School's in! CCP classes are back

"Hey! How are you?" cried education teacher Sandra Spicer-Sharp yesterday as she walked into her classroom at Community College of Philadelphia.

"I'm good," student Craig Kapur answered with a grin as Spicer-Sharp squeezed his shoulder and then hugged two more students on her way to the front blackboard.

For thousands of students such as Kapur, 22, yesterday was the first day of classes after a sometimes bitter strike that had shut down the college for two weeks.

"I would say I missed you all," Spicer-Sharp joked to her class. "But with all the cell-phone messages, I think I talked to you more than my own children."

Soon she was down to business, explaining to her 13 students in her twice-weekly educational psychology class the make-up tests and the coursework she will try to cover in the weeks remaining.

Earlier, the day's blue skies, budding magnolias and 80-degree temperatures found hundreds of students milling on the college's sidewalks and lawns, where many chatted up classmates for the first time in weeks.

"It's too nice to be indoors," complained Elise Wright, 18, of Mount Airy. "It would be easier to be indoors if it was snowing."

Gone were the picketing teachers milling on street corners. Striking union members approved contracts Sunday and Monday that provide annual raises of 3.62 percent over the next five years, as well as bonuses averaging $900.

And back were street vendors selling caps and sunglasses, and the smell of frying onions radiating from food trucks.

"I like to have people back so I make money," said Pursan Muhammed, whose truck was parked on 17th Street.

Some students interviewed at the Spring Garden campus voiced relief to be back in class. But many expressed frustration - even anger - with the strike's duration and disruptions.

"Now I'll probably have to work 10 times harder to catch up," said Celine Jones, 18, of Northeast.

Shantel Washington, 19, of Mount Airy, said she had been frustrated in the early days of the strike but quickly began to enjoy the extra at-home time with her 5-month-old daughter.

"This morning I had to get up and leave her," Washington said. "We both felt bad."

Communications major Mike Greenspoon, 23, of Bala Cynwyd, said it felt good to be back, but he was irked that the strike lasted so long.

"It was stressful being out," Greenspoon said. "I thought it would be one day."

Pharmacy major Erica Montanez, 20, of North Philadelphia she was not happy with the strike, which she called "two weeks of lost time."

She blamed both the teachers and the administration for its duration.

"I'm not coming back next year," Montanez said. "I'll go to Temple, instead."

Her friend Carmen Melindez, a 24-year-old criminal justice major, said she thought the strike was unfair to students. "Now they want to add on two weeks" to the end of classes, she said, "but I'm not staying. I've got to start work. I'm taking finals when I'm supposed to and then I'm leaving."

Farther down 17th Street, a teacher and student got into a debate about the value of the strike.

"We got jerked, and for what?" 32-year-old Frankie Thomas, a psychology major from the Northeast, demanded of a part-time English teacher. "If you're going to strike, let it be for something."

Thomas scoffed at the $800,000 in bonuses that the strikers won through the intervention of U.S. Rep. Bob Brady and Gov. Rendell. "In my eyes, you didn't get anything."

"We got health benefits," said the teacher, who later asked not to be identified in print for fear of reprisals.

"We all should have been told you might go on strike before we signed up for this semester," Thomas retorted.

"Listen," the teacher replied, sternly but without rancor. "You're from a poor working-class family, trying to move up. Someday you may have to fight to make employers treat you fairly.

"They [the college] exploit the part-time faculty. We have to make gains incrementally," the teacher continued. "We don't win in one strike, but we had to stand up."

"I believe in unions," Thomas replied. "But I still think you got jerked and we got jerked."