Teachers in Bankrupt Pennsylvania School District Pledge to Work for Free
The good:
Would you still go to work every day if your boss couldn’t pay you? That’s what 200 teachers and 65 other employees of Pennsylvania’s Chester Upland School District have pledged to do after district officials told them that a $19 million budget shortfall meant they wouldn’t be receiving salaries.
Sara Ferguson, who’s been a teacher in Chester Upland—a 3,700-student school system just south of Philadelphia—calls the situation “alarming,” but she told the The Philadelphia Inquirer that she and her colleagues have committed to staying on the job because “the students don’t have any contingency plan. They need to be educated.”
The bad:
How did the district end up in such dire financial straits? Last year, the Pennsylvania State Assembly axed about $900 million from education budgets. Those cuts came down particularly hard on districts like Chester Upland, which serves a student population that is predominantly low-income and receives about 70 percent of its funding from the state.
The just plain-down-right ugly:
The union has also appealed to Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett for state aid, but he has turned down the teachers’ requests. The state’s education secretary, Ron Tomalis, has said that because the district mismanaged its money, its employees shouldn’t expect any help.
My overall sentiment:
I just think this is ridiculous. I hate when our nation plays politics and young, low-income, often people of color get caught in the crossfire. Of all the places you could get rid of $900 million dollars from, you had to pick education? And how exactly did this budget cut get spread across the state? Are any of the upper-middle-class neighborhood schools aching like this district is?
