Chester-Upland School District is one of the lowest performing school districts in the State of Pennsylvania. It’s embarrassing.
The school district budget is nearly 3 times greater than the entire budget of the City of Chester.
The school superintendent earns nearly 5 times the salary of our mayor.
Principals earn nearly 3 times the salary of our city council members.
With that being the case, in my opinion, the school district should be running the city, not the other way around.
A lot of folks get upset that city government doesn’t get involved in the education system in Chester. It’s because they can’t.
The politicians you need to address about education in Chester are in Harrisburg. The State is running our schools, not our city. It’s our governor who determines how much money our school district receives, and he wasn’t too generous this year.
The only role our city plays is collecting the school taxes that gets passed through to the school district.
Yet, the current administration did pull off a miracle through an arrangement with Harrah’s and the Delaware County Community College. They convinced Harrah’s to put up the $2 million to allow Chester to ‘buy into’ DCCC as a sponsoring school district. This allows us to attend DCCC at half the price per credit hour than what we paid without this arrangement.
I applaud the existing administration for their creative solution with DCCC. For those of us who commit to higher education, it is a great help.
A new mayor will not have any more influence on the school district than the existing mayor. City government and the school district are not connected and a new mayor is not going to change that.
Parents have more influence on the school district than city government. Use that power.
The Mayor nor the senator cares about The Chester upland school Kids because if they did they would be at the school board meeting and talking to the state fighting for our kids education. the only city officials I see fighting for the school is State Rep thaddeus kirkland and John Linder... and for the record the Mayor do have power to help the school system he just havent Yet!
ReplyDeleteAnd what exactly has been the results of Kirkland's and Linder's fight?
ReplyDeleteLinder will have the same power as Butler if he becomes Mayor, none. The city has no authority over the schools.
At least Pileggi talked the governor to get the district more money.
Your St. Rep and Senator have the power to change things in the school. It's under state control.
Or, to put it more simply...
ReplyDeleteJohn Linder the Chester school tax paying citizen has more input on what goes on in the schools than John Linder the Chester City Councilman.
So many people either want to blame the school district's woes on the city government or they want city government to save the schools.
City government can say all they want to the school district, but the school district doesn't report to the city.
This is a very difficult fact for Chester folks to understand for some reason.
And, so that there is no confusion, Kirkland is not a city official. He is a State Representative.
ReplyDelete