Education Beat: Closing out Flint Community Schools’ 2023-2024 year by the numbers
By Harold C. Ford The final weeks of Flint Community Schools’ (FCS) 2023-2024 school year might be best understood by parsing the district’s numbers. The most important number may be five – the length, in years, of a new contract awarded to Superintendent Kevelin Jones on June 12. The agreement was called “unprecedented” by Flint Board of Education (FBOE) President Joyce Ellis-McNeal and represents a milestone for a district...
At 136 years, Garland Street Literary Club returns to its origins
By Jan Worth-Nelson In 1888, seven upper-class women, all neighbors in what was then considered one of Flint’s most elegant neighborhoods, walked along leafy streets to an early afternoon gathering at 718 Garland. It was the home of Mrs. Sarah Durand, wife of a prominent local judge, George Durand. The meeting was not just tea and crumpets. The women were intent on forming a club, and they got right down to business. That day,...
Five years later, Flint’s Every Nation Church remains committed to ‘racial reconciliation’
By Harold C. Ford Five years after the merger of two Flint congregations – one predominantly white and located in the center of Flint, the other a Black congregation that left its church home near Flint’s north side – the co-pastors of Every Nation Assembly of God Church remain committed to the union. “We never look back,” said Every Nation Co-Pastor Michael Stone, who led his congregation’s departure from its former Beecher, Mich....
Nominating petitions for Flint’s Third Ward City Councilmember now open
By EVM Staff Nominating petitions for the 3rd Ward Flint City Council Member Recall Election are now available in the Flint City Clerk’s Office. According to a press release June 13, 2o24, the deadline for filing nominating petitions with the Clerk’s Office will be Saturday, June 22, by 4 p.m. and the subsequent recall election will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 5. The recall election was announced on Wednesday, when Genesee County...
Commentary: A primer for the August primary
By Paul Rozycki While so much attention has been on the November election between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Michigan’s August primary may be just as critical to determining who will govern us in the next few years. Because our primary takes place in August — when many are thinking of SPF rather than GDP — the turnout for primary elections is usually much lower than for fall’s general election. That’s...
Flint Public Art Project is ready to put paint to paper with new mural book series
By Madeleine Graham The Flint Public Art Project (FPAP) is launching a book series to showcase the hundreds of murals artists have painted on structures across the city since its founding over a decade ago. “People have been requesting books of the murals,” Joe Schipani, former FPAP executive director, told East Village Magazine of why the nonprofit is pursuing the series. While Schipani stepped down from his executive director role...