Testimony of Ilene Poses to the BOE, January 30, 2020

Action Item 47

I urge the board to support the contract with 1199c.  It supports district CTE programs and has impacted 4000 students who are trained yearly.

There are plenty of good local partners that cost the district little or nothings at all that deserve support.  As I have mentioned for the past year The Hospital Auxillary Support Program run by retired district teacher Mark Spiller for 46 years is another exemplary partnership.

Philadelphia Young Playwrights has a 33 year partnership with district schools which has allowed students from first through twelfth grade to find their voices and improve their literacy skills through playwriting.

For the past 16 years History Hunters program has made history come alive for 4th and 5th grade students by visiting historic houses in Germantown.  Their Dinah project will create a monument to Dinah, an enslaved woman, who saved Stenton House during the Revolutionary War.  This monument is one of the few monuments in the country to honor an African American woman.  The project demonstrates a model for true community engagement.

Contrast these partnerships with the kind offered by PSP – Philadelphia School Partnership – for the new HS2L charter which offers money with strings attached and poaches on the exemplary CTE programs already working well in the public schools.

Sing to Summertime – (now sung at Met by Golda Schultz)

Charter time

And to give in is easy.

A moratorium

is what we need.

KH(SA)teens

want THEIR high school

supported

With partnerships growing

Improvement is guaranteed.

One of these mornings

you will toss out String Theory.

Their application

 is the same as last year.

And you’ll notice

Wynnefield neighbors

are  leery.

So stop

Board of Ed

Say no without fear.