Detroit School Kids Don’t Have Enough Books

Your Black World reports

Detroit is a city that is plagued with serious economic problems.  The city has seen a significant loss in the number of jobs, and with those job losses comes an increase in crime.  One way to prevent further decay of the city is through education, which gives kids a future.

But the city is unable to provide an adequate future for those children if they are unable to give them textbooks and the basics they need in order to learn.  Detroit Public Schools is experiencing a serious shortage in textbooks.

"I know there is a shortage and there is an order and they are still sharing books," said Andrew Hayes, a third grader. "There are a lot of frustrated parents. They want the kids to have what they are supposed to have. At the beginning of the year, we were told that every student would have the textbooks. It's seven weeks into school."

Cass High School, one of the biggest schools in the city, is short 2,400 text books.  They are missing 950 Chemistry books, 250 history books and thousands of others.

"If we didn't share books in some advanced classes such as Calculus or Trigonometry, we had outdated history books," said Theo Nicolaidis, a 1994 graduate of Northwestern High School. "I remember my history book had no mention of the Berlin Wall falling in 1989."

The schools in Detroit are known for not being able to pay their bills and have even had credit holds placed on their accounts by textbook vendors.

"I remember how the textbooks would always be outdated," said LaKaisha Hollingsworth, a 1997 Renaissance graduate. "What made up for it was having a teacher that knew how to instruct without a textbook. A teacher that could bring the real world into the classroom based on current events and real life experiences."

Detroit Public Schools cut it’s budget for books by nearly half, from $6.5 million to $3.5 million this year.   There is no sign that things are going to get better for the kids of Detroit.