School districts all across the country are humming with activity, preparing for a new school year. Not so in Detroit, where the state’s largest school district, still under state-imposed emergency management, remains mired in a series of overlapping crises—fiscal, political, administrative and pedagogical—that appear certain to doom any hopes for a productive new year.

Elena Herrada, an elected member of the “old” school board whose authority over local education was overridden by the state, explains the dire situation with education in her home town.

Detroit is in its third year of servicing a $20-billion debt under the strict terms imposed by a federal court. Those terms have caused an evisceration of budgets for essential services and practically a bargain-basement giveaway of its land and municipal assets to the politically well-connected.

Bernie Sanders stunned the political world—and especially 13 million voters who had supported his presidential bid in the primaries—when on July 12, two weeks prior to the Democratic National Convention, he ended his “independent” campaign and in the name of “party unity” instead declared unqualified support of Hillary Clinton for president.

A lot has happened since then—federal probes, email issues, Clinton Foundation pay-to-play lawlessness, resurfacing of Clinton (Bill’s and Hill’s) history of ethical challenges—that should cause Sanders to rethink his political decision. But no indication from Bernie that he’s troubled about Hillary.

Download this episode (right click and save)