How will budget proposals help schools and students?

FULL DISCLOSURE is in order: I am a Philadelphia public-school teacher with a skewed agenda that advocates for students, and I am a member of that notorious union that has yet to step up with concessions to support our own demise. Most of the prevailing reform initiatives put forth by the district have meager educational value. They are more or less a pretext for "charterizing" into a feudal corporate model at the very high cost of further degrading the Philadelphia School District. There is another, often neglected, but more worthy conversation worth having.

For teachers, a primary consideration is students' receptivity to learning. A growing body of evidence negatively correlates poverty and academic achievement. I teach in the Philadelphia School District, where 39 percent of children in Philadelphia are poor, below a bare minimal threshold at $11,490 for a single person to $23,550 for a family of four. Many more don't qualify as "poor" in the government's eyes, but 80 percent of PSD students meet the standard for the federal free-lunch subsidy, and are struggling every day to subsist.

Poor children are more likely to experience hunger, abuse, violence (which is positively correlated to more aggressive behavior), environmental toxins and episodic and chronic stress. In response to stress, the body's adrenal glands release cortisol. High levels of cortisol are linked to the inhibition of cognitive functioning, such as memory loss, processing information and problem solving. They also interrupt the immune system, diminishing resistance to pathogens and causing a greater susceptibility to illness. In one-parent households with less familial support, children's social and emotional competence is more likely to suffer.

Besides the potential developmental concerns caused by the effects of poverty, there are urgent life issues that trump the importance of school.

In a larger environmental context, Philadelphia itself faces severe challenges, which add to our students' burden. We are near the top of national lists such as "highest poverty levels," "hunger," "most violent," "most obese" and "most dropouts," and among the worst in collecting delinquent taxes, "health care" - despite having top-notch hospitals and medical practitioners - and the lowest with college degrees, despite having first-rate institutions. The fractured social infrastructure and its ubiquitous climate, along with the lack of institutional support, manufacture a fierce undertow for generational poverty.

The situation is compounded when student development and learning are additionally challenged by impoverished school facilities, like those of developing nations, with dilapidated brick-and-block mortar buildings that bake on hot days and leak on wet ones, with a paucity of antiquated instructional resources in overcrowded classes. Yet, the district can't even finish a 10-month school year without additional school-based cutbacks. The threat of everyday violence for many is palpable. School communities are already busting at the seams doing a yeoman's job struggling to keep it together and moving forward. Out-of-pocket teacher expenditures for their students' personal and instructional necessities are a given.

Yes, our students not only can improve, but they can overcome these dire circumstances and thrive. I've seen it and I'd like to believe I've helped the process. And while the 60-percent graduation rate has improved, a 40-percent dropout rate is still deplorable and unacceptable.

I am baffled, however, by how the stature of the learning environment and academic achievement will actually be enhanced by the district proposals, such as 10 to 13 percent pay cuts with a freeze through 2017, eliminating the pay scale and senior career teacher, limiting/eliminating due process, right to outsource any job (e.g. noncertified nurses), eliminating the cap on class size, reducing librarians and counselors, and eliminating guarantees for books, furniture and water fountains, among others.

We have been and continue to be set up for failure in a rigged game on an uneven playing field. It is my contention that the district would be a lot worse off without the hefty lifting of the everyday workforce in the schools, despite the destitute and deteriorating conditions, and being perpetually told to do more with less, surviving one budget crisis after another. We need less provincial heavy-handed managers squeezing kids and teachers and repulsing everyone else, and more leaders and visionaries addressing real educational and social issues.

I want to apologize if I was rude for speaking up. As teachers we are generally excluded from the conversation outside of the classroom (and even there it's tough, with adherence to a scripted scope and sequence curriculum).