Beyond the $50 million deal: What about the schools our children deserve?
(Photo: Philadelphia Inquirer)
Alfie Kohn’s 2000 book titled The Schools Our Children Deserve has become a visionary slogan for public education advocates across the country. It was the phrase I was thinking of as I listened to last week’s dueling press conferences between the Mayor, the District and City Council about the lack of funding that threatened the opening of school.It wasn’t because I heard the phrase echoed by our public officials. I heard the opposite. Instead of funding the schools our children deserve, they talked about funding the schools we can minimally afford, or funding the least we can get away with, or funding schools not in gross legal violation of basic educational standards.
That became most apparent when Dr. Hite undercut what was arguably the bravest act of his short tenure here. I commend Dr. Hite for saying that the current level of funding makes our schools unsafe for opening. After more than a decade of a state takeover which promised to fix a broke and “failing” district, Dr. Hite’s statement that Philadelphia doesn’t have enough money to even open schools was a stunning indictment of the failure and neglect of that takeover. But I was baffled by the figure he threw out as an ultimatum to open them – $50 million.
When did $50 million become the new bar?
In May, the District passed a budget that cut $250 million – almost entirely from schools. Back then, officials