Detroit Public Schools (Update: New Marketing Strategy)

DPS going door-to-door in effort to enroll more kids, save teacher jobs

By Chastity Pratt Dawsey Detroit Free Press Education Writer

   As Detroit Public Schools pushes a new back-to-school marketing plan to try to reverse its enrollment and budget decline, the district must try to draw back kids from dozens of districts and nearly every charter school in the tri-county region.

   A majority of children who live in the city do not attend DPS — the district enrolled only 42% of Detroit children in fall 2012 compared with 83% a decade earlier.

   So where is everybody going?

   One out of three children who attend school in Ferndale lives in Detroit. River Rouge also gets a third of its students from Detroit. Nearly half of the children in the Oak Park School District live in Detroit. Overall, about 73 school districts attract more than 18,000 Detroit students while charter schools enroll about 50,000 Detroiters.

   The competition for students has heated up in the past decade with Detroit parents enrolling in suburban districts that offer school choice pro- schools offer more options.

   The DPS general “I’m In” advertising campaign is taking a backseat to a new strategy of marketing each individual school to neighbors and parents. Principals, teachers, parents and students are walking door-to-door citywide to talk up their schools. If DPS can’t attract or retain 5,000 kids this fall to maintain enrollment at about 50,000 students, the schools will suffer teacher layoffs midyear.

   Linda Whitaker, the new principal at Mark Twain Elementary-Middle, walked residents of the southwest Detroit neighborhood around the school recently to try to convince parents to enroll. The children around Mark Twain attend districts that border the neighborhood — including Melvindale and Ecorse — as well as several charter schools.

   In the race for students and the funding each one brings, the trick to getting and keeping students is not fancy ads and big promises. Educators must form relationships and earn word-of-mouth referrals to gain parents’ trust, she said.

   “My two children went to this school when it was (named) Boynton. I have a personal stake,” Whitaker said. “Visiting the community, walking to the stores, visiting the churches I do that even without this marketing campaign.... when you have a personal stake and personal involvement, I think the community will back you.”

   In 1966, DPS enrollment peaked at 299,952 students, according to “The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-81” by Jeffrey Mirel, a University of Michigan professor. Since then, enrollment has declined each year, with a historic slide that started in the early 2000s that has led to the closure of about 160 buildings — or more than half of the schools in the city.

   In 2011, Detroit ranked second in the nation in the percentage of children attending charter schools, at 41%, or about 47,000 students, according to the Washington, D.C.-based National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. About 50,000 Detroit children attended charter schools in fall 2012, nearly the same as the number of children who attended Detroit Public Schools.

   For the first time since the enrollment crisis began, DPS is banking that it will reverse the trend with its new strategy. Demographer Kurt Metzger, director of Data Driven Detroit, a nonprofit data collection agency, said the district’s marketing strategy is optimistic, though unrealistic considering the population trends.

   “There are fewer kids in the city, fewer kids being born, more charter schools showing up in the city, more competition from outside districts,” Metzger said. “I love their optimism , but I’d hate to bet the farm on it. ... I don’t see how you buck the trends.”

   Small districts in the area that draw kids from Detroit show enrollment gains are possible. When Derrick Coleman left his job as an administrator in DPS to become the superintendent of River Rouge in 2012, the small district had about 950 students. Enrollment is now about 1,300. He agrees with Whitaker, saying schools need close relationships with their community in order to gain the trust of parents.

   “I had to acknowledge why people left us and told them how we were going to change,” he said.

   About a third of students in River Rouge schools come from Detroit, while about 450 students who live in River Rouge do not attend River Rouge schools. The Detroit parents in River Rouge schools were looking for programs that DPS doesn’t promote well or had discontinued — dual-enrollment in college courses, athletics, fine and performing arts, Coleman said.

   “It’s customer service and branding. Parents send their children to a place they trust. And the safety piece cannot be underestimated. We don’t have metal detectors. Parents feel safe.”

   Chris White, co-chair of the Coalition to Restore Hope to DPS, a nonprofit, has been a vocal activist for and critic of DPS for years. This year, he decided to transfer his son out of DPS after the district closed another special-needs school and also informed parents midyear that the school year would go through July. It will mark the end of his family’s 80-year tradition of attending DPS, White said.

   A political consultant, White said in order to retain and gain students DPS needs to take into account parents’ concerns on issues such as school closings, special education and parental involvement. The state-appointed emergency managers who have run DPS since 2009 have not held regular public meetings.

   “(DPS) extended the school year without consulting us. When a parent no longer has a say in the process of their child’s education, you no longer have a school district,” White said. “Parents want to place their child in a learning environment where our input is welcome.”

   Jack Martin, the state-appointed emergency manager for DPS, said that he, staff and volunteers will be out in neighborhoods telling parents what they don’t know about their schools — that crime reports are down, social service agencies have offices in some school buildings while music and art programs will be offered after school at some schools this year.

   “The ground strategy that the team has put together will make the difference — it’s school (by school) specific,” he said. “If parents see that, it will show them what our commitment is.”

Lyndsey Davis, 14, of Detroit shows some of the school supplies she will be using as a freshman at the Henry Ford Academy in Dearborn this fall.

   KATHLEEN GALLIGAN/ DETROIT FREE PRESS

Larmender Davis, 45, looks on as Lyndsey Davis, 14, both of Detroit, organizes the school supplies she will be using as a freshman at the Henry Ford Academy in Dearborn this fall. KATHLEEN GALLIGAN/DFP