The facade on the Muskegon Heights high school is crumbling. Not figuratively. Literally. Crumbling, and in disrepair. Back in 2012 one of Michigan Governor Snyder's Emergency Managers installed the for profit charter school Mosaica to become one of the first ever District Wide charter schools to take over the ailing and cash strapped Muskegon Heights school system.
Now Mosaica's five year contract is being terminated after two years. They're out for good in June. Mosaica determined there was no money to be made, they couldn't pay the teachers, and they couldn't fix the buildings.
So they're leaving. Or being kicked out. It depends on who you talk to.
The bottom line really underscores how silly and idiotic is notion that a for-profit school can magically manage money better than a non-profit or public school.
Muskegon Heights has no money. The roads are crumbling. Driving down the residential area you see house after house after house abandoned and boarded up, the downtown boarded up. Factories that once operated there empty or being demolished.
The city has no money. The city has no tax base. The city has no additional ways of producing financing for the school, for better technology, building improvments...hell..there was even a charitable drive a few years ago to get PENCILS and PAPER for elementary school classrooms. And in the face of it all Michigan's Republican legislature with the help of Rick Snyder has stabbed and slashed at Michigan's school funding year after year after year on some fantasy notion that maybe some free market pixy dust can help.
Well...it can't. There's NO MONEY. At least not enough for a for-profit entity to skim extra off the top. And no amount of wishful, imaginary Ayn Randian posturing is going to change that. Mosaica failed. The Republican gamble of turning all our schools into some free market experiment on the backs of Michigan's future has failed.
The good news is, there IS a precedent for quality schools in the United States. And we'd been doing it for a hundred years. They're called PUBLIC SCHOOLS, funded adequately with quality teachers, and they served our nation proud for a very, very long time. The sooner we can get back to a well established and successful model, the better for everybody. The better for the kids of Muskegon Heights and other Michigan communities.
But I guarantee, Michigan Republicans will cling to their fantasies and twisted social experiments while the kids who need the MOST help getting a shot at a better life are sacrificed to the ignorant, blood hungry conservative dreamland.