms and a building in need of repair. “The kids had to wear their coats in the classrooms.”