Located on Phillip south of Jefferson on Detroit’s eastside, Guyton sits in a well-maintained working class neighborhood. The school has been open since the 1920s. There are neighborhood residents in their 80s who remember attending Guyton as children. Guyton is a school of choice; there are children from all over Detroit and even some suburbs at Guyton.

Community residents formed Community Partners to Revitalize Guyton Elementary (CPR-Guyton) two years ago after Guyton landed on the 2005-2006 DPS hit list. The support committee included parents, teachers, block clubs, local businesses, and churches. Along with the Local School Community Organization (LSCO) at Guyton, they organized and submitted plans to continue to meet No Child Left Behind Adequate Yearly Progress requirements [see sidebar]. They also committed to increasing enrollment to 400 students.

Margaret Littles, vice president of the LSCO and a member of CPR-Guyton has three children at Guyton. She explained, “We met all our goals.” And yet they were targeted—again—to close in September of 2007.
“Everybody heard it on the news and everybody got together,” Littles said. “We talked about ways to get our enrollment up, once again. We had our enrollment. Our agreement was to have 400 and we had 426. We know how to get it done. But I think this time it’s a lot more serious,” said a concerned Littles.

In January, Guyton supporters attended the first open school board meeting for all east side schools. Littles explained what happened. “They totally try to blow you off. They try to make it seem like they really care about what you’re going to say, but they don’t have any of their facts right. They don’t have the right enrollment numbers; they don’t have the correct information about the building or about our plans. I had to say to them, ‘please pay attention.’ There was no conversation; I didn’t see any of them with a pen or a piece of paper. They were not there to hear our concerns.”

At the second meeting at Pershing High School a few weeks later in February, Guyton was on the agenda. “We had 10 minutes to present our case. We also had packets prepared for the board with our plans for enrollment, attendance, AYP and the building. Ten minutes is not nearly enough time,” Littles pointed out.

In the past (and included in their submitted plans), Guyton Elementary supporters have organized Enrollment Fairs to bring prospective parents and students to see the school and to enroll on the spot. There are incentive prizes (from local fundraisers) for enrolling students. They wrote a grant to the Skillman Foundation and were awarded $25,000 which they used to build a computer lab and install computers in every class room. This year they are targeting preschools and daycare centers in the area for new students.
“This is a full time job,” explains Littles. “If I’m not in school (taking classes), I’m working to keep Guyton open.”

The Guyton LSCO, CPR-Guyton and the community effort to keep Guyton School open are good examples of local organizing. The key elements of their success so far include extensive involvement stakeholders such as local organizations, businesses, parents, children, and teachers.

Their success has raised some important questions. The School Board, whether intentional or not, is setting different neighborhoods and schools against each other as Detroiters are forced to fight over ever smaller slices from the same pie. “It’s divide and conquer. This is not about adults, it’s about children. I don’t want the next school to be mad at us because we’re not wanting to put our kids there. I want their school to stay open for the kids in their neighborhood to go to their school. I just want ours open, too.”

The drop in Guyton enrollment was due to parents who pulled their children out of Guyton because of uncertainty during the recent teachers’ strike [for analysis, see Critical Moment issue 19]. “The teachers’ strike changed a lot. Our enrollment fell to 376,” said Littles.

Parents weren’t sure how long the strike would last. And, on top of that, the School Board has been regularly announcing that it wants to close Guyton. Many parents supported the teachers’ strike as a struggle for justice for the teachers, as well as the students and the community. At the same time, the teachers’ strike had the effect of reducing enrollment, and reduced enrollment is a factor cited by the school board for school closings.

As Littles put it: “Divide and conquer again. [The School Board] wanted us to cross their picket line to make sure that all the kids were counted. That was awful for me because they demanded that all children had to be in school on the first day of school. I support the teachers.”

She urged parents not to pull their children out of school because of the uncertainties people felt when the teachers went on strike. “I said to them, ‘Just hold on.’”

The community helped the school through the strike. “The church on the corner let us set up a daycare class with the teacher’s support so that parents could have a place to drop off their kids. But parents just didn’t know what was going to happen.”

It is a difficult problem for Detroiters, one that people in struggle often confront. We need to support the teachers and their strike. At the same time the strike disrupts teaching and forces parents with school age children into very difficult choices: keep “holding on” during a potentially long strike and in a district that is constantly threatening to close schools or move to another district. Uncertainty, whether from the teachers’ strike or from school closings, exacerbate the problem of the exodus of families with children from Detroit.

At the end of the day, lack of money and the failure to prioritize education for poor and working class children is the core cause for school closures. As Littles put it: “The No Child Left Behind Act is bull. How can we say No Child Left Behind and close dozens of schools?” We can’t. We are leaving thousands of children behind.

On March 16th, the school board will announce the closings. As long as there is even a remote possibility, the Guyton community will fight to keep their school open, they will fight for themselves, their children, and their community.