'I Don't Want My Daughter To Fail': Detroit Parents Rally In Lansing For Better Schools
LANSING (WWJ) - The Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren staged a rally at the State Capitol to push for 24 recommendations to improve Detroit schools.
The first: They want the state to take responsibility for the district's debt and give the governing of the system back to the School Board, throwing out the emergency manager.
Members of the group were joined by Detroit parents bused in on Tuesday to meet with legislators and drop in on legislative sessions to urge lawmakers make to education a priority.
#SwDetroit is on our way to Lansing! Plus a bus from @DHDC1! #ChoiceIsOurs #KidsMatterHere #SouthwestDetroit pic.twitter.com/gK7KfAON4c
— Congress of Communities (@CoC_SWDetroit) September 29, 2015
Patrina Riley has a 9-year-old daughter in the fourth grade at DPS.
She worries that although she's now an A student, that the school system is failing her daughter.
"I do not want my daughter to fail," she told WWJ Newsradio 950's Sandra McNeill. "I want her to have the opportunity just like suburb schools — the same type of education as them — so that she can be able to have a good opportunity in this world and become a working citizen."
Riley has an older son who quit DPS due to gang activity in the schools.
"Our kids are falling through the cracks," she said. "My son was forced to go to a farther school, and what it did was create a problem where different gangs came from the closing of schools, so it (caused) him to drop out of school."
Said Detroit mom, Rhema Davis, "As the mother of an ambitious 1st grader, it's painful to see all of what she can be and know that the avenues to get her there don't exist."
The coalition has put together what leaders say is a set of "bold recommendations" to change school in Detroit and statewide "for the better for all students." [Learn more here].