Detroit's Durfee school to shut as district, state debate closure list

Durfee Elementary-Middle School in Detroit will close in June and its students moved to a nearby high school.

The plan involves turning Durfee into a small-business incubator — and comes as state officials are considering which poor-performing Michigan schools should be shut down or reformed.

Detroit Public Schools Community District, not the state, decided to close Durfee, said John Walsh, director of strategy for Gov. Rick Snyder.

He said the decision was, however, linked to discussions between the district and the State School Reform Office about potential closures or other interventions the office could bring to schools in Detroit.

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"We are working with (the district) on the Durfee matter," Walsh said. "It was their decision. We believe it was a good one. They came to it on their own."

Durfee's nearly 600 students will be moved into a wing of Central Collegiate Academy. The two schools are next to each other on the city's west side.

The nonprofit Life Remodeled will lease the Durfee building from the district and turn it into a hub for small and start-up businesses.

Within weeks, the State School Reform Office will announce which persistently poor-performing Michigan schools will be subject to closure or other state intervention, such as the appointment of a CEO, in an effort to improve academic performance.

In a letter obtained by the Free Press, the school district's outgoing transition manager Steven Rhodes suggested that the closure of Durfee was part of an agreement related to the State School Reform Office.

Rhodes wrote to Walsh on Dec. 22 that he was "grateful for the administration's agreement that our planned closing of Durfee Elementary-Middle School in June 2017 to consolidate it with Central High School for the fall of 2017 will resolve our (School Reform Office) issues for this school year. ...

"We are pleased that this resolution will obviate the need for litigation, which would have been distracting, expensive and of uncertain result for everyone."

Walsh told the Free Press he hasn't responded to Rhodes' letter. He said he couldn't comment on its content beyond saying the state supports the district's decision to close Durfee.

Rhodes, who left the school district Dec. 31, referred questions to the district. Chrystal Wilson, a spokeswoman for the district, said she couldn't comment on the letter.

Walsh stressed that state officials have not made any final decisions on which Michigan schools should be subject to closure or other forms of intervention. They are working closely with school districts and analyzing data, he said.

More than 120 schools were on the state's 2015 list of Michigan's bottom 5% of schools, including 47 schools in the Detroit district. Durfee has been on the list since 2014.

The 2016 bottom 5% list — and an announcement about school closures or reforms — is expected to be publicly released within weeks. The Michigan Department of Education compiles the bottom 5% list based on state test data. Officials warned in August that some schools that have been on the list for three consecutive years could be shut down.

Walsh said state officials plan to broadly interpret a provision that allows a persistently poor-performing school to remain open if it would be a hardship for it to close. An example of a hardship would be if there are no better schools nearby for students to attend.

"We're still working with the (Detroit Public Schools Community) district. We recognize that there are very big challenges in Detroit," including a decline in population and a brand-new school board, Walsh said.

Potentially closing schools is a hot-button issue in Detroit, where more than 100 public schools have closed since 2005.

In August, Rhodes received an opinion from a law firm that said the state couldn't close any schools in the Detroit system before 2019 because the district was new, created by recently passed legislation. Snyder's office said it would accept that opinion.

Then just weeks later, State Attorney General Bill Schuette said the state could close persistently low-performing Detroit schools as soon as this year.

The future of Durfee

Chris Lambert, the president and CEO of Life Remodeled, said the nonprofit has inked a 20-year, $1-a-year renewable lease with the school district for Durfee.

The nonprofit will organize a renovation that will cost up to $5 million — funded mostly by donations of cash and volunteer labor — to turn the 176,000-square-foot building into a space where small businesses can grow, connect with each other and receive support.

Life Remodeled is assuming building maintenance and operational costs. Lambert said the goal is to eventually make enough money in rent to cover those costs.

Lambert and Wilson, the spokeswoman for the district, said the incubator will provide learning opportunities for students at Central.

"There's an educational benefit," Lambert said. "Entrepreneurs will be able to guest lecture in the classrooms."

Life Remodeled in recent years has led other large school renovation projects, including at Osborn and Cody high schools.

Central Collegiate Academy is in the Education Achievement Authority state reform district. But it will revert to the Detroit Public Schools Community District when the reform district closes this year.

Wilson said the Central building is only about 30% utilized now and in better physical shape than Durfee.

The property will become a pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade campus, with younger students and older students learning in separate areas.

Crystal Wells of Detroit, who has a seventh-grade daughter at Durfee and a ninth-grade son at Central, said she wishes Durfee could stay open.

"I don’t think it’s a good idea to put little kids in an environment for bigger kids, unless they let out at different times, so they don’t run into each other," she said.

Contact  Ann Zaniewski:  313-222-6594 or azaniewski@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @AnnZaniewski.