Weekly Media Roundup - April 17, 2013

“Detroit Public Schools plans to provide preschool to all of the city's 4-year-olds, offer music and art after school and allow schools to house educational and social services for 12 hours every day as part of an ambitious effort to attract and retain students,” the Detroit Free Press reports. The new plan also calls for a longer school day and a longer school year and for turning some of Detroit’s schools into community schools. Detroit Public Schools has lost two-thirds of its enrollment in the past decade and has a deficit of about $76 million and long-term debt of about $400 million. The district is hoping its reform efforts will enable it to keep its students and its per-pupil funding so that it won’t be forced to close more schools.

 

The Herald-Standard reports that California State Rep. Peter J. Daley (D) recently visited the Charleroi Elementary Center’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers afterschool program to read to students from Brownsville, Connellsville and Charleroi area school districts. The afterschool program has partnered with California University of Pennsylvania. The program includes daily skill development, individual tutoring, physical education, cultural and technology enrichment.

 

Some students from Access 21, an afterschool program at Haverhill High, are spending two afternoons each week painting “images of native plants such as sumac trees, and cattails as well as animals such as deer, foxes, coyotes, great blue herons, eagles, seagulls, geese, beavers, turtles and turkey vultures” on 12 4-by-8-foot panels for the Merrimack River Rail Trail, the Haverhill Gazette reports. The panels will be mounted on the back wall of a hardware store abutting the rail trail, creating an 80-foot-long by 20-foot-high mural for all to see.