The path forward: Q&A with Helen Gym of Parents United
By Bill Hangley Jr. on Aug 5, 2014 01:11 PM
Helen Gym ranks among Philadelphia’s best-known education advocates, and one of the most vocal critics of education reform as practiced in the city.
A co-founder of Parents United for Public Education, she has said she feels that the city is now going through “some kind of sick social experiment,” pointing to the failure of reform efforts to address systemwide inequities even as they are exacerbated by budget cuts.
Recognized this year by the White House as a “Cesar Chavez Champion of Change,” she is convinced that the conversation about education needs to be fundamentally shifted away from the goal of expanding “choice,” and back towards the goal of ensuring “equity.”
“This is a state obligation, plain and clear,” she says. “Our essential responsibility as parents is to reframe and refocus the discussion on the constitutional mandate and the moral obligation.”
In the wake of this year’s budget process, we asked Gym to reflect on the message from Harrisburg, the role of charters and the teachers’ union, and Parents United’s strategy for shaping the debate in the months to come.
What did this year’s education budget debate look like from where you sit?
It was extraordinarily reductive – it’s not addressing the fundamental issues that districts across the state are dealing with. Elected officials were doing the least possible, and the public was demanding so much more.
Take the cigarette tax – it was the least that could be done, and it couldn’t even make it through in a timely manner.
What did it tell you when you saw totally unrelated amendments being attached to the cigarette tax bill, like the one to allow some cities to raise hotel taxes?
What was sad is that basic human needs were being exploited. The more desperate the situation, the more politicians jumped on it to exploit it for other political purposes. It’s an eye-opening thing. If we’re not active, this is where this stuff ends up.
And this does not have to be a partisan issue. Plenty of people feel both sides of the aisle in the state of Pennsylvania have fallen down – and the city of Philadelphia has failed its The path forward: Q&A with Helen Gym of Parents United | Philadelphia Public School Notebook: