Detroit goes bankrupt, the largest city to do so in U.S. — from nytimes.com by Monica Davey
Excerpt:
DETROIT — Detroit, the cradle of America’s automobile industry and once the nation’s fourth-most-populous city, has filed for bankruptcy, an official said Thursday afternoon, the largest American city ever to take such a course.
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From DSC:
First of all, thanks to George Siemens for posting this item on Twitter. Secondly, as I mentioned there, many people have left Detroit through the years, leaving an aging infrastructure that still needs to be paid for, but with a constantly dwindling tax base.
What are some of the lessons other cities, towns, and villages can learn from this?
One potential item that comes to my mind is to not put all of our eggs into one basket. Detroit was too focused on the automobile; we should have diversified more. (This could also be said of our careers/skillsets I suppose…)
Anyway, the people of Detroit have been on my heart and mind for years now. I internally pitched an idea a while back whereby our student teachers in our Education Department could employ web-based collaboration tools to help the youth of Detroit in their studies. It seemed like a potential WIN-WIN situation — providing real-world teaching experience to our current EDUC students (and most likely opening up completely new experiences for them) while at the same time providing some solid/free tutoring/assistance for the students of Detroit.
Addendums on 7/19/13:
- Quote from Governor Snyder today
I’d like to take a moment to explain why I made that decision and what it means for the city — and for the State of Michigan. In many respects, this day has been six decades in the making. Detroit is buried under $18 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities. In fact, 38 cents of every city dollar goes toward debt repayment, legacy costs and other obligations. By 2017, that figure will go up to 65 cents per dollar. That level of debt is unsustainable.
. - And this could help:
The Federal Communications Commission begins its restructuring on Friday of the “E-rate” the government uses to provide schools with funds to connect to the Internet.
. - I tried flipping an inner-city, impoverished class and… — from bamradionetwork.com by Jon Bergmann and Kathy Swanger
. - Consider bringing in remote teachers/experts via tools and technologies such as these
