How bad is Phillie schools crisis? This bad.
The word “crisis” is misused and abused in the education world, but it applies perfectly to what is going on in Philadelphia. A financial crisis in the Philadelphia school district is so profound that schools may not be able to open as scheduled Sept. 9. Superintendent William Hite, a former schools superintendent in Prince George’s County, Md., has said he may have to keep the schools closed, open only a few or open some and operate for on half-day schedules. If schools do open, they will be missing some of the fundamentals that were cut in a “doomsday budget” that the School Reform Commission passed in late May. It has no funding for athletics, arts, music, counselors, paper, new books, and more. In addition, the districts laid off thousands of employees, including hundreds of teachers. Even Arne Duncan, the U.S. education secretary, made an unusual public statement about the financial crisis in Philadelphia, urging officials to fix the problems. His recent statement said in part:There’s no excuse for a public school system anywhere in the U.S. to be in this situation in the 21st century, and it’s even worse to see it in Philadelphia, the cornerstone of this great country and the cradle for our founding principles.
To understand how the crisis is affecting students, here’s a powerful open letter from a teacher, Daniel Ueda of Central High School, about how the crisis is affecting him, his colleagues and the award-winning robotics team of 80 students that he oversees. This
