Philadelphia Schools Budget Crisis : Philadelphia School Program

The states need to look at themselves on how they will be able to fix the dilemma of education within their districts. With pressure from the federal level, education leaders at the state level try to overhaul their schools with the approach of looking at individual failing schools instead of the issues across their districts. As long as a state remains focused on the wrong issues, schools will fail and those that are deemed as making yearly progress will only continue to

Since last spring, Philadelphia school district leaders have been sounding the alarm about this year’s fiscal budget. Even after months of discussions and headlines, schools have opened with fewer resources than last year. On March 28th the School Reform Commission approved a lump sum budget which showed a need for an additional $220 million in revenue in order to provide schools with same resources as the “wholly insufficient” 2013-14 school year (McCorry). There will be many inadequate funding impacts on the quality of the education. Classroom resources would be stripped to untenable levels. The district would reduce as much as $2.2 million funding to the districts’ multiple pathways to graduation program which affects estimated 300 students. Another $1.5 million could be reduced from the elimination of preparation and professional development time for teachers at the district’s high needs promise academies. The district’s building maintenance budget could have reduction in amount of $9.6 million. Schools will be cleaned less frequently as a result. Building maintenance will also be curtailed as a result. District’s school police budget could also have reduction in amount of $2.4 million. School police officer vacancies will be unfilled, leaving an additional 27 elementary schools to share an officer.

“Shrinking state and local education budgets matched with the added pressure of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which sets rigid standards in reading and math that schools must achieve in order to receive federal funding, have created a new challenge for districts” (Van Harken).

Matthew Countryman, in this chapter, showed how the Black Power movement in Philadelphia was successfully able to challenge the Board of Education and bring about some changes in community schools. He also discussed how the violence that occurred in the late 1960s was not just a result of black radical activism but also the result of white support for institutional racism. Countryman provided pictorial and, most likely, scholarly evidence to back up his claim. The pictorial evidence he provided was a picture of high school students on their way to the Board of Education during the mass student protest that took place on the 17th of November 1967. He cited a lot of his sources and although I was unable to peruse his bibliography, I think, based on the level of detail in the chapter, that he must have had scholarly sources like newspapers reports (on page 232, he mentioned the Greater Philadelphia Magazine) and historical documents.

Teachers, lose their jobs because of government wanting to replace these classes. Evidence supporting this claims is an article called “Decreasing public high school”, by Grace Chen. Sources also state that the less teacher, the less we learn. Now if one teacher leaves, they all leave, and then we’ll end up with “0” teachers!! I support this because lots of the articles i’ve read they say the same thing.

We would all like to think that schools are going to educate every child and expect them to bring every child to high standards of performance. Until fairly recently it was a permissible practice to reserve the most qualified teachers for those schools serving high-achieving, affluent, college-bound students who were believed to hold the greatest promise of success. Holding school districts accountable for improving the performance of all schools and all students might well require that resources, both human and financial, be allocated according to greatest need (ca.gov). This notion presents a challenge to public

Budget cuts cause many conflicts throughout the nation. Philadelphia school district have many high budget cuts. A budget cut is when the government is not giving the district enough money and instead takes money. So, the district ends up with millions of dollars in debt and with nothing to help support the free public schools. The schools in Pennsylvania have gotten much worse as the years have gone by and it keeps digging into the ground. It seems almost impossible to rise from this debt and huge hole we have fallen into but there is always a solution. Many schools have over 35 students in their classrooms. Not enough teachers for every subject. Are we being fooled when getting our money taken away by taxes claiming it's for the district? If not, then why hasn't the school system improved one bit instead of having

These numbers show clearly how unfair Pennsylvania’s school funding is. School income shapes the students’ success, and without enough resources this goal cannot be met.

The current sanctions placed on the York City School District by the Pennsylvania Department of Education have intrigued me since the day I started working at Jackson Elementary there three years ago. YCSD ranked 490th out of 496th school districts in the state of Pennsylvania in 2015. Last school year they did not improve as expected, according to the latest reports just released by the State Department of Education. The district has some goals to meet, which include cutting in half the gap between the district’s reading and math Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) scores and the state average, as well as cutting the gap between the district’s third grade reading scores and the state average.

In today’s society, children attaining an education has become a very important essential in life. Most children in the United States of America attend public schools, due to the fact that parents do not have to pay for tuition. Public schools face many dilemmas and one of the most detrimental is budget cuts. Since public schools are often underfunded and “influenced by political winds and shortfalls”, it makes them quite vulnerable (Shortt 62). Due to budget cuts, schools agree to sponsor brands in order to gain funds. When schools agree to sponsor companies, not only does it harm children physically and mentally, it also distracts students from their goals in school. Companies care more about selling their products than the children’s welfare.

People tend to blame the government for the Educational systems budget cuts. Throughout the years there simply is not enough money to go around to meet the demand of the school system. The ones that are suffering the most are the staff and the students. The government has been trying to figure out ways each year to support the educational budget. Budget cuts are not only affecting teachers but it is also affecting class sizes, school supplies, and after-school programs.

they must be reinvented. It is not enough to try to fix the schools; they must

In a regular company, the store must produce what the consumers’ want if they want to generate a profit and continue to stay in business; the consumers normally hold all of the power. Schools, however, are not getting their money or power from their consumers so they have no need to please the consumers and better their product. That type of system takes away the power from the consumer, which is vital for improvement, because without it the producers have no incentive to change their ways. We can recognize this is true due to the fact that there has been little change in the way we have taught school in the last 100 years. The workers are not at fault, the institution is. The institution has made it difficult for teachers to perform well because the institution has no need to be innovative so they don’t encourage or reward teachers for coming up with better and more efficient ways to teach. Public schools feel no need to improve because they will receive enough funding to keep the school running no matter their performance. Giving schools more money based on the school’s grades has given some incentives to the schools, but seeing as that this money is not taken as a profit, the incentive is not truly there

Many people believe that just aimlessly supplying school districts with funding is the same thing as equal opportunity for education, when in many ways it is not. An unqualified teacher cannot be giving more tools to teach if they themselves cannot teach. As important as funding is to impoverished school districts, when it comes to education, it is the ability of the teacher to connect to the students and relay the information in an effective and engaging manner that makes the difference. Once school administrators are aware of this, they can begin creating stricter guidelines for teachers so that not only are teachers more motivated

When analyzing the problem with college students and their lack of vocabulary there are noticeable problems with the attrition rate, percent in reduction, of teachers due to either retiring, stopping teaching, or transferring to other schools. When teachers stop teaching, it greatly impacts the students who lose the ability to be taught by experienced teachers. This impacts the education high school students receive. According to Alliance for Excellent Education, “…the single most important factor in determining student performance is the quality of his or her teachers” (Issue Brief 1). If the quality of the teacher is the most important factor in a students education shouldn’t states and school districts focus attention on helping new teachers stay teaching and become experienced rather than spending money to hire and re-train new teachers every year? Since experienced teachers are not teaching students the results are detrimental on high school graduates. “Only about 30 percent of high school students read proficiently, and more than a quarter read