Not the same public schools I went to
by thenotebook on Aug 28 2013 Posted in Commentary
by Kia Hinton
I live in the same house in Southwest Philadelphia that I grew up in. My kids go to the same public schools I did. But even though the buildings are unchanged, and some of the teachers I had are still around, going to public school in Philadelphia is just not the same as it was when I was a kid.
It’s never been as bad as it is now. Four thousand teachers and school support staff were laid off. Twenty-four schools have been closed. The classes will be packed to capacity. There will be nearly no art, music, or extracurricular activities. Our kids will get barely any one-on-one attention. The list goes on and on.
My neighbors are panicking. Some are thinking about home-schooling their kids. Others are scrambling to gather enough money to send their kids to private school. This isn’t what they’d choose. They want their kids to go to high-quality neighborhood schools. This is a last resort.
Last resorts have become all too common in our starving school district. Mayor Nutter’s 11th-hour announcement that he would borrow $50 million to get the school doors open on time is the latest example. And the thing about it is, we don’t need to be in this “last resort” place.
Big businesses in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are getting the break our kids need. The City Council tried to pass an increase in the corporate Use and Occupancy tax that would have raised $30 million for our schools. That failed.