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Today at the SRC
Submitted by Keith Newman on Tue, 05/29/2007 - 9:10pm.
Education is the vital link to restoring the America Thomas Jefferson believed in: An America where who you become is not decided based on who your father was.
The SRC may well be caving in on itself. Parents were there in force today, and two contributors to this board spoke.
Teachers are being cut everywhere, split classes on the rise, high schools such as Saul only have a nurse one day a week, their library is closed and others don't have a nurse at all. Some don't have counselors.
After 5 years of "state management" the deficit is huge and the debt load, well you are all in for a nasty surprise.
Dwight Evans is holding out for complete funding of EMOs despite the conclusive research against such funding. Has anyone told him he lost the election and he lost it badly? He is demonstrating why Philadelphia has not chosen him to be our leader. I suggest that if he ever wants to win a city wide election, that he represent the wishes of the taxpayers of Philadelphia. Fund our schools. You want your EMOs? Fine. Keep them, but in no way do they deserve extra funding above publicly run schools.
As one person in senior administration said to me today, "five years ago they wondered if you spent money in the schools would it raise test scores. We know now the answer is yes."
But we don't have nearly enough money to help our troubled children. Time to make Dwight, who was repeatedly skewered today, step up to the plate and swing for for the fences. He will be the hero or the goat.
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What the SRC Should Do....
I've spent the past several weeks interviewing at and visiting many schools, both public and charter schools in Philadelphia, and public schools in New York City. While Philadelphia's charter schools meet with mixed success, its a pretty constant observation that our public schools are overcrowded and underfunded.
What Philly, or the SRC, needs to do is take a hint from NYC: break up the large schools into smaller, self-governing schools, even if they share a building. In visiting NYC's public schools, enrollment was almost always between 300-400 students, with 700 as the maximum that I visited. Contrast this with Phildelphia's monsters ranging from 1000-2000 students per school! There are, of course, still exceptions, both in NY and in Philly. Overall though, the smaller school initiative has worked wonders in decreasing classroom violence and allowing each school to care for the whole of each child- their social, emotional and academic wellbeing. When I shared tales of recent Philadelphia school violence, NYC educators were shocked. Smaller schools offer more staff per student and allow the students to understand the investment of these staff. Also in NY, the spread of technology was impressive. Most classrooms has laptops, LCD projectors and smartboards, even the smallest of schools. NY has also switched to a budget that operates regardless of geographic distrct- but instead based on the students. Each student is given a basic minimum amount of funding, and certain students are allotted extra funding: English Language Learners, and middle schoolers (due to a drop in their test scores) for example. THe schools get their budget based on the next year's students' needs. There are still significant academic challenges, but they are being met by a huge team of committed educators and increasingly well cared for students.
Or, why doesn't SRC should go in and meet with the worst schools in the city work to create a detailed, objective based plan to turn the school around. I'm not an economist, and I'm not sure where the money will come from, but I do know that Philly's kids are the soundest and most imperative economic investment the city can make. And right now, Philly's schools are failing. Failing to educate, failing to keep students safe.
and driving middle class
and driving middle class residents out of the city as one speaker noted yesterday.