Over 600 faculty and staff at Penn have organized Penn for PILOTS and issued a statement calling on the university to make “payments in lieu of taxes” (PILOTs) to the Philadelphia public schools. As is well known, the public schools in Philadelphia are chronically underfunded, thanks to a hostile Republican legislature, and they are currently facing devastating cuts amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Penn is the largest property owner in Philadelphia and the only Ivy League university that doesn’t pay PILOTs. Calls for PILOTs have surfaced for years, but support for the idea has now reached an unprecedented level. A significant number of Penn faculty and staff believe that it is time for the university to pay its fair share for public schools.
As the organizing statement of the group says, Penn is the seventh wealthiest university in the nation, and the Philadelphia schools are among the poorest in the nation.
This is the petition of the organizers. The statement begins:
We are faculty and staff at the University of Pennsylvania who believe that Penn has a responsibility to ensure adequate funding for the Philadelphia public schools. Penn is the largest property owner in the city of Philadelphia, but as a non-profit institution, it pays no property taxes on its non-commercial properties. In other words, it contributes nothing to the tax base that funds Philadelphia’s public school system—this in a city whose schools are underfunded and facing deep budget cuts amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our Commitment
Penn should contribute to an Educational Equity Fund governed by the school district and city of Philadelphia. These would be payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs)—a fraction of what Penn would owe if it were subject to property tax assessment. We commit ourselves to seeing our university pay its fair share.
Nearly every other Ivy League university already makes payments in lieu of taxes. Penn would be joining the ranks of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth in recognizing its financial obligation to the community of which it is a part.
The supporters of this demand explain their rationale:
This is not a matter of charity but of justice. Penn’s tax exemption is predicated on the notion that it is a non-profit institution that exists to fulfill a public purpose, not a for-profit corporation that exists to accumulate capital. That distinction must be made meaningful. Today, Penn is the seventh richest university in the country. Philadelphia, meanwhile, has the highest poverty rate of the ten largest cities in the United States. If Penn’s public mission is to have any meaning at all, the university must not be an exemplar or engine of urban inequality.
Yet the existing system of public finance ensures that Penn benefits from city services that it does not pay to maintain. Penn’s administrators, faculty, and staff rely on city schools, sanitation services, transportation, and other programs. Penn’s location in the city of Philadelphia is one of its defining characteristics that enables the university to attract faculty and students. When the university does not pay for the services and environment that make its work possible, other Philadelphians are left to make up the difference—or city schools and other institutions simply go without. Penn has a duty to contribute to the city that sustains it.
Here is their list of frequently asked questions.
The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about this remarkable movement.
I salute the faculty and staff at Penn who support this movement. The financial condition of the Philadelphia public schools is dire. They need all the help they can get. In this age on intense individualism and greed, it is wonderful to see people acting with a sense of social responsibility.
Time for the churches to join these universities!
You said it, Bob!
Penn is sitting on a mountain of endowments, and Philly’s schools are starving. It would lovely if Penn helped out the local schools, but the Philadelphia schools are not suffering because of anything that Penn has done. The Philadelphia schools are starving because the failed leadership in both the commonwealth and the city. The Philadelphia schools are in a bad way from years of disinvestment and reckless charter school expansion. The best way to help the schools in Philly is to show up and vote. What is needed more than anything is to flip the legislature in Harrisburg. They hold the key to changing the laws to provide more funding to the public schools and stop the irresponsible charter expansion.
My cousin’s daughter married a lovely Italian fellow two years ago. He is finishing his Ph.D. at Penn, and he has completed his course work and is now working on his dissertation. My cousin’s daughter mentioned on social media that Carlo will teaching in the Philly public schools this year. All I could say was that he should be safe, and I wished him well.
PA Republicans have never cared about Philadelphia and ignore the fact that without Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Scranton as well, PA would be another Mississippi.
I get your point. Without these cities, the Pennsylvania would be north West Virginia. Without Philadelphia we would not be a democratic republic. Philadelphia is far too important historical gem with some of the best medical facilities in the nation to allow it to collapse under its own mismanagement.
Back in September 2013, Michelle Rhee perpetrated an infamous teachers-union-bashing & traditional-public-schools-bashing speaking tour. Student activists from low-income Philly neighborhoods held a candlelight vigil outside Rhee’s speech at Temple University as part of a campaign to increase their state’s per-pupil spending amount.
They asked for Rhee’s support in getting the legislature to vote to increase the (then) $9,000-per-pupil funding.
Rhee’s response?
Rhee refused, and opposed the students activists’ campaign, claiming the the then $9,000-per-pupil-per pupil-per year was more than enough, as the state was already “throwing too much money at the problem.” (Music to her corporate masters’ and Wall Street funders’ ears, no doubt.)
Read that here:
http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20130919_Two_radically_different_schools_of_thought.html
Hmmm … so if $9,000-per-pupil-per-year is plenty, what’s the per-pupil funding for Rhee’s own children?
Well, for the answer to that, just go the website — where her own children attended in 2013 — on its “Tuition” page and see:
https://www.harpethhall.org/admission/tuition-financial-aid
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
HARPETH HALL Website’s “Tuition” page:
“2017-18 school tuition is:
“Upper School Students: $27,930
“Middle School Students: $26,900”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Mind you, that’s a low-ball figure, as Harpeth Hall gets millions in fund-raising on top of this figure.
In the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER article above, it’s interesting to note — for comparison’s sake — what Ms. Rhee’s standard is for the funding (and other aspects) of the education of Philadelphia’s children — as it relates to politicians and school administrators (she was one in D.C. 2007-2011, as we all know):
http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20130919_Two_radically_different_schools_of_thought.html
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: (italics mine)
“Rhee said elected officials should make the same education decisions for all students as they would for their own children.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Now everyone drinking a beverage while reading that can wipe his / her computer screen of the spit take they did.
I mean really.
For Rhee to be consistent — and for Rhee to make the same decision that for Phlly’s kids that Rhee would for her own — wouldn’t she then advocate that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania increase its per-pupil funding to $27,000/per pupil/per year — instead of the paltry $9,000/per pupil/per year they were currently spending?
Oh no, that’s right. They’re already “throwing too much money at the problem.”
Rhee is a card carrying hypocrite, and so are many others in the colonialist deform movement. Just look at DeVos. She is in office to spread her poison from coast to coast. Nobody in her family has ever attended a public school, and she knows nothing about them other than what she has learned from her biased bubble. At this point deform is mostly about class and race warfare with the main goal of destroying public education while putting all the money in the hands of the already wealthy.