Word: flints
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...blue eyes are a bit misty, but when the school board of Flint, Mich., considers its annual budget, Philanthropist Charles Stewart Mott focuses on the figures as critically as an IRS agent checking a casino tax return. "I'm a nut on this sort of thing," says Mott by way of explanation...
...nuttiness would be welcomed by any school board in the country. In the past 33 years, Mott has pumped $42 million into the public schools of Flint to keep them open evenings, weekends and summers for an improbable array of community activities. This year 92,000 residents of Flint (pop. 200,000), more than half of them adults, have signed up for extra curricular educational, recreational and civic programs in the city's schools. Including 47,000 school-age children, well over half of Flint's residents are involved in some form of school activity...
...Ford, Rockefeller and Duke philanthropies are undoubtedly larger). It contributes directly to the school board ($3,477,141 this year)-but only after Mott and his aides study and approve of the board's plans for spending the money. "Let's not kid ourselves," says a Flint attorney. "We want the money and are willing to make some concessions...
...courses, that means lessons in everything from breast feeding to small-boat handling, from arithmetic to advanced cake decoration. A Sunday "coffeehouse" lecture series takes up such questions as "Why does love escape us?" and "Am I a slave to circumstance or free?" There are discussions of race relations (Flint is 22% Negro) and such religious questions as "Is God dead...
Mott, who spends little on himself, also donated the land and two main buildings for a two-year community college in Flint. He views the multifaceted Flint program as a pioneering effort designed to be copied by other cities. Some 70,000 educators have already come to Flint to inspect its schools firsthand, and more than 100 other communities have started versions of the Flint program. The University of Michigan even offers an M.A.-level course on the program at its Mott-built Flint branch. The 54 "interns" now in the year-long course get a minimum $5,000 stipend...