Ostensibly, any public school who receives funding from taxpayers should never be able to turn away applicants who reside within the school's neighborhood boundaries.
Better off city dwellers have exploited this two-tiered system of the haves and have-nots for YEARS in order to avoid sending their children to the neighborhood schools in neighborhoods that were, shall we say, "in transition." That's why Powel, etc. was an alternative for so long to Wilson and later Lea school. That was school choice without, "school choice." Now, the tide has turned. Charter schools are still funded by by taxpayers as well as huge corporate funding sources such as Penn and therefore are public schools. However, they conduct themselves as private schools on taxpayers money. Penn Alexander is not a special program or magnet public school. As long as they are "public schools", they should never be able to say they are only set up for smaller classes. ALL public schools, as well as private schools, function better with smaller class sizes. In fact, that is one of the few documented research factors that actually contributes to closing the achievement gap. NO public/charters should be permitted to turn away children who reside within their boundaries, but they do. Poorer neighborhood schools should not have to cut their already limited budgets and resources and increase class sizes and accept cast-offs in order to allow public charters or selective schools to turn away rightful applicants because that might contribute to a less than ideal learning environment. All public schools should be able to do this. From: "krf...@aol.com" <krf...@aol.com> Reply-To: "krf...@aol.com" <krf...@aol.com> Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 08:11:06 -0400 (EDT) To: UnivCity listserv <UnivCity@list.purple.com> Subject: Re: [UC] FW: In catchment or not, Penn Alexander will be forced to turn new ... In a message dated 5/13/2011 7:31:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, wil.p...@comcast.net writes: > > A pity. Class sizes will increase to epic proportions across the district as > charter schools are increased, school buildings are sold and schools combined > under the "Right Sizing" initiative; schools with a lot less resources than > Penn Alexander. If I were a parent in the catchment area, I would fight it. > It is still a public school. FYI: When Jasmine (four-going-on-twenty) didn't make the cut for kindergarten at the Alexander school, we looked into a few of the better charter schools (in Center City and South Philly), and also into Lea and Powel. The charter schools were "wait list" propositions with little likelihood of getting in. Lea was unimpressive, to put it mildly. Powel seemed better and they said we could register. By the time we heard back from Powel, we'd already decided to enroll at St Francis DeSales and are sticking with that decision. The item about Powel being overcrowded now reinforces that choice. St Francis is $2,000 plus some expense for uniforms. Compared with other local private school options, that's actually very cheap. And the quality of the education there is undisputed. We looked at two other church-affiliated possibilities as well. Spruce Hill Christian School (affiliated with Tenth Presbyterian in Center City) is three to four times as much. And a school run by a Baptist church further west than University City was $4000 -- and although it looked like a good option, I was concerned whether they had as established/proven a curriculum as either St Francis or Spruce Hill Christian. We were figuring on transferring to the Alexander school for first grade -- but now that seems to be an "iffy" proposition, too. Al Krigman
