Last week, the School District of Philadelphia announced that they will be closing two schools and convert three more to Renaissance charter schools. One of the schools that are going to be converted is Jay Cooke Elementary School in North Philadelphia.
Jay Cooke was "chronically underperforming school" by the School District of Philadelphia, but went the first 5 months of the 2014 school year without a first grade teacher..
According to the school teacher, Christine Kolenut:
The initial reactions among the teachers at Cooke were “shock and anger.” She stated that “for the past several years Cooke was stripped to bare bones, staff and resource wise,” and that the school’s funding problems were so bleak that an “entire first grade went without a teacher for over 5 months because a long term sub was never sent when a teacher left on medical leave” in 2014.
Spending money on teaching supplies isn’t as big as an issue at Jay Cooke as it might be at other schools in the district, but one of her larger complaints is the constant curriculum turnaround in the district. She sees the constant turnaround as an “incredible waste of money” explaining “that every couple of years there is a new initiative and a whole new set of curriculum materials are sent. Those [textbooks] are used for about 2 years and then stuck in an empty classroom and abandoned for new materials.” Christine and her colleagues have spent personal resources making sure students have clean uniforms, functioning athletic and physical education programs and so families can cover the costs of graduating.
That's the least of the problem. There is an organizing effort happening to stop these charter conversions. Two years ago, there were two charter conversions happening in the city, but parents from the two schools shot down the conversions in a vote. Since the school district didn't get what it wanted, they've changed the rules so that a panel decides, not the parents:
Caucus member Amy Roat told the Raging Chicken Press that “we’re not here for a press conference,” and stated that members from Jay Cooke are getting ready to organize teachers, students, parents and the surrounding community to stop these conversions. Two years ago, the Caucus of Working Educators, Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPs) and parents of students at Edward Steel and Luis Marin-Munoz elementary schools were able to reject the two Renaissance conversions through a voting process, but this time around will be a lot more difficult because parents from the three schools will not be able to vote against the charter school conversion. Since the results of the Edward Steel and Louis Marin-Munoz did not go in favor of the School Reform Commission, Superintendent Hite’s Action Plan 3.0 excludes input from parents, teachers and community and hands off the decision to convert these schools to a selected panel.
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Over the weekend, teachers at Jay Cooke held meetings developing an action plan to keep Cooke a public, neighborhood school. Members of the leadership team within the school have already started reaching out to parents and community members. The fight to save Cooke Elementary is going to once again ignite the grassroots organizations who have been at the center of the push back to preserve public education in Philadelphia and is happening at an interesting time for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers due to the challenge they are facing from the Caucus of Working Educators.