OUT & ABOUT: The School District According To Alice Cooper

BY DENISE CLAY/ School’s out for summer…

School’s out for ever…

Whether we want to admit it or not, these lines from an Alice Cooper song may be closer to the School District of Philadelphia’s reality than we all want to admit.

In what may be the most-blatant example yet of how badly the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania plays with its School District toy, Superintendent William Hite announced last week schools may not open on time this year.

Because the School District went to Harrisburg to ask for more money, because despite closing 23 schools and laying off 4,000 people, the district is still $350 million in the hole.

The district asked for $180 million more. It got $2 million. It then asked for $50 million. Hite says he needs at least that much more to open the schools safely.

The Commonwealth said $45 million, but only if you show substantial progress in implementing so-called “fiscal and operational reforms”.

Translation: Get $133 million in wage and benefit concessions from the worst-paid teachers in the Commonwealth while simultaneously putting even more of the blame on their shoulders should the kids not meet the State’s standards.

Thus, schools may not be opening on Sep. 9 as scheduled.

This development has made people on all sides of the debate put their thinking caps on to see what can be done to make sure the district’s kids don’t get an extension on their summer vacation.

City Council President Darrell Clarke held a news conference on Friday to announce the City would be selling the buildings that once housed the schools closed this spring and would be putting a chunk of that money into the district budget.

Then on Tuesday morning, Mayor Michael Nutter announced the city sales tax increase that was supposed to expire this year will now become permanent and that he would be borrowing the $50 million from future revenues generated from this tax, something Clarke doesn’t agree with because he believes a substantial chunk of this money should go toward the City’s pension-plan obligations.

Both men say they’ll have something worked out by Hite’s Friday deadline day. I don’t see it.

Meanwhile, parent groups are calling on School District parents to keep their kids home from school until the Commonwealth coughs up the $180 million.

Yeah. That’ll happen. Unless Gov. Tom Corbett decides to ask the Marcellus Shale people to finally start paying for the privilege of turning our water flammable, or reverses all of the tax cuts that he says will create jobs and haven’t yet, that money’s not coming.

If you’re a School District of Philadelphia parent and you’re not planning to vote for Governor in 2014 or Mayor in 2015, you should have your children taken away due to neglect.

Because if this mess doesn’t prove that elections have consequences, nothing will.

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