At n+1, Full Stop founding editor Jesse Montgomery has a long, detailed, and outstanding essay on the massive budget cuts and attempted privatization of the Philadelphia public school system.
From his essay “On Philly Schools,”
The immediate question was whether what remained after the thousands of cuts could really be considered “schools.” Before casting the sole dissenting vote, Commissioner Dworetzky stated that “wherever the line falls between a school and not a school, what’s being proposed here is very close to the line.” But the question was treated as academic. His fellow four commissioners cited their legal obligation to approve a budget before May 31 and voted yes. One week later, it was announced that layoff notices were being sent to 3,783 district employees.
The budget vote was only the latest blow to Philadelphia’s public education system, whose schools have bled from cuts for generations, and was hit especially hard this past year. Just two months earlier, in April, the SRC had voted to close twenty-four of the city’s public schools, a decision that is anticipated to dislocate over 14,000 students this fall and funnel them in to new, now dramatically understaffed, buildings. As schools open this week, many students will be forced to attend school in unfamiliar neighborhoods. The potential for gang violence and turf feuds is expected to escalate with the influx of unfamiliar faces. And with so many neighborhood schools closing, parents worry about longer walks for their young children, walks of up to two miles in the dark before school. Unsurprisingly, the closures affect economically vulnerable and minority students almost exclusively: 81 percent of students in now-closed schools are black, 93 percent come from low-income households.
Nothing is ever truly settled (or beyond further degradation) in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP), but the budget vote carried with it a grim sense of finality. The argument behind the closings is that these schools were underutilized, expensive to maintain, and academically underperforming. Their closure was framed as a sacrifice for the sake of the district. But it is overwhelmingly young people of color, and those who work in their schools, who will bear the brunt of these closings and witness the worst effects of the budget cuts. Over the last six months, the SDP and the state of Pennsylvania have decided, again and again, that this is acceptable.
You can read the rest of the essay here.
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