Posted on 04/19/2002 6:41:34 PM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK
P H I L A D E L P H I A, April 19 — Hundreds of disenchanted teachers are preparing to flee 70 city schools that are to be privatized or otherwise transformed under sweeping reforms planned for the fall, union officials said Friday.
Twenty teachers at the Luis Munoz-Marin School asked for transfers after learning the elementary school would be handed over to a for-profit company, Edison Schools Inc. Another 416 in the system have filed for retirement about a third more than usual.
Jerry Jordan, vice president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, predicted many more will follow suit by the start of the new school year.
"We have been getting an overwhelming number of calls from teachers who are concerned about being able to transfer out of schools being privatized," Jordan said. "They are totally demoralized."
On Wednesday, the city's School Reform Commission said it would privatize 42 of the district's 264 schools and turn them over to nonprofit groups, universities and three for-profit companies, including Edison.
The plan also calls for nine failing schools to be operated by community groups as charter or independent schools. Another 19 would be "reconstituted" which in the past has meant a purge of top administrators and most of a school's teachers.
Many teachers believe the education companies will cut programs and trim staff to make troubled schools profitable. Teachers also argued this week that many of the targeted schools don't deserve to be on the city's takeover list, despite low student test scores.
Joyce Paige, a learning coordinator at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School, said teachers there have already implemented reforms that have made the school into one of the best in the district even though it is in one of the city's poorest areas.
"As far as we are concerned, reconstitution means we didn't do our job. And that is not true," Paige said. "They never came to see what this school was like. They don't know what an excellent staff we have, or how dedicated we are."
The changes are also being made over the objections of Mayor John F. Street, who lost control of the district during a state takeover in December.
Philadelphia's school system, the nation's seventh-largest, has 265 schools and more than 200,000 students and a budget of $1.7 billion. The majority of its students score in the bottom quarter on state reading and math tests and the district has predicted a budget shortfall this year of $107 million.
And that's a bad thing?
A public school in Philadelphia named for the former governor of Puerto Rico???!!!
DITTO !!
Ummm...yes. That is a bad thing! .... For unions. Less slush cash for the coffers. All in all, a very bad thing to lose dues paying members. You did notice they didn't mention that it was particularly bad for the kids.
What a shame.
Buh Bye, guys. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Okay. I like to do the math. The math says that Philadelphia's school system spends $8,100+ per student.
And these are the results:
The majority of its students score in the bottom quarter on state reading and math tests and the district has predicted a budget shortfall this year of $107 million.
And this pathetic pack of teachers union scum has the gall to insist on keeping the status quo?
These crybabies should get "transferred" right out of their jobs.
Rats leaving the sinking ship.....
Note also the budget numbers: $1.7 billion annually, for 200,000 students, um..... let's see, carry the seven, .... um, $8500/student/year spent by the Philly school system. Guess they can't blame their poor performance on a lack of funding, can they?
We home school three kids ... 11th grade, 5th grade and second grade. One is already out of school and on her own.
When we started, about seven or eight years ago, it cost us about 4 or 5 hundred bucks per.
Now, because of the internet and various homeschool groups, I think our cost is about a hundred each. Most of that is paper, ink and two scanners/copiers a year.
I want my reparations!!!!
They are demoralized by the reform and NOT by the dismal failure of the system they are now a part of??
Well it's apparent that being dedicated means ZILCH as far as performance is concerned.. AND they are totally disillusioned if they believe they have an excellent staff .. apparently NOT!
Looks like the plan is working straight away. I would like to see this and similar approaches spead throughout the country. It is unfortunate that things have to get SOOOO bad, that the incompetents ruin the lives of so many, before corrective action is demanded by the public. Here in Kalifornia the downward spiral has been under way for at least twenty years. Education has movbed from substantial subjects (e.g. the three R's and the sciences) to social indoctrination. High school graduates can't tell you what twenty percent of one hundred is, but they are sure that we should'nt drill in ANWR. It's just despicable.
The school system here is VERY well funded. But many schools are in disrepair and ill-equipped. Many teachers are unqualified and under-payed. A large and growiung share of funding goes to the large and growing staff middle managers. And these are the ones who are defining the socialist curriculum. And when test scores shine light on the problem, their answer is to "dumb down" the tests (under some murky logic about differences in cultures affecting performance, blah blah blah). Oh, students have great self-esteem, but they don't know how to think. As a hiring manager I see this ALL the time. It's going to take a lot to turn this mess around. Competition (against the government schools)in the education business is a must.
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