Detroit made history this month, electing the first woman in the city’s 324 years to the role of mayor.
Mayor-elect Mary Sheffield is kicking off her victory by asking residents their concerns. It’s not just smart political strategy, it’s critical, in a time when residents have loudly expressed their desires for stronger neighborhoods, and for plans to bolster the city’s public schools.
Nearly 160,000 people in Detroit are under the age of 18. And newly released U.S. Census data shows that more than 51% of Detroit’s young people are living in poverty. Alarmingly, that percentage has grown in recent years.
As Detroit rises, we cannot overlook the challenges facing its youngest residents. Sheffield stands poised to lead in the arena of education, building a new future for our youngest residents. While Detroit’s mayor does not run the school system, she will be able to evaluate how our city government, in its entirety, supports our children. Education begins with stability — children need secure housing, basic necessities, and safe routes before they can thrive academically. All of these circumstances can help or hinder a child’s school day.
Our new mayor’s mandate is to wield the power of city hall to cut child poverty by addressing issues that take place outside of the classroom. Detroit’s young people don’t need another office or department inside of the mayor’s administration just “to work with the schools.”
Under Dr. Nikolai Vitti’s leadership, Detroit Public Schools Community District has transformed from the days of emergency management to a district whose students are outpacing the rest of the state in literacy growth. DPSCD is making unprecedented investments in school facilities, innovative programs, outstanding arts and career technical education pathways and more.
And now, there is an opportunity for our city government to also transform how it centers the next generation of Detroiters. There is already solid momentum to build upon. In the past 10 years, the city and its partners have expanded high quality early childhood seats through Hope Starts Here, Detroit’s early childhood framework, secured universal Pre-K, and activated dozens of parks catered to youth and families.
Families with young people need stable and affordable housing, safe after-school programming and well-resourced neighborhood hubs and safe streets. We can look to the DPSCD Health Hubs as a model for a one-door basic needs system that can be instituted by city hall. Along with our partners, at the Kresge Foundation, we’ve taken the lessons learned from launching the city’s first cradle-to-career campus at the Marygrove Learning Community to propose ways in which a next mayoral administration can create Child- and Family-Centered Neighborhoods.
We imagine Detroit’s neighborhoods as places in which children and their families can thrive, find educational and economic opportunity, and grow into the middle class. Our next mayoral administration can support that vision by:
Our young people can’t wait on the perfect conditions for action, and they deserve a leader that can lead beyond the schoolhouse door to use what we already have in place to get families to a point where they can thrive. If we organize city government around the daily lives of young people and families, we can cut child poverty, strengthen their ability to learn and ensure Detroit is a place where families want to stay.
The pieces are ready; what’s needed now is a leader who can seamlessly integrate support and services into the unified whole Detroit children deserve.
Wendy Lewis Jackson is managing director for the Kresge Foundation’s Detroit program.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 4 things Detroit Mayor-elect Mary Sheffield can do for schools | Opinion
Reporting by Wendy Lewis Jackson, Op-ed contributor / Detroit Free Press
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