degree. just the other day the census reported detroit has lost another 10,000 residents since 2012. a new federal report recommend that detroit tear down 40,000 buildings just as a starting point. at katherine ferguson academy after the girls saved their school they did struggle, the city arranged to have the school run by a charter company. the charter s principal said being pregnant didn t make you a bad person, didn t make you a criminal. but the new system required girls to get a court referral before they could enroll at katherine ferguson academy as if being pregnant was a crime. last year a group of students sued the school. funding dropped. enrollment dropped. detroit was emptying out. and so to some extent was katherine ferguson. well to day we learned that katherine ferguson academy is closing. i think this time really closing.
for refusing to leave their school. but you could see what had happened to them. you could see what the school mint to them. and katherine ferguson academy was spared, in 2011. kept it open. the system of by passing elect officials and installing emergency managers and giving them unilateral power. that business rolled on. voters repealed existing emergency manager law in 2012. michigan republicans in the legislature put in a new one that voters couldn t as easily repeal. though it is really not at all clear whether this sort of thing works. or helps these towns. when you bypass democracy and instead install a little dictator to act alone without oversight. in muskeegon heights. a state appointmented emergency manager, he announced they were off to the healing process. hooray. then he laid off the entire staff of the school district and hired a for profit company to run the schools. now the company is quit eg quitting effective this month. turns out they couldn t turn a profit.
you have got to make it happen. it will make it happen. ms. andrews is going to make it happen. thank youing about ms. andrews, who founded the school nearly 30 years ago. she is the kind of person who makes you believe you can do anything. she created this school for girls who other people said shouldn t be bothered with. she pulled and pushed and nurtured and cajoled the students they would go to katherine ferguson academy. offered day care in the building bring their kids with them, their course work would be real course work and they would be expected to go to graduation after all of that. the school s motto was success by choice not by chance. katherine ferguson academy opened that choice to generations of young women in detroit. young will when we who had kids as teenagers the expectations would be nil. but not there. we picked of the story in 2011 when a state appointed emergency manager, ordered katherine ferguson academy should be closed. the elected school board and offic
some stories leave a mark on the people who hear them. but also on the people who tell them. some stories we tell here on this show end up leaving a mark on us. as individuals and us as a show. and a few years ago we got one of those. we brought you the story of katherine ferguson academy. one of a kind public school that specifically served pregnant girls and young mothers with young kids in detroit, michigan. the school specializes in sending girls to college after they graduate and in teaching them farming of all things while they re still in high school in the middle of detroit. katherine ferguson has a farm on site in inner city detroit. and they, with that land and those animals, and that educational mission for the girls, they have been an oasis inside that city for generations of young women. an oasis where the young women could do well and a place that really expected them to do well. high standard. also the help to make it happen.
he was done. have fun paying off the new loan i got you. i am out of here. in a sense the problems of cities and detroit are not unique in the nation except perhaps for the scale and the degree. just the other day the census reported detroit has lost another 10,000 residents since 2012. a new federal report recommend that detroit tear down 40,000 buildings just as a starting point. at katherine ferguson academy after the girls saved their school they did strug tlglestru city arranged to have the school run by a charter company. the charter s principal said being pregnant didn t make you a bad person, didn t make you a criminal. but the new system required girls to get a court referral before they could enroll at katherine ferguson academy as if being pregnant was a crime.