I hope that this reaches you in time to be of some value. I
was waiting to respond to your request for information about
the changes in racial patterns in "ublic school enrollment
until the Federal District Court Monitoring Commission could
supply me with data. Paving just arrived in its raw form,
that data is a challenge to interpret for your purposes.
The Commission had been heavily involved in making public a
study of the high schools and their implementation (or lack
of such) of the various components of the court order, thus
the delay in filling my request.
The basic generalization upon which Fay O'Hare, Monitoring
Chair and LMI HR Chair, the Commission staff, and Merle Henrick-
son, Detroit Public School Administrator agree is as follows:
The population loss of the Detroit Public Schools since the
January 1976 implementation of the court order has been part
of a larger trenu of the past ten years. The decline has been
about 8,000-10,000 per year, in part directly related to the
total decline in the population of the city. That decline
can be attributed to many causes, one of which is schools,
the perceived quality thereof and the prospect of a court order.
The loss of students within the city to private schools was
made up of black as well as white students, most of whom enrolled
in the area's already established private and parochial schools.
Two exceptions to these are the Baptist Christian academies
which benefited particularly from the prospect of unil reassign-
ment. Mr erickson attributed to the St. Clair Shores academy
a large stare of 1000 plus students who never appeared at their
newly assigned school. I have not been able to trace that
school through the phone company but the Southfield Christian
Schools on the other side of the city tell me they were founded
about eight years ago and have 725 students K-12.
I will send on to you materials sent to me by the Commission, but I'm sure they are of limited value without more knowledge of the city. Let me know if we can be of further help.