Detroit Gets 24% Of State's Emergency School Relief From Feds

The Detroit Public Schools Community District will get $85.1 million in COVID-19 relief for schools from the federal government. The amount represents 24% of the $350.8 million that will be allocated to Michigan, which will be distributed to all of the state's K-12 school districts.

Districts that serve lower income communities will get a larger share, as with regular federal grants for schools serving "at risk" students. Detroit's share of this emergency funding comes to $1,672 per pupil, which is far more than what most other districts will receive.

By comparison, school district serving the affluent community of Grosse Pointe received $359,071 in COVID-19 relief funding, or about $48 per pupil.

The COVID-19 federal boost to Detroit's school district comes as the state of Michigan has agreed to settle a 2016 lawsuit that was filed on behalf of students with the Detroit public school district over “a right to education.”

The lawsuit claimed there had been “decades of state disinvestment in and deliberate indifference to Detroit schools have denied Plaintiff schoolchildren access to the most basic building block of education …”