Rochelle Riley: DPS makes wise move; saves school for young moms and pregnant teens

Roy Roberts said words today that the city hopes to hear over and over where its children are concerned: “We have found a solution.”

This time, Roberts, the emergency financial manager for the Detroit Public Schools, was talking about way to keep open Catherine Ferguson Academy, a school for pregnant teens and high-school age mothers.

"I am relieved, excited and pleased," Principal Asenath Andrews told the Free Press.

The news traveled the Web yesterday, including a blast on the blog of Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC talk show host who had been covering news of the school for the past week. Ferguson, which has helped almost 5000 students through the years, has received national attention for providing a safe place for young mothers, a kindergarten for their children and an urban garden where the girls work that features a barn in which the girls themselves installed the sinks.

But it also was on the DPS closure list and was expected to shut down tomorrow.

Ferguson now will become a charter run by Evans Solutions, a for-profit charter company that runs another Detroit charter, but which is more known for settling a 2007 disability discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of a social worker fired because she had breast cancer.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the company after Doris Bennett was let go by a supervisor who regarded her as disabled when he learned of her cancer. The company settled with Bennett for $47,500 last September. My great hope is that the company is much more sensitive now than it once was. I couldn't ask anyone. No one answered the phone listed for the company's Jefferson Avenue offices this afternoon.

But no matter. Everyone at the office might have been at the rally at the school, which was planned in protest but became a celebration.

We will be watching.

It appears that this community, this city is finally waking up to the truths that we must help raise the children, teach them new paths and new standards.

And that no child – even one who is a mother – can be thrown away.