Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, April 26, 2011

In Philadelphia the heads of local citizens are spinning from a whirlwind of events that are keeping their school district in constant turmoil.  A massive budget shortfall, charter school corruption, anticipated school closings and scandal, are but a few of the problems that are plaguing the district.

Chaos seems to be the new normal in Philadelphia Schools.  In the view of Eli Broad this is a good thing. Broad is a billionaire philanthropist. He along with Bill Gates is one of the most influential advocates of the educational entrepreneur reform movement that is currently shaping the future of America’s public school systems.

Broad believes that public schools should be run as though they are businesses.  He advocates for the continual reorganizations of schools, staff firings, and experimentation in order to create chaos or churn.  The Broad view sees this as a productive strategy in that it weakens the ability of communities to resist change.  In order to advance his educational agenda he has created the Broad Foundations.

It is essential to understand the objectives of these foundations and the scope of their work in order to make sense of recent school reform efforts.  Parents Across America a grassroots advocacy group has prepared an excellent guide for parents that examines the educational policies of the Broad Foundations. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, April 21, 2011

For the years that I was the principal of a low resource school in Philadelphia, there was never enough money to do everything that needed to be done.  Making ends meet was difficult.  Providing all of the elements that a high quality instructional program should posses was a monumental challenge. In this financial climate, an important skill that I mastered over time was the ability to get the most for my school’s dollars.

Finding more money and resources was a constant endeavor.  Lobbying district leaders, applying for grants, creating partnerships with arts and sports organizations, seeking gifts from individuals and organizations were active pursuits of mine.  Every contribution was welcomed regardless of its size.  A five hundred dollar donation might pay for a music assembly.  A fifty dollar gift would be spent buying books for classroom libraries.  Every extra dollar received helped to build a better school environment. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, April 19, 2011

The affairs of the Philadelphia School District have been generating a considerable amount of news as of late.  A bomb threat at the district headquarters, potential school closings, charter school fraud, IRS problems for the superintendent, are a few of the breaking stories. But the top story continues to be the District’s $620 million budget deficit. To deal with this gap, considerable cuts will have to be made to current expenditures.  This means that virtually all instructional and non-instructional programs will be affected and considerable cuts in personnel will occur.

Even when faced with this fiscal Tsunami, Superintendent Ackerman is still determined to protect her costly Imagine 2014 plan.  In particular she is intent on proceeding to create 10 new Promise Academies in addition to the 8 already in operation. According to the Philadelphia Public School Notebook the estimated additional expenses of operating 18 Promise Academies will exceed $30 million.

Most of this money will be used to compensate the staff of these schools for the extra hour per day they are required to work as well as an eleventh month to their school year. The revenue that will be required to accomplish this objective will have to be drawn from other program sources.  The price tag for the experimental Promise Academies is hefty.  Is it worth the cost, particularly when it will drain resources from other critical areas of the district budget?

Here are several possible options of targeted programs that the district might decide to cut in order to raise the thirty million dollars necessary to fund the Promise Academies.  The cost and number of positions cited were drawn from the budget requests for the current budget year. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, April 14, 2011

Last Tuesday I published a post that examined the misguided budget funding priorities of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  In the budget proposal offered by Governor Corbett for the 20011 fiscal year, he has suggested increasing the allocation to the state prison system by 11%.  His proposal also recommends a 10% cut to public K-12 schools and a whooping reduction of aid to state colleges of 50%.  In my post, I pointed out that these fiscal recommendations are exactly of the type referred to in a recent report released by the NAACP titled “Misplaced Priorities”.

Nationally, $70 billion is spent in a year to incarcerate 2.3 million people in American prisons.  Another 7.3 million people who are either on parole or probation, are also being monitored.   Although the population of our nation is equal to 5% of the world’s population, the prison systems of America detain 25% of the world’s prisoners.

“The majority of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails are people of color, people with mental health issues and drug addiction, people with low levels of educational attainment and people with a history of unemployment or underemployment.” (Misplaced Priorities, page 1)

During the last two decades, states across our nation have increased the amount of their discretionary spending in order to pay the cost of our seemingly ever-expanding prison systems.  This cost is one that is being seriously questioned by individuals and groups across a wide spectrum of political ideologies.

This PBS video clip features an interesting pairing of Benjamin Jealous, President of the NAACP and Grover Norquist a leading conservative advocate for tax reform.  The similarity of their views regarding the inappropriate use of tax revenues to pay for the cost of incarcerating large numbers of American citizens is noteworthy.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.