An earlier post today described the devastating budget cuts to public education by Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Corbett. Districts across the state are laying off staff, cutting librarians, teachers of the arts, and school nurses and guidance counselors. No city has been harder hit than Philadelphia, which has been under state control for over a decade. The following commentary was written by Ken Derstine, a retired teacher in Philadelphia.
Ken writes:
Philadelphia’s Democratic Mayor Nutter’s role in these events should be noted. Nutter, currently the President of U.S. Conference of Mayors http://www.usmayors.org/about/orgleaders.asp,
is Mayor of a city whose public schools are in crisis. After ten years of starvation budgets to build up charter schools http://tinyurl.com/kphmwmm, last week the School Reform Commission passed a Doomsday budget which will devastate an already struggling School District cutting school staff to only a principal and classroom teachers.
It is in this situation that Nutter on Tuesday held a special press conference in Harrisburg with charter school operators to lobby for Corbett to fund schools….so that Philadelphia can expand charter seats! His only prescription for the struggling public schools has been that there must be “shared sacrifice” in the new contract of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers starting September 1st, with wage and benefit concessions of $133 million.
Nutter is hoping to capitalize on Corbett’s ALEC inspired agenda of privatization of public schools. The Philadelphia School District was taken over by the state in December, 2001. The School Reform Commission which runs the District has brought in the Philadelphia School Partnership and Boston Consulting Group to oversee the privatization of public schools. In FY09, charters were 15% of the District budget. In FY14 they will be 30% of the budget.
The charter management companies have come into conflict with the SRC over the last few months. The SRC in March called a moratorium of expanded charters at this time because of the budget crisis. A number of charters defied this moratorium and enrolled students even though it violated the contractual enrollment caps in their charter. When the SRC refused to pay for this over enrollment, the charter companies went to Corbett’s Secretary of Education and he took the money out of state funds that had been approved for the Philadelphia School District. It is in this situation that Mayor Nutter is in Harrisburg lobbying for more money for charter schools. 21 charters want 15,000 new seats which the District estimates would increase charter costs to about $110 million annually.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
ICLEI USA Board Member
Mayor, City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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just google arne duncan and chakka fattah
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Total corruption and that is where Vallas went after Chicago to do more destruction as that is his specialty as shown by his destructive career on the future of our youth. Mayoral control does not work.
In California luckily it is against the California State Constitution and in spite of that Mayor Villaraigosa, King Tony, got illegal legislation anyway and the Calif. Supreme Court turned it down on constitutional grounds. Myself and a friend were the only two who gave the legislature of Calif. the documented proof that all the reasons they were using for mayoral control were a lie. It helped slow down the process some but we still needed the Calif. Supreme Court to finish the job. Power wants more Power and that is all there is too it.
Right now we are working on taking schools away from Villaraigosa’s PLAS based on the legal requirements of the MOU and the documented facts of lower performance in almost all the schools under their control since they took over. The parents and many students do not want PLAS anymore. Both schools have lost around 1/2 of their students. Do not have trade classes anymore, Almost no elective classes are available. And at Santee High School teachers have gone from 170 to next year 50. The principal and a PLAS representative did not know what the revenue/student was at the school 3 times. They did not know what the revenue/student of LAUSD is and they did not know that Roosevelt High School in the same basic area and with the same basic demographics has over $9,000/student and Santee has $3,478/student. Run by the same PLAS and by the same board member Monica Garcia, Board President. In July Garcia can never again be the board president. Under her students who did not come to school everyday went from 40,000 to over 117,000. Is that reform or deform?
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