Collecting news and data about government, schools, and change in Detroit.
At the Ledger, we track large issues over time. We started here, but it's clear that context is hard to construct in short posts and often falls short of the explanatory graphs in the text we're linking to. To make things worse, links to the major local newspapers -- the News, Free Pres, and Crain's -- quickly become inaccessible. All three remove or hide their content shortly after publication.
We've moved much of our work to DetroitWiki. That means we can create pages that have the whole narrative -- from the start of the issue to the most recent decisions. It's easier for us to link to related topics and collect information around a theme. You can find a list of the issues we track regularly on the front page. They include the usual suspects, like the Detroit Public Schools, the public/private bridge question, and the Detroit Public Librar, as well as dozens of short pages about people in Detroit and many other subjects.
It also means that you can log in and edit any page as well. So if there's an issue you want to track or something that's missing, please feel free to add it directly. We're working on a system that will make it easier for everyone to participate, but we thought it's better to get started now than to wait.
We'll continue to post updates here, because the Recent Changes feed on the wiki can be annoyingly technical. We'll also keep posting larger projects, like datasets, documents, and links that are more timely. We hope you'll read along.
Special Projects:Michigan Public School Data
Documents:
Detroit Journal of City Council, 2000-2009
Guided tour of the Charter Revision Commission Discussion Draft (April 2011)
2010 Deficit Reduction Plan Part 1, Part 2
Old books, missing supplies, cut art and music classes, and unhelpful teachers are on the list.
PARK(ing) Day is an annual, worldwide event that invites citizens everywhere to transform metered parking spots into temporary parks for the public good.
Join us on West Canfield to help sweet-talk the meter maids* into letting us create a temporary park. Bring lawn chairs & games. We’ll provide the astro turf & quarters.
When the Detroit Police Department assumed oversight of the city’s Citizen Radio Patrol this summer, it discovered spotty record-keeping for reimbursements, equipment inventories and policies, police say.
He plans to convene public meetings to get ideas and buy-in from the community like he did in the Kansas City, Mo., district where he was superintendent since 2009.
That doesn’t mean he’s coming to town without any ideas.
He said he will advocate for longer school days, a longer school year, merit pay for teachers and autonomous schools that allow principals the flexibility to create classrooms that address their students’ needs.
Bing’s office said mechanics have deliberately slowed maintenance jobs and even called in buses for service that were later found not to need repairs.
The delays worsened after Detroit Department of Transportation managers began issuing disciplinary actions for the slowdowns that began after the city cut overtime pay as part of the recent budget deal between Bing and the council, the mayor’s office said.
