No one will give those children back their missing educations, that’s for sure.

The articles on Detroit schools talk about buckled floors, missing toilet seats and mystery mold. They don’t talk about Carlotta’s attempt to teach in the classroom with the odd smell and the black patches. I know Carlotta*. I listened sympathetically as she laid out daily life in the dank, subbasement.

Her room’s wiring did not work. She could not buzz security. She could not call security either, at least at first, although I believe the administration finally fixed her phone. When fights occurred — I remember two — Carlotta had to send a student running down the hall and up the stairs to administration. Other fights may have occurred that I did not know about, since Carlotta was far from me and far from almost everyone else in the school. She was by herself in an isolated corner of the school, teaching in a room that had been abandoned due to funky smells and poor location, a room that was reopened in response to an alleged need for more classroom space. The kids complained fiercely about that room. They hated going into that empty hallway and Carlotta’s first challenge was to manage the understandable whining. No one could identify the room’s strange smell, and that smell made Carlotta and the students uneasy.

Kids don’t learn well in a situation like the one I watched unfolding in the basement that year.  The best teachers don’t stay in a situation like that. They find another, more comfortable district where the water can be trusted, and the rooms don’t smell funny or have black patches in spots. Administration responded to Carlotta’s problems and moved her mid-year, but those administrators in Detroit may have no options. You can’t find a better room for a teacher if that room does not exist.

Eduhonesty: To add to an underlying thread, school funding reform has become overdue. Dank, moldy rooms matter. The students in Detroit need America’s help.

*I’ve changed her name and she taught in another moldy room in another scary place.

P.S. She retired early after that year.