Nancy Kahn

In August of 1969, the Michigan State Legislature passed Public Act 244, designed to “decentralize” the Detroit school system. The act (a watered down version of the original bill submitted by Sen. Coleman Young) called for a new division of Detroit city schools into 7 to 11 school districts, each of which would be run by a locally elected regional board. On the surface, the act appeared to provide a way of giving people in each community a much greater say in the way in which their schools would be run.

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