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US Education Secretary requests more state funding for underserved Philly schools

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited a South Philadelphia public school on Friday to address the city’s ongoing education crisis.

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U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited a South Philadelphia public school on Friday to address the city’s ongoing education crisis.

The students at EM Stanton School greeted Duncan with live musical performances: an animated drum line in one hallway, a string ensemble in the other. The secretary also sat in on a student mock trial involving Little Red Riding Hood.

EM Stanton is a unique in a number of ways, and Duncan was visibly impressed.

Called “the neighborhood’s best kept secret,” it is one of the few schools with a fully funded music program. It has a state-of-the-art playground. Hale and hearty trees line the property. Parents from far-off neighborhoods have fought to get their kids in Stanton’s door.

The school is able to do this through a mixture of public and private funding, as well as through private partnerships with community organizations.

In a roundtable discussion, Duncan was joined by Philadelphia School District Superintendent Dr. William Hite; Pa. Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera; School Reform Commission President Marjorie Neff; EM Stanton parents; students; community leaders, and others.

“There’s a message out there — it’s charter, it’s private, or it’s suburbs,” said Lauren DellaCava. “But they haven’t been in the door.”

While DellaCava doesn’t have children enrolled at the school, she’s the acting president of EM Stanton Community Partners, a group of parents and neighbors that help see to Stanton’s success.

“We’re a neighborhood with a lot of resources,” she said. “There are other [schools and neighborhoods] where partners don’t have the same opportunities to come together.”

 

 

Most of Duncan’s criticism fell on state funding.

“When the state significantly underfunds students who weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouths, there’s a problem with that,” Duncan said.

Governor Tom Wolf’s education budget proposes to invest $2 billion into K-12 schools over the next four years, but Philadelphia needs a sizeable amount of that if it wants all of its schools to perform on the level of EM Stanton.

Superintendent Hite has asked for $206 million from the state, which he said will help reinstate the programs and resources — from nurses to arts teachers — that Philly schools have lost in recent years.

“The other side of this challenge is what do we do between now and the time this money is approved?” Hite asked. “Because quite frankly, it’s hard for districts like Philadelphia to budget with money that isn’t a sure thing yet.”

Hite also said that he’s encouraging neighborhood communities to become involved like they are at Stanton, but strained resources make it difficult for the city’s underserved schools to even build these types of partnerships.

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