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March 27, 2007
Kwame Kilpatrick flip-flops on charters?!
In 2003, Michigan philanthropist Robert Thompson offered $200 million to the city of Detroit to build a string of charter schools. The establishment's reaction?
In Detroit, officials reacted to Thompson's proffered $200 million not with gratitude but with rage. The Michigan Federation of Teachers urged a walkout, declaring a school holiday so that union members could march on the state capitol in protest of charter schools. State Democrats cowered before the union, while Detroit's politicians bristled at a white suburbanite's "meddling" in the city's affairs. Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick--whose own children attended a charter school--responded to Thompson's offer by saying, with a dismissive wave of the hand, "Let us make the rules, and if he can't abide by the rules ..."
Says Thompson, "We thought if we tried to do good things, people would appreciate it. I guess we were naive." Shunned and saddened, Thompson withdrew his offer in October 2003.
That was then. This is now:
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said Monday that he has been in private conversations for months with educators and community leaders about establishing more charter and private schools across the city.
"We've been meeting quietly so no one would think we were doing something" yet, Kilpatrick said at the University Preparatory Academy charter school. UPA operates three schools in the city, and Kilpatrick said he wants to help Superintendent Doug Ross open four more.
I'd say it's far more likely that he first needed to gauge his political capital in advance of the coming battle with the union. And make no mistake, there will be a battle; if they dropped the hammer on a guy offering a nine figure gift, they'll gladly go after a Democratic mayor showing signs of wandering off the reservation.
The question is whether Kilpatrick can succeed against the union where Thompson failed. It's possible that the union may have lost enough clout in the wake of last year's strike for the mayor to find an opening. (The Detroit Free Press article mentions a massive drop in enrollment last year, but fails to mention that it seems to be directly connected to the strike. In fact, there's no discussion of the strike at all. How odd!)
No word yet whether Thompson was involved in those discussions. Strangely enough, much like the strike, the entire DFP article burns through 673 words without so much as a single mention of the Thompson affair, something that didn't escape the attention of one of the many readers who commented on this story. In fact, do yourself a favor and wade around in the comment thread, where support for Kilpatrick runs by my estimation at least 8-1. To my mind, that's the real story here: in spite of--or perhaps because of--the best efforts of the teachers' union, there seems to be a major groundswell of support in Detroit for any sort of escape hatch from the imploding Detroit Public Schools. If Kilpatrick can successfully harness that discontent and exploit union weaknesses, it could put him over the top in bringing greater parental choice to folks in Detroit. Fortunately, he's changed his tune on school choice--here's hoping he meets with success.
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