[lbo-talk] Philadelphia School District announces its dissolution

123hop at comcast.net 123hop at comcast.net
Tue Apr 24 10:41:38 PDT 2012


You keep saying this. And, interestingly, it is the obverse but parallel argument made by Michelle Rhee. She argues that teachers and students have opposing interests and that we must fight the interest of adults to protect the interest of the kids. You argue the opposite but it could be inferred that you share the assumption about the conflict between students and teachers. This is unfortunate and quite wrong.

Rhetorically it is much easier to convince parents that children's learning conditions are a teacher's working conditions. The better the one, the better the other.

To tell parents that they must defend teachers' rights as a part of the working class might be politically advanced, but it defies common sense. Parents care about teachers because they care about the education of their children. They do not care about teachers because the teachers are working class. You could say this is primitive, but content matters. There is an indissoluble and meaningful link between teachers and their students. Otherwise, defending the rights of teachers would be the same as defending the rights of prison guards -- they are both members of the working class.

Joanna

----- Original Message ----- This is the sort of thing that can only be 'corrected" by a single-minded focus on defending teachers as part of the working class. The question, "What about the kids?" is a way of cooperating with the enemy.

Carrol

-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of SK Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 12:06 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: [lbo-talk] Philadelphia School District announces its dissolution

http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/nakedcity/Philadelphia-School-District-announ ces-its-dissolution-.html

Philadelphia School District announces its dissolution

Philadelphia public schools are on the operating table, reeling from a knockout blow of heavy state budget cuts. It was too much to bear after decades of underfunding and mismanagement at the hands of shortsighted Philadelphians and mean-spirited politicians in Harrisburg.

So the District is today announcing that it's going to call it quits. Its organs will be harvested, in search of a relatively vital host.

“Philadelphia public schools is not the School District,” Chief Recovery Officer Thomas Knudsen told a handful of reporters at yesterday's press conference laying out the five-year plan proposed to the School Reform Commission. “There's a redefinition, and we'll get to that later.”

He got to it: talk about “modernization,” “right-sizing,” “entrepreneurialism” and “competition.”

Forty schools would close next year, and six additional schools would be closed every year thereafter until 2017. Closing just eight schools this year prompted an uproar.

Anyhow, the remaining schools would get chopped up into “achievement networks” where public or private groups compete to manage about 25 schools, and the central office would be chopped down to a skeleton crew of about 200. District HQ has already eliminated about half of the 1,100-plus positions that existed in 2010.

This is all aimed at closing a $218 million deficit for the coming year, part of a $1.1 billion cumulative deficit by 2017. Charter schools will teach an estimated 40 percent of students by 2017.

And this rosy picture is premised upon City Council agreeing to fork over $91 million in additional property tax revenue. If not, things are even worse.

There will be $156 million cut from personnel costs and $149 million from payments to charters. (Looks like everyone was eating from the same shrinking pie after all.)

And Knudsen threatened to outsource all custodial, maintenance and transportation work to private companies unless union workers could underbid them.

"There are other people out there who do these things, if not better, then at least less expensively."

This seems to now be the theme song for public education in cities like Philadelphia: other people do these things maybe not better, but cheaper.

I asked if the five-year plan would address the District's core problems: severe teacher understaffing, too few school police, too few counselors, too few extracurriculars, too few libraries, too few everything? Is this just triage?

“The things that other networks do in other parts of the country,” said Knudsen, “is that these networks attract resources.”

What he meant was a startling admission: like some high-end charter schools, Philly schools would panhandle for donations from rich people.

Dale Mezzacappa from The Notebook asked a follow up: In response to Dan's question, are you saying that philanthropy will pick up the shortfall?

Not just that, Knudsen conceded. The economy could also get better.

I almost felt bad asking the question. Knudsen didn't run the state government that has for decades failed to provide Philadelphia students with access to a decent and equal education. This is triage, and triage is ugly. But critics will surely charge that the District plan only makes a horrible situation worse. Stay tuned for more in a few weeks.

Posted by Daniel Denvir @ 11:15 AM Permalink | File Under: News | | Schools | 1 comment

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