For weeks there were whispers. And then one night in November 2005, hundreds of parents, teachers, and students crammed into a big Art Deco recital hall south of downtown. Janice Brown, the superintendent of the Kalamazoo schools, had an announcement to make, and it was even more surprising than the rumors that preceded it: Kalamazoo, small, struggling Kalamazoo, best known for its strange name and the industries it was no longer home to, was about to launch the most generous municipal college scholarship program in the country, an audacious experiment not only in education reform but in re-engineering a troubled town.
Read Full Article »
