Walkout Seen as Further Blow to Dwindling District

While striking Detroit teachers remained on the picket lines last week and district administrators conceded they couldn’t keep schools open without them, parents, community leaders, and experts pondered a more long-term problem: Would this latest crisis accelerate the student exodus from the city’s already withering school system?

Before the standoff with the Detroit Federation of Teachers began, district officials were braced to lose 9,000 students from last year’s roster of 129,000. Now, district and city leaders expect the drop for the new school year to be even more severe.

“We are worried that our projections for declining enrollment are going to go up stratospherically as a result of this strike, and we can’t afford it,” said Lekan Oguntoyinbo, the spokesman...