With the arrival of 2014, we once again look at the
possibility of a kerfuffle over who will fund the School District so that the
students of the city can start the next school year with the supplies and
services they need. Mixed up in the funding problems is the lack of a contract
with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, whose contract ran out on
September 1, 2013. At the end of the last school year, there were 23 school
closures and almost 4,000 teachers and support personnel were laid off in an attempt
to present a balanced budget. A sizable number of former employees are still
laid off even while there is currently inadequate personnel to do the job the
teachers are expected to do.
Our new superintendent of schools, Dr. William Hite, was
tasked with balancing a budget that was $300 million in the hole, a Herculean
task. He did so with draconian cuts. There was even a standoff with the city
when Dr. Hite said he would not open schools unless he could get $60 from the
city. After some back and forth, the city granted the district a loan from the
city for the $60 million, and schools opened on a bare bones operation. The
state did not ante up any additional money other than the $45 million they owed
the federal government. This debt was forgiven by the feds on the grounds that
it give the $45 million to the schools. The state did, only not all of it went
to the Philly school district.
Now counselors and nurses are not a guarantee at most
schools under 650 students, and there are no classroom assistants. Students
with diabetes, severe asthma, and serious mental issues, are not guaranteed a
medical professional in their building more than once a week. Early in the
year, a child with asthma died when there was no nurse to evaluate the severity
of her illness, and so she was not treated in a timely manner.
High schools as large as 4000 students limp by with only 2
counselors. College applications were previously filled out with counselor
assistance through individual appointments. Now the college process is totally
up to the student in some cases. Pupils who want an appointment with counselors
have a three-week wait. Schools under 650 students are assigned a roving
counselor who may make an appearance once every 2-3 weeks. Contrast this to
Radnor School District, 10 miles away, where the high school has 7 counselors
plus other employees who help in the counseling office.
When schools opened in September, sports and music were
given enough money to operate until February 2014. Schools received enough
supplies only for the offices to run. Teachers must supply their own paper,
school supplies and even toilet paper is in short supply at many buildings.
Class sizes are at the maximum levels, split-grade classes are back in vogue,
there are not enough ELL teachers, and teachers struggle to teach every child
in their classroom effectively with little or no support. There are no extra
personnel in the schools to handle emergency situations. The principals are
doing a yeoman’s job trying to keep it all together.
All that aside, the children in the schools are expected to
perform proficiently on the state standardized tests and Keystone Exams. How is
this possible when the schools are but shadows of their former selves? And when
they do perform poorly, at whom will they point the finger? The teachers, of
course!
In November 2013,
a study was published by Matthew Steinberg and Rand Quinn, professors at the
University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, on
Assessing
Adequacy in Education Spending in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. They
examined the spending by each district, the poverty levels and the academic
success of its students. They determined an adequacy gap, “the extent to
which actual spending fell below the level necessary to provide adequate
educational services to all students in a district.” Steinberg and Quinn found that, in
Philadelphia, actual amount spent was less than what was determined to be
adequate by $5,478 per pupil. They add, “Despite this significant funding
shortfall, the SDP does more, per pupil, with its current resources than its
closest counterparts in terms of student poverty and achievement. Our
findings suggest that, rather than a story of failure, the SDP is a story of
possibility.”
The
conclusion of the paper stated that the difference between what the state
funded and what was actually needed for an adequate education, is
$1.26-billion and is unevenly distributed among districts. The poorer
districts, the ones with high numbers of children living in poverty and
higher percentages of lower scores, had the highest adequacy gap. The paper
ends with a challenge of sorts to the state to provide more funding.
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“The SDP…is doing
significantly more in terms of achievement than its nearest counterparts—and it
is doing so with significantly less money per pupil. Although additional
research is necessary to discover the reasons for these differences, our
preliminary findings suggest that if the SDP were provided the adequate level
of resources to educate the district’s students, it could make great strides in
improving the academic achievement for all of the district’s students. In an
era when Pennsylvania is searching for ways to do more with less at all levels
of government, investing in the SDP and in Philadelphia’s public school students
appears to make good economic sense.”
A woefully under-funded school district, Philadelphia has
actually been under state control since the year 2000. Representing the state
control, a School Reform Commission (SRC) runs the schools, and oversees the
day-in and day-out operations, but has no taxing power. The Mayor, City
Council, and the state government decides how much money the school district
gets.. During the SRC’s tenure as school district overseers, our deficit has
bloomed from $70 million to $300 million. Part of the problem is the reduction
of $1 billion from the state’s education budget two years ago, and another part
is wasteful spending, especially by a couple of horrible superintendents. The
third part is the inequality of the funding formula established by the state,
one which relies totally on property values. This makes for wildly different
per pupil spending amounts. Kristin Graham of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports
that the latest data show that in
2011-12, the last year for which figures are available, Philadelphia had $5,766
less per pupil than Radnor to educate needier students: spending was $18,117
per student in Radnor, $12,351 per student in Philadelphia, according to state
data.
Indeed, to the teachers, the chief task of the School Reform
Commission (SRC) seems to be the establishment of charter schools. Even though
charters have carte blanche to run their schools the way they see fit, they are
considered public schools and get their share of the pot from the school
district’s now-paltry sum. Cyber Charters pull even more money from the schools
at the same rate as regular charter school, even though they have a much
smaller overhead. The result was a multi-million dollar budget shortfall and
the slashing of budgets for the 2013-14 year.
And the teachers’ union still doesn’t have a contract. It seems as
though the teachers’ union will be expected to carry the district on its back
for an extraordinarily large sum of money. The district expects the teachers to
take up to a 15% pay cut and pay 25% of their medical benefits, even while
their workload has been increased, seniority abolished and no support is
available.
The Governor has already told the school district that it
won’t get any more money until the union is brought down. They are really
trying their darnedest to make that happen this year. We need a rallying cry,
one that will he heard throughout the city and state.
Right now, all I can think of is:
We’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it any more!
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