Word: bobbe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that prompted Granholm, a Democrat, to seize control of Detroit's public schools in the fall of 2008 and then look for someone to fix them. After a wide search, she settled on Bobb, who had a reputation for restoring fiscal sanity to city governments - including managing public-school-system budgets. When Bobb arrived last spring, here's what he found: Contracts had been stuffed in office drawers. The district couldn't afford new books. Gas was siphoned between buses. The district had to borrow money to pay its employees. There wasn't even a chief financial officer managing...
Beyond saving money, Bobb sees his mission in broader terms: to improve the system's miserable academic performance. Again, the situation is dire. Last month brought news that more than three-quarters of the 900 eighth-graders who took a national math exam scored at "below basic" levels. In October 2008, some 57% of Detroit third- through eighth-graders essentially failed a state writing test. Detroit's graduation rate is 58%. "The system is academically bankrupt. This is almost academic homicide," Bobb says. (See pictures of a public boarding school...
...Denial was a problem too. Shortly before Bobb took over, Detroit's school board okayed a budget that it claimed had an $8 million surplus. Bobb's assessment showed a budget deficit of $303.5 million. He's since reduced the deficit partly by trimming the system's job rolls from about 14,000 to about 13,000. He's closed 29 of the district's 194 schools and hired outside firms to restructure 17 others. And in what may be his most inspired move, Bobb has asked some 2,600 volunteers to donate 360,000 hours to helping kids read...
...Bobb knows from experience that he is fighting an unconventional war. Born in New Orleans, he grew up mainly on a southwest Louisiana sugarcane plantation, where his grandmother worked as a maid. During summers, he worked in sulfur pits; to cover tuition at Grambling State University, he buffed floors. He moved quickly through a series of city-management jobs in Kalamazoo, Mich., and Oakland, Calif. In 2003, Washington's then mayor, Anthony A. Williams, hired Bobb as city manager and deputy mayor; he managed an $8 billion annual budget and some 20,000 employees. Three years later, he was elected...
...Bobb acknowledges that the cost-shaving measures have made some high school classrooms "look like lecture halls." They have also raised the potential for clashes between students from rival schools and neighborhoods suddenly thrown under the same roof; as a result 137 guidance counselors cut by Bobb were later hired back. Bobb had a similar change of heart after 20 piano teachers were dismissed. "You go back to your apartment and think, How can you have a school of music without a piano teacher?" Bobb says. So he hired them back too. Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Bobb's chief academic officer...