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

[Hannah Bell]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/pont-m20.shtml

The social cost of GM’s downsizing

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 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.