Things will be different this year.
That's the promise that Superintendent Arlene Ackerman made to a group of South Philadelphia High School freshmen and their parents at orientation Tuesday morning.
The U.S. Department of Justice has found merit in a civil rights complaint filed against the Philadelphia School District over December 2009 violence against Asian students at South Philadelphia High School.
Cecilia Chen, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) lawyer who filed the complaint, celebrated the news.
This week's guest blog comes from Anand Jahi of Youth United for Change.
At 8:00 a.m., on Monday, July 19, three buses carrying 150 students, parents, and community members will set out from Philadelphia to Washington D.C.
We won’t be alone.
Community members and organizers from across the country will converge in D.C. as part of the Alliance for Educational Justice’s national day of action.
Speaking only through their T-shirts, which read “We Are Not A Flash Mob,” a group of over 30 students descended quietly and purposefully around the fountain at Love Park on Monday at 4:30 p.m.
Moreso than many of the previous hearings on school violence held by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations (PCHR), Tuesday night’s gathering of parents, principals, and students at the Towey Center in North Philadelphia highlighted some positive efforts to combat hostile school climate.
In the past few weeks, the School District of Philadelphia has made a heavy media push to recast the story at South Philadelphia High School. From news articles to columns to letters to editorial board briefings, the District is pushing the story that the events of Dec. 3 are long past and, in their typical refrain, it’s time to move on.
The latest push has been to use statistics. According to Monday's Philadelphia Inquirer story, the District claims that last school year there were 92 assaults total; this year 44. From Jan.-May, there were 70 assaults reported; this year only 15.
It seems pretty astounding to claim that this school year has been a better and safer one than last year.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It’s almost impossible to believe that a story that first comes to public light with 30 kids getting beaten up in school can get worse over time, but in fact, that’s exactly what’s happened with the on-going fiasco at South Philadelphia High School.
Last week, South Philly High Principal LaGreta Brown abruptly resigned hours before a teacher vote of no-confidence and amid the finding that her Pennsylvania principal certification was inactive. The latter technicality capped a disastrous tenure for Brown.
A few weeks back I wrote a post about a 16-year-old boy who enrolled at South Philadelphia High School post-December 3 and who was assaulted last month in a bathroom stall.
Monday’s Inquirer story gives an update on Lin De Liu’s condition:
Como muchos estudiantes de 9no grado, Tiffany Burgos estaba entusiasmada al entrar a la Escuela Superior Kensington de Comercio, Finanzas y Empresarial. Esperaba con gusto sus clases, apreciaba la oportunidad de estudiar materias nuevas, y quería comenzar el proceso de preparación para la universidad.
The violence at South Philadelphia High School last December served as a catalyst for the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations (PCHR) to schedule a series of public hearings on the topic.
School violence victims, parents, administrators, and teachers have already attended two of 11 scheduled meetings to speak about their experiences.
“Our goal is to focus on finding ways to ameliorate a part of the problem,” said Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, a PCHR commissioner.
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