"The preliminary tally showed enrollment in the Detroit School District dropped to about 88,000 this fall -- far below the 104,501 students counted last fall. It could constitute the largest one-year enrollment drop in the district's history. The district projected 98,356 students . . ."

Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Only off by around 200 percent.

The article focuses on the loss of funding the decline means, but the real issue is the future of this goofy "District of the first class" law that limits charter school penetration in a district with "more than 100,000 students" - ie, Detroit.

Here's how the headline reads: "Detroit Public Schools' board president warns that enrollment stats far from final."

Translation: They've stolen tougher 'elections' than this - don't count out their corrupt ability to finagle this count to the point of it being a compete farce.

Um - I do count it out. Too many people are watching, and the gap is too great.

So attention now turns to Lansing. Especially to the GOP Senate, and whether it will cave to pressure from the edu establishment, Dems and Granholm to just lower the charter-limiting threshold - to say "a district with more than 87,500." Their performance when the issue came up in the school aid budget earlier this summer doesn't inspire confidence.

Here's the bottom line: Will the potential for a huge increase in Detroit charter schools this event creates be allowed to happen, or will timid Repubs strangle it at birth?

Watch Senate edu chair Wayne Kuipers - he has some "neighborhood schools" scheme up his sleeve, and the danger when Repubs get ambitions like this is that they become way too eager to trade away any genuine policy reforms for being able to say they "did something" - witness NCLB.