School district of philadelphia action plan

THE Closing of Schools Schools all over the country are being shut down due to a lack of funding. Here in Philadelphia, the superintendent announced that 37 schools will be closed and others combined. Dr. William R. Hite released an Action Plan for the School District of Philadelphia. In this plan, Dr. Hite declares his two anchor goals. The two anchor goals are to improve outcomes for students in all schools and ensure the financial stability and sustainability of the School District. You may be asking, “What is the problem?” “Why are schools being closed and combined?” There is a myriad of problems. Some of the problems are: a lack of funding, underutilization, facilities, and underperformance. I will give you a synopsis and examples of the problems that I just listed.
Lack of Funding

“We recommend that we borrow $300 million to finance our deficit for FY 2013 and part of FY 2014, because at this point the initiatives left to us to cut costs to achieve fiscal balance will take that long to implement. We must proceed with the greatest care; a deficit borrowing is an extraordinary action that we will not be able to undertake again in this planning horizon. Under the best of circumstances, we will be living with the payment obligations of this financing for some time to come, adding an estimated $22 million each year to our already significant debt service burden. And so we must make sure that we use the time this money buys to truly rebuild our financial underpinnings.”
This is what Thomas E. Knudsen (Chief Recovery Officer and Acting Superintendent) said in Proposed Five Year Financial Plan Fiscal Years 2013-2017. He basically is saying that the school district has a deficit and that they plan on borrowing $ 300 million. He also said that even at its best, the school district would be paying $22 million each year on top of their deficit.
Underutilization

“We recommend closing a number of school buildings because they are underutilized and in poor condition, and the money we are spending on heating, cooling, cleaning, and repairing empty, dilapidated space could be better spent on teaching and learning. We realize that this may create confusion and disruption for many families, and so we take on this task seeking to ensure a better utilized system that will better serve our children. This will mean, in particular, paying close attention to the academic performance of school programs and separating them from the state of the buildings the programs happen to be in. Quality school programs must be preserved, even if their buildings must change.” Again, these are words from Thomas E. Knudsen in Proposed Five Year Financial Plan Fiscal

Philly Healthy Schools Initiative

The average age of the School District of Philadelphia's public school facilities is over 66 years, and decades of under-investment has resulted in nearly $5 billion of deferred maintenance, repairs, and replacement needs. As a result, students, teachers and staff have been exposed to lead in paint and drinking water, asbestos, mold, rodent and pest infestations, and lack of proper climate control.

In May 2017, the Law Center joined a coalition that includes many of the city’s largest labor unions including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT), AFL-CIO, AFSCME districts 33 and 47, and Teamsters Local 502, representing the city’s public school principals, as well as parent organizations such as the Friends of Neighborhood Education (FONE) and Parents United, and environmental health groups like Penn Environment and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

The Philly Healthy Schools Coalition calls on the School District and Philadelphia City Council to immediately implement the following policies:

Improve the Public’s Right to Know by requiring greater information and data transparency about environmental health threats from the School District of Philadelphia to parents, teachers, and community members. District officials have thousands of Indoor Environmental Quality reports, site inspections and other environmental health-related data that is not easily available, or even known, to the public.
Establish “Adequate Building Conditions” that will set minimally acceptable environmental health standards that should be met by every school building in Philadelphia and Best Practices Standards to significantly improve school conditions.
Identify and address the most critical environmental health threats in our schools—and develop an action plan to remediate them in the fastest ways possible.
Develop a districtwide “Comprehensive Educational Facilities Master Plan” (CEFMP). While most large school districts across the country have a Facilities Master Plan to prioritize and ensure schools are healthy and safe, no such plan exists for the School District of Philadelphia.
Create an official Educational Facilities Environmental Health Task Force comprised of parents, teachers, unions, public and private advocates and other community stakeholders that can provide input and recommendations to the School District and help develop the CEFMP.
Advocate for Increased funding to finance these and other critical initiatives to address environmental health risks in our school buildings.

Project Updates

October 2017
Right to Know Request Filed

May 2017
Labor Unions, Parent Groups, and Health Experts Join Philly Council Members to Announce Citywide Coalition to Tackle Environmental Health Threats in Public Schools

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