Funding crisis reaches boiling point

You don’t cook a frog by throwing it into boiling water, the adage goes. Instead, you place it in tepid water and slowly raise the heat.* 

Last week, news coverage of the opening of the school year was punctuated by sudden school closures as regional temperatures breached 90 degrees, turning classrooms into veritable hotboxes.

Approximately 75% of Philly schools have no air conditioning. Other poor districts in the region face the same challenge, like William Penn and Upper Darby.

This week’s hot button issue isn’t an unfortunate and unforeseen confluence of factors. The heat has been rising for years. Underfunding schools is the fuel.

Thanks to this late summer heat wave, the consequences of underfunding have hit home in a widely-relatable way. It’s so hot it’s dangerous and expecting students to learn in such conditions is ridiculous.

Wherever you’re reading this week’s The Point indoors, you’re likely somewhere air conditioned. If not, you probably won’t tolerate the discomfort for long.

But schools filled with children? 

“Heat shouldn’t be a factor for whether or not children stay in school all day, and, unfortunately, it’s been that way for us for some time,” said Superintendent Bill Hite last week after the district was forced to close schools early every day in the first week.

Adding to the frustration was a reminder that the state program designed to remedy these kinds of building issues was put on ice to cut costs. PlanCon (Planning and Construction Workbook) is the state’s formal process for reimbursing districts for school building projects—and it’s been essentially shut down since 2011, under Governor Corbett.

On Friday morning, elected officials representing William Penn, Upper Darby, and Philadelphia school districts (all of whom have seen heat related closures) joined PCCY, Public Interest Law Center and Education Law Center to demand the reinstatement of PlanCon funding.

“The moratorium on reimbursements to local school districts for building new schools since 2015 is reflective of how broken the politics of Harrisburg really are,” said State Representative Leanne Krueger-Braneky, who is a member of the PlanCon advisory committee. “The only way to change it is to change who’s in charge [of the legislature] and reinstate the funds for PlanCon.”

Philadelphia Councilmember Helen Gym arranged the event that took place outside of Lewis C. Cassidy School, a building infamous for its state of disrepair.

“I hope that as we gear up for the fall, state leaders recognize that we are watching, and we are committed to significantly increasing funding for facilities,” Gym said, noting that poorer districts like Philadelphia will never be able to cover the Commonwealth’s obligation to schools.

“Like climate change itself, the root cause of underfunded schools is government inaction,” said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, staff attorney with the Public Interest Law Center. “The consequences from both of these scourges are felt most by those who often absorb the brunt of injustice: low-income people, people of color, and children.”

Urevick-Ackelsberg’s remarks remind us of an eye-opening Inquirer report that showed the temperature difference between wealthier, tree-lined neighborhoods like Chestnut Hill and poorer, row-home dominated neighborhoods like Hunting Park can be as vast as 20-degrees. 

In leafy Lower Merion, students are learning unimpeded.

“I have three high schoolers in the Lower Merion School District,” said Shirlee Howe, PCCY’s Education Coordinator for Montgomery County. “They’re facing the same heat but my kids don’t have to deal with closures because their classrooms have air conditioning. We have the funding to take care of these essential safety issues. Students in all districts should have the same opportunities.”

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*PCCY is aware that frogs will actually jump out of warming water as soon as they are uncomfortable, well before it becomes dangerous, but chose to use the metaphor anyway. PCCY does note, however, we are alarmed that state legislators don’t seem to jump regardless of the degree of danger posed to our public education system.