Philadelphia guts public education: no responsibility to provide water or teachers' desks

[HiPointDem]

Last week four members of UNITE HERE, one of the four unions representing staff in the School District of Philadelphia, began a hunger strike that would culminate nine days later with a thousand-person rally at the state capitol. Two parents, organizers with UNITE HERE, and two cafeteria workers represented by the union fasted in protest of what the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) has termed the “doomsday budget.” That budget is an attempt by the School District of Philadelphia to fill a $300 million deficit by laying off 3,700 staff and eviscerating the teachers’ union contract.

In addition to ending teachers’ seniority protections and step increases , the district’s proposal includes a wage cut, an increase in employee benefit contributions, and the elimination of necessary overtime pay—prep time for teachers and emergency visits by nurses. The plan would institute unlimited class sizes and reserve the right for the district to contract out union jobs. Other clauses absolve the district of the responsibility for providing water fountains and educators’ desks...That’s just the teachers.

The district’s entire safety staff (employees whose roles fall somewhere between hall monitor and security guard) will be gone in the fall, more than halving UNITE HERE Local 634’s membership. The staff is vital in a district that reported over 2,600 violent incidents last school year (the union says closer to 10,000).

Whereas the teachers’ contract was proposed in February, it is this more recent announcement about security that brought parents and staff out to Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett’s office for a week of protest. While the community may have been displeased with the mistreatment of teachers, it was outraged at the prospect of dangerous schools...In addition to the UNITE HERE-represented safety staff, the proposed layoffs include every assistant principal in the district...The quality of public schooling is set to be drastically reduced alongside safety: the district proposes eliminating all extracurricular activities.

The School Reform Commission, created in 2001 as an early foray in replacing elected officials with state-appointed managers, is a profoundly undemocratic body. Composed of a five-member board, three appointed by the governor, two by the mayor, it is instrumental in implementing the state’s strategies for restructuring the city’s education system. Because the governor will always have a majority, there are few institutional channels for the parents of the district’s 200,000 students to shape the future of their children’s schools.

The tumultuous protests represent this year’s high water mark in the struggle for a democratic alternative to the school reform program being pushed by the Broad Foundation in Philadelphia...
The recent rally on June 25 against the cutting of safety workers, drawing some thirty busloads of protesters, marks an escalation against the Broad agenda....the crisis in Philadelphia has revealed potential for a citywide insurgency. Between the March arrests, the student strikes, and the safety staff layoffs, much of the blame, in the eyes of many Philadelphians, is not on the union but the district and the state. Rural Pennsylvania—the source of Republican majorities in both houses of the state legislature—may see the issue differently. But layoffs are hardly unique to Philadelphia, and rural austerity may have the potential to sway votes in 2014.

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/is-philadelphia-the-next-chicago


The bit about desks reminded me of a documentary I saw about some poor country where the kids had to bring their own desks to school.

[suffragette]

1. Remember when reform conveyed going in a better direction?

I'm so disgusted by the Orwellian use of positive names to hide vile agendas.

[HiPointDem]

2. 'reform' = return to 1850.

[suffragette]

3. Yep, the Robber Barons strike again

[hollysmom]

4. People forget why these rules were made to begin with

Civil service was set up so that people could not get fired and replaced by political hacks with each election making the most inefficient government ever. Tenure was set up so teachers could not be fired because of their political views or could not be replaced with inexperienced people, i.e. if a teacher last long enough to get tenure, they should have the ability to stay. If a teacher should not have made it to tenure, someone did not do their due diligence in checking them out originally.

If you can't have seen the incompetence of giving the FEMA job to Brownie - a political hack friend, then you don't understand that people want to go back to the good old corruption days and they hide that by claiming they are fixing abuse, when they are really fixing to abuse the system.

[life long demo]

5. All I can think of is this is because of the election of 2010

when not enough Democrats came out to vote. We can not let this happen again, ever!!!!!!!

[HiPointDem]

6. No, it's not. The Obama admin is pushing privatization of education, even more diligently than

bush did.

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. But they have $125 million for football stadium renovations.

The Eagles are not spending $125 million to renovate Lincoln Financial Field to host a Super Bowl, but it doesn't hurt owner Jeffrey Lurie's case.

Lurie first mentioned the possibility in March when he was asked about New Jersey's MetLife Stadium hosting the Super Bowl this season. Lurie noted that if the event proves to be a success, he would push for Philadelphia to host the annual event. An updated stadium will enhance the Eagles' bid.

"That wasn't the intention, but certainly when I'm on the Super Bowl committee, when you're bidding on a Super Bowl, the committee looks very closely at your stadium and your city and what you can host," Lurie said. "Philadelphia would be a great place."

http://articles.philly.com/2013-06-18/sports/40050561_1_jeffrey-lurie-super-bowl-l-sun-life-stadium

First things first.

[DeSwiss]

8. Is this where we're headed?

[center]
China: a school in a Cave
Children attend class at the Dongzhong (literally meaning "in cave&quot primary school at a Miao village on China's Guizhou province. The school is built in a huge, aircraft hangar-sized natural cave, carved out of a mountain over thousands of years by wind, water and seismic shifts. [/center]

- As China begins to look more and more like us, we are beginning to look more and more like China.....

K&R