"I’d like to start by discussing my friend Fred Montgomery. For the past eleven years, Fred has taught gym at Harrison-Morton Middle School in Allentown, devoting his career to teaching kids at a school where over 90% of the student population is so poor that they qualify for free or reduced breakfast and lunches. Fred is phenomenal at what he does and cares deeply about the kids he teaches. His wrestling teams have won championships for the past seven years. Fred is so good that last year, he won an “Outstanding Teacher of the Year” award.
But in Governor Corbett’s world, Fred Montgomery is just a name – just a number. To the Governor, Fred isn’t a beating heart that has taught and inspired hundreds of inner city children. Because of the Governor’s failure to adequately fund public education, Fred received a furlough notice last week, becoming one of 99 teachers who were laid off this year in Allentown, on top of another 33 positions that were eliminated. Those layoffs are in addition to 80 positions eliminated last year. And they are on top of the 142 jobs lost the year before that. That’s more than 350 positions in three years in Allentown, the state’s third-largest and third-poorest school district. This year, among other programs, Allentown will be cutting out gym and recess.
Of course, what’s happened in Allentown is a drop in the bucket compared to state-wide teacher layoffs. We’ve seen nearly 20,000 of them in Pennsylvania under the Corbett regime. Not coincidentally, we’ve had a massive drop in test scores; a drop that is related, according to the Governor’s office, to a crack-down on teacher cheating. If you believe that, then I have a bridge to sell you. We’re in Pennsylvania, so the bridge is probably falling apart, but that’s beside the point.
We all know what the Governor’s approach to education has done. In addition to tanking test scores, 70% of classes state-wide have seen size increases; this year alone, Allentown’s average class size will jump from 29 to 32. Property taxes have increased thousands of mills throughout the state; in Allentown, they’ve shot up nearly 20% in three years. All of this has occurred, according to the Governor, in the name of fiscal responsibility.
Can someone please tell me why students in Allentown don’t deserve a quality education? Can someone please explain this to the children of Allentown? Or Easton, or Bethlehem, or York, Chester-Upland, Reading, Harrisburg, Scranton, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, or any of the school districts that Pennsylvania is failing so badly? What did these children do wrong? What crime did they commit besides being born and raised in a poor city?
We can do better, and it’s not hard. We need real charter and cyber-charter school reform. We can and should freeze the phase out of the Capital Stock Franchise Tax. We should enact a reasonable fee on Marcellus Shale extraction. We should close the Delaware Loophole, and I mean really close it, by implementing combined reporting. All of these changes would generate almost an extra billion dollars for education without raising taxes on the overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania taxpayers."
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