Philly schools hostage crisis: countdown to Aug. 16

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.

Black History blunder: More evidence of dropping the ball

February. What some call Black History Month. Others, Negro Employment Month -- especially those in the arts. After all, historically, it's been an annualized opportunity to create their own series of "Black Fridays" -- landing gigs singing, dancing, and otherwise sharing their cultural outlook as part of proclaimed attempts at multicultural inclusion, and buffering otherwise bleak bank accounts for the year in the process.

Increasingly there are debates as to whether this designated time is proper, needed or even respected. Certainly, what has arisen today isn't what Carter G. Woodson could have envisioned way black when, when his "radical" concept of "Negro History Week" helped kickstart the whole matter. Even he probably never foresaw a black man leading the most powerful nation of the world -- or the rates of self-inflicted mass murder, all existing in tandem.

Dr. Carter G. Woodson: scholar, journalist,
father of  black history study as a discipline

Yet, equally striking is an examination of the most recently announced list of Pennsylvania's lowest performing schools, released by the state department of education. There's the usual kerfuffle around the list, the hand-wringing, shoulder shrugging and bolstered furor on both sides of the school choice movement.

Peeling the list back further brings a sadder realization, though. It comes from not only examining the locations of those schools, but also their names.

There once was a notion that if people had a role model, an example of someone who started in similar, if not worse, circumstances and could rise above, it would be enough to inspire similar if not greater achievement. It was also an impetus to have buildings named after those who achieved great feats, a legacy that would continue to reap tangible benefits.

For African Americans, garnering such respect in society had been a hard-fought affair, as the name on a building represented a demanding permanence, a declaration of being through this edifice and its reminding namesake source that required respect from everyone who passed it. For centuries, that was a respect not so accorded. After the turbulent '60s and '70s and the burgeoning economic and political power amassed in the '80s and '90s, that sort of architectural reverence has become more commonplace. Perhaps it's because of that, the names on buildings -- particularly schools, places at one time most attributed to having the keys to a better future for a struggling people -- have a reduced sense of power. It's all so banal, apparently.

Or we've just completely fallen down on the job, as black folk.

As a youngster in class, it wasn't just the eyes and expectations of my teacher and my family I felt as I approached my lessons. It was the hopes of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Mary McLeod Bethune, Alain Locke, Leslie Pinckney Hill, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and even Dr. Ethel Allen that flowed through my fingers, that helped push me whenever a bout of laziness would strike. Thinking of the obstacles they overcame and the trails they blazed made me want to do as much, if not more, as not to let them down. It was as if I had my own academic council, generations removed, perhaps, but just as real -- and relevant. Never did I attend a school with any of their names, but walking by their buildings reinforced that presence in my mind.

Then again, my family took pains to constantly expose me to their stories, their legacy, to plant seeds of curiosity so that I would explore further and interpret more. That's what Black History meant for me, and no, it was not confined to one month or one class. It was part of our lifestyle, much like the pride of building a personal library or getting a museum membership card. That didn't make us special. We simply carried the torch others already had lit, and made it about more than just dates and factoids. It was applied learning.

Today, it's almost an accepted joke -- if not fact -- that places named for our heroes are run down and raggedy.

Indeed, there is a school named for each of those icons in Philadelphia. The children attending those schools primarily are African American. And each school shares in the distinction of producing the lowest academically performing students in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Mull that a minute.

You can point to money, declaring resources for "our" schools -- from better teachers to computer labs -- always are subpar in comparison to others. You can underscore socioeconomic realities -- that the families of these children make less money, thereby inadvertently deprive kids of everything from meals to enrichment opportunities. Yes, those things play a role. But it's past time to look inward and call it for what it is.

Last I checked, libraries are still free, as is PBS. And if the moves of Beyonce or the Real Housewives of Atlanta can trend on Twitter, Internet access isn't the problem it once may have been.

Our forebears weren't necessarily wealthy -- or even exposed to much. Yet many of them not only managed to function, they also defiantly produced some of the greatest minds the world has seen, then or since, often facing far more precarious circumstances. They had a fortitude, a belief, and a will to achieve greater, for themselves and for their progeny, direct or otherwise. Failing to acknowledge that we, as a people, no matter our "station," have abandoned that outlook in larger numbers than have cherished it, is a start. Much like taking the time to learn and share the stories of the people whose feats forced a less lenient society to speak their names, to declare them for generations. Except many of us have stopped listening, robbing our children in the process.

There is power in speaking the names of our ancestors. Maybe doing it more frequently could help re-focus us on the opportunities we simply squander. Because no matter how wretched, the fact that a child can walk into a building where knowledge exists in some form gives that child a leg up so many before never had. If those generations could scrabble and make glorious, it's hard to see why we can't.

That truth holds no matter whose name is on the building. We should take it to heart when those names are our own.