Put aside your lesson plans and paperwork for the afternoon, and please join fellow educators, parents, and allies to celebrate the end of another school year, and share your skills and ideas to keep fighting for our schools, students, and profession. PLUS, sign up for a summer book club to get informed and learn together!

Happy hour food and drink specials! // Free street parking! // Children's area!

-Meet like-minded educators and public education supporters.
-Celebrate the end of a challenging school year.
-Reflect together on how to keep growing in our schools and classrooms.
-Share ideas to strengthen our union and keep fighting for the schools Philly deserves.
-Learn about the books for our 3rd Annual Education Summer Book Clubs, meet the facilitators, and sign up for one!

Thursday, June 2nd
4:00-7:00pm
Frankford Hall
1210 Frankford Ave (just above Girard)
Philadelphia, PA 19125

RSVP on our website or on facebook

The packed house at Munoz-Marin school on Thursday night.

Last Friday, four district schools got word that they were targeted to become “turnaround” schools, and that all staff would be laid off from the building, with no more than 50% allowed to return.

Yesterday, in a major reversal, Superintendent Hite made a statement to the press that the staffing requirements for these turnarounds are “flexible.”

So how did this turnaround language get turned around?

It’s simple: 

"Long before the draconian budget cuts we nurses commiserated about the responsibility we felt in adequately addressing the mandated professional duties enumerated by my colleague earlier today. We had professional meetings several times a year in which we shared best practices, honed our skills, and supported one another in our difficult but rewarding jobs serving Philadelphia's children. Our passion for this work is unmatched.

But, let me be abundantly clear here. Before 2011 we were able to get our job done.

Before 2011 our quality, Philadelphia's school health program was nationally recognized. In fact, prior to the 2011 budget cuts school nurses were rarely in the news precisely because adequate, well functioning school nurse services did not constitute a newsworthy topic." -Eileen Duffey

This past Thusday, February 18th, two of Philadelphia's Certified School Nurses testified at City Council's first State-of-the-Schools Hearing on the impact of budget cuts on Philly's children. Their testimony can be found below. They were joined by inspiring testimony from Philly's counselors, as well as many other education leaders. 

Peg Devine and Eileen Duffey are both running on the Caucus of Working Educators Slate for PFT Leadership. 

In recent months, people in Philadelphia have been hearing a lot about “community schools.” Both Jim Kenney and Darrell Clarke have made public commitments to this reform, which would potentially transform public schools into neighborhood hubs by expanding community partnerships and bringing in external providers for services important to students and families. Creating community schools has become a growing strategy nationwide, with major recent commitments to these schools in cities like New York and Baltimore.

While the pledges of our next Mayor and our City Council Speaker have garnered big news, they come in the context of years of advocacy by the organizing coalition PCAPS, which has pushed to bring community schools to Philadelphia, beginning with a pilot in at least 25 schools. Community schools have also been in the news recently as PCAPS and school community members have campaigned to have Huey, Cooke, and Wister elementary schools become community schools, as an alternative to the School District’s proposed charterization plan.

With this rapidly developing movement towards a new school model, the Caucus of Working Educators has a few questions for students, families, and PFT members to consider:

• How will new services provided at a community school be funded and supported? Many previous initiatives organized by the school district have been lauded as “the solution,” only to fall to pieces when the funding or political support dried up. Moreover, we must make sure that any new funding will come free from special interest strings.

• Who will be responsible for oversight of community schools? Community schools are a strategy for connecting resources and services to student needs -- they are not a one-size-fits-all model that can be applied in the same way to every school. Decisionmaking for these schools should reflect that. In the field of education, we always have to be mindful of the ways that powerful interests can hijack “reform” models to advance their own interests (be they cost-saving politicians or curriculum-peddling corporations). Individual schools must have their own decisionmaking abilities, and power should be wielded by the stakeholders at that particular school. 

• Will any educator positions at these schools be outsourced? Some community schools models replace longtime educators with part-time employees who provide  learning support, health and psychological services, giving students a lesser version of the expert resources they previously had access to.

• Will positions lost to the “Doomsday Budgets” be restored? After years of cutbacks, it has become unacceptably common in Philadelphia schools to lack a full-time nurse, counselor, and librarian. Contracting with external providers must not be used to allow policymakers to avoid returning to a budget that restores certified, full-time school professionals to every school.

If implemented well, the community school model could provide students with the comprehensive support they need for academic success, while addressing critical needs of students and families. If implemented poorly, however, the model could actually undermine the stability and sustainability of what schools currently offer Philadelphia’s children.

The PCAPS Community Schools Task Force, which includes members of the Caucus of Working Educators, will soon release a platform setting out specifics for what a community school should look like. As we approach the inauguration of Mayor Kenney, it is crucial that educators are asking the hard questions to make sure any new model for our schools does right by our city and our children.

Teaching is one of the noblest professions and represents that selfless sacrifice that men and women are willing to make to provide for the betterment of America’s youth. But between punitive education 'reform' policies, the starvation of public education, and the myth of 'failing' urban schools and their 'bad teachers', teachers don't get much credit these days.

The Caucus of Working Educators feels that it's about time the many great teachers across the city are acknowledged! We are asking educators across the city to begin posting #WETeach Tuesday posts on FB and Twitter on Tuesday that highlight the powerful educators we work with every day.

The ideal post is a short (1-3 sentences) write up expressing what makes their highlighted teacher a great teacher. Don't forget to include an image as well (see example below).

This acknowledgement of educators strengthens our power as a union by focusing on the one-to-one relationships that give us strength as a union and allow us to fight for our students in our buildings, neighborhoods, and city. It also provides an opportunity to overturn the myth of the “bad teacher,” by highlighting the great work and professionalism that we all engage in everyday.

Ready to get started? Here's an example of a #WETeach post:

The Caucus of Working Educators of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers does not support the School Reform Commission’s proposal to renew Superintendent Hite’s contract for an additional 5 years, while there are still more than two years remaining in his current one.

The SRC should not decide to renew the superintendent’s contract without the data and observations of an appropriate evaluation. The School District of Philadelphia cannot afford another financial misstep.  Let us not forget the lesson from 2011, when the SRC extended then-Superintendent Arlene Ackerman’s contract for one year. That very same year, the SRC fired Ackerman and bought out her contract for $905,000.

The reported reasoning for this decision includes the district’s need for stability, as opposed to evaluating Hite’s actual accomplishments. His record includes more school takeovers, privatization, layoffs, and outsourcing of union jobs that has resulted in more turmoil and instability, not less.

Philadelphia Public School students, families, and staff deserve to be a part of this decision in an actively engaged format. This decision should include actual voices, opinions, and data from the community at large, rather than another unilateral decision that looks and feels like the business as usual. The SRC should invite the community to a series of round-table discussions and actively utilize the conversations to make a more informed and shared decision in regard to Hite’s extended contract.

The SRC should use those conversations to re-evaluate the qualifications that our superintendent should possess. The School District of Philadelphia deserves a superintendent that:

• has no affiliations with the Broad Foundation

• is experienced with community engagement

• demonstrated teaching and leadership experience within the School District of Philadelphia

• demonstrates a willingness to work with all major stakeholders

• demonstrates a commitment to public education

• demonstrates the desire to work in conjunction with rank and file members towards a fair and equitable contract, and

• demonstrates a passion to provide a top-notch education to all children regardless of zip code, race, ethnicity, sexuality or socioeconomic status by fighting for all of the resources lost in the last four years to be returned to each and every school.

This new proposal binds the SDP to Superintendent Hite’s leadership until August 31, 2022. Given the current situation, an early decision to renew the superintendent’s contract is not a sound decision. The district is in the midst of a budgetary crisis. The credit rating and the overall morale of the School District of Philadelphia is at its lowest. Major decisions continue to be made with zero input from the staff and families of our children. If any of these conditions cause the SRC to reconsider its decision and terminate Hite’s contract early, it could cost the district at least $300,000 per year.

If you do the math, our students simply cannot afford this decision.

On October 15, members of Working Educators filled the SRC meeting along with many of our friends in the Philly Education community. On Thursday, November 19th, we will do it again!

Bring your work to show what we do #beyondthebell. Help fill the speaker's list by sharing testimony. Bring your phones and cameras to take photos and video. Live tweet, post, and share your views on a public meeting. Follow our Twitter @CaucusofWE as we live tweet it. 

We do not show up to SRC meetings with the expectation to change their minds, but join with fellow education advocates to stand up for the truly democratic, community process Philly schools deserve. As the saying goes, the people united will never be defeated. On November 19th, help us flood the SRC meeting with public education supporting teachers and families! Let's show them what a REAL public meeting looks like! 

 

Check out some of the testimonies from Working Educators members at the last month's SRC meeting. 

 

George Bezanis: https://vimeo.com/142590649

 

Diane Payne: https://vimeo.com/142666962

 

Robin Roberts: https://vimeo.com/142684128

 

Tomika Anglin: https://vimeo.com/143152135

 

Sherrie Cohen: https://vimeo.com/142590205

 

For more testimonies from WE Members and our parent & community allies, please see Ken Derstine's videos here: https://vimeo.com/user3379601/videos

Join us on Thursday as we continue to speak truth to power, stand up for a democratic vision for our schools and communities,  and #OccupyTheSRC!

Earlier this month, we brought you the story of Mifflin Elementary organizing their Work To Rule Campaign. Their week-long action is now complete -- here's how it went, from caucus member Pamela Roy. 

Last Friday, after participating in a week of work-to-rule, the staff at Mifflin went out to happy hour. There, we shared some of our successes and desires for improvement.

On a positive note, many of the parents of our youngest students became aware of the amount of time the teachers at our school spend watching their children after hours. Most kindergarten and first grade parents became very aware of the drop-off and pick-up times with the understanding that there would not be adults present to watch their child. Some parents expressed their displeasure that they could not drop their child off as early (some drop them off up to 45 minutes before school starts). We hope that parents will continue to realize the importance of timely drop-off and pick-up times, for the safety of their students.

We also felt the roll-out and notification of parents was successful. In most cases, parents were aware of what we were doing- and why. However, we perhaps didn’t achieve the intended result, which was for students to contact the district and SRC and complain about the lack of resources in our school. Apparently, they were not inconvenienced enough to communicate this message to the decision-makers in our district.

As a staff, we wondered: what if there had been district-wide buy-in? Would that have been more effective?  Participation from all schools and all members would have sent a more powerful message. Additionally, we asked: Would this have been more effective if it had started on the first day of school?

Ultimately, we agreed that if we were to do it all over, we would make the following modification: we would have stayed in the building outside of contractual hours to have time to prepare for our classes.

Most teachers would agree that things like lesson planning, making copies, grading papers and the like are a part of the job, and those things usually take place outside of contractual hours. We would have liked more time and space to do those things in the building, with the understanding that we would not be watching or working with students outside of those hours, nor communicating with administration or parents. On a do-over, we would have still upheld our lunch periods as student-free time, and cancelled after-school activities.

In the end, the work-to-rule protest helped create solidarity amongst staff, while raising awareness with families that we have been stretched quite thin as professionals and our schools are sadly under-resourced.

On Thursday, September 30th, SDP Superintendent William Hite announced that he will continue to continue to disrupt the education of thousands of Philadelphia students by implementing Action Plan 3.0.  

Superintendent Hite claims that the plan to “phase out” two schools and turn three more over to Renaissance Charter operators must be implemented in order to  “deliver on our vision of equity.”  Why does that vision include closing or causing upheaval in schools that are in struggling neighborhoods and have been denied adequate resources for years?

Here are a few ways that this new plan is anything but equitable, and examples of how things could be done differently:

• Two years ago, the school communities of Steel and Munoz-Marin had the chance to vote on whether to accept outside charter operators. By contrast, this new plan was designed without any teacher, parent, or community input. Schools were only informed of their fate early Thursday morning.

• When Steel and Munoz-Marin faced their vote about possible charter takeover, the current staff were given an opportunity to present their own plans for the school. Why are no district teachers being given the opportunity to speak for their own schools?

• The three schools suggested for Renaissance charter takeover--Cooke, Huey, and Wister--are all in neighborhoods where the educational fabric has already been cut to pieces by encroaching charters. That they would also eventually be put up for charterization is not an accident.

• The possibility of naming up to three turnaround schools means that all of the staff will automatically be removed from the school, and only 50% can return. By contrast, when a school applies for a “redesign,” they can keep all of their staff. Why does a “turnaround” require that students be separated from the teachers they trust?

Hite’s letter to teachers also claims that the SDP has “made progress obtaining the necessary resources to adequately serve our students and families.” Unfortunately, the biggest new resources are ones that push teachers towards more assessment, such as the “Driven by Data” handbooks that teachers at Central High School collected to resell so that they could raise funds for paper.

In fact, most educators can tell you that since 2013, there has been a consistent stripping of resources, both human and material.  Most school lack a full time nurse and school counselor.  Most schools lack safety personnel to supervise students before and after school, as well as in the halls during the school day. Most schools have one secretary and most principals struggle without an assistant principal to guide their schools. The district does not have the right to label schools as failing and ripe for overhaul in these conditions.

Philadelphia’s Caucus of Working Educators is already working to support students, teachers, and community members who wish to defend their schools from takeover or closure. Any educators who are looking for support can reach us at [email protected].