The public schools of Philadelphia are being slowly, surely strangled by Governor Tom Corbett and the Legislature of Pennsylvania.
Or, maybe, not so slowly.
The state has a constitutional responsibility to maintain a public school system in every district but the state leaders don’t believe in what the state constitution says.
Let it not be forgotten that the state has been in charge of the public schools of Philadelphia since 2001. Along the way, Paul Vallas was superintendent and tried the nation’s most sweeping privatization plan; it failed.
And now the governor has decided to let the district die.
Aaron Kase, writing in Salon, asks:
Want to see a public school system in its death throes? Look no further than Philadelphia. There, the school district is facing end times, with teachers, parents and students staring into the abyss created by a state intent on destroying public education.
On Thursday the city of Philadelphia announced that it would be borrowing $50 million to give the district, just so it can open schools as planned on Sept. 9, after Superintendent William Hite threatened to keep the doors closed without a cash infusion. The schools may open without counselors, administrative staff, noon aids, nurses, librarians or even pens and paper, but hey, kids will have a place to go and sit.
The $50 million fix is just the latest band-aid for a district that is beginning to resemble a rotting bike tube, covered in old patches applied to keep it functioning just a little while longer. At some point, the entire system fails.
Things have gotten so bad that at least one school has asked parents to chip in $613 per student just so they can open with adequate services, which, if it becomes the norm, effectively defeats the purpose of equitable public education, and is entirely unreasonable to expect from the city’s poorer neighborhoods.
The needs of children are secondary, however, to a right-wing governor in Tom Corbett who remains fixated on breaking the district in order to crush the teachers union and divert money to unproven experiments like vouchers and privately run charters. If the city’s children are left uneducated and impoverished among the smoldering wreckage of a broken school system, so be it.
To be clear, the schools are in crisis because the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania refuses to fund them adequately. The state Constitution mandates that the Legislature “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education,” but that language appears to be considered some kind of sick joke at the state capital in Harrisburg.
What is happening is outrageous.
Where is President Obama? Why hasn’t he spoken out?
Where is Secretary Arne Duncan?
Why is the federal government standing by in silence as the children of one of the nation’s premier cities are deprived of the education they need?
Oh, wait, they will get the Common Core!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They are all working from the same “playbook”. Where Vallas failed, Corbett will succeed and “so be it” is their attitude. Once bulldozed, the death dance will continue atop the remains of what was Philly’s Free Public School System.
Common Core, and subsequent horrors, will prove catastrophic failures and then somewhere around 2020 the entire experiment will be declared a civic shambles as thieves, liars and snake oil salesmen walk away, their pockets stuffed with loot.
Remember that Bernice Robinson figured out how to run a successful literacy school in the back of her beauty parlor and prepare courageous adults to fight the racist voter registration bureaucracy in South Carolina. What do we know how to do?
Kathy:
The budget for SDP is $2.7 billion, involves 150,000 students and 10,000 teachers. Beauty parlor metaphors do not help.
Another question. Where is Mayor Nutter?
Find the answer in The Notebook: the notebook.org/blog/136318/countdown-day-21-mayor-says-kids-not-teachers-doing-heaviest-lift. Mayor Nutter believes that asking for the additional $45 million promised by the state but not forthcoming pending concessions from the teachers union would be “futile” on his part. Mayor Nutter says he is “unclear” what concessions from the union are required to pry the money loose from Gov. Corbett’s hands. Mayor Nutter says ” I can’t do anything about that.” Mayor Nutter says the teachers must make what he calls “shared sacrifice”, even though he has promised 50 million in a loan, the Governor so far has committed 2 million, and the teachers are told to contribute 133 million in pay cuts and other givebacks!
Here’s a few suggestions for Mayor Nutter: you are the Mayor and the people of your city are looking for leadership. Provide it. Demand the 45 million from the state immediately. Go to court under the PA Constitution to fund the school district. Find out what concessions the governor wants to release the 45 million. Pick up the phone. And this Thursday march with the teachers from the Comcast headquarters to City Hall to the School district headquarters as they demand that the leaders of the school district, city and state properly fund the Philadelphia schools and educate its children.
It is unclear to me the nature and source of this problem. The SDP budget is around $2.7 billion. Is this a cash flow problem, a structural funding problem, a local tax burden issue, hardball negotiating tactics from the State to force fiscal realities? I do not know. This article provides few details beyond rather crass political finger pointing. According to the Thomas Fordham Report more disruption is around the corner because of huge unfunded pension liabilities.
Click to access 20130606-paying-the-pension-price-in-philadelphia-FINAL.pdf
It’s a state de-funding education issue. Cutting the budget, calling for shared sacrifice, then pricking the city/state’s finger, while asking the teachers for an entire arm is what’s happening here.
It’s hardball negotiating tactics – but it has little to do with fiscal realities and everything to do with funding private schools.
M:
But the Pennsylvania DOE 2013-14 Enacted budget indicates that Basic Education has increased by $122 millions to $5,526 millions plus funding for School Employee pensions has increased by 18.8%, from $856 millions to $1,017 millions.
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/education_budget/8699/summary_of_state_appropriations_for_education/539258
I have no idea of how much of this funding goes to charter schools although on a per pupil basis less money per pupil is given to charter schools than to traditional PS.
http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/policyblog/detail/how-much-do-philadelphia-schools-spend
Pennsylvania ranks 44th in its funding of public education. It relies almost entirely on local property taxes, raised and spent by municipalities, as the principal funding stream for schools. Philadelphia has the highest % of its citizens in deep poverty of any city in the US. Major improvements to the city’s commercial districts have come at the cost of ten-year tax abatements. Comcast, for instance, threatened to move its corporate offices out of the city if it did not get the extortion it was demanding. Philadelphia school teachers already rank among the lowest paid of any in the Commonwealth.
The city did sell about 1 billion in bonds to fund the building of 2 sports stadia. Did I mention that the Phillies and the Eagles both threatened to leave town if the city didn’t cough up the money?
It’s actually a series of problems. First off, the SDP is largely funded by property taxes, which can be fairly unreliable, especially in Philadelphia where the collection of said taxes is not as good as it should be. We also have a set of large corporations and property owners who have managed to gain exemption for their properties, which cuts that basic city funding for the schools even more. But that’s only the first and least problem we face.
The real problem is that state funding was cut drastically in 2011 and has never been restored to the same levels. This year the state also reworked the formula for funding districts in a way that made large urban districts lose even more funding. That’s the main place the current deficit comes from.
Then you have the drain from large numbers of charter and cyber-charter schools that the state and their pet School Reform Commission (to which the governor appoints the majority of members) that runs the SDP have given virtual carte blanche without the same oversight or requirements that the public schools have. The SRC has also wasted more money on a host of “education initiatives” like canned curricula from for-profit companies that have failed and had to be abandoned.
So there are several causes for our problems, all stemming from the state and its control of the district, even though the SRC was originally instituted to bring fiscal stability. It’s also worth noting (as the media never seems to do) that when we negotiated our last contract in 2011, the PFT gave up $58 million in concessions to help prop up the district’s (then much more flush) budget, concessions that we’ve never gotten back. Yet now we’re expected to fork over more than twice that amount, even though we’re already paid 17% less than the teachers in our surrounding suburban districts and our salaries top out at much lower levels.
What this really comes down to is that, while the district does need more stable funding on the local level, the main culprit in all this is the state and Corbett’s attempt to break the PFT. Make no mistake that the funding formula changes and the other problems with this year’s budget were orchestrated for that purpose, to get rid of the last obstacle to privatizing the SDP and turning it over to Corbett’s corporate friends and donors.
Hi Dr Ravitch,
I’m actually trying to comment on “The Attacks Begin” posting, but whenever I do, I get a message saying “comment can’t be posted”…I just wanted to let you and your readers know that The Indignant Teacher also put her 2 cents in re: said attacks.
Keep fighting!!! Millions of teachers and students across the nation support, believe in, and need you! I hope for the chance to thank you in person when you come to Boston on your book tour 🙂
Thanks, Jill, you are right to be indignant. I don’t know why you were unable to leave a comment on the other article. The technical side of this blogging thing is outside my realm of knowledge. I just write.
Oh, and here’s the link to my response:
http://theindignantteacher.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/the-attack-against-diane-ravitch/
And Chicago is not far behind. Atlanta won’t be long either, with multiple TFA alum about to run/win school board seats…
I live in the suburbs of Philly. How can this be stopped? Schools will open with bare bones. The struggles will create a climate that is wrong for the kids and teachers. I can’t believe that someone hasn’t stepped up to stop this. Diane, thank you for the insight, words and help. Now let’s see if our political leaders have a conscience to stop this dismantling.
Vote Corbett out of office. That’s where you start the change.
Where are Obama and Duncan?
Meaningless words aside, observing their handiwork.