Skip to content
News
Link copied to clipboard

Chester Upland braces for change as schools reopen after deep cuts

For Christina Wilmer and Wanda Mann, a summer of discontent is about to give way to an autumn of trepidation.

For Christina Wilmer and Wanda Mann, a summer of discontent is about to give way to an autumn of trepidation.

In an era when the ax has fallen freely on public-education budgets all over the nation, it has come down with extraordinary ferocity and sharpness in their distressed Chester Upland School District.

Largely as a result of state cuts, more than 40 percent of the teachers who finished the 2010-11 school year won't be back for 2011-12, which starts Tuesday. High school class sizes will jump 65 percent, from about 21 - near the national average - to 35 or even more.

Wilmer, whose son has been forced to change schools as he enters his senior year, worries about what those bigger classes will mean to the district's pupils.

"It makes the learning environment so stressful," she said. "There is no teacher who can adequately give these kids a fair shot. It's extremely frustrating. I just want to cry."

For Mann, the school board president, the budget crisis has meant painful personnel decisions. "It was an extremely hard summer," she said. "Telling people they don't have a job is very hard. There's no nice way you can do it."

In recent weeks, the district says, it has been able to call back 40 teachers, but overall more than 140 of 330 professional staff have been laid off, along with dozens of support staff and 11 security guards.

As a result of the cuts, a foundation that partnered with the district to operate a popular and successful arts school announced last week that it would end the agreement in June and seek to open its own charter school.

"We have work to do, and we recognize that," said acting Superintendent Joyce Wells. "We're moving forward." She said the district was working to call back more teachers.

The level of cutting was unparalleled in the region, and perhaps in the nation. Despite big reductions in Philadelphia, the staff cuts amounted to less than 15 percent.

Districts all over the country have suffered from statehouse-aid reductions and the end of federal stimulus money, said Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell University Higher Education Research Institute.

The impacts have been more pronounced in poorer districts that tend to rely more heavily on state aid, he said. But Ehrenberg said he was unaware of any district that had been hit as hard as Chester Upland. "That's extraordinary," he said. "I feel for them."

For her part, Wells said she is focused on getting the school year started and living with the realities at hand. "We understand where we are," she said Friday. "We have more work to do, and we recognize that."

The teachers union is sympathetic, said its president, Gloria Zoranski. "We're working hard with the district," she said. "We would like to see our class sizes smaller, but we understand the situation the district is in."

The 4,245-student district is one of the poorest in the state, drawing on a paltry property-tax base.

From 1994 through last year, the district was under some form of state control, and it relies on the commonwealth for about two-thirds of its funding.

Thus, the Corbett administration cuts struck deeply. The administration originally proposed a 30-percent-plus reduction in funding, but the final figure was closer to 10 percent. However, the district also took a hit when it lost more than $10 million in federal grant and stimulus money. Ultimately it slashed $16 million from a budget that came in around $95 million.

Students have been defecting to charters, now attended by more than half the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade pupils, and the district is making close to $40 million in payments to those charters, as required by law.

"The governor did us a bad, bad disservice to come out with an insane budget," said Charles Warren, whose grandchildren attend the district's art school. But Warren, who is running for the school board, isn't prepared to let the district off the hook.

"We knew this train was coming," he said. "We had a year, and did no planning." Said Wilmer: "I don't believe our leadership has done everything they could to keep our teachers in place."

The Wilmer household was rocked in August with word that the district was merging its Science and Discovery and Allied Health High Schools.

Her older son attended Allied Health, a few blocks from the house. She said that the school represented a tight-knit community where her son was comfortable.

That's now closed, and he will have to commute across town to the shared building. Wells, the acting superintendent, said she was satisfied that the district did everything possible to accommodate extreme circumstances.

"Staff members are eager and ready to go," said Wells.

"I don't belive the school district is working to find a long-term solution," said Wilmer. "They are putting a Band-Aid on an open sore."

The large classes, she said, increase the likelihood of lost students. "Someone is going to miss the boat," she said. "I don't want anyone to miss the boat."