March 2022: What’s Next for Education
By Eileen Kenna
While one could argue over which sectors of society have been impacted the most by two-plus years of the COVID pandemic, the field of education likely ranks near the top of most people’s lists.
Consider: Students in kindergarten through12th grade trying to pay attention to academics all day on a screen; teachers struggling to teach remotely while many of their colleagues leave the profession in exhausted frustration; parents tearing their hair out as they tried - and often failed - to monitor their kids’ new way of learning, all while trying to work themselves.
And that’s not even getting into the school funding problems and systemic racism that were both underscored and worsened by the pandemic.
“Now What for … Public Education?” - the Sunday Breakfast Club’s March forum - acknowledged all these factors with comments ranging from sadness and frustration to hope and resolve.
Let’s start with the hope voiced by Dr. Naomi Johnson-Booker, founder of the Global Leadership Academy charter school in Philadelphia, who said that during the pandemic, children at her school became “digital champions.”
“We were able to put a Chrome book into every (student’s) hand in the city,” Johnson-Booker said, noting that the city’s office of education worked with Comcast and others to fund the initiative.
Otis Hackney, a former teacher and principal who’s now chief education officer for the city of Philadelphia, agreed with Johnson-Booker regarding that positive aspect.
“We had to adapt on the fly really quickly,” Hackney said. “We thought it was only going to be for two weeks. We adapted and got 18,000 [Internet] connections into households so parents could show up,” he said. “The face of education is changed forever and, I think, for the good.”
Johnson-Booker said as families adjusted to remote learning, opportunities arose for more Philadelphia parents to participate helpfully in their children’s education, while allowing more teachers and social workers to get “into” homes virtually to offer help and advice.
Most of us are familiar with the urge to curse Zoom, but the platform actually did a lot of good, she said.
“If I got 10 parents at an in-person meeting at the school before the pandemic, I was doing good,” she said. “But on Zoom during the pandemic, we’d get 75-150 parents come to our parent town hall meeting.”
That said, don’t assume all is well in Philadelphia public schools.
“School was failing the children pre-pandemic. Things were not great,” Johnson-Booker said.
Much of it, of course, comes down to inadequate and inequitable funding.
Donna Cooper, executive director at Children’s First, the region’s leading child advocacy organization, spoke of that underfunding saga in the city of Philadelphia and in many rural and suburban districts around the state, where local property taxes don’t throw off enough revenue to keep schools functioning properly.
Cooper reviewed the status of a long-running school equity lawsuit that might actually be coming to a conclusion seven years after it first was filed in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.
“We’re going to win this lawsuit when the courts decide,” she predicted about the case, which was first brought by the Education Law Center and the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia way back in 2014. Its goal is for the state courts to affirm that, under the Pennsylvania Constitution, it’s the state government’s job to ensure equitable and effective school funding across economic and geographic lines. While the case was dismissed in 2015, an appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court kicked it back to Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, where closing arguments were scheduled this week.
“Philadelphia ranks 45th (among the states) in the amount of money that’s put into schools per student,” Cooper said. “That has got to change.”
And it’s not just big city school districts suffering; some suburban districts struggle as well given their limited local tax base, said Dan McGarry, superintendent of the Upper Darby district, where he himself graduated from high school.
“We’re larger than most of the school districts in our county but one of the most underfunded,” he said of his district, where at least 80 languages are spoken in students’ homes.
McGarry has launched Upper Darby Rising, an initiative to encourage community support for greater diversity and equity across the school system. He said it’s vital not to define equity as “taking away from some to give to others” but rather as determining what each child genuinely needs and making sure he or she gets it.
If the Commonwealth Court - or, upon appeal, the state Supreme Court - rules in favor of equitable funding, Cooper said the next step will be to pressure the state legislature to provide that “relief,” with the court ruling as a powerful new tool.
She and the other panel members are hoping that relief will mean many more dollars for school districts like Philadelphia and Upper Darby, which spend far less per student than affluent suburban districts just minutes away.
Another crisis facing Pennsylvania is an underfunded pension fund for teachers. James Sando, a former teacher with 38 years in the classroom and now president of the National Council for Teacher Retirement, said problems with the fund started decades ago when the legislature passed improvements to teacher pensions without actually funding any of them.
“Those chickens have come home to roost,” he said. While the state and school districts were repeatedly allowed to kick the pension can down the road, he said, “How many times did I not pay into my pension every month? Never, not once.”
Several panelists spoke of a massive shortage of teachers - both because teachers are leaving the profession and young people are not choosing to become teachers. Sando said that 10 years ago, 20,000 new teachers were certified in Pennsylvania. Last year that number was only 6,000. And three years ago, Hackney said, only 10 black men obtained teaching certificates in Pennsylvania.
“Our legislature will spend $30,000 to $40,000 a year to put Black men in prison,” Hackney said. “We’ll lock them up, but we won’t educate them.”
The challenges ahead for Philadelphia are immense. The district needs to hire a new superintendent to succeed William Hite, who is leaving after an unusually long tenure for a big-city superintendent of 10 years. It also must address the district’s many crumbling school buildings with a long-term plan, Hackney said.
Asked by panel moderator Chris Satullo how to “move the needle” to improve our schools, the panelists offered solutions including:
· Measures to address systemic racism by pushing for funding equity and job opportunity.
· Addressing the lack of respect so many teachers feel by increasing teacher salaries and improving school climate.
· Mentoring young people or promising school staffers to persuade them to become teachers.
Johnson-Booker said she and her staff have identified half a dozen non-teaching staff members and supported them in obtaining education degrees through the city’s innovative College Together program. The program fosters non-traditional paths to becoming a classroom teacher by offering mentorship, financial aid, and other supports.
“We should all be asking, ‘Who in our schools can we elevate to join the profession?” she said.