PFT launches neighborhood rallies to protest budget cuts
by thenotebook on Jul 31 2013 Posted in Latest news
Photo: Mark McHugh
PFT members, parents, and students protest budget cuts outside DeBurgos Elementary in Kensington.
By Mark McHugh
Dressed in their red union shirts, members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers filled a crowd of abut 60 people who gathered outside DeBurgos Elementary School Tuesday afternoon to protest the budget crisis in the School District.
The protest is the first of an August campaign launched by the PFT called “Rally the Neighborhood,” in which PFT members and community organizers will stage rallies at neighborhood schools to call attention to the District’s fiscal crisis and paint a picture for the public of what students will be without when school starts in September.
“DeBurgos is a microcosm of what is taking place in the Kensington community, in North Philadelphia, in the whole city, and to be honest, the whole state and nation,” said Hillary Linardopoulos, a 3rd grade teacher at DeBurgos.
“The idea of (the rallies) is highlighting some examples of what these cuts will look like in actual schools,” she said.
Linardopoulos has worked with the PFT all summer to oppose the budget cuts. Just this past week, she estimated that she, along with fellow PFT members, knocked on about 500 doors in the DeBurgos community to inform residents of the impact the cuts will have.
Even with Superintendent Hite’s announcement last Friday during a special School Reform Commission meeting that the District will restore 220 secretaries, as well as fall sports and 66 itinerant music teachers through January, many still find the
