A public school in crisis

Flint’s public school students have developed drastic learning and behavioral issues as a result of the water crisis

By Steph Conquest-Ware

Since the 1970s, enrollment at Flint Public Schools has decreased drastically from more than 45,000 to fewer than 2,700 students. The water crisis has had a significant effect on the city’s once flourishing public school system. A 2022 study by the National Institutes of Health found that a substantial number of adolescents in Flint had clinically significant behavioral issues.
‍
Students at Southwestern Classical Academy — the last remaining public high school in the city — who were 5, 6 and 7 during the height of the crisis, have been prone to behavioral and learning issues. With scarce resources, parents and teachers in the community are looking for someone to step up and help at Southwestern Academy. Reporter Steph Conquest-Ware visited Flint with a cohort of Northeastern University students to investigate how the city is still suffering from the crisis that began over 10 years ago. Listen to the podcast for more on the story.

A public school in crisis

Flint’s public school students have developed drastic learning and behavioral issues as a result of the water crisis

https://upliftwebdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Caelon-Keys.mp3

Denisha Stinson, an English teacher at Flint Southwestern Academy, sits at her classroom desk. Credit: Steph Conquest-Ware

Flint Southwestern Classical Academy is the last remaining public high school in Flint.
Credit: Steph Conquest-Ware

The library inside of Flint Southwestern Academy.
Credit: Steph Conquest-Ware

Alison Montgomery-Littlejohn, a social worker and mother of eight, stands in front of the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. Credit: Steph Conquest-Ware

Central High School closed in 2009 and the building has been abandoned ever since.
Credit: Asher Ben-Dashan

The abandoned Central High School sits behind a chain link fence.
Credit: Steph Conquest-Ware

Steph Conquest-Ware: At the start of the class period, most seats stayed vacant. Every 10 minutes, students trickled in with small, bright pink tardy slips from the administration office.

Conquest-Ware: I sat in the back of Denisha Stinson’s 6th period English class. The lights in the room remained dim with little sun peeking through the blinded windows. The walls were covered in vocabulary words, a ‘slang word’ chart and punctuation posters.

Conquest-Ware: Originally a reading intervention and substitute teacher at the high school, Stinson inherited the 9th grade class at the beginning of 2025 when the previous teacher quit after six years.

Stinson: Some here I notice are so far behind that they think it's almost impossible for them to do different than what they've been doing. And that is copying off other students or sitting here writing nothing.

Conquest-Ware: In 2013, the Flint Community School system closed 11 schools, nine of which were in predominantly Black neighborhoods on the north side of the city. Southwestern Classical Academy, home to fewer than 500 students, is currently the last remaining public high school in Flint.

Stinson: A lot of our kids, there's a lot of trauma that is happening now outside of school.

Conquest-Ware: In 2014, the City of Flint, Michigan, switched its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. According to the Centers for Disease Control, this switch caused “water distribution pipes to corrode and leach lead and other contaminants into municipal drinking water.” Residents soon questioned the taste, quality and odor of the brown water coming into their homes. After 18 months of protests, officials finally switched back. Today, Stinson sees how that tainted water drastically affected Flint high schoolers who were 4, 5, 6 and 7 during the height of the water’s contamination.

Stinson: A lot of these ninth and 12th graders are sometimes on a middle school level or lower as far as reading and basic conventions.

Stinson: So when you are already this far behind, it's hard to get caught up in just a regular school day on all the things that you've already missed. So that's disheartening.

Conquest-Ware: Lead, PFAS and other contaminates in the Flint water have had a wide range of effects on the city’s children. A 2022 study by the National Institutes of Health found that a substantial number of adolescents in Flint had clinically significant behavioral issues. The agency warns that even small amounts of contaminants like lead can create emotional, behavioral and cognitive problems.

Conquest-Ware: Stinson believes the community has not yet fully addressed the effects the water crisis has had on students.

Stinson: There's no parental support and there's no real administrators that are able to handle the kind of behavioral issues that we have daily on our campus. The village concept is not in play, unfortunately, in a lot of our communities and schools like it once was before. What’s going to fix it? Letting all the stakeholders in this Flint community come together to fix Flint.

Conquest-Ware: Claudia Perkins— Stinson’s mother— holds many roles across the city including secretary of the Flint School Board. She had a lot to say about students’ behavior at the high school.

Claudia Perkins (2:37): Nowadays they want to sleep in the classes. There's some coming in not up to par, and then the teacher is trying to teach, but they got to get order in class before they can do that. You see, there are so many things fighting against what we're trying to do, and we got to get a handle on it. These are all point blank essential things that need to be addressed. And as long as I'm at the table, it will be because I don't think I'm alone in how I feel.

Conquest-Ware: Michael Clack graduated from Southwestern Academy in 1998. He has been an educator in the community for many years and previously served as vice president of the Flint School Board. Clack taught social studies at Holmes Middle School from 2010 to 2016 and also served as a behavioral specialist in the district.

Michael Clack: I mean, I could think of so many different stories and so many different faces and that it's just - why else would all of them have the same issues? These aren't bad kids. These are kids that are victims of circumstance.

Conquest-Ware: Clack believes the water crisis exacerbated the behavioral issues for children in Flint Community Schools.

Clack: There's some type of correlation with the behavior issues, the suspensions, the fights, just a lot. There was an issue here in Flint where there was a student, a young lady that threw a chair at another student, but a teacher ended up getting hit with the chair.

Conquest-Ware: With the rise in behavioral issues and lack of resources at secondary schools in the Flint Public School system, some parents have opted to send their kids to charter schools or other public schools outside of the district.

Alison Montgomery-Littlejohn: From her being in that school, I did see an increase of violence overall, an increase of behavioral issues with the children. So because of that, with my son and oldest daughter, from that point on, after the sixth grade, we put 'em in Kearsley School District.

Conquest-Ware: That’s Alison Montgomery-Littlejohn. I spoke with the social worker and mother of eight at University of Michigan’s Flint campus, located along the shore of the Flint River, to discuss her experiences with schools in the city. She believes families are leaving the district because of distrust in the water and its effects on their children. She would like to see a strong leader take over and make things right.

Montgomery-Littlejohn: I think that Flint Community Schools needs a Joe Clark. Do you know that movie? “Lean On Me.” That's what Flint Community Schools needs is someone that has the courage and the confidence and does not care about what other people think..a real advocate for their students, their families. That's what I'm looking for. And I don't know if we'll get it.

Stinson:I'm the teacher that no good deed goes unpunished because I have classroom management and discipline and all these things.Students are like, why don't you go to the other schools? They don't need me there. I'm needed here, so this is where I hang my hat.

Conquest-Ware: After Ms. Stinson’s class, I spoke to one of the more engaged ninth graders.. She was one of the only students without her head on the desk and she was taking notes. She told me she recently started attending Southwestern Academy and felt uncomfortable due to the constant fighting at the school.

Conquest-Ware: Southwestern Academy will soon be joined by another high school in the district. The Flint Board of Education recently accepted a $750,000 grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation to bring Central High School — which closed down in 2009 — back to life through a refurbishing project. But, Stinson believes a new building won’t fix the behavioral and learning issues at Southwestern or in the greater Flint Community School District.

Stinson: It's not about building a new building because we'll take the same problems over to the new campus. If you're going to spend money, spend it on the mental health treatments that we need to really help these kids to overcome what they're dealing with right now. We know the city’s not gonna do it. People haven’t even been reimbursed from being poisoned already. But what we can do in this Flint school system or whatever to turn the tide, that’s where the money should go.

Conquest-Ware: This is Steph Conquest-Ware for Flint Unfiltered reporting from Michigan.