- [Announcer] Just ahead on One Detroit, we'll check in on the state of education more than two years after the start of the COVID 19 pandemic Lori Higgins of Chalkbeat Detroit gives an update on mask mandates in the classroom and the shortage of teachers.

Plus Stephen Henderson and Nolan Finley debate the findings of a new report on the impact of COVID on education and the future workforce.

Also ahead, a salute to pizza, Detroit style, it's all coming up next on One Detroit.

- [Woman] From Delta faucets to bear paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Announcer] Support for this program is provided by, the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV The Kresge Foundation.

- [Woman] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV, among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEfoundation.com to learn more.

- [Announcer] Nissan foundation and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - [Man] Just ahead on this week's One Detroit, the Detroit regional chamber releases its annual report on the state of education in Southeast Michigan.

One Detroit contributors Nolan Finley and Stephen Henderson take a closer look at the data and what it means for the state's talent pipeline.

Plus a new study shows Detroit takes the cake for pizza, that's right, New York and not Chicago, so it's a perfect time to take a look back at the restaurant that introduced Detroiters to pizza by the square.

But first up, we're getting an update on how the pandemic disrupted learning in the classroom, from remote lessons to mask mandates and to teacher shortage, education in Michigan has changed over the past two years, in this future of work report, One Detroit senior producer Bill Kubota checks in, with Chalkbeat Detroit's bureau chief Lori Higgins, to see how COVID 19 has affected the teaching profession.

(upbeat music) - Lori, you had a recent report in the New York Times, you contributed to a story talking about masks in schools, specifically in Detroit, what were you finding there, and where are we now with lifting that mask mandate?

- On the situation with mask mandates, I think what we're seeing around Michigan is that, most if not all districts have, either loosened their mask mandates or eliminated them completely, one of the districts that has continued with this mask mandate is the Detroit Public Schools Community District, their thinking is that they wanna wait until after spring break to see, you know, kids are gonna be traveling, last year there was a surge after spring break, so there is a concern that that might happen again this year, we also know that there's another variant out there that hasn't really affected Michigan and the US as much as it has since some European countries, but there's that fear that it could happen.

And so, you know, Detroit doesn't wanna lift this mask mandate and then have to reinstate it, you know, two weeks later, because suddenly there are a lot of cases, so they will have a pretty good sense of where things stand within like the first week or two of the return from spring break, they do return on April 4th.

- Well, the other people to consider are the teachers in all of this, in different districts I'm guessing, right?

- Yeah, I mean, I think the teachers that I've talked to, particularly, and I've talked to a lot of teachers in Detroit in particular, they're concerned in part because the vaccination rates are so low in the city, you know, very few adults are getting vaccinated and very few kids are getting vaccinated, and so, they may feel comfortable with themselves being vaccinated, but they're worried about, you know, the classroom.

I spent a little bit of time in a kindergarten classroom about a month or so ago for the New York Time story, and the teacher that I spent time with, she was wearing two masks, and it is a difficult thing, you know, wearing a mask because, especially when you're a kindergarten teacher trying to teach language, trying to teach kids how to sound out a word, and a lot of, some of that comes through by watching someone speak, watching someone say a letter, so there was one time or a couple times where she went to the far edge of the room and pulled her mask down, so that the kids could like see how she forms the ch sound because you know, the kids have to get it.

- [Man] Another issue, perhaps a crisis, not enough teachers.

- The Michigan Education Association says, you know, what they're experiencing right now is a crisis.

- Another story that comes up a lot is this teachers shortage, and how do you term that, is it a crisis?

- I think that the term crisis could apply in some districts, I don't know that we can say that there is a crisis across the board.

- So there's more teachers now, than, since 2007 08.

- [Man] Tom Gantert said the right leaning Michigan capital confidential looking into teachers staffing issues, filing freedom of information request to see where school districts really stand regarding recruitment and job offerings.

- Is it a crisis?

- You know, we've done dozens and dozens of stories on this dating back to 2017.

I would say it's questionable, if there is even a teacher shortage if you go by the data, I would say there's more of a pupil shortage in Michigan than a teacher shortage.

- [Man] Less students in Michigan overall, were shrinking population, so less teachers too, but in the latest pandemic year staffing is up 3%, that's what the nonpartisan citizens research council of Michigan found, and the student staffing ratio has dropped some, that's considered good.

But the group has taken notice of governor Whitmer plan to boost teachers pay across the board.

- The largest component in the school aid section of that spending plan, is a $1.5 billion employee retention bonus.

- [Man] Every educator would get many thousands in pay boosts the next few years, whether their district is hurting from the teacher's shortage or not.

- The key is to acknowledge that this is a highly localized problem, and that the experience in one district isn't exactly or nearly the same as it is in another district and another part of the state, we just don't know that a statewide retention bonus program is the best way to approach that problem.

- Without a doubt, there are shortages in some areas, for instance, special education, foreign languages, some of the more advanced placement classes.

- [Man] Chalkbeat Lori Higgins can add to that list.

- We're now seeing some other areas that we never really had shortages in, like English language arts, art and music education, elementary education, we were overproducing in some of those areas.

- What brings up this other area with a substitute teachers, where are we now with that?

There's this shortage with them too.

- Yeah, I mean the substitute shortage, I mean, we could probably turn out a crisis, I think that every district is struggling with subs.

- At the beginning of the school year I would say that it was a crisis, yes, it was a crisis because.

- [Man] Dani Montini supply subs for schools, she's with Midwest Guest Teachers Staffing in Farmington Hills, still coming up short finding the right people.

- We had a lot of candidates that came to us and wanted to do virtual, where the schools wanted placements in facilities.

- [Man] Pay for subs or call them guest teachers higher now, pre pandemic the pay was $100 a day.

- Through our firm, we pay them $135 daily rate.

- And how many hours a day of work do they do for that?

- Six to eight hours, many times you'll call them and they're unwilling or unable to meet the need.

- [Man] So teaching, going outta style?

The Michigan Education Association commission to study.

- This survey proves what we already knew.

- [Man] They're talking job satisfaction, make that dissatisfaction.

- And we've seen a pretty dramatic drop in educators job satisfaction since.

- It's not a desirable field like it used to be, there's just too many other options that they can make a lot more money, and have a lot less headaches.

- [Man] The MEA, the teachers union, their survey released in February, showed 20% now want a different career, consider that along with other data showing fewer coming out of college with education degrees.

- I think crisis may not necessarily be the right term right now, but I think that, if Michigan isn't able to figure out a way to sort of stem the shortages that we could be heading into a crisis.

What about one year down the line or two years down the line will people as they reach retirement age decide, you know, this is enough for me, I'm done with teaching, we don't know, we don't know, and I think, you know, if we don't address these things now, like we could be in a serious crisis.

- [Man] The Detroit regional chambers annual report on the state of education reveals an urgent need to reduce the racial equity gap, and increase the number of students who attain a post-secondary degree, according to the report, the COVID 19 pandemic threatens to further weaken the region's already challenging talent pipeline.

Nolan Finley of the Detroit News and Stephen Henderson of American Black Journal, sat down to discuss the findings in the report and the long term impact on the future workforce.

(upbeat music) - Well, Steve the Detroit regional chambers is out with its third state of education report, measuring how well we're doing and training our citizens for jobs and for, you know, success in society, we've been looking at these sort of reports, both of us, probably for 20 years in Michigan, we always set these very ambitious goals for education performance, and we always miss them, and we're gonna miss the new goals that this report is measuring progress on, this idea of getting to 60% of post secondary degrees or certificates by the year 2030, it's not gonna happen, and coming out of the pandemic, we actually have fewer people enrolled in colleges than we did before, and we're not seeing a push toward re enrollment, and I think that's very bleak finding, for the future of our state.

- Yeah, well, I mean, I have always said that this is an investment problem, when you look at what we invest in education on average, not just looking at the outliers where we pay a lot of money for education and allow local jurisdictions to raise a lot of money for education, you know, on the whole, we're middle of the packer below in terms of what we're paying, we have huge districts like Detroit, where the under investment has existed for decades, and you've introduced this wildly unregulated, not much better, completely other system that the siphons money out of the public schools, you know, when it comes to higher ed we're nowhere near what other states are paying, when you look at the states that are ahead of us, the states that are moving up the ladder instead of down, they're all investing much more, and to some extent, I mean, it's a pretty cliched thing to say, but you get what you pay for, we shouldn't expect more than what we have, from Michigan schools right now.

- Well, we've got billions to work with now, more money than we've ever had to support education at all levels in this state, thanks to the various COVID packages out of Washington.

What we don't see is a plan, and there's institutional dysfunction in Michigan's education system, we're one of the few states that have both an elected school board and a department of education under the governor, and they don't work together very well, and you know, what they do is provide a vehicle for finger pointing, something gets done, they can go like this, there needs to be accountability for education, and the governor needs to be the accountable person, whether it's a Democrat or Republican, the governor should be responsible for education, that elected board should go, it serves the interest of the education establishment, not the interest of students.

The other thing we have here is, and elsewhere in the country is, higher education is getting prohibitively expensive, particularly in an era of high inflation where folks can't set aside the money they need to set aside to get their kids educated and in any other or any other product, if you will, when demand falls off, like it is now, prices would fall, and I would guarantee you those 13 or 15 public universities who saw fairly significant declines in enrollment over the last couple years, aren't lowering tuition, they're raising tuition, and we should be applying what we've learned over the pandemic, in terms of virtual learning, distant learning, other, you know, you uses of technology, to lower the cost of an education, because you know, you've got kids now signing up a four year college degree that's gonna cost them, you know, $120,000, and they're gonna come out making 40 grand a year, the return isn't apparent as it should be.

- At the higher ed level, we've built this series of fiefdoms really around the state, you know, look, I'm all in favor of the academic value of having independent colleges and universities instead of a system, but the economic value of it, I think is really questionable, and this is a good reason, you know, you've had a lot of our colleges and universities build up in a way that didn't make a lot of sense.

How many med schools do we have right now in the state of Michigan, how many law schools?

Those were not things that I think we necessarily needed, they were temporary demand because of certain bubbles, but anyone who forecasted out would say, this is a place that's not gonna attract as many people in future, and so we shouldn't invest that kind of money in it, but you know, I also don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that the growth and cost of higher ed is tied to any sort of rational supply and demand model.

- That's obviously not, price can be going down.

- Yeah, I think everyone will believes that, everyone in higher ed believes that there isn't much of a ceiling to what you can charge for people who want and need that four year degree, you know, at the same time, we're talking about not just the chamber, but many of the statewide institutions, talking about this need to create many, many, many more college graduates, four year college graduates to fulfill the jobs that we hope to attract and hope to build, the whole thing is off.

You have to invest differently, and you have to invest more in K12, I think.

- Yeah, but this report Steve is also showing a familiar pattern in Michigan, as the economy improves, as prosperity comes back, people stop thinking about college, stop thinking about secondary training, go right into jobs, and that's what this report is showing, that's good for them on the short term, long term, I mean, success is going to depend on how much skill, how much education you bring to the workplace, and so it's not so much a positive thing, but that's always been the case in Michigan and we're seeing it again, and I think, you know, you constantly hear companies corporation coming to Michigan saying, God, we gotta have skilled workers, and you know, the education system is letting us down, of course it is, but that's been the case for decades now, they've gotta take a bigger hand in training workers for the jobs they can't fill, obviously it can all be left up to the education system, because that system is failing, and it's not gonna change this year, next year, it's gonna take a long time for that to change and a plan, which we don't have, so I think the companies are gonna have to become much more aggressive about training their own workforces and their own future workers.

- [Man] A new study ranks Detroit as the number one city for pizza in the US, the study lists the motor city as having the most independent pizzerias per capita, and the greatest depreciation for a variety of pie styles, of course, one of those choices is the thick crest square pizza originated by Buddy's pizza, One Detroit senior producer Bill Kubota, and broadcaster Eric Smith, looked back at the history of Buddy's Pizza, in the Detroit Public Television documentary, Detroit Remember When: Made in the Motor City.

(upbeat music) - Everybody square pizza?

Square, they make a square pizza, and that was weird.

- Are these people crazy?

- No one even heard of square, it was unheard of.

- You fell in love with it, it was great.

- But there's purists that will come in and say, nope, cheese and pepperoni, original sauce, that's it.

- Detroit style pizza is gonna be something, and every time you take a bite, you're gonna taste every product that's on there.

- It became sort of the Detroit style as they're referred to it now, but it's actually Sicilian style, that originated in Detroit.

(upbeat music) - [Man] Detroiters came back from the war and some had acquired, well, a more refined palette.

some were stationed in great Redland, so they wanted English food.

- Fish and Chips places like where we were at, there was three or four and two miles.

- [Man] On the East side, Gus Guerra owned a Tavern at six mile in Kona.

- It was a gathering place like, Buddy's Rendezvous let's Rendezvous Buddy's 'cause the guys were coming to play cards.

- [Man] Gus came from San Marino, that little country surrounded by Italy, and he had married into Sicilian family.

- And my father said, you know what, he says, there's really no pizzas here, we got one pizza in the city, so we started making pizza.

- [Man] But his Rendezvous was at the front end of what soon would become Detroit's pizza craze.

- Everybody was throwing up pizzerias.

- [Man] There was lots of pizza, round pizza, but Buddy's stayed square and thicker, and they used trays that were supposed to hold small car parts or even catch oil dripping from milling machines.

- It's a labor intensive process to do our pizza, it requires multiple stretchings, where you take a round pizza, you take the dough, you flip it, twist it, and it's ready to go.

With us, it's gotta sit and proof, that part of it, it didn't maybe appeal to a lot of pizza people at the time.

- [Man] Buddy's added one more ingredient too, brick cheese, brick cheese from Wisconsin, another place with a lot of poles and Germans just like over on Detroit sea side.

- The pepperoni is underneath the cheese, which is unique, what it's known for is the blend of the cheese and the flavors of the sauce with the dough, creating this crunchy pizza that has, is got a great taste.

- [Man] Yep, business was going good, all right, but it wasn't going quite so well for Gus.

- My father left Buddy's in 1953, there was a little internal problem between the partners, which could happen in any relationship.

- Two guys both named Jimmy wanted Buddy's, and so Gus sold it to them.

- He promised Buddy's, he'd moving two miles away, and he found a little farmhouse in East Detroit, it was called Clover Leaf farm when he bought it.

- While Gus made his pizza north of eight mile road on GRAT, back in Detroit, these women led by a Sicilian named Connie Pintonato kept faithful to the original Buddy's recipe.

Wesley Pikula started as a dish washer there when he was just in high school.

- Whatever Connie tells you do, whatever Sabina tells you do, and Anna the one on the left, you could see the size of her arms, so trust me, I listened to her more than anybody.

- [Man] By the 1960s Buddy's had become an east side institution, sports teams that played at nearby Jane fied held pizza parties there sometimes, hey, they even lined up around the block just waiting for seats.

- Let's put it this way, in 1970 Buddy's was the story in that area, they had other places, I mean they had other pizzerias on east side, there was many of them, but none of them had the reputation that Buddy's had.

- My parents went there around 1969, and my parents were just, love the atmosphere.

- [Man] 1970 was the year that really changed everything, Buddy's was sold again to Bill and Shirley Jacobs this time who arrived just in time for the great pizza contest, created by the Detroit News.

- We had a good pizza and we thought we'd have a good shot at it.

- [Man] In a city full of round pizzas, it was between the Clover Leaf and Buddy's for the squares, but only one of them would get to compete.

- My father called about it, my brother called about it, and they told them that you're excluded, you can't enter the contest because you're inside Detroit city limits.

- As the Oman was, Buddy's was picked as the best pizza place in the city.

- Buddy's took first place, and it hurt us I know that, but there was nothing we could do about it.

- [Man] By the late 70's, Buddy's was adding another location out in Warren.

- Every story got better by the day, so at some point it became legendary.

- [Man] In 1980 Ronald Reagan came to town for the Republican National Convention, it was big news of course, and Buddy's decided to feed square pizza to all those hungry reporters down at Cobo hall, and they liked it.

- Every news person you could mention, every anchor, signed that Buddy's book, said better than New York, I mean, we had Ted Coppel, this knocks anything out of New York, and we had so many of those quotes.

- [Man] Now Buddy's is spread out all over metro Detroit.

- Maybe now it's a brand, it's the test of time.

- [Man] How much time?

Well, almost 70 years, and Clover Leaf is still going strong too, and then there's Louis.

Now we've gotta mention Louis.

- That's Louis's pizza without an E, he made it originally at Buddy's and then he made it to cheese, and well, he decided to do it all by himself right here in Hazel park nearly 40 years ago.

Detroit square pizza is good of course, but we haven't talked about Detroit's iconic round pizzas.

Well, maybe more on that next time.

- [Man] And finally today, we're inviting you to join us on April 13th for the first of many conversations here at Detroit Public TV on the future of work, hosted by One Detroit's Will Glover, the virtual town hall features Crain's Detroit Business Senior Editor Chad Livengood, and a panel of guests discussing Michigan's labor force and economy, in an ever changing world of work.

That's noon on Wednesday April 13th, streaming live on the One Detroit Facebook page and at OneDetroitPBS.org.

That will do it for this week's One Detroit.

Thanks for watching.

Make sure to come back for one Detroit arts and culture on Mondays at 7:30 PM, head to the one Detroit website for all the stories we're working on and follow us on social media, and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

(upbeat music) - [Woman] From Delta faucets to bear paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Announcer] Support for this program is provided by, the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

The Kresge Foundation.

- [Woman] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV, among the state's largest foundation's committed to Michigan focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state, visit DTEFoundation.com to learn more.

- [Announcer] Nissan foundation and viewers like you.

(upbeat music)