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Subscribe to RSSIn a case of she said/she said, a Pennsylvania teacher and school board president accuse each other of starting a fight at school, in view of students. WCAU's Lu Ann Cahn reports.
A police chase through the elementary school cafeteria during lunch on Tuesday. A brawl between the school board president and a teacher at the high school on Wednesday. Oh yeah, and that nagging $23 million deficit that still hasn't been resolved.
It's been a rough week for the Chester Upland school district in Pennsylvania, a financially troubled school system that is regularly among the state's worst performers academically.
On Tuesday, staff at The Village at Chester Upland Elementary School thought they would let in the unusually warm weather by opening up a side door to the cafeteria, the school principal told Philadelphia's NBC10.com. The burst of spring air they were hoping for came in -- followed by a suspected burglar and police officers right behind him, authorities said.
"I saw a guy running through, and police were chasing, and we all were screaming," one student who witnessed the lunchtime chase told NBC 10.
The school was in lockdown for 45 minutes while police searched the school, NBC 10 reported. The suspect was found and arrested; no one was hurt.
Wednesday didn't go any better.
The district's school board president and a teacher had to be taken to a local hospital with scratches and other minor injuries after the two had a physical altercation in the teacher's classroom in front of students, according to NBC 10. Both women claimed the other started it.
“She shoved me and pushed me away, pushed me hard,” Board President Wanda Mann said. “It went back and forth, she started cursing. I probably said some curse words back to her.”
But high school teacher Leslye Jordan said Mann lunged at her first, reported NBCPhiladelphia.com. She told the station Mann was upset because Jordan wrote a letter to the district superintendent saying she felt unsafe at school after a student threatened her.
“It’s terrible that teachers have to go to school and not only be threatened by students, but by the president of the school board,” Jordan said.
Police are reviewing cell phone video of the fight to determine whether there will be charges filed.
Financial 'disarray'
For months, the district has been wondering if it would even have enough money to stay open for the rest of the school year.
Impoverished Chester Upland claims Pennsylvania has been denying it necessary state funds for years. State officials maintain the district got into the mess due to its own money mismanagement problems. Regardless, the district is forecast to be $23 million in debt by June if nothing is done.
On Tuesday, Pennsylvania's secrectary of education filed a report in federal court outlining recommendations for funding the district. The $27.7 million proposal noted that the district's finances are "in complete disarray," and asked a state judge to appoint an outside receiver for the district, reported The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The plan is just a bandaid solution, only solving this year's "critical expenses ... truly necessary to keep the schools open through June," according to The Inquirer.
Chester Upland depends on state aid for close to 70 percent of its funding, according to The Inquirer. When statewide budget cuts were issued last year, Chester Upland suffered. In addition, Chester Upland’s state-allocated funds go to two charter schools in the city. Earlier this year, the district filed a lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania claiming that even though funds were transferred to the charter schools, demands on the district were not reduced, leading to huge financial problems.
For nearly a week in January, Chester Upland teachers, bus drivers and staff members worked for free when cash ran out, before a $3.2 million advance from the state was approved by a judge.
Sara Ferguson, an elementary school teacher in Chester Upland, told MSNBC-TV's Ed Schultz in January, "It's just unfortunate in the United States of America that a student's address and zip code can determine their worth and their right to a quality education. And I just want everyone to know that whether we got this 3.2 million dollars or not, the support staff, the teachers, the community, the parents, we are all committed to the students."
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msnbc.com's Elizabeth Chuck contributed to this report.
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Actually it sounds like a not as bad as it could be week considering the demographics. The NAACP found out that in the state of PA over 1/2 of all state prison spending was on residents of 11 zip codes in philly which have less than 1/4 of phillys population. The NAACP tired to make it seem like this was racism as if an equal amount of crime occurs in a nice zip code but cops just let it go, instead of realizing that its gang crime & people acting out rap videos.
Washington DC spends $23,000 per student per year - one of the highest amounts in the WORLD.
And their kids perform near the bottom in the US.
Money isn't the answer.
Ryan agree, money has never been an answer. But schools these days are just cheap day care and education is not the priority.
Good old us of a land of the free and home of the brave. Let's not leave out equality, oh yeah, we're equal, except we're not. Neither the intelligence nor physical playing field is level. For as long as iq has been measured there has been around a 30 point difference between the race with the highest and the one with the lowest.
You see iq cannot be learned or taught, it is a genetic trait just like height or musical ability. Stop torturing the ones with the low end for something that is not their fault. It's just like trying to make a basketball star out of a jew, it is unlikely to happen. All you do is cause mental anguish and all the associated problems by pushing them.
We waste way too much money on education, the money is simply poured down the drain with one idiotic experiment after the other. We need to go back to the basics for our education system, our kids can't read, can't write, can't do math, have no sense of their history and simply can't begin to contemplate the basics of science. Students are stupid, lazy, oversexxed and tied to their ipod or iphone rather actually taking the time to actually do something called study. Parents are disengaged, have no sense of discipline and have shrugged their responsibilities for family, home and work
IWonder,
People on this board will rip what you said apart and curse you for saying it, but it is 100% the truth.
steveaae, interesting that you never mentioned the children. Tea anyone?
Ahhh IWonder, finally someone who understands how IQ & genetics factor into education. well said!
They left blacks in charge of their own schools in Dallas. The schools got "F" ratings and a lot of money was missing. Eventually they had to add those schools to other districts. Just sayin"
loll
"Just sayin"...
Yep jw , we know exactly what you were trying to say...
Look at the state of the schools in Detroit. School board members have LIMO drivers! Using the money to buy personal crap and then the schools are all graded "F" and so much money was missing the state stepped in. Nothing but corruption.
Tell me where that is happening in any failing district that isn't minority run.
@Katethebrat so you honestly think that there are no schools with primarily white populations that are having difficulties? I'm digging the racism, good times.
The LA unified school district here in Cali has over 50% dropout rate and the teachers in the state get paid more than anybody else in the Nation 8)
What a surprise!! Why is it that black feel whites owe them something? The slave thing is generations old...move on!
You are a bigger idiot than IWonder! I bet both of you are blue collar, low wage, probably endured bouts of unemployment workers that barely escaped high school!
And we wonder why "Johnny Can't Read"! A tip of the hat to Don Henley for that great sad, but true, song.
Read Lincoln's speech to the freedmen.
you could put these kids in the best school districts in the world and they'll still fail miserably.
if you don't valued education in the home... you won't value it anywhere else.
... says the guy who can't get his tenses right.
And just how do you know education isn't valued in the majority of homes in this school district? What facts do you have that none of the rest of us seem to have?
LL
i do seem to spell poorly on these boards.
my grammatical errors have little to do with the point being made.
as a culture... blacks don't value education... this really isn't that hard to prove.
Aaah...Jason. So it's the blacks? That's the problem? "Blacks don't value education?" No, it's POOR people who don't value education. Because:
1) They don't have the time, as many have to work TWO suck-ass jobs to pay the rent
2) Their families are often fallen apart, meaning junior is passed from one relative to another
3) They are so often in a position of not being able to pay their rent they have to move every six months
And most importantly...
4) Education doesn't seem to have much value to people who are so deep in a permanent underclass that the idea of going to college or medical school or what have you seems as likely as winning the lottery.
So what exactly are these shared behaviors and beliefs charactistic of blacks? Well, besides sharing similar skin pigmentation and hair color.
People should really stop using culture or race when all they're actually describing is one attribute. What next? The blond culture? THe obese culture? The blue eyed culture? The rich culture? The poor culture? Every person is obviously a product of unlimited blended 'cultures'.
Somewhere along the line Americans started treating culture as a synonym for stereotype. It's just that stereotype is not PC and culture is PC.
rrobeson: Culture and race are NOT the same thing. And "race" (which is a culturally dependent idea itself) is only one of many things that can be a part of one's culture. And it's not even the biggest one. Your joke about "rich culture"? Yes -- socioeconomic status is a HUGE part of what defines different cultures.
I'm not sure if I understood what you're getting at, so if I've misconstrued your point, I apologize.
Actually, it's the very nature of free public education that it is undervalued.
Compare to China, where people pay tuition to send their kids to better public schools. When you pay for something, you value it more than something that is handed to you.
In fact, you can easily see research on the fact that poor kids in the US do better in tuition charging schools than poor kids in "free" schools.
I wouldn't even bring race into it.
People forget that Education spending has gone up faster than medical spending. Yet, the kids are no smarter than before. It's simply a waste of money, and perhaps a part of the problems we are having.
Once you decide that more money can't solve the problems (and that is a hampster treadmill anyway since you can always say "If we only spent more" no matter how much you spend), then we can move on to solutions.
Yes, poor kids don't do as well as rich kids in school. I don't think it's because the rich kids work harder because their parents are paying tuition. It's more likely because they grow up in a well educated family were college is a given, they live in nicer neighborhoods where crime and gangs are less of an issue, their parents have the time to participate more in their education, etc.
I think you may be confusing correlation with causation. If your theory were true, the nation with the best education in the world, Finland, would actually be at the bottom of the list. You see, in Finland there are no private schools. Tuition is illegal.
Are you black jasonInNYC?
Incorrect sentences, racist comments...how the hell do you know anything about black households? I'm just asking.
JasonInNYC
i do seem to spell poorly on these boards.
my grammatical errors have little to do with the point being made.
as a culture... blacks don't value education... this really isn't that hard to prove.
Jason is right, some of you poster that don't agree might want to re-evaulate the core problem and don't mask it with being politically correct on race. It doesn't matter where you are from, if historically your family does not value education as much as the next one, chances are the kids will not do as well. Culture plays as much in the success of education as well. although monetary value can raise a person's value placed on education, it is only a tiny part and mostly apply to higher education.
Growing up in a diverse neighborhood I saw first hand that those kids whom their parents valued education, fared better and graduated verse those who's parents could care less what their grades were. It didn't matter the race or financial situation. Education starts at the home, not when you enter a school.
revelwoodie - They have poor people in Finland.
I was trying to come up with a theory that didn't include race.
I could have gone for the obvious connection, since the data is clear when broken down by race - and that is corrected for income.
Because then we are back to the question of if poor performance is simply a cultural thing.
There is an interesting book out by a guy that compares poor neighborhoods in the UK to poor ones in the US. It tends to show that it has nothing to do with discrimination, based on race, but mainly linked to cultures that produce many of the bad results we have attributed to race in the US.
The upshot is that many poor people are poor because of their own behaviors, those being molded by the particular culture they live in. I guess you would call that "class".
It didn't seem like you could easily separate cause and effect there.
Of course, dirt poor people in China scrape together enough money to send their kids to better public schools - and those kids are really motivated by that sacrifice. Similar thing in India - so you can't say poverty = poor educational performance.
That's why my theory is that since we ask no sacrifice in the US, and really it is more of a handout of free daycare for many, that people already in a culture that values education less are even more able to take it for granted.
Ohhh Jason get the facts before you say things like that. Find an article called "Poverty's Children in Chester PA" and realize little has changed between then and now. Do you have a clue what Chester is like? Have you ever been there? Have you ever lived in a place that's half empty because all the factories bailed leaving people with nowhere to work? Or somewhere the majority of families have only one parent because the men left and don't send child support? How do you collect taxes from people that have no money? I like to believe things have changed since I was last in the area but this article seems to tell a different story.
These kids don't start out in school not believing in education. They start like every other kid, thinking the world is wide open to them. Their eyes start to open in junior high. They get outside school look around and realize there is nothing there. By high school education starts looking like a waste of time because it will get them nowhere. All the talk of what education will do for them has been a lie. They're trapped in a cycle that began long before they were born. How do they leave, how do their parents leave with no money or job to do so? How do they reach higher education when there is no money to put food on the table?
Poverty doesn't have a color.
JASON in NY for the next republican candidate!
I could have sworn I had an engineering degree and started out over $25,000 in student loan debt. If that isn't "valuing education", i'm not sure what else I can do to "prove" it.
Love it...these democrats feeding on each other. Hey liberals, hows that workers Utopia feel, once the money dries up?
You love the fact that kids are not getting an education? That speaks volumes as to your character.
LL
Chester PA is a "workers Utopia"? Oh yeah, I forgot. In 1917 a group of Russian Bolsheviks got shipwrecked off the American coast. Hungry, wet and exhausted, they bravely walked the many miles to Chester PA. There, without the pressures of the internal politics of the incipient Soviet Union, they were finally able to realize their dream of a true workers' Utopia. Nearly a hundred years later, this dream is finally crumbling. Will they now finally realize the follies of their leftist ways?
How the hell do you know they are liberals. Never seen a black educator that is a republican?
a police chase through and elementary school.
i mean... wow.
I know what you mean Jason...
If it would have been a white school lunch room the cops would have been chasing down a shooter!
Jason needs to work on his English. He is pitiful.
Since when is shoving and yelling a "brawl"? This barely qualifies as a fight, and certainly fails to rise to the level of news.
Ha ha ha ha, animals they are. What a shame they are allowed to breed.
Its a shame you are allowed to talk.
the tragedy here is that as bad as this news is, it's great when you compare it to the sexual abuse coming out of california. how sad is that?
What was a member of the school board doing in the classroom? There are at least 2 level of administration between her and the teacher. If she felt the need to talk with the teacher, there should have been a meeting scheduled with the super or principal present. That board member should resign just for not following proper procedure and micromanaging.
Students elsewhere in the school had requested to meet with the school board president for one reason or another, as reported by some of the local papers (I live in the region, this snafu is the "big thing" right now). That meeting never happened, so the woman took the opportunity, while at the school, to speak with the teacher who'd written the letter about feeling unsafe and threatened by students who'd been harassing her.
Apparently, it was highly constructive...
I agree, the board member did not follow protocol, she should have never walked into a classroom to berate a teacher. This is on heck of a way to run a railroad (school district).
I say fire them both. Losing face in front of the kids that they are supose to show restraint.
I tend to agree that they should both be let go. Teachers are not only there to teach material in a book, but are also role models - whether they like it or not. What are you modeling when a disagreement between two supposed professionals devolves into a physical altercation? If this is the way school officials act, maybe they ought to let the kids run it.....
lmao...further evidence that some segments of our population just can't seem to take care of themselves or even get out of their own way...perhaps John Wayne WAS right
BTW I invite any bleeding heart to live among these segments and tell yourself there isn't something seriously wrong with how they view life, property, education and each other...I dare you
I already do and you are wrong.
LL
Ummm...I'm a white housewife whose husband makes $140,000 a year. I'm just to the left of Che Guevara in my politics. And I live in a row house, in a mixed neighborhood with as many black families as white, in a poor city that is having the exact same problem with it's school district. All I can tell you is that cultural problems with what people "value" have a lot more to do with their socio-economic status than their race. In fact, it has NOTHING to do with their race. Some of the poor familes in my neighboorhood that drink beer on the porch all day while their half naked toddlers run barefoot down the street are WHITE.
Rick, depends on what segments of the population you are referring to. If race is not what you are referring to, then I agree, but if its a racial statement just come out with it. There is a segement of the population that can't seem to take care of themselves, criminals, thugs, mentally unstable people, drug addicts, prostitutions, sociopaths, the list goes on.
Hope and change will only come when the community stops glorifying rap and the thug mentality. When the African American community starts to take real responsibility for themselves instead of blaming everyone for their plight, when they actually do something about their youth that can't value anything other than bling, drugs and sex, then and only then will we begin to se real change. I for one will not hold my breath.
No one else has any responsibilites whatsoever?
LL
So what kind of change do you want? The european americans blames every one else beside themselves for their plight. When will the european americans do something about their youths that can't value anything other than paris hilton, jersey shore, drugs and sex, then and only then will we begin to see real change.
@William Spoken by a racist who doesn't personally know any blacks or probably non-whites for that matter.
Also, "African American" is a term used by people who still think that 1) all blacks in America arrived here from Africa and 2) ignores the possible ancestry they share with their family's European slave owners. Unless you specifically know they arrived here from Africa, how can you think it's appropriate to refer to blacks as "African American"? My skins as white as it comes and yet my ancestors are African. Funny thing is, I've never once been referred to as "African American". I know, strange, right?
This is why democrats are idiots. They vote for whoever will bow to their wishes. If u want a school run properly, vote in a teacher and let him/her do the work. Pay them 100k annually at most. Anything more is ridiculous. Many superintendents make 200k or more a year, which is 2 or more teachers. Weed out administrative. A school needs to be run by teachers, not idiots who are lucky enough to graduate high school. And for the parents school board, why do they think they know better than the teachers if they don't even finish high school? We are teachers for a reason. Let us teach, and you parents need to be involved with your child's education. Stop worrying about American idol or whatever and sit with your parents. We went to school and I'm sure we have an idea of how and what we are teaching.
You know why Obama is getting worse ratings than bush? You tell him apwhat to do, and u blame him for your mistakes. He changes and then makes another mistake in your eyes. It was the democrats idea to place obamas name on the health bill. He went to Harvard! Let him be the president and do his job. Unfortunately all u fat slobs don't even listen to Michelle. Stop blaming other things, including heredity factors on your obesity. Go run and workout. It costs 10 dollars to go to a gym for a month. ( I go to 24 hr fitness at 12 a month. Don't tell me u can't do it either.).
It's the people that are the idiots cuz you blame society for what is YOUR fault. Man up, grow some balls and take some responsibilities
And your comment is exactly why a majority of American find Republicans disgusting vile people. You are ignorant on purpose. Republicans choose not to hear the truth or read facts. They believe in the bible of science. They spread hate and fear to advance their ideals. Racism is a game changing card. They love to use it at will and how it get them support. Why would America believe anything a Republican says?
Ummm...I hardly know were to begin, Brian. I'll stick to two errors of fact and leave the ideological inconsistencies to others.
1) The average public school teacher makes under $50k a year. Even if you add in benefits from the most generous states, you're not going to come anywhere close to $100,000. So your salary cap idea seems unnecessary.
2) GWB had approval ratings as low as 19%. Barack Obama has never dipped below the 40s.
I think there is too much politics in the educational system. I had a Rusian professor in college and he told me what he say was wrong, here in America the principal can fire those he does not likes and promote those he likes. Where as in Rusia, the principal is responsible for the overall perfomance of all the students, if you have one bad teacher, even if you like him/her they must go, or else the principal was next in line to be fired. If there was a teacher that the principal did not like, but performs well with his/her student, the principal would stupid to fire that teacher. Now that, I think is the model the educational system should follow. If the school does not perform start at the top, not at the bottom. But then again, the R and D will fight over this model, because it is an uncomfortable model for either parties. Like I've always say, the R and D are one in the same, they just attend different parties.
I'm not a fan of either Bush or Obama, but that is either a typo or an outright falsehood. The polls I looked at show clearly that Obama, overall, is below Bush's average approval across the entire length of the timelines. You can look them up yourself, they're quite easy to find.
Dude. Bush was famous for being "Mr. 19%" when he left office. It's even on wikipedia, for crying out loud: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_George_W._Bush
"Upon leaving office the final poll
recorded his approval rating as 19%, a record low for any U.S.
President.[3][5][6]"
Obama has NEVER come close to that. What are you talking about?
Sorry. Check the gallop poll figures. They never show Bush even close to those numbers.
Real change can only come from the people. And it can only be achieved by doing what our founding fathers did to the redcoats from 1775 to 1783. Anything short of that is a floundering nation compromising with the new redcoats who wear suits and ties. The bags of wind who have a messiah complex and are doing all they can to run our nation straight into the ground. Incompetence and corruption rule the day as our freedoms shrink. Political correctness rewards the thugs and punishes the forthright. We're being lied to. We're being slandered. We're being accused of everything and everything under the sun as the real criminals do whatever they want. And if you want your country back, you'll hit the streets. Holding signs and shouting slogans isn't going to get it done. It didn't work for the hippies and it won't work for us.
Suspend them, just like they would any kid!
Do you think the incident might have been staged?
Schools, hospitals, what ever, to much dead wood at the top. People that sit and have other people do the work for them. Same with the Government, trim it down by doing away with Congress, nothing but dead wood do nothings. Rewrite the constitute from scratch, it's old and out of date. On paper it looks good, but it never has worked the way it's written.
I live in WV and there are school districts in this state that are failing and it's because of poverty and not race since the state has a small percentage of racial minorities. The schools in the more wealthier parts of the state consistently score higher on standardized tests and send way more kids to college than the poorer schools.
I hope the teacher won.
before there was the "Chester Upland School District" there was Chester (predominantley black) and Upland (predominantley white). I was an Upland student in 6th grade in 1972. The merger was to take place the next school year in 1973. Chester had recently completed building a new school, big bucks! it even had the first computers around! We eould all attend the new expensive school in Chester.
My mother moved us out of the area before the next school year started - because we knew it would be bad. My friends from Upland would get jumped (thats what we used to call a mugging) every day on their way to the brand new school they had built in Chester. None of my friends ever finished high school in Chester. It was too dangerous. A few years later guards were added to the bright shiny new school in Chester along with those computers. This all happened 39 years ago and look how far they've come.......................
Want to bet that this school district is primarily minority, and the school board members are all minorities?
So you are saying the schools are run by european americans? What's your point?
Do you ever make sense?
If this were a predominately white school/area, these comments would be so different. As a matter of fact, the race/culture would not even been mentioned.
It's sad, but politics and government work does not attract good people.
Even though the pay and benefits are better than the private sector for equal jobs, most public schools are failing to educate the citizens that will inherit the country. These are the citizens who will be expected to pay for the government that failed them.
I've been working on reducing my tendency to stereotype but this story has just set my efforts back to start.
And that story about the Meth head guy who's mom uses some kind of medicine to revive him when he overdoses has done the same for me.