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Sports - philly.com. School district spends less per student | Philly. Watch this 10-minute documentary on Philly schools budget battle. Take a Video Tour of the Real Philly. What Philly should know about creating successful community schools. Mayor Kenney’s first major policy announcement centered on plans to develop 25 community schools across Philadelphia. As is the case with any ambitious policy proposal, the “how” will take time. The “what” and “why” are more clear: By providing extended learning opportunities and access to additional services – such as preventive health care, counseling, and quality early education – community schools strive to address the effects of poverty on academic performance and provide more comprehensive supports for traditionally underserved students and families.

At the same time, research tells us that initial effects of community schools are small and that program quality matters enormously when it comes to outcomes. So, what can Philadelphia learn from the experiences of other districts that have invested in the community schools approach with varying results? Next, changes in student behavior will be the building blocks for academic success. MAP: Where Income Inequality Is the Worst in Philly - Philadelphia Magazine. We’re starting to wonder why the Occupy movement didn’t start in Philadelphia. For the umpteenth time in the last few years, a study has just come out showing that the Philly region is one of most unequal areas in the country. The Urban Institute looked at income and educational inequality in the nation’s largest “commuting zones” — which are similar to metropolitan areas — and found that Philadelphia had the second-highest degree of disparity in 2010.

The think tank developed a score for an area’s level of inequality based on four factors: its average household income, homeownership rate, median housing value, and percentage of residents who have a college degree. Dallas, Baltimore, Columbus and Houston also rank in the top five most unequal commuting zones in the country. If you don’t believe that inequality is a massive problem here, check out just a few of the stories that Citified and our sister blogs have written in the last couple years: Read More About: City Vs. When Voter Turnout in Philadelphia Really Matters | The Philly Post. Polls were crowded and lines to vote were long on Election Day here in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. It is a political maxim that voters engage and turn out for presidential elections. But, in the four years between the presidential contests, Philadelphia polling places can be awfully lonely. If we are going to make Philadelphia the city we know it can be, we have to change that fact and come out to vote in local races—as they can be much more important to our day-to-day lives than national contests.

While the president sets an important direction for the nation, local leaders decide what taxes we will pay to fund the services we consume. Some people talk about the emergence of a new Philadelphia. Looking at Philadelphia’s track record, it is clear that voting in non-presidential election years is as rare as a Philadelphia sports-championship parade. Hundreds of Philly students opted out of standardized tests this year. Your browser does not support the audio tag. This spring, Tonya Bah sent a letter to parents with children at Wagner Middle School in West Oak Lane, where her daughter Fulani is in the 8th grade.

In the letter, she shared why she didn't think standardized tests helped students at Wagner and explained how parents could opt their children out of taking the tests, using the School District of Philadelphia's protocol. "If enough of us refuse the tests," Bah wrote, "the message to the state will be clear: We will not accept the label of failure for our students, for our schools. " In all, 171 Wagner parents responded to the letter, pulling about a third of the students in the school out of statewide standardized tests called the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSAs. Bah has fraternal twins in the 8th grade. Her daughter is an A student, bound for Carver High School of Engineering & Science next year. Many schools had high concentrations of students opting out.

White People Attending Public Schools Is Newsworthy In Philly | Huffington Post. Civic, health, religious leaders huddle on protecting Philly kids from lead. Calls to end SRC grow louder; others urge more transparency | News | philly. A push to return local control of public schools to Philadelphia for the first time in more than 15 years intensified during a rally Thursday outside the School District of Philadelphia headquarters. A crowd of more than 100 gathered outside of the school district administration building on North Broad Street before a 4:30 p.m. meeting of the state-controlled School Reform Commission, which administers city public schools. “It’s time for the SRC to go,” Rodney Muhammad, president of the city branch of the NAACP told the crowd. “What we need Harrisburg can’t give us. What we have in here,” he said, pointing at the school administration building, “has shown us they can’t give us what we need either.” He told the crowd not to “fear being held hostage” during budget time.

Security was tight with a dozen uniformed police officers at the entrance of the building and along Broad Street. “It’s time to get rid of them,” Jones said. Jeff Sheridan, a spokesman for Gov. When it comes to education funding, what's the deal with Philly schools? — Keystone Crossroads. Fourteenth in an occasional series of podcasts and web "explainers. " How much does the Philadelphia School District spend? The district's budget for the 2014-15 school year is roughly $2.6 billion.

The School Reform Commission and Superintendent William Hite have proposed a $2.89 billion plan for the 2015-16 school year, arguing that the additional money is needed to restore vital, basic services. Doesn't Philadelphia get a huge share of state education aid already? House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R- Allegheny) makes the point that the city has 12 percent of the state's school population, but receives 18 percent of the state's basic education subsidy. That's accurate. Philadelphia school officials counter that those numbers alone don't capture the situation.

Also, they say, the state's school aid system is supposed to send more help to districts that have a lot of impoverished families with children who pose extra challenges to educate. It does. Doesn't politics play a role in this? Yes. Philadelphia Student Union. Why Voter Turnout Sucked in Philly's Mayoral Race - Philadelphia Magazine. Photo by Matt Rourke/AP 1. Voter turnout in Philadelphia wasn’t always so pitiful. The gist: Only 27 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in Philadelphia’s mayoral primary last week. It wasn’t always like this. In 1991, 49 percent of Philly voters came to the polls.

In 1987, 67 percent did; in 1971, a stunning 77 percent did. Turnout peaked in these local elections starting in the late 1960s through to the early 1980s, when intense civil rights activism translated street power to electoral might and met white backlash at the polls. Why it matters: As Denvir writes, “who turns out in local elections might actually matter more” than who turns out in national races. 2. The gist: Last week, three challengers won the Democratic City Council At-Large race: former Council aide Derek Green, education activist Helen Gym and “condo king” Allan Domb. Why it matters: The idea of Green, Gym and Domb getting together isn’t as crazy as it sounds. 3. Low voter turnout philadelphia demographics. Philadelphia, a city of great economic inequality, prepares for Democratic National Convention | Fox News Latino.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – When the Democrats come to the City of Brotherly Love to nominate Hillary Clinton for president and the talk turns to income inequality and the 1 percent, Exhibit A will be right outside their windows: Philadelphia itself. The nation's fifth-largest city is rebounding, filling some Philadelphians with an unfamiliar sense of civic pride. And yet it struggles with the gap between rich and poor that Sen. Bernie Sanders decried during his campaign against Clinton, with 26 percent of residents living in poverty, the highest rate among the 10 biggest cities in the U.S.

The July 25-28 convention creates an opportunity to acknowledge the city's successes in urban revitalization, but also "to look closely at the real Philadelphia, which is also the real America," said Randall Miller, a history professor at Saint Joseph's University. Philly has ridden a wave of good publicity lately. New Mayor Jim Kenney hopes to change that, starting with better schooling. Student Log — Building 21 Philadelphia. Across the Line: the inequities in educational opportunity between Philadelphia and its suburbs.

The Union Rep 2001-2 by Philadelphia Student Union. Integrative Arts Programs in Philadelphia: An Examination of Philadelphia’s. A win on five demands- but fight to end school police violence isn’t over | Philadelphia Student Union. By The Philadelphia Student Union June 23, 2016 For the past six weeks, students in the Philadelphia Student Union have held weekly vigils at 440, held press conferences, organized student speak-outs about school police violence, written editorials in major newspapers and The Nation magazine, and testified in front of the School Reform Commission, all to call attention to the injustice of a student being assaulted by a school police officer in his own school hallway, for the minor infraction of attempting to go to the bathroom without a hall pass. On Monday, June 20, 2016, the Philadelphia Student Union met with Dr.

William Hite, Superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia, to address the incident on May 5, 2016, where a student was punched, choked, and thrown to the ground by a school police officer in the hallway of Benjamin Franklin High School. In our letter to Dr. Specifically, thanks to continued pressure from the students of Philadelphia, Dr.