Pontiac, Michigan “restructures” schools, fires entire education staff

[dcsmart]

The social cost of GM’s downsizing

By Tracy Montry
20 March 2009

Earlier this month the school board in Pontiac, Michigan, in an unprecedented action, voted to lay off all 774 teachers and support personnel in the public schools, effective June 30. Workers are being forced to reapply for their jobs for next year. It is expected that less than half will be rehired.

The school board, which is controlled by the local Democratic Party, said the layoffs were a necessary part of a massive "restructuring" plan needed to close a $12 million budget deficit caused by cuts in state aid and huge losses in the city's property tax base.

Pointing to the long-term decline in enrollment—down from 13,000 in 1999 to 7,200 students today—board officials in January said they would shut eight of the district's 20 public schools and consolidate the two high schools into one by 2010.

The choice of the term "restructuring" is telling. General Motors, which has long dominated Pontiac, is currently "restructuring" its international operations, wiping out 47,000 jobs, including 21,000 in the US, and closing 14 North American plants. The Obama administration is demanding a sharp reduction in workers' wages and benefits in exchange for federal assistance to keep the near-bankrupt company afloat.

The virtual collapse of public education in Pontiac—the product of years of school closings, layoffs, cutbacks and privatization schemes—parallels the decline of GM.

Pontiac, like nearby Flint, Saginaw, Detroit and other GM manufacturing centers along Michigan's I-75 highway, was once thriving. Its factories poured out GM's hot-selling Pontiac cars and thousands of workers—black, white and Hispanic—came to the city to join the ranks of the auto workforce, attracted by the relatively high living standards won by the United Auto Workers union. In 1976, Pontiac was awarded the banner of "All American City" and boasted about its high rate of home ownership and quality school system, built to accommodate 20,000 students.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/pont-m20.shtml

[opihimoimoi]

1. This all part of Bushies/GOP Legacy......Bush has fucked America

[spartan61]

2. This is so sad.

I did my student teaching in Pontiac many, many years ago.