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Old 07-10-2014, 08:09 PM
 
Location: Montgomery County, PA
16,563 posts, read 15,124,541 times
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It is sad that they can come up with $3.7 billion overnight for people who just showed up at the door but Philadelphia has to scrounge $2 here and there to keep the schools running.
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Old 07-11-2014, 08:58 AM
 
Location: New York City
1,943 posts, read 1,469,966 times
Reputation: 3316
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyRider View Post
It is sad that they can come up with $3.7 billion overnight for people who just showed up at the door but Philadelphia has to scrounge $2 here and there to keep the schools running.
Last I checked it was the local and state government's job to fund education, not the feds. The last thing you want is the feds throwing you money and grabbing influence.

Lets be honest here people. The main reason Philadelphia's schools suck is far beyond just funding. It serves kids who come from poverty stricken homes where their parents don't care, violence is normal, and education isn't valued. You can throw all the money you want at the problem, but it won't fix the underlying cause.
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Old 07-11-2014, 02:28 PM
 
Location: back in Philadelphia!
3,263 posts, read 5,623,357 times
Reputation: 2120
Quote:
Originally Posted by MB1562 View Post
Last I checked it was the local and state government's job to fund education, not the feds. The last thing you want is the feds throwing you money and grabbing influence.

Lets be honest here people. The main reason Philadelphia's schools suck is far beyond just funding. It serves kids who come from poverty stricken homes where their parents don't care, violence is normal, and education isn't valued. You can throw all the money you want at the problem, but it won't fix the underlying cause.
The schools can't suck or be decent if they can't stay open for lack of funds.
Whether it's honest or not, blaming kids or their parents for their poverty and its associated culture is a dead end argument, and kind of a societal cop-out IMO. We owe it to ourselves to provide functional schools for our upcoming and future generations.

I do agree that getting the federal government involved is the totally wrong approach, and that the best solutions should be as close to local as possible. People need to have some skin in the game.
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Old 07-11-2014, 08:22 PM
 
Location: Philly
10,220 posts, read 16,729,984 times
Reputation: 2971
Quote:
Originally Posted by MB1562 View Post
Last I checked it was the local and state government's job to fund education, not the feds. The last thing you want is the feds throwing you money and grabbing influence.

Lets be honest here people. The main reason Philadelphia's schools suck is far beyond just funding. It serves kids who come from poverty stricken homes where their parents don't care, violence is normal, and education isn't valued. You can throw all the money you want at the problem, but it won't fix the underlying cause.
why do schools in chestnut hill suck? of course it isn't just lack of funds but the way the schools are run the PSD tries to spread the cancer evenly to chase out as many good kids and parents as possible. The city needs to step up, fund the district, and run it to improve education not drive out whitey as was done for years.

Last edited by pman; 07-11-2014 at 08:52 PM..
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Old 07-11-2014, 10:09 PM
 
Location: Montgomery County, PA
16,563 posts, read 15,124,541 times
Reputation: 14584
Quote:
Originally Posted by MB1562 View Post
Last I checked it was the local and state government's job to fund education, not the feds. The last thing you want is the feds throwing you money and grabbing influence.
I agree but it's a bit too late. ED has 5000 employees, none of them teachers. They spend $70 billion, with a b, a year. I would gladly kick them out of local education if they return the money.
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Old 09-23-2014, 08:33 AM
 
Location: Center City
7,528 posts, read 10,192,212 times
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Round 2: Pa. House passes cigarette tax, next up is state Senate
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Old 09-23-2014, 10:29 AM
 
178 posts, read 256,640 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by luv4horses View Post
Statistically, people with smaller incomes smoke more than people who earn more.
Statistically, people that smoke are poor.

Statistically, the smoking poor can only afford to put their kids into Philly schools.

Statistically, the very people that are utterly horrible at being parents, that spawned the brats that need a permanent police force in the schools, are now the ones paying for that police force.

That sounds as fair as it gets.
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Old 09-23-2014, 11:14 AM
 
154 posts, read 213,829 times
Reputation: 150
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leon2014 View Post
Statistically, people that smoke are poor.

Statistically, the smoking poor can only afford to put their kids into Philly schools.

Statistically, the very people that are utterly horrible at being parents, that spawned the brats that need a permanent police force in the schools, are now the ones paying for that police force.

That sounds as fair as it gets.
Philadelphia's poor don't generally live near the edges of the city, either, so they're not going to suburbs for cartons.

Plus, some people will never give it up. I hear them say "I used to do this and that, and I gave it all up. At least let me have my smokes."
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Old 09-23-2014, 11:33 AM
 
154 posts, read 213,829 times
Reputation: 150
Quote:
Originally Posted by pman View Post
why do schools in chestnut hill suck? of course it isn't just lack of funds but the way the schools are run the PSD tries to spread the cancer evenly to chase out as many good kids and parents as possible. The city needs to step up, fund the district, and run it to improve education not drive out whitey as was done for years.
1964 - Fifty (50) years ago PSD half white & half black. We didn't really have any sizeable Asian or Latino residents to speak of at the time, but I see your point. People from all walks of life avoid the public schools here. Immigrants are warned not to live here or have to fight their way into the schools, such as the Liberians in SW Philly.

It's actually a shame for the people who AREN'T poor who live here.

It would really help if the city would collect the $400 + million in outstanding property taxes. But I guess most of that would get pocketed somewhere along the line like a lot of the other dough.
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Old 09-23-2014, 01:59 PM
 
712 posts, read 695,565 times
Reputation: 1258
Quote:
Originally Posted by pman View Post
why do schools in chestnut hill suck? of course it isn't just lack of funds but the way the schools are run the PSD tries to spread the cancer evenly to chase out as many good kids and parents as possible. The city needs to step up, fund the district, and run it to improve education not drive out whitey as was done for years.
Jenks doesn't suck. However, it has long had far too many black students for the comfort of all but a small number of white families in the area. The district has tried everything it can think of over the years to attract white families, up to and including operating a magnet school with higher per student spending within Jenks back in the 1980s. However, as has been the experience at Jenks and at schools all over the US, once the tipping point is reached demographically it's almost impossible to reverse the trend.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fern Rock View Post
1964 - Fifty (50) years ago PSD half white & half black. We didn't really have any sizeable Asian or Latino residents to speak of at the time, but I see your point. People from all walks of life avoid the public schools here. Immigrants are warned not to live here or have to fight their way into the schools, such as the Liberians in SW Philly.

It's actually a shame for the people who AREN'T poor who live here.

It would really help if the city would collect the $400 + million in outstanding property taxes. But I guess most of that would get pocketed somewhere along the line like a lot of the other dough.
50 years ago half of the high school students in the city attended Catholic schools and nearly half of all 1 - 8 students were in Catholic schools. Whites would have otherwise been far more than half of the district's enrollment at that time. People have been sorting themselves along lines of income, ethnicity and race in city schools for a very long time.

Also, 50 years ago the district under court order began ending its de facto segregation policies. It stopped doing things such as drawing school catchment boundaries to match residential redlining patterns. The district's efforts to comply with court ordered desegregation has a lot to do with why the district has its current demographics.

Setting aside the current financial crisis for the moment, city residents who aren't poor have had generally better access to good public options than low-income families. They make up the bulk of the enrollment at the special admission schools and the charters that have predominantly middle-class enrollment. the proliferation of special admission schools that began in the 1960s was designed precisely for the purpose of keeping those families in the city. Middle-income families are much better prepared to navigate the school admission and selection process at the higher-income charters and special admission schools and the enrollment demographics of those schools reflect the fact. Those families are also the ones who have options such as moving to the suburbs. My point isn't that middle-income families don't deserve to have good schools, it's that they aren't the ones most negatively affected by the challenges the district faces.

The lowest income families, especially those with children who have special needs or who are learning English, are the ones for whom the situation is most bleak.

Yes the city needs to do a better job of collecting property taxes though my understanding is that the actual amount of money that we can realistically expect to recover is far less than $400 million.

Last edited by BR Valentine; 09-23-2014 at 02:33 PM..
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