By Susan Snyder
A Philadelphia School District plan to send more money to schools with the neediest students has parents worried even though the change is at least a year away.
In the Philadelphia district, each school receives a budget to pay for teachers, programs and other resources. There are long-standing inequities among schools in part because inexperienced teachers, who earn less, tend to work at the most troubled schools.
Parents whose children attend higher-performing schools with less needy students are concerned that their children's education may suffer if money is taken away. In a district constantly trying to offset a deficit, money is tight at all schools.
"I doubt anyone questions that lower performing schools need more resources - I certainly agree that they do," said Kevin Peter, whose son attends C.W. Henry School in West Mount Airy. "However, in our district's top-performing schools, like Henry, we're just barely hanging on with our current funding."
There's no librarian. The school continues to struggle to keep class sizes small. And three staff positions were lost in the last year, Peter said.
While Peter shared his concerns in an e-mail last week, the commission at its meeting yesterday also heard from parent advocate Helen Gym, who has a child at Masterman, one of the district's top magnet schools.
School Reform Commission Chairwoman Sandra Dungee Glenn said she understands the concerns and the commission will look carefully at how to deal with long-standing inequities in funding.
"That is going to be a balancing act we have to go through," Dungee Glenn said.
The commission in December hired Education Resource Strategies, a Wayland, Mass.-based firm, to study the district's budgeting and recommend ways to make it more fair. The work, which will cost the district $350,000, is likely to take a year.
Arlene Ackerman, who was announced last week as the district's new chief executive officer, has created new funding systems that shifted dollars to more needy schools in Seattle, Washington D.C. and San Francisco. Ackerman will help Philadelphia in the effort, Dungee Glenn said.
Dungee Glenn for months has expressed her concerns about the need to give more money to schools with students who may need more services--poor students, English language learners and special education students.
The inequity, in part, is because the most inexperienced teachers - and therefore lowest paid - work at the neediest schools. Given the contract with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, Dungee Glenn said she wasn't sure if that could be changed.
"Whether we can adjust for that or how much we can adjust for that is an outstanding question," she said.
Dungee Glenn said the district wants to find a way to shift dollars without penalizing higher performing schools.
"It would be wrong to say the only way to approach it is to take money away from x to give to y," she said.
The district may need to move money out of central administration or use additional state funding that Gov. Rendell wants to send the district over the next few years, she said.