Teacher plans to shame mayor, SRC, superintendent with I-95 billboard
Coming soon to I-95, if a city teacher has anything to say about it: a billboard calling out Mayor Kenney and Philadelphia School District leaders.
Donations are streaming in to crowd-fund a giant reminder that Philadelphia teachers have not had a contract for nearly four years and have gone five without a raise.
George Bezanis, a teacher at Central High School, is taking aim at the people he feels are most responsible for the lack of a contract for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers -- a “calamity,” he said.
“As each month passes with no agreement in sight, Philadelphia loses more and more great educators to other surrounding districts. It is the over 100,000 children in the district, however, who suffer the most because of this lack of a stable workforce,” Bezanis wrote in his online plea for donations to place the billboard.
Two days after starting a GoFundMe campaign online, Bezanis had raised well over $1,000. He needs $5,000 to pay for a piece of prime billboard real estate -- a sign on I-95 near the Center City exit -- for four weeks, beginning soon.
“Welcome to Philadelphia, where we don’t value our public school children,” the billboard would read. It would include photos of School Reform Commissioner Bill Green, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr., and Kenney.
Hite and the SRC are naturals, Bezanis said. But Bezanis said he holds Kenney just as responsible. The mayor recently said he would not seek any significant new tax increases this year. With Republicans firmly in power in Harrisburg and firmly opposed to significant new money for Philadelphia, that leaves the city to help get the contract settled, Bezanis said.
“The only thing that could possibly help us solve our budgetary crisis was if Kenney was going to get some money,” Bezanis said. “He‘s billed himself as a public education person, and he needs to be called out on it.”
The School District, while in relatively healthy financial shape at the moment, projects Teacher plans to shame mayor, SRC, superintendent with I-95 billboard:
