September 27, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

City, State plug school budget Jenks shouldn’t see any more program cuts
by KRISTIN PAZULSKI

The school district budget woes seem to be over — at least for this school year.

On Sept. 11, Governor Ed Rendell and Mayor John Street announced that additional state and city funding is available to expand some student programs and eliminate the deficit that still hung over the school district’s head on the first day of school.

This comes after the district cut about $100 million in expenses for this year, leaving the deficit at more than $90 million.

Street said he expects an additional $42 million in revenue this year from new efforts to round up tax delinquents. The city is already providing an extra $10 million over its budgeted $18 million to the district.

The state, which already promised to give an additional $18.8 million, is providing $49 million more to the district, according to the release sent out by both Street and Rendell’s offices.

Despite the budget cuts, the school year at the John S. Jenks elementary school started without any major losses in programming, said Cindy Fitz, president of the Jenks’ Home and School Association.

The only major change, Fitz said, was a reduction in the days the school has a nurse — from four days a week to three. Some parents are upset about the cut, as a letter in the Local two weeks ago indicated, but Fitz said she wasn’t worried. School personnel are trained and know how to handle minor nursing needs, and if anything happens that requires a trip to the hospital or a 911 call, she said they could handle that just as well as the nurse.

She said that last year, when her son got pencil lead in his hand, the nurse bandaged it and called, asking her what she’d like the school to do.

“I said that bandaging it was fine, and I’d look at it when he got home,” Fitz said, explaining that the school’s personnel would only do the same thing in that situation.

Fitz is happy there are no split classrooms — when two grades are combined and taught in one classroom by one teacher because of a teacher shortage. Jenks was faced with that situation last year after losing a teacher in the beginning of the year. A first grade classroom and a second grade classroom were joined when a first grade teacher went to teach the fourth grade.

Though the new funding has not directly affected Jenks (the money is going to truant efforts, transportation costs for the students, improvement in high school classroom technology, additional pre-K classes, among other projects), Fitz is relieved the extra money was found to offset the deficit. But she’s still unsatisfied with the district’s overall funding, even if part of the additional overall funding is going toward expanding student programs and not alleviating the deficit.

“There are still things that need to be restored,” Fitz said, referring to the cuts in teachers, staff and programming that have been made during the past two years. “The money is great, but it’s not restoring the 100 teachers that have been lost.”

To avoid having a split classroom this year, the Jenks administration had to rearrange funds to hire another teacher — but it was lucky to have the opportunity to do so since it would not get more funding from the district for the teacher.

Fitz would also like to see a librarian, which the school has not had in several years, reinstated in the school’s library. The school is getting by fine without one, she said, and the Home and School Association arranged with the Chestnut Hill branch of the Free Library to better utilize its research resources for the children. But having one to supplement student’s learning would be beneficial, she said.

Fitz has high hopes for the new leadership, though. She said that so far this year, working with the School Reform Commission, which just changed leaders after the departure of chairman James Nevels this month, has been much more positive than in the past.

At the end of the school year in May, she was complaining about the SRC not listening to parents and scheduling meetings and hearings at times that working parents were unable to attend. This year, she said, the SRC, now under the leadership of Sandra Dungee Glenn, seemed to be genuinely listening and responding.

“It seems to me that they are starting to move in the right direction and are listening to the parents of the kids,” she said, adding that she was delighted to learn of a meeting with the SRC that was scheduled in the evening, after work hours.

“We’re going to be asking the SRC to look at how to restore these things in the future and to direct the money back into the classrooms, where it’s really needed,” she added.

Contact staff writer Kristin Pazulski at 215-248-8819 or Kristin@chestnuthilllocal.com.