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News in brief
On the horizon: more PA tax dollars for schools?
The election of Ed Rendell as governor of Pennsylvania may be the prelude to legislative action in 2003 on new ways to fund education in the commonwealth.
Rendell has consistently pledged to increase state funding for public education and boost the state's share of total education costs from 35 percent to 50 percent. Over the past two decades, as state aid for education failed to keep pace with spending, local property taxes in communities across Pennsylvania have soared.
Rendell's campaign proposals also included funding for full-day kindergarten statewide, high-quality preschool programs, and reduced class size in grades K-3. With the state facing a ballooning budget deficit, Rendell has acknowledged that it will be hard to find funding for his whole education agenda.
But one sign of the ongoing frustration with the current school funding approach is that Republican legislators continue to be at the forefront in pushing for new state taxes that would both boost state education aid and allow a shift away from property taxes.
An increase in the income tax is the route being pushed in bills introduced by two Republican legislators - state Sen. James Rhoades, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, and state Rep. state government.
More information on school funding proposals is available at the website of the Pennsylvania School Reform Network: www.psrn.org/campaign.html.
Battling a continuing shortage of teachers
Philadelphia's shortage of qualified teachers shows no signs of abating and continues to hit hardest at the city's high poverty schools.
Two months into the school year, the number of teacher vacancies in the District still hovers near 100. In addition, an estimated 1500 of those on the job do not have full certification.
A Philadelphia Education Fund (PEF) survey of new Philadelphia teachers this fall found that fewer than half of them were fully certified and more than two-thirds had prior teaching experience of a year or less.
PEF is one of several local organizations that have been urging the District to make the teacher quality issue a top priority.
The District and CEO Paul Vallas have taken several new steps to address the continuing teacher shortage, among them:
- A new “Campaign for Human Capital” is bringing together business leaders, human resource professionals, academics, union leaders, teachers, and administrators to come up with a plan for strengthening the quality of the teacher workforce.
- Marj Adler is gone as director of the District's Human Resources Department. “I'd seen enough in Human Resources to know we needed a new Human Resources team,” Vallas explained. Tomas Hanna, director of teacher recruitment and retention, now oversees Human Resources.
- The District will be working for the first time with the “Teach for America” program, which brings top college graduates to teach for two years in understaffed urban and rural schools. Vallas said the program might bring 100 or more new teachers to Philadelphia next September.
A new federal education law, known as the “Leave No Child Behind” Act, requires that every classroom have a “highly qualified” teacher in it by 2005-06. Another provision requires districts to notify parents if their children are being taught by teachers that are not “highly qualified.”
More military programs planned for high schools
The School District is looking for a site for a military high school and is planning a major expansion of Junior ROTC, an elective military-run course for high school students, according to CEO Paul Vallas.
“Our goal is to get ROTC programs in all 22 of the comprehensive high schools,” Vallas said at a November School Reform Commission meeting, during which the SRC voted to award a $50,000 contract that made Ben Franklin High School the seventh school in the District to house a JROTC program.
But in an overall climate of growing antiwar sentiment, at least two locally based groups are organizing in opposition, saying Vallas's plan would “turn our youth into soldiers.”
Supporters of the American Friends Service Committee and the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors say Junior ROTC is military training that sends the wrong messages to students about violence and weapons and does not belong in the public school system. The two groups also argue that the program is not a wise use of class time, and that the JROTC curriculum and instructor credentials fall below accepted standards for schools.
The JROTC program is a three- or four-year course of study taught by retired military personnel using a curriculum developed by one of the service branches. It combines classroom work on topics like leadership and military history with activities like drill and marching.
Participating students are not obligated to join the military but sometimes wear a military uniform to school. JROTC staff work in partnership with military recruiters, and JROTC cadets have consistently enlisted in the military at a much higher rate than other students.
The JROTC program is mostly found in high schools with many low-income students and students of color as well as in schools in the South.
“I don't see it as a military recruiting program, but a program that offers a "character-building experience,” Vallas commented. But he touted the military scholarships and career opportunities available to JROTC students who graduate from high school.
As schools chief in Chicago, Vallas oversaw the launching of the nation's first all-JROTC public school.
The School District has hired Lieutenant Colonel Russell Gallagher to direct its JROTC programs district-wide and oversee the military school initiative at a $75,000 annual salary.