Joy Resmovits reports on Huffington Post that Moody’s rating service is happy about the school closures in Philadelphia. She writes;0:
“School Closures: Good For Wall Street? Philadelphia recently voted to close 23 schools, and a Moody’s analyst thinks that the move, which frees up privately-run charter organizations to set up shop, is a good thing financially. Why? The analyst writes that it shows the district is willing to cut costs even when faced with tremendous opposition. “The SRC has introduced deep expenditure cuts over the past 18 months, reducing a fiscal 2012 deficit of $720 million to $20.5 million through a variety of revenue and expenditure measures that included a 16.7% staff reduction and salary and benefit cuts that generated a combined $466 million in savings,” the analyst writes in a report for bond investors.”
“But as a source notes, the closures and cuts don’t mean that these schools are driving the savings — the district says its plan would save $25 million, just a fraction of the $700 million deficit reduction. So why does the market care about closures?”
Here is a link to the Moody’s story.
What is remarkable is that the discussion is purely about cutting costs and privatization. Not a word about the impact of closings on children, education, families, communities.
Our nation is in deep trouble. All the talk about “reform ” is really about cutting costs while pretending it is “for the kids,” “children first.” At least Moody’s makes no pretense about caring about the kids. Their honesty is refreshing, if cynical.
Diane Ravitch's blog 