Save the Philadelphia Public School System from being privatized!

The SRC in Philadelphia has voted to close up to 40 schools at the end of this year and additional schools for the next several years. The SRC is trying to use a corporate model in the planning of education. We cannot allow our schools to be sold off to corporations. The governors and mayors have selected poor leaders for the district for over 15 years—Paul Vallas and then Arlene Ackerman. Ackerman decisions were the beginning of the end. We need to support our public education system and help our students learn. The teachers and principals have long been ignored.

It is time for Philadelphia to have a home grown superintendent and an SRC that is made up of teachers, educators, and parents, not lawyers and business people. The funding issues for Philadelphia start at the state level with a governor who feels we need too much without thinking about how many students we teach. His plans for education, from charters to vouchers, are a blatant attack on the education provided to poor and middle class students. It is time for all politicians to have their children in public schools. Send the message that the most important issue in this state should be the education of our children. It is time to select a Philadelphia educator to be leader of this district. It is time for the SRC to be reformed with a PFT representative to speak for the teachers, a parent to speak for the people with the most invested in this system, and educators. And all of those on the SRC must be from Philadelphia. It is time for the superintendent to be from Philadelphia.