Refusing to Educate Other People’s Children: Woes Continue in Philadelphia
What does it mean when, in June, the leaders of a school district that serves over 131,000 students are working with city and state governments to locate enough money to open school in August? In the United States—where provision of K-12 education has for nearly two centuries been provided publicly, where it has been believed essential for the formation of an informed democracy, where all have taken for granted the provision of schooling that is free and universally available—what does Pennsylvania’s seeming incapacity to provide adequately staffed schools for Philadelphia’s children mean?
On June 18, the Associated Press reported that school superintendent William Hite remained alarmed about a gaping hole in next year’s school budget. Still needed was “at least an additional $96 million to offer students even a ‘wholly inadequate’ education next year.”
Pennsylvania lacks a working formula to distribute funds to local school districts. At the same time the School District of Philadelphia has been under state control since 2001, with a state-appointed School Reform Commission making decisions in place of an elected local school board. According to Education Voters of Pennsylvania, under the current system, “City Council is the body that approves local taxes going to the District as well as the transfer of funds from the City budget.” But all of these bodies in charge of the schools say they are unable to come up with the money to educate Philadelphia’s children. Philadelphia is today’s poster child for the destruction of a public school system—primarily by a state government unwilling to carry out one of its primary responsibilities.
At the end of May, Valerie Strauss covered the situation in the Washington Post: “One surefire way to wreck a public school system. There are plenty of ways, but right now let’s just focus on one district, the state-run Philadelphia School District, which has been starved for funding by the administration of Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and has been a guinea pig for corporate school reform, with widespread school closures and rapid charter expansion in the past decade.” As Strauss reported, in late May the state-created School Reform Commission itself staged a protest by refusing to pass the doomsday budget presented by William Hite, the school superintendent. Hite—explaining that the proposed budget would elevate class size to 41, cut special education, and lay off 800 teachers in addition to the mass of teachers laid off a year