There’s a lot happening over at the School District that every council member -and state legislator - ought to know. So if you haven't already, pick up the latest issue of the Public School Notebook for more information:

1. First up, Renaissance Schools – yet another list of failing schools (this time there are 26 schools:14 identified Renaissance schools, 12 “alert” schools), yet another set of promises to parents and children skeptical about the District’s insistence that this time it will be different. Consider the families at Douglass Elementary which has had 7 principals in 7 years, or Dunbar Elementary which, if chosen a Renaissance school, will be on its third manager in 8 years. Or Stetson, which along with Dunbar, was the first wave of promised change through privatization. Stetson too is listed as a potential Renaissance school.

   What’s the problem with Renaissance? My main concern has been that the District is stuck on seeing transformation via management and contracts, rather than defining what substantive changes are going to happen in the life of a child. I’d like to know whether Renaissance schools are going to reduce class size, offer more literary specialists, provide home-school liaisons, improve school food and provide a full library and build science labs? Are they going to revamp discipline, provide real professional development, analyze and publish studies on their improvement, and invest in their teaching force rather than threaten them into compliance? A number of Renaissance Schools have significant English Language Learner populations. Are they going to provide a model bilingual program, diversify their hiring, create a multicultural curricula that engages students? Are they diversifying their curricula overall? Or is it really just a change of names at the top of the masthead, a “trust us, we’ll get some good folks in there with a track record” which is basically what parents have heard for a decade now.

   The Notebook has done an excellent job compiling a full summary of information on Renaissance. In addition, look for the latest issue of the Notebook which focuses exclusively on understanding school turnaround. Renaissance School meetings are happening all around the city. We need city and state leaders present to hear the frustration parents and communities are feeling and to bring more accountability to the District.

2. School Choice: Research for Action has a new study out on the expansion of choice options in the district, which has cost the district hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade – it’s been the District’s single most decisive change – yet has led to limited choice options for the majority of students seeking a way out of their neighborhood high schools.
   

   70 percent of District eighth graders participated in the application process to begin ninth grade in fall 2007. However when the dust settled, only 45% were enrolled at any District school to which they applied. In other words there are not enough “seats” in schools of choice for the number of students trying to choose. This means that in most cases high schools are selecting students rather than students choosing schools, robbing students and families of the agency that school choice is supposed to provide.

   That’s a pretty serious indictment that needs careful review and consideration. Since 2002, the District has nearly tripled the number of high school options, and through charters has created the second largest school district in the state. The investment of resources and personnel has been tremendous. Yet for high school, more than 50% of kids seeking out of their neighborhood school can’t find another seat. It’s also worth noting that as the investment has spread to create options, disinvestment in our neighborhood schools remains a problem. In Imagine 2014 it was hard to determine how much investment there was for the average comprehensive high school. There were counselors to be sure, which was a helpful boost, but how significantly was life going to be different for the average high school kid at say, Gratz or Bartram?

   RFA’s report issues a strong call for investment in neighborhood high schools as well as provides recommendations for improving the high school selection process. Worth the short 8-page read.

Many believe we can reform schools by paying teachers teachers based on certification and the subject they teach, that science and math teachers should be paid more than grade teachers. What this accomplishes is simply shifting the weakest link in education.

The most important and perhaps hardest working teachers are the K-3 teachers. They lay the foundation for successful reading. Imagine trying to teach science or math to a child who can’t read. It can’t be done. In building you can hire the best electrician, the finest carpenter, but if the foundation crumbles then the money was not well spent.

In education there is consensus based on research that the early grades are the most important. Paying other teachers more will only weaken our foundation.

Many non educators believe the school day for teachers and students should be longer, but ignorance is no excuse for bad policy. Let us first examine an educators’ day, since so many underestimate the hours a teacher puts in.

Arne Duncan visited Philadelphia today and like the failed Educational Management Organizations whom we wasted over 120 million taxpayer dollars on, he promoted a one size fits all plan to fix education.
One aspect of his plan is to make school year round. I don't know about others, but from 10th grade on I worked after school and summers, knowing that my full time summer money was spending money when I got college. I expect for many in Philadelphia these funds are even more necessary than they were for me. Duncan's fix it may actually result in fewer people being financially prepared to attend college.
Sorry Arne, yours' is not the plan we need.
Use the summers off as incentive. Those who need it go, those who don't can work and earn money. As a teacher I tell my kids you learn more, you earn more. This is an opportunity to back it up.

No rest for the weary. One crisis may be down, but another looms for the second biggest entity next to city government: the School District of Philadelphia.

One week into school and the School District is facing an almost certain $150 million budget deficit and counting. It’s a number that’s likely to touch every school, and possibly be felt in every classroom in the city.

It’s worth remembering that three years ago, when then-CEO Paul Vallas first announced a stunning deficit, the number came to $73 million – less than half of the anticipated shortfall today.

This is a situation the School District ignored as it padded executive offices and signed off on millions of dollars in contracts for the past five months – despite appeals that contracts should be prioritized or even held off until the state budget came through. It’s a situation the School District steadfastly refused to acknowledge even when the governor’s budget was clearly dead in the water. It’s a situation that the School District’s only apparent preparation for was a “doomsday budget” it passed out to Council last spring in the event of a worst-case scenario.

The doomsday budget is a Plan C for the District, a list of threats that were meant to frighten lawmakers into meeting the Governor’s educational demands. There's only one big caveat. Plan C never happened for the city.

It lists 30+ cuts totaling $300 million and included the following:

• An increase in class sizes to 33 kids in grades K-3 and 35 kids in grades 4-12;

• No charter reimbursements for 300 charter school teachers and 7800 charter school students citywide;
  Elimination of more than 130 nurses and counselors district wide;

• Elimination of summer school and pre-K programs;

• Elimination of 800 sports teams for kids;

• One less police officer in the 33 comprehensive high schools;

• Removal of dozens of kids from getting SEPTA transpasses and partially basing passes on attendance records.

Every single one of the $300 million in cuts comes off the backs of school children in our city.

Anecdotally we know the impoverished state of school libraries – Parents United for Public Education has been campaigning on this issue since our inception. For most schools, on the ropes with budget cuts for years on end, librarians were considered one of the earliest disposable positions. After all when choosing between a librarian and a grade teacher for 33 kids, not a whole lot of schools hesitate about chopping the librarian.

Although high schools for the most part, had enough general funds to cover library positions, the cruel irony is that it’s the elementary schools that saw the most dramatic losses – ironic because it’s these students for whom access to books and literacy skills can most actively impact and remediate struggling readers.

Earlier this month, the Association of Philadelphia School Librarians posted for the first time in years, a full accounting of the number of full-time librarians in schools (fourth bullet that says "School library staffing by region with maps").

Out of 281 public schools, there are 77 full-time librarians, 31 of which are in the high schools. At the elementary level, when literacy skills are most likely to increase the fastest, more than three-quarters and possibly as high as 80% lack a full-time librarian.

On the Free Library website, you can click on the various branches and observe which schools they formally serve. My research shows that the 11 library branches slated for closure serve about 47 public schools. Here's the breakdown:

• only a quarter of these 47 schools (12 to be exact) have full time librarians;

• an additional four schools are able to pay for part-time positions of either a library assistant or part-time librarian;

• of the 35 elementary schools that are served by the library branches slated for closure, only four had a full-time librarian and one had a part-time librarian on staff.

• That means more than 85% of elementary schools served by the targeted closings have no library staff at all.

Although I was happy to read the Costing-Out Study produced for the PA State Board of Education, we all know that the legislature will not magically fix all of the District's fiscal problems now. And in Nutter's education plan, getting more state money is just one of many strategies to improve the District. Well, below are my top two recommendations. I hope we can use this as a jumping off point but of course, I welcome feedback. It is as "real world actionable" as my knowledge permitted. And let me know if anyone wants to know my sourcing. The one nice thing about Philadelphia is there doesn't seem to be a shortage of research on our schools and their problems.

Read on!