The abandoned Detroit Public Schools are some of the most interesting of the abandoned locations we have explored in Detroit below is a list of all the schools we have explored in order from our favorite to least favorite. Each school is unique for it’s own reason but some shine more then others

While some schools in Detroit began closing rapidly in 2005, most schools closed between 2007 and 2012. The cause was the shift of Detroit residents choosing charter schools over public schools, which was also expedited by the significant population loss from the early 2000s into the 2010s in Detroit. CEO of Detroit Public Schools Kenneth Burnley (CEO from 2000 to 2005) tried to save many schools from closing and witnessed the impending demise of Detroit Public Schools. His goal was to restore confidence in the Detroit Public Schools District as a whole. He accomplished this by investing resources into students' hands to learn modern material and help improve the test scores of students, which were very poor even by year two of Burnley 's five-year term . By this point, much of the money allocated to the school district was a mystery as to where it had gone . Much of the money was likely to have been misappropriated during Kwame Kilpatrick's reign of fraud against the city of Detroit while he was mayor from 2002 to 2008. Burnley left office leading Detroit Public Schools in 2005. During Burnley's time, the district lost a quarter of its enrollment in just five years. By 2009, Detroit Public Schools declared a deficit of over $400 million to Governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm. In response , Granholm declared an emergency for the district . By this point, it was too late, and schools had been downsizing, merging, and closing rapidly . Many parents fought to keep numerous schools open; some succeeded, while many did not, including those that succeeded initially but ultimately closed later between 2007 and 2012. At the beginning of mass closures in the district, many schools, like Jane Cooper Elementary ( closed in 2007) and Joy Middle School ( closed in 2006), felt the wrath of scrappers, who claimed the resources and assets left inside the schools at closure. The schools closed early on were not properly secured and faced extensive scrapping. Many schools that closed later in the timeline were spared much of the damage experienced by some of the earlier closed schools. Detroit Public Schools Police began cracking down on scrappers and thieves inside the schools around 2009. This was accomplished using a camera system called Videofied , along with standard intrusion systems such as motion sensors and the use of VPS boards, which are metal boards designed to be hard to remove by vandals looking to access vacant properties. To this day, abandoned DPSCD property owned by the district is still heavily guarded, and anyone found inside the abandoned schools of Detroit owned by the district is likely to be arrested on the spot. The difference is with city-owned property, of which does not have the same intrusion methods as the DPSCD owned schools, of which 39 of the approximately 200 abandoned schools are. In 2015, the city of Detroit purchased many properties from Detroit Public Schools, mainly to pay off overdue utility bills on the schools. Many of these sold schools were elementary schools, with a few middle schools and one high school. In 2025, many of the abandoned schools closed from 2007 to 2012 still stand in a variety of conditions.