Sarah Cwiek

Some students, parents, and education advocates from Detroit and Highland Park will testify at a federal hearing in Washington this week.

They are part of a nationwide group speaking out against changes in Detroit and other poor school districts.

The group alleges that some of the measures, particularly closing neighborhood schools, have “sabotaged and destabilized” education for many children.

Helen Moore is with the Detroit-based group Keep the Vote-No Takeover.

She said the group wasn’t getting far fighting these measures at the local level.

It appears that a plan to turn Detroit’s Belle Isle into a state park will be voted on next week. But it’s far from clear how that vote will turn out.

The plan calls for the state to lease Belle Isle from Detroit for 30 years, and have the Michigan Department of Natural Resources manage it as a state park.

The Detroit Public Schools plans to shrink even more to wipe out its deficit by 2016.

The district’s latest deficit elimination plan projects that enrollment will dip below 40,000 by then.
And in order to “stay ahead of the cost curve,” emergency financial manager Roy Roberts proposes some drastic cuts—including closing as many as 28 more schools, and cutting more than 1000 employees.

The Detroit Police Department is launching a major re-organization to put more officers on the street.

On Wednesday, Detroit mayor Dave Bing and police officials finally unveiled the plan that’s been in the works for awhile.

An Ohio woman who was arrested and strip searched at Detroit Metro Airport says her constitutional rights were violated.

The Michigan ACLU has now filed a federal lawsuit on Shoshanna Hebshi’s behalf.

Flying from California to Detroit on September 11, 2011, Hebshi says she was seated next to two men she didn’t know or speak to during the flight.

Those men were accused of behaving suspiciously during the flight. When they landed at Metro, Hebshi and the two men were arrested.

“I can only gather that I was targeted and forced at gunpoint off that
plane, handcuffed, and taken into custody for hours because of my ethnic name, and an arbitrary seat assignment,” said Hebshi, who is of
mixed Saudi Arabian and Eastern European-Jewish descent.

Hebshi and the ACLU are now suing federal agencies, airport officials
and Frontier Airlines. They allege her story is an example of
unconstitutional racial discrimination leading to false arrest and
imprisonment.

“I’m extremely concerned about my children growing up in a country
where your skin color and name can put your rights at risk,” Hebshi
said.

ACLU attorney Sarah Mehta says there have been a number of lawsuits
alleging racial discrimination against airlines since the September
11th, 2001 attacks.

“Generally, though, those claims have been about people being pulled off of planes for suspicious activity,” Mehta said. “What is unique about our client is that there are no allegations whatsoever about her involvement in anything suspicious.”

Hebshi is seeking monetary damages, and the court’s declaration that
her constitutional rights were violated.

Events in Washington Monday honored President Obama’s inauguration, and the Martin Luther King Day holiday.

The two events also meshed at Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, where a few dozen people came to the Wright Museum to watch a live broadcast of President Obama’s second inauguration.

Detroit Public Schools worked to draw district alumni back to their
old schools for this Martin Luther King Day.

Thirty schools across the city are participating in the national day
of service, and former students are invited to join in.

Spokesman Steve Wasko said the district was searching for a way to
draw DPS alumni back to their former schools.

Metro Detroit’s “Big Four” met up for their annual public conversation at Cobo Hall in Detroit Thursday.

The group is made up of the Wayne county executive Robert Ficano, Oakland county executive L. Brooks Patterson, and Macomb county executive Mark Hackel, plus Detroit mayor Dave Bing.

The event usually stresses regional cooperation and all-around good feelings between the four leaders.

A gaming company run by Detroit billionaire Dan Gilbert has announced plans to move into the city’s casino business.

Quicken Loans founder Gilbert owns Rock Gaming, which already owns
several gambling sites in Ohio.

Now, one of the group’s subsidiaries has announced it will buy a
majority stake of the company that runs Detroit’s Greektown
Casino-Hotel.

Gilbert says in a statement they envision a “significant investment”
in the Greektown casino, “as well as the enhancement and growth of the
existing entertainment district.”

The Michigan Gaming Board will need to sign off on the deal.

They hope to grow that area as well, building on what Gilbert calls
“the positive momentum” now going in downtown Detroit.

Gilbert himself is partly responsible for that momentum.

He’s been buying up much of the major commercial real estate in
downtown Detroit in pursuit of a vision he’s dubbed “Detroit 2.0.”

The vision is a vibrant downtown district to “live, work, and play,”
centered around tech start-ups along Woodward Avenue, which Gilbert
calls “Webward” Avenue.

A Wayne county man is facing criminal charges for allegedly defrauding federal real estate giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Samer Salami, a real estate agent and broker for Fannie and Freddie,
is accused of obtaining properties they owned through Trademark
Assets--a shell company he secretly controlled--for an artificially
low price.

Salami would then turn around and sell the property to an actual,
higher bidder—pocketing the difference between the two sales, plus a
double commission.

Overall, it’s alleged Salami bilked the mortgage giants out of about
$488,000, through 22 such illegal housing sales in Wayne county.

Cadillac is hoping to make waves in the electric car market with its new Cadillac ELR.

The car is described as a “luxury sport coupe” powered by the same technology as the Chevrolet Volt.

That’s an electric vehicle with a small gas engine for extended range back-up.

Cadillac spokesman David Caldwell says the car is a “first of its kind”: a primarily electric luxury vehicle.

“So we think this is perfectly well-suited for us," Caldwell said. "But more importantly, an interesting new offer for luxury consumers who are interested in the latest technology.”

U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and UAW President Bob King jointly toured the Detroit auto show today.

Both say the auto industry’s resurgence shows the benefits of strong labor-management relationships.

Solis praised the American-made products she saw on the show floor. She also praised the sense of “empowerment” and “trust” she sensed among the workers showing them off.

Details of the so-called “Detroit Future City” plan are out in the open, and people are weighing in on its detailed, long-term vision for the city.

The plan stems from the two-year-long Detroit Works Project. It started as an effort to deal with Detroit’s vacant land problem. But it evolved into a highly-detailed, 50-year vision for a future city.

Kurt Metzger, head of the group Data Driven Detroit, calls the plan a “great, comprehensive framework” for the future.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette continues his effort to remove some Detroit school board members.

A Wayne County judge heard oral arguments Thursday about Schuette’s lawsuit to throw out seven board members elected by district.

Schuette says state law only allows so-called “first class” school districts to elect board members that way. He says Detroit hasn’t met that threshold since 2008.

School board attorney George Washington insists his clients followed the law "as the legislature wrote it."

Washington also noted the lawsuit was only filed in 2012, after Michigan’s emergency manager law was suspended.

“They were happy with the way the school board was elected, until they thought they might not have a financial manager," Washington said. "And then they said, ‘Well, we gotta get rid of the board. No matter what the law says, or what we’ve allowed to happen.'"

A long-awaited—and controversial-- long-term vision for Detroit’s future emerged Wednesday.

“Detroit Future City” is the result of a two-year effort called The Detroit Works Project, one of Mayor Dave Bing’s signature initiatives.

It comes after two years of community meetings, fact-finding, and exhaustive planning—“the broadest, deepest, and most comprehensive look at Detroit that’s ever been done,” according to its creators.