from “le détroit” · the strait
In a new op-ed, Skillman Foundation president Angelique Power argues that Detroit's comeback is clearest in how the city is investing in kids, from free bus rides to a record graduation rate.
The president of one of Detroit's largest youth-serving foundations has a simple test for reading the city's direction: watch its kids.
In an op-ed published September 28, 2026, Angelique Power, president and CEO of The Skillman Foundation, argues that Detroit's comeback is clearest in how the city is choosing to invest in young people. "But if you want to understand where Detroit is headed, look to its young people," she writes. The piece first ran in Crain's Detroit Business.
Power points to a run of recent numbers. Detroit became the nation's largest provider of Rx Kids, offering direct financial support during pregnancy and a baby's first six months. City funding for afterschool opportunities has grown 120% to $2.2 million, with a goal of placing a program within two miles of every school. Expanded summer efforts are expected to reach 30,000 more young people this summer. And every Detroit K-12 student can now ride city buses free year-round through Ride to Rise.
The classroom results are moving too. Detroit Public Schools Community District's graduation rate reached an all-time high of 83.2% in 2025, less than one percentage point below the state average. Power says the district's students are now outpacing peers nationally in the post-pandemic academic recovery.
Power credits a shift in how the city listens. She notes that Mayor Sheffield's Rise Higher Detroit transition engaged more than 9,000 Detroiters through a citywide survey, 1,200 through community conversations and nearly 300 community leaders across 18 committees. The administration has since created dedicated youth and education leadership within the Mayor's Office to carry that focus forward.
Her throughline is that none of it works in isolation. "Education does not begin and end at the schoolhouse door," Power writes, tying graduation gains, bus passes, cash to new parents, and afterschool seats into one civic project.
For a Detroit reader, the argument lands because the specifics are local and checkable. A free year-round bus pass is not an abstraction to a 15-year-old getting to a shift or a practice, and a program within two miles of every school is a map rather than a slogan.
You can read Power's full op-ed on the Skillman Foundation blog.
One dispatch a week. No tracking, no filler. Free, always.