It gets sickening to constantly hear about how much we, as a society, should and do value children, but when it comes right down to it, children remain the nagging inconvenience and near accidents we typically ascribe them to be. Especially whenever and wherever money is concerned.
It is more than disgusting to see the repeated cycles and
budget battles year in and year out, when people pontificate about values and
priorities, but then we have the same conversations about education. It would
seem that by this point we would just make a decision: either we’re going to
allot the resources to fully educate every child in this city, this state, this
nation, or we won’t. The half-measured attempts, with partial funding here,
cuts there, programs today, gone tomorrow, are more than wearing.
And this is spoken as someone who has borne no children.
Today we heard from School District of Philadelphia
Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. that unless $50 million falls into the
district’s bank accounts by Aug. 16, he
will not – cannot – open the city’s 218 schools on time. At least not in
the way that most people would think of fall school opening – with a full day
of orientations or re-acquaintance with hallways, students, faculty, staff and
routine.
Instead, some select schools might open and others remain
closed.
Or, schools will open for a few hours, and then close,
for some undetermined period of time.
Or perhaps no buildings will ring their proverbial bells
to welcome kids back. It’ll be the luck of the draw.
Among communities already reeling from historic closures
and clumsy communications that marked those decisions, there’s little expectation
that either suspicion or hostility will be suspended in such cases.
Hite’s rationale is that there’s not enough guaranteed
money on the books to start calling up the requisite personnel to staff these
schools so that they’ll be manned with some measure of comfort for the average
parent – and citizen. The memory of a 5-year-old
being abducted from her school in broad daylight remains fresh for many –
and that was at a fairly well-staffed school. Imagine the potential room for
errors – and horrors – if adult-to-student ratios fall to simply a principal
and a handful of teachers.
Certainly no high school principal even wants to
contemplate it, not with attendance rolls sometimes numbering in the thousands.
Not with cavernous turn-of-the-century buildings with enough nooks and corners
to offer aid and comfort to gleeful mischief makers great and small, drug
dealers to pedophiles.
It can all be dismissed as an extreme stakes game of
chicken, with Hite pressing publicly, but with sly finesse, against stubborn
union leaders as talks approach a climax. Critics charge there has been little
reduction in salaries among those occupying the administrative offices of 440
N. Broad Street, or much other sacrifice, though the honest among them will
admit staffing there has been cut since the last administration. Hite’s pronouncement could be chalked up as a
warning shot to area politicians that he’s willing to test his power and strike
first, turning parental anger toward them, not him, when a lousy,
budget-compromised school year seems imminent.
Regardless of heartfelt intentions or Machiavellian
motivations, kids and families remain the absolute hostages in all of this,
followed by those who directly serve them in the classrooms and hallways of the
city’s schools. As adults squabble about finding money to ensure there are
bodies in buildings – and we haven’t even gotten to the quality of said bodies –parents and guardians, the thoughtful and
engaged ones anyway, hold their breath and await outcomes. On the other side
are teachers, aides, counselors, nurses and other staff following the back and
forth like a Wimbledon match. It is their
lives that will be tossed into upheaval as “leadership” dances toward the fire,
up to the absolute last minute.
No one is waiting for Superman. Lex Luthor must have smashed
his GPS in their last battle or something.
What would be super is if parents started talking to each
other. And their families. And their friends. And with their neighbors. And
with their employers. And their faith leaders. And if they decided that they
were tired of waiting for The Powers That Be to decide their children’s
education is worth something. And definitely worth more than the seemingly unending
multimillion dollar prison construction projects.
If change indeed begins with the man in the mirror, and
the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting
different results, it is amazing that so many of us gnash our teeth as we watch
this dance. It grows more intricate and inane with every passing year, like a
black Greek step show run amok.
Maybe these are just the ramblings of a home-schooled
kid, one whose parent early on said, “Enough,” because she valued her child’s
education more than those charged with delivering it, and decided to put her
effort where her heart was.
No, not everyone is as equipped to take that option, just
like many cannot flee to tuition-based schools for relief. But exercising some other
kind of option is a right every parent, every resident of this city, owns.
Then again, maybe in the main, we are innately enjoy,
even are ultimately entertained by, the annual do-si-do that is the Philly
public schools funding dance.
Circuses worked wonders for the Roman Empire. We see how
that ended.
