A new report by the U.S. Census Bureau found that voter turnout in the 2014 congressional elections was at an all-time low. The turnout rate of 41.9 percent was the lowest since the bureau started collecting voter participation data in 1978.
How low can voter turnout go? Well, in the birthplace of our democracy, a special election took place last week and hardly any voters showed up. The winners received a combined total of 6,185 votes.
Tuesday is Election Day in Philly. For the Philadelphia School District, it’s Groundhog Dog. The school district is facing yet another budget crisis. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:
The city charter requires the school district to adopt its budget by May 30, but funding from the city and state are a giant question mark at this point, leading to the possibility that the district might violate the charter and go past its deadline for the second straight year.
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In a similar situation last year, the SRC [School Reform Commission] opted to wait until receiving assurances from Council on a sales tax extension and other measures before passing a budget in late June. Green predicted that Council and the mayor would agree on a short term fix to help close the district’s $85 million projected deficit while they wait on the state, but no one knows for sure.
According to a recent poll, education is the most important issue for Philly voters.
Still, City Council ain’t got time for education. They’ll deal with the school budget deficit when they get around to it. In the meantime, Council is scheduled to vote on a bill sponsored by Councilman Bobby Henon that would authorize the Commissioner of Public Property to spend up to $7.26 million to acquire the land to build a prison. The bill was introduced on April 30 and referred to the Committee on Public Property and Public Works, which Henon chairs. A Council rule was suspended to allow for a vote on the bill on Thursday.
Why the rush? The price tag for the proposed prison is between $300 million and $500 million. The proposed prison is just that – a proposal by lame-duck Mayor Michael Nutter.
The new mayor will have the final say on spending priorities. In response to Decarcerate PA’s mayoral candidate survey, Jim Kenney, the likely next mayor, said he will not move forward on Nutter’s plan to expand the Philadelphia Prison System. He supports a moratorium on the construction of new jails and detention centers.
Get this: Henon said he found the condition of the House of Correction “deplorable.” Has he taken a tour of our public schools? Students are trapped in 100-year-old buildings without librarians, school nurses, guidance counselors or air conditioning.
900AM-WURD host Solomon Jones has been sounding the alarm about the new prison. Jones was the keynote speaker at the school district’s Family Education Summit:
I’m trying to tell you about principles. The only thing that stands between our kids and that prison is us. City Council has its priorities. Our priorities are these kids.
Jones continued:
They know where that $300 million is coming from, but they don’t know where the money is coming from to close the school district’s $85 million deficit. We must make sure their priorities line up with ours. … The bottom line: If you have $300 million for a prison, then you have $85 million for the schools. Take it from the Capital Budget if you have to, but do what you have to do to fund our schools. ... Vote on Tuesday, and then whoever doesn’t do what’s right by our schools, vote them out.
Doing what’s right means stopping Philly’s school to prison pipeline. City Council and the next mayor must be held accountable. To do so, we must turn Election Day into Accountability Day.
The Knight Foundation issued an open call for ideas on how to get more Americans involved in their communities so that they will have a voice in local, state and national issues. I answered the call and submitted an idea to increase Millennials’ interest in elections, boost voter turnout and jump-start civic participation.
Some background. Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 have the lowest turnout. In Philadelphia, Millennials are not targeted for voter outreach because they are “inactive” (meaning they have not voted in five years or are not registered to vote).
With the cutback in civic education in the schools and no targeted outreach, it’s not surprising that Millennials are not showing up on Election Day. In 2014, turnout for Pennsylvania’s competitive gubernatorial race was 36 percent. That was Philadelphia’s lowest citywide turnout in a midterm election since 1998. By one estimate, youth turnout was 20 percent, the worst turnout in a midterm election since 1940.
The takeaway of the 2008 and 2012 elections is that young people will turn out if they are the target of voter education initiatives. But the dirty little secret about voting is that incumbents have a vested interest in keeping the electorate small. Philly’s political machine spends few, if any, resources encouraging new voters to get involved. The lack of information and the city’s archaic ward system are barriers to participation.
Yo! Philly Votes will bridge the information gap. Our mobile app will provide a calendar of nonpartisan candidate and policy forums, and an Election Day incident reporting tool. The flattening of newsrooms means there are fewer journalists to report on what’s happening at polling places. So we will crowdsource election protection.
It’s said that “blues ain’t nothing but a botheration on your mind.” I’m bothered that developers are erasing African Americans’ cultural heritage.
In Philadelphia, developers routinely – and without notice – build in front of or demolish murals that are paid for in part by City taxpayers.
Murals are part of Philadelphia’s cultural fabric. The Mural Arts Program creates murals that engage the community. They reflect a community’s history, identity, hopes and dreams.
City Council members can use Councilmanic Prerogative to require that developers of publicly-subsidized projects replace murals of social or cultural significance. Who will determine which mural meets that threshold? Let’s stipulate that murals that tell stories about events or persons who are the subject of books, songs, documentaries, national holiday, or City and congressional resolutions are culturally significant.
The how of replacement is negotiable. What is non-negotiable is that developers can erase African Americans’ cultural heritage because, to borrow a phrase from Al Gore, there is “no controlling legal authority.” A Council member is the controlling legal authority in his or her district. He or she decides which projects go forward and which ones go nowhere. While developers view murals as disposable, Council members must exercise their prerogative and demand that they respect that which came before.
If you are concerned about cultural heritage preservation, get involved with Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC) Committee on Arts and Culture, which I chair. For more information, call ATAC at (215) 552-8785.
For updates, follow #BlackCultureMatters on Twitter.
Last week was D-Day for the School Reform Commission. On Feb. 18, the SRC held a public hearing at which it would decide the fate of 39 applicants for new charter schools. I arrived 45 minutes before the hearing was scheduled to begin. After a 15-minute wait in the bitter cold, I was let inside 440 N. Broad and directed to go to Room 1075, the “overflow room.”
I’m an art lover. The school district headquarters is full of art but it’s a joyless and soulless space. Room 1075 is a room with a view of the blues. So after a few minutes, I left and viewed the proceedings via livestream. I’m glad I did. Between the scheduled speakers and the unscheduled outbursts, the meeting lasted five hours.
When it was over, the SRC voted to approve five of the 39 applications. The SRC approved three-year charters (rather than the usual five-year agreement) with conditions for Independence Charter West, KIPP Dubois, Mastery Gillespie, MaST-Roosevelt and TECH Freire. The five schools represent 2,684 new charter seats. But coupled with the abrupt closure of Walter Palmer Leadership Learning Partners Charter and Wakisha Charter School, and the expected closure of underperforming schools, there’s no net gain in the number of charter seats.
Still, the SRC is catching flak from both sides. Gov. Tom Wolf said in a statement:
The Wolf Administration continues to believe that the district’s financial situation cannot responsibility handle the approval of new charter schools. Governor Wolf remains committed to restoring cuts and delivering more funding to public schools across the commonwealth to ensure our children have the resources necessary to succeed.
More funding for Philly schools may be a casualty of the SRC vote. Pennsylvania Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Turzai said he’s “disappointed” the SRC didn’t approve more applications:
If they’re not going to provide the charter schools for the parents and grandparents that want them, I think that negates the discussion [charter reimbursement budget line item].
The rejected applicants have 60 days to appeal the decision to the state Charter Appeal Board. Meanwhile, charter expansion critics are appealing to parents to stick with traditional public schools “for the greater good.” Please. What parent chooses a school based on the needs of other people’s children?
Charter critics invoke the old chestnut that if you can’t save every child, then no parent should have the option to choose their child’s school. Instead, their child must stay trapped in schools without librarians, nurses and guidance counselors.
It’s crazy to argue that parents should keep their child in a failing school because “all children” do not have options. Parents want what’s best for their child. They do not stand in loco parentis for all children. Try disciplining someone’s child and see what happens.
Let activists, teachers unions, elected officials and others fight over delivery systems. In the birthplace of our democracy, parents on charter school waiting lists want the freedom to choose the best educational option for their child.
In the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, there’s little love for the Philadelphia School District and the School Reform Commission.
When the school district and SRC are not rattling the cup, they’re rattling people’s nerves. The SRC got on my last nerve when it approved the sale of William Penn High School for pennies on the dollar. A school district that’s too broke to pay attention left $17 million on the table.
Within days of signing off on the sweetheart deal, school officials were in Harrisburg lobbying for a $2-per-pack cigarette tax. They said without more money, the schools would not open on time.
As they say, be careful what you ask for. The cigarette tax was passed. Tucked inside the bill was an amendment that required the school district to accept applications for new charter schools. No new charters have been authorized since 2007.
The school district received 4039 applications for new charters.The SRC has scheduled a special meeting for Feb. 18 to vote on all 39 applications.
Meanwhile, a group of teachers, educators, parents and community activists is circulating an open letter to “stop the 40 charters” on the grounds that “opening more charters is not a sensible option for our already cash-starved district.” They added:
While there seems to be no panacea for the amalgamation of social issues that affect children’s school experiences, increasing the number of charter schools, and thus, competition, in education does not help to solve any of our city’s problems.
Out of the blue, Mark Gleason, executive director of the Philadelphia School Partnership, made an offer he hopes the “cash-starved” district could not refuse: $25 million to approve up to 15,000 new charter seats. PSP offered an additional $10 million to cover stranded costs. Gleason said in a statement:
We have been listening to the concerns of education stakeholders, parents and public officials about the potential financial impact of charter expansion on District schools and students. We agree that financial impact is an important consideration, and it has become clear that cost concerns are hindering the SRC from making decisions about the charter applications in the best interest of kids and families who are eager for a new opportunity to attend a great school.
The best way to ensure that the SRC can make decisions based solely on the merits of these applications – and give more students access to a high-quality education – is to help the District manage the stranded costs associated with charter expansion.
Critics accuse PSP of fuzzy math. They District spokesman Fernando Gallard said “half a billion dollars is not off the mark.”
The stranded costs issue was on the agenda at the Amplify School Choice conference. Prof. Benjamin Scafidi, a senior fellow with the Freidman Foundation for Educational Choice, said don’t believe the hype:
All costs are either fixed or variable. ... When they [school districts] say they can’t lose any more students, they’re saying all their costs are fixed.
The mayoral race is the backdrop to the charter expansion drama. Putative frontrunner Anthony Williams said in a statement:
The school district needs more funding, and Philadelphia public school students will benefit from those additional dollars, especially as they do not draw from additional school resources. We must ensure that the funding stream is revenue-neutral or net-positive, and three years may not be enough time. We must also couple these funds with reinstating the charter reimbursement and a fair funding formula to get the resources we need for every student and put the district in better fiscal shape going forward.
Mayoral candidate Jim Kenney says PSP’s money is tainted and taint enough:
Our school district should not accept PSP's $25 million. Not only does that offer cover a fraction of the nearly $500 million required to enroll just 15,000 more students in charters, but the donations come from unnamed millionaires who already have far too great an influence in our upcoming mayoral election.
For the school district and SRC, “it’s like the more money [they] come across, the more problems [they] see.”
