The remarkable thing, Lakia, is that you still teach and children still learn in what is assuredly a building that could be condemned or at least closed for mold abatement. You are to be commended for fighting for your kids how ever you can, by what ever mean you can.

One reader gave some very creative suggestions, but they presuppose that air quality is acceptable while riding bikes in the gym and so forth. Other have the unmitigated gall to blame the teachers or the union that supports them and has supported them, when Detroit is just only now beginning to see the veiled light of success, resurgence, new investment and interest, young people moving back with good intentions who are building businesses. Teachers have known about these problems for years and still choose to stay, to teach, to support, to fight- fight the government, fight for the students, sometimes fight parents, and sometimes the students themselves. Let’s face it, these professionals are at war for the sake of their students.

I attended the Detroit public schools in the 60's when they were certainly not new, but were well maintained and respected. Unlike many metro areas, Detroiters are Detroiters whether you live in Detroit or in one of the surrounding communities. We may complain about it but we are all connected to it. It is my hometown and it breaks my heart to see schools I might have attended so long ago, so decrepit. And angry.

And still you teach, Lakia, and still your students learn. My brother in law, a bilingual math and science teacher who worked in the elementary and middle schools of West Bloomfield for 17 years after teaching in Detroit for his student teaching, has taken his talents back to the city. He has brought his fighting spirit, his experience with various expansive teaching consortiums, and his activism with the MEA back to Detroit — To Make A Change. As a teacher. He took a substantial pay cut, so let’s not kid ourselves listening to cynics who assert that the a teachers of Detroit are overpaid.

Don’t bother putting funds into a failing system? Divert funds away from infrastructure because there are more important battles or causes or agendas to push? Kind of reminds me A LOT of Flint. Remarkable!

Sorry. It is absurd to compare schools in poorer parts of Africa, and and smacks of borderline racism. We have certain expectations of acceptable schools in this country, which frankly, every African child and teacher should aspire to. No one should have to settle and just be grateful because they have tiled floors to walk on as opposed to dirt ones.