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Anyone who thinks this tax is going to generate 85 million, is very foolish. Like others have said, people who have cars, are going to drive 5 to 10 minutes and buy them in the suburbs. As far as the people who think that the poor will make up the difference, they have no ideal how things work in the so called hood. You are going to have a black market in the poor areas. Guys are going to buy cigarettes in the suburbs and sell them in Philly and make a dollar on a pack. Even now the poor don't buy packs, the stores and the hustlers sells them singles.Which is illegal, but law enforcement are too busy dealing with real crime.
Jenks may not be the worst school but it's not a good school but it's run by the psd which has a knack for turning things to ****.
Today only half of the PSD's budget actually goes to educating children which is the source of the crisis. Increasingly the the funding goes to retirees rather than students.
Jenks may not be the worst school but it's not a good school but it's run by the psd which has a knack for turning things to ****.
Today only half of the PSD's budget actually goes to educating children which is the source of the crisis. Increasingly the the funding goes to retirees rather than students.
So what makes Jenks a "not good" school? Can you provide an answer other than it's run by PSD so by definition it's bad?
The district was subject to a court order to desegregate and compliance was not optional. When black children were allowed to enroll at Jenks white families fled the school. As I mentioned the district has tried a variety of inducements to attract white students to Jenks over the years to no avail. Throughout the US most white families do not want their children in schools with significant black enrollment. Jenks is by no means an outlier in that regard.
So let's pretend that you are the district superintendent in the 1960s which is when Jenks' enrollment transitioned to majority black. You have an opportunity to change history and not allow things to "turn to ****". What would you have done while complying with the desegregation order that would have kept white families at Jenks?
You do realize that 50% of the district's budget consists of charter school payments, debt service and payments for out of district placements for severely disabled children, right? Between charter payments, the 50% of the budget that pays for enrollment in district run schools and the 5% of the budget for out of district placements, more than 50% of the total budget is spent on instruction.
Throughout the US most white families do not want their children in schools with significant black enrollment.
Do you think most decent black families want their children in schools with significant black enrolment?
It's not about skin color, it's about socio-economics. Most white and black families would not want to send their children to schools with significant poor white enrolment either.
Do you think most decent black families want their children in schools with significant black enrolment?
It's not about skin color, it's about socio-economics. Most white and black families would not want to send their children to schools with significant poor white enrolment either.
No, it's actually about race AND socio-economics.
School enrollment patterns are clear evidence that both income and race matter. White children are a plurality of total K - 12 population in the US yet most white children attend majority white schools. the more affluent a white child is the more likely the child is to attend a majority white school. Conversely black children are overwhelmingly likely to attend nearly all-black schools. In fact black children are more more likely today to attend an all-black school than was the case in 1960. Enrollment of black children in majority white schools has been steadily declining since the late 1980s. The pattern with hispanic children is similar though they are slightly less isolated in nearly all-hispanic schools than their black peers. In Philadelphia 90% of black children attend a school where 90% or more of the students are black and the same is true for hispanic students.
Jenks is a very good example of how race and income both matter and matter to different people in different ways. Jenks transition from majority-white to majority-black was very rapid. It happened over a roughly five year period between 1965 - 1970. Race was undeniably the triggering event causing the change from majority-white to majority-black during the 1960s. Black families began moving into a portion of Jenks' catchment and that led to white families moving out of the catchment or pulling their children from Jenks. The black families moving into the Jenks catchment were middle-class and were themselves looking to remove their children from all-black schools with less affluent black families than their own. The rapid departure of white families from the school opened up slots for additional black students to enroll from out of the catchment creating a cycle which ultimately led to a nearly all-black school in a majority white catchment. The out of catchment families weren't coming to Jenks from North Philly. They mostly lived in Cedarbrook and East Mt. Airy. They weren't poor, but they were black and they were less affluent than the white families they replaced.
Social values have changed in the intervening years. However something that hasn't changed is that once a school is majority black it is incredibly difficult to get white families to enroll their children at that school regardless of the black children's family income. White enrollment at Jenks has hovered between 8 - 15% for the past 35 years or so. The white children enrolled only stay through 4th grade though Jenks is a K - 8 school. The school has never succeeded at achieving a critical mass of white students large enough so that a larger portion of white families feel comfortable sending their children to school there. The exact same process has played out in uber liberal West Mt. Airy at Henry. Few white families in WMA send their kids to Henry and that's been true for decades.
I'll leave it to you to determine what constitutes a "decent" black family. Most black families don't have a choice as whether their children attend schools with significant black enrollment. The fact is that they disproportionately do. Facts are fun.
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.
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.
Catholics did not historically attend public schools. They had their own schools, which used to be free, so they would have no reason to attend public schools. Public schools back then were for Protestants, Jews, and Blacks. You can look up the 50-50 racial split in 1964. I got it from an old Bulletin Almanac.
School enrollment patterns are clear evidence that both income and race matter. White children are a plurality of total K - 12 population in the US yet most white children attend majority white schools. the more affluent a white child is the more likely the child is to attend a majority white school. Conversely black children are overwhelmingly likely to attend nearly all-black schools. In fact black children are more more likely today to attend an all-black school than was the case in 1960. Enrollment of black children in majority white schools has been steadily declining since the late 1980s. The pattern with hispanic children is similar though they are slightly less isolated in nearly all-hispanic schools than their black peers. In Philadelphia 90% of black children attend a school where 90% or more of the students are black and the same is true for hispanic students.
Jenks is a very good example of how race and income both matter and matter to different people in different ways. Jenks transition from majority-white to majority-black was very rapid. It happened over a roughly five year period between 1965 - 1970. Race was undeniably the triggering event causing the change from majority-white to majority-black during the 1960s. Black families began moving into a portion of Jenks' catchment and that led to white families moving out of the catchment or pulling their children from Jenks. The black families moving into the Jenks catchment were middle-class and were themselves looking to remove their children from all-black schools with less affluent black families than their own. The rapid departure of white families from the school opened up slots for additional black students to enroll from out of the catchment creating a cycle which ultimately led to a nearly all-black school in a majority white catchment. The out of catchment families weren't coming to Jenks from North Philly. They mostly lived in Cedarbrook and East Mt. Airy. They weren't poor, but they were black and they were less affluent than the white families they replaced.
Social values have changed in the intervening years. However something that hasn't changed is that once a school is majority black it is incredibly difficult to get white families to enroll their children at that school regardless of the black children's family income. White enrollment at Jenks has hovered between 8 - 15% for the past 35 years or so. The white children enrolled only stay through 4th grade though Jenks is a K - 8 school. The school has never succeeded at achieving a critical mass of white students large enough so that a larger portion of white families feel comfortable sending their children to school there. The exact same process has played out in uber liberal West Mt. Airy at Henry. Few white families in WMA send their kids to Henry and that's been true for decades.
I'll leave it to you to determine what constitutes a "decent" black family. Most black families don't have a choice as whether their children attend schools with significant black enrollment. The fact is that they disproportionately do. Facts are fun.
Social values have probably changed over the years. In 1965-1970 the racial tensions in Northwest Philly were very high. Pennypacker school in West Oak Lane were nearly 100% black by the early 70's. I knew one of the two white students who attended. Black-on-white violence in the area at the time was nearly incredible, especially after the majority Jewish population left in literally less than two years. This left people like me and my siblings getting chased and jumped coming home from St. A's by kids from Pennypacker. The decent black kids from St. A's got the same treatment. If you had options, your kid wasn't going to public school.
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