I'm feeling really good about the direction our city is going in with public education under our Mayor Jim Kenney. He campaigned to invest in community and schools and has done so with the community school model. He also campaigned to dissolve the School Reform Commission and turn our schools over to local control. So what does local control look like for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania?
I asked several residents of our city and public school advocates to get a take on what they would like to see in local control of our schools.
An elected school board is the only way to go. People should be discussing the mechanism for that though. How do we get a school board that reflects each community?
One proposal I’ve made at meetings is that, since the School District is divided into Districts, why not have a member on the School Board elected by each district in an election. This way we can get a school board reflective of the different communities in the city.
Ken
thanks, i feel like an elected school board would bring more corruption to our schools.
Alicia
No system of democracy is perfect but democracy is the best. A mayoral appointed school board would be very corrupt with special interests like in Chicago. If each member of the School Board were closer to their community and elected just by that community, there would be more accountability, people would get more involved, and the School Board members would have to pay attention to their community.
Ken
you have a point there, but back when we had local control without an elected board we had great public schools that needed resources and trained professionals. just see elected boards as another avenue for corruption when we can hold people accountable without being in often ugly costly elections. look at the games being played on us all for a dollar.
Alicia
Alicia
Historically public schools have been operated by publicly elected school boards who hire a superintendent to manage the operations of the district. Lately as part of technocratic, top down accountability, states have been taking over school districts. It has never worked. Public oversight by a local school board ensures that local citizens have democratic control. State takeovers impose overseers from above to manage the schools. With state control, powerful interests from outside the community can impose their will, and local citizens have no recourse---no check and balance on outside power. Too often such takeovers occur in black and brown communities. Think Flint’s water and Detroit’s schools. Democracy is not perfect, but a locally elected board of education ensures that local citizens can exert public oversight over the schools that serve the children.
Jan Resseger
Here are blog posts I’ve written on this subject: https://janresseger.wordpress.
by having an election for the school board that would give the people in the community a voice.
Retired Educator
we have low voter turnout and corporate America tend to take over political races.
Alicia
the people that don't vote are the problem.
Retired Educator
the people running for office is the problem why people don't vote.
Alicia
1. i trust our Mayor Jim Kenney when addressing great schools in our communities. Mayor Jim Kenney was born and raised in Philadelphia and brings to the Mayor's office pride in our city. Pride that invest in our city future with resources in our schools that also connect to our community members who may not have families in schools. No more turning communities into desert storms with the dismantling of public education under the direction of Mayor Kenney. Our schools can be great like they were under the direction of the Great Constance Clayton who was appointed by the Mayor. Mayor Kenney is planning to get community input on the issue of local control, please make sure your voice is heard.
2. Dark Money controls politics and have a interest in controlling our schools. How are we dissolving the School Reform Commission to end the privatization of our public schools and yet giving corporate America the vessel that they own aka elected school boards as an option to stop the corporate take overs of our schools.
3. We can't get people to elect judges on the ballot, now we want to add a school board to an already low voter turnout on crucial issues. Not to mention not all voters have children in public schools aka interest in what's best in our public schools.
Please add your voice to this conversation!!
Decrease in Voters Voting
http://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-voter-turnout-municipal-elections.html
Jeannine Missaoui here is my response: "The City of Philadelphia needs FULL control of our schools, with adequate citizen oversight and to be able to exclude a majority of state or lobbyist influence upon our policy, our curricula, our finance. This should be accomplished by referendum whenever possible so that the citizens have full control of what their children experience. There should be NO state or lobby denying our access to any portion of education. We also need to jettison the political sideshoots in this department so that it is about education and education alone, NOT a means of funding, obfuscating or adding lard with only vaguely related or totally unrelated operations. Charter schools cost too much, are rarely held to the same standards, are political money machines and dilute funding for fully public education and should be phased out, as they do not demonstrate any particular advantage to the majority. Our PTA should have members touring the local civic, CDC's and RCO's not be a semi private membership where the public knows little of school operations."
ReplyDelete