RIVER ROUGE: School district to remain open thanks to deficit elimination plan, grant

RIVER ROUGE — The school district plans to remain open now that the state has accepted its deficit-elimination plan and it has been chosen as part of a United Way initiative.

The district is among seven recipients that will share a $27.1 million donation from the General Motors Foundation to the United Way of Southeastern Michigan. It is the only Downriver recipient.

The money will be used, in part, to make River Rouge High School part of the United Way’s Venture Fund, which works to turn around schools labeled as “dropout factories” to high-performing schools.

It works by creating smaller schools with smaller classes in the same building.

“All of these schools are the ones that didn’t make AYP (federal annual yearly progress) or were struggling,” said Roxanne Brinkerhoff, the Southgate-based Guidance Center’s director for early childhood services and project director for the Promise Neighborhood grant. “The goal is to turn around the high school graduation rate.”