Word: bobb
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Detroit. Demographer Kurt Metzger heads up Data Driven Detroit (DDD), an agency that just completed a plot-by-plot analysis of the city's 139-square-mile footprint, without which Griffin would be flying blind. DDD is backed by $1.85 million from the Kresge and Skillman foundations. Robert Bobb, emergency financial manager for the Detroit public schools, draws one-third of his $425,000 salary from an alliance of philanthropies led by the Eli Broad Foundation. And if all goes according to plan, Detroit will break ground this year on a trolley line connecting downtown with an Amtrak station...
Just how divisive it can be was on vivid display last week. There was an uproar over Bing's emerging plan to relocate residents - the weekly Michigan Citizen likened it to a "modern day 'Trail of Tears' for Detroiters" - and an equally unfavorable response to Bobb's $81,000 raise in the second year of his contract, most of which is paid for by foundation money. The school board is so incensed that it has filed a lawsuit...
...know there is discomfort in terms of the cuts being made at the city level and in the schools," says Bing. "And then [Bobb] gets a major increase. That was very unfortunate, to have that come into the conversation...
Meanwhile, Bobb is drafting broad academic reforms to bolster school-administrator, teacher and student performance. He is establishing systemwide standards for what classes a student needs to have passed to be promoted to the next grade. He has shuffled dozens of principals, often from relatively high-performing schools to less than stellar ones, and he may extend the school day. In the next 18 months, he wants significant gains in the percentage of fourth- and eighth-graders who perform at grade level in math and reading. By 2015, he wants 90% of all students to complete at least one Advanced...
...dark suits and cowboy boots, Bobb has a commanding presence and seems to be everywhere: at school-bus depots, at barbershops, churches and grocery stores to prod parents to get their kids to school each day - on time. His schedule is often double-booked, partly because he knows he must quickly build support for his plans, like a $500.5 million proposal - approved by voters last November - to build or renovate 18 schools. He has recently signed on for a second year. It won't be any easier than his first. "Change is painful," Bobb says, adding, "We cannot be afraid...