When we know the names Plainfield, North Annville, Ridgefield, and Village Park as well as we know the names Wilson, Fairhill, Germantown, and University City – and vice versa – we will have a better chance of defeating the people and interests who are destroying the system of universal free public education in Pennsylvania and profiting while doing it.
The momentum generated by students, parents, teachers and school workers over the past year is truly amazing. The school closings, cuts and “doomsday budget” in Philadelphia have made national news.
Making connections between attacks on public education in major cities around the country, and building unity between directly impacted groups have been keys to the Philadelphia education community’s success in wrestling the narrative away from the corporate reformers and bringing and broader attention to the issue.
The willingness to conquer geography to get to the people who are facing the same conditions is strategic. The scale at which it is done and who is engaged are crucial. The pain of austerity, school closings, program reductions and layoffs being directed at our communities through the public education system has been spread around Pennsylvania like thick icing on a cake. In districts smaller and larger, urban and suburban, among African-Americans, Whites, Latinos and Asian-Americans. And people have spoken up and spoken out.
Here are just some examples of what has happened around our state in the last five years:
*The Millcreek School Board near Erie voted to close 2 schools – Ridgefield and Vernondale. Total enrollment in the district is 7,464 students, and the district has only 14 schools, so they are losing 1/7 of their schools. The district is 96.55% white and it is the county’s 10th largest employer.
*In Northumberland County, Dalmatia and Leck Kill in the Line Mountain School District are to be closed, half of the district’s four schools.
*Pittsburgh School District with 55% African-American, 33% White and 12% Latinos, Asian-American and other students closed 22 of its 76 schools in 2008.
*Allentown School District just announced plans to lay off 99 teachers. Sixty-five percent of the district’s students are Latino, and the district is the 5th largest employer in the Lehigh Valley.
*As of 2011 it was reported that PA teacher layoffs exceed 4,000, which helped create a budget surplus for the state and which goes into the state’s general fund – not necessarily back into our schools.
*And right in Philadelphia’s backyard a groundswell of parents, students, teachers and community moved to stop cuts in Upper Darby’s schools.
Our collective wealth is being transferred upward, and misappropriated, while children, youth, families, teachers, school staff, and neighborhoods are made to feel the pain. All the while, the cumulative impact of cuts, layoffs and closings shifts the mental landscape about what a public education means, what our rights are, and what we can reasonably expect. When something that we urgently need is being taken away so dramatically, it calls into question our worth and value in the society at a deep level.
Pennsylvania’s public schools, students, workers and communities are under a coordinated and strategic attack – a grab for resources and power. It’s outlines are simple – “students” and “taxpayers” are the heroes/victims, unions are the villians, and technocratic and corporate reformers, and privatized educational models are its heroes. This strategy unites with anyone who agrees with it. We must build a force that is capable of vying for power and resources too – except we’re not fighting for our profit, but our survival. Universal free public education for all students, strong worker protections, and a public education system funded and organized around the needs of students, families and communities.