Constitution High students protest loss of more staff
by thenotebook on Oct 02 2013 Posted in Latest news
by Isaac Riddle
Protesting further losses in staff and resources to their school, around 200 students from Constitution High School staged a “sit-in” in front of their school’s entrance early Wednesday morning.
The school's staff was informed Monday during an emergency meeting that $90,000 would be trimmed from the school’s budget, according to Kathleen Melville, an English and Spanish teacher at Constitution, a citywide admission school in Center City. The reduction is a result of leveling, the District's process of reassigning teachers about six weeks into the school year, based on actual enrollments at that time.
Students at Constitution, however, feel their school already lacks an adequate number of teachers and staff.
“We can’t just sit by and let the School District take advantage of us,” said Christopher Warnauth, a senior.
One teacher on the list of possible cuts is the art teacher, said Melville.
After deep budget cuts district-wide, Constitution High now has four fewer teachers than it did last year, while enrollment has remained level at about 400 students. The school’s guidance counselor was also cut, as was the case at all District schools with less than 600 students. More than 100 schools, including Constitution, share the services of 16 “itinerant” counselors, who travel among six or seven schools each and have caseloads of around 3,000 students.
Students from Constitution preparing their college applications said that they had only seen the counselor once, the first day of school.
“We have to find help for college outside of school,” said senior Brianna Harvey.
Protesters were also concerned with class sizes. Sophomore Myracle Morris said there are 40 students in her English class. “It is really hard for us to learn,” said Morris. “It’s not fair.”
According to Melville, nearly half of the teachers have classes over the limit of 33 students that is mandated by the recently expired teachers' contract. Melville said that none of her own classes are over the limit.
“We would never subject adults to this type of environment,” she said.
District spokesman Fernando Gallard said he could not confirm whether Constitution would be losing a teacher.
Between now and Oct. 15, when the leveling will be completed, "some schools will gain teachers, some will lose teachers," he said. "Our goal is to maintain class sizes as per the contract. That is our goal, that’s where we want to end up at the end of the process."
Protesters were encouraged by the school’s principal, Thomas Davidson, to move inside the building. Before the official start of school, Davidson had warned students of the possibility of facing disciplinary charges from the police.
“I am doing everything possible for you not to get arrested,” Davidson told the student protesters.
City police arrived about 30 minutes into the protest but allowed students to continue protesting outside the school building. Students were advised by police to move their protest into the school lobby.
School police officers eventually began to take down names of those who refused to enter the building once some students had begun to move the protest to the lobby to avoid arrest.
Some students grew emotional as their peers gradually moved their protest to the lobby. Students shouted, “Don’t go in, save our teachers,” but some protesters, fearing suspension, ended their protest outside.
“They say we don’t care about our education because we are out here and not in class,” said Morris. “If we really didn’t care about our education, then we wouldn’t be out here protesting.”
Striving for order after chaotic school-year opening at Roosevelt K-8
by thenotebook on Oct 02 2013 Posted in Latest news
Photo: Aaron Moselle/WHYY
Students arriving for the first day of classes at an expanded Roosevelt Elementary/Middle School in East Germantown.
by Aaron Moselle for NewsWorks
The first day of school at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary began with a sizable dose of chaos as new students, new staff, and a very new principal converged at the school in East Germantown.
Directives crackled between teachers armed with walkie-talkies as parents trickled into the K-8 school in search of classroom assignments.
Others wandered the building's perimeter to find out where their children needed to go.
"Teachers weren't assigned to classrooms," said James Knipper, who teaches 7th-grade math.
Breaking good
As the first month of the school year comes to a close, though, staffers who spoke with NewsWorks say that, bit by bit, things are running more smoothly.
Knipper termed the difference since Day One "astronomical."
"It's a 200 percent change," he said.
First-year principal Byron Ryan, who started just days before the beginning of the school year, attributes much of the progress to a complete willingness on the part of teachers and other employees to work together to fill in the school's staffing gaps.
Roosevelt lost its assistant principal, two noontime aides, two support-services assistants, a social worker, and a counselor when the Philadelphia School District laid off nearly 4,000 employees in June.
As a result, teachers say they often take time away from their prep or lunch periods to help keep an eye on the hallways, which are now filled with more than twice as many students.
"We pretty much all chip in," said Ryan.
Read the rest of this story at NewsWorks
Teachers in at least one Philadelphia high school say they were called into a meeting last week and told that funding has been cut for Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes, two types of honors programs that, with the payment of costly exam fees, can enable students to receive college credits.
Then, they say, they were told not to tell the students.
Philadelphia School District spokesperson Fernando Gallard confirmed Tuesday that there is no funding for the fee schools must pay to participate in IB, for the required IB-teacher training or for test fees. Nor is there funding for AP tests or training. “The good news is the IB teachers are still in the IB programs, so the students are still taking IB courses. The bad news is that they are taking IB courses that are not being credited to them yet, because we are not able to afford the school fee,” he says. Gallard says restoring those funds is important to the District. “That’s why we are continuing to push … for more funding out of the negotiating table. Whatever we are able to save out of the negotiations with our unions, we are able to use to pay for things like this.”
The cuts extend to Philly’s esteemed magnet schools. The IB coordinator at one such school tells us, “Teachers have been rostered to teach these classes, but have not been trained.”
“These are the programs that, as a public school, still make us an attractive place for parents and students — college-preparatory, rigorous curricula,” says another teacher, who like others asked to remain anonymous because he was told not to speak about the matter. He says the school spends about $50,000 per year on training and fees for IB programs and exams, and also covers the cost of hundreds of student AP exams. “Students need to be registered by November [for IB or] … they will not be able to take the exams. And we’ve been told not to say anything to any-body yet — but time’s a-ticking, and it’s not fair to these students.”
An AP and IB teacher at another magnet high school says her students in the past have used the courses to get into better colleges, earn scholarships and skip entire semesters of (pricey) college coursework. “It’s their chance to compete with kids at premier suburban public and private schools for the college process,” she says. Shifting the funding burden onto kids and their parents is not an option, she says. “If schools in Philadelphia stop offering AP and IB, we’re letting kids down.”
Parts of this story were originally reported on our Naked City blog.
Philly parents file hundreds of school complaints with Pa. education department
by Holly Otterbein for NewsWorks
Before this year's classes began in the Philadelphia School District, parents groups and lawyers from the Public Interest Law Center worried that budget cutbacks were so severe that the state would not be able to meet its legal obligation to provide an adequate education.
A few days before class, they called on fellow parents, students and teachers to file formal complaints with Pennsylvania's education secretary.
Thus far, they said, 260 have been filed. They expect to file an additional 100 complaints by the end of the week.
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