Back in my hometown, it looks like charter school reforms are having their intended effect:
Facing a still-massive deficit, the Philadelphia School District will not open on time unless it has assurance by Aug. 16 that it will receive $50 million from the city, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said Thursday. Hite said the district would postpone the scheduled Sept. 9 opening of 212 district schools, open just a few, or operate them on half-day schedules because of the financial crisis that led to the layoffs of nearly 4,000 employees.
… Faced with what was then a $304 million deficit, in June, the district had asked for $60 million in additional money from the city and $120 million from the state, with the rest to come from savings from union concessions.
The bailout package hashed out in Harrisburg contained little new state money, but could provide as much as $140 million for the schools, including funds from the city’s borrowing, revenue from improved city tax collections, and one-time $45 million grant from the state.
To be clear, there is little new state money because Republicans in Harrisburg want the savings to come almost exclusively from union concessions. Nothing short of breaking the teachers union is acceptable; the welfare of the kids aren’t really the issue.
Of course, the Philadelphia School District has been in almost perpetual financial crisis since the white flight of the 1960s hollowed out the property tax base in much of the city. I grew up just outside the city limits, and when I was a student in the 1970s, my affluent suburban school district spent twice as much per student than was spent on the kids on the other side of City Line Avenue.
But the magnitude of this current disaster is entirely intentional. Everything that can be done to undermine the school district has been done. If only the city could be drowned by hurricane, the education reform agenda would be complete.
Makes Seattle look like a paradise by comparison, doesn’t it?