Philly schools open with fewer counselors and many concerns

PHILADELPHIA schools opened yesterday amid the district's well-documented fiscal woes and drastically reduced staffing levels.

And how exactly did the day go?

Ask Superintendent William Hite Jr. His answer late yesterday was: "I thought the day went well. I thought the day went very well."

Monitor social-media sites, particularly Twitter, or ask Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and the answer is much different.

Jordan focused on what was missing from schools, specifically guidance counselors. "They are not frills. They are central components to school staff," he said.

Both sides, who will be negotiating today over a new PFT contract, do agree, however, that the teachers, principals, secretaries and counselors in place have done outstanding work.

There just weren't enough of them.

Hundreds of parents visited the district's headquarters on Broad Street yesterday, hoping to enroll their children in school.

"Every year, we get an influx of people who wait until the last minute," said district spokesman Fernando Gallard.

But this year was worse. Gallard said about 800 parents showed up throughout the day, causing hours-long waits at three locations within the building.

The first-day chaos may have been caused by parents who went to their local school, but were unable to enroll their children because of staffing limitations, he said. Each school now has only one secretary.

"It is possible that, due to that, parents are coming here," Gallard said.

Veronika Jones' weary face said it all. By about 2:30 p.m., only a few dozen parents were still waiting, but she'd been in line for 3 1/2 hours.

"It's a huge nightmare," said Jones, of Germantown, who was trying to get her 12-year-old daughter enrolled after she was told last week that the Francis D. Pastorius charter school was full.

"This is the third room we've been to," Jones said. "I think they're on 4, and we're No. 27."

Opening day included the anticipated merging of some schools that were once rivals. The Promise Academy at Martin Luther King High School received students from the now-closed Germantown High School, and South Philadelphia High School was the new destination for many students from nearby Bok Technical High School, which also closed.

A number of efforts went into blending these and other school populations, and for the most part, the work seems to have paid off at least for now, according to officials. Students from all four schools have begun a team-building Outward Bound program that will last the year.

At MLK, a group of girls gathered yesterday afternoon in the school parking lot. Two of them had started high school last year at Germantown. Another was a returning King student.

They all said they had been told to expect possible problems between the students who were transferring from Germantown and the students who already had been enrolled at MLK. The schools were known for their football-team rivalry over the years.

"It was not a lot of trouble," said Tania Rogers, 16. "But there still was some tension. You could feel it. But there wasn't too much drama."

Over at Southern, principal Otis Hackney said he spoke with three male students whose taunts "didn't go past a couple of looks." None of the students was from Bok, he said, and there was no trouble after school.

"I mean this in the best possible way, I'd say it was uneventful," he said. "You want it to feel pretty normal."

Some sense of normalcy might return if laid-off counselors are restored, which Hite said "we may not get." He does aspire, he said, to have at least one guidance counselor per school. It would cost $17.3 million to restore all counselors from last year.

Hite reiterated that he didn't want yesterday to be a new, stripped-down standard. He said he wants funding to pay for an entire year of music, athletics and intervention programs.

"In no way should the good opening today suffice for an adequate education funding in Philadelphia," he said.

-Daily News staff writers

Valerie Russ and William Bender contributed to this report.

Online: ph.ly/DNEducation