Dexter to Delray to DPSCD: Arlyssa Heard on Saving Detroit Schools

“Schools are the very center of communities—close a school and in three years you’ll see what happens to the neighborhood.” From the first laugh about “getting lost in my own neighborhood” to hard truths about policy, Arlyssa Heard of 482Forward sits with Khary Frazier and maps a Detroit story stretching from Delray pulpits to Dexter & Fenkell porches and into Lansing’s halls of power. She honors Southern roots (“Atlanta was becoming the Black mecca before our eyes”), a preacher father (“I’m a daddy’s girl”), and a childhood of full blocks where “every house was occupied,” then names the turn: vacancies, blight, and the weaponization of policy—Milliken v. Bradley, white flight, and emergency management that left her son with “an entire year without an English teacher.” Heard walks us through the rise of African-centered schooling—Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Aisha Shule—and the organizing lineage of Helen Moore, Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu, and Queen Mother JoAnn Watson, reminding us that “Detroit families have always exercised choice,” but too often against rigged funding: “If you can’t shut something down, starve it—don’t fund it.” She distinguishes being anti–starvation from anti–charter, exposes post–Count Day push-outs, and puts receipts on how 482Forward helped “get DPSCD its board back” while blocking a New Orleans–style takeover.