Hello again.  My name is Jason Greene and I am 9th grader at Science Leadership Academy.  In English class we are doing a project called You And The World.  During this project we have to find a issue we are passionate about then go into the world and try to fix it.  My issue is Public Education in the city of Philadelphia.  This is my second blog post.  To read my first blog post click here.  In my first blog post I introduced my issue and how it is one of the biggest problems facing the city today.  I also talked about how there was a lack of funding for public schools.

   

For my original research I decided to do make a online survey.  I wanted to find out if the people taking the survey had special classes while in middle-school.  I also wanted to find out if there were cuts while they were attending the school.  I got lots of good responses back.  Almost all the people who responded said that they went to middle-school in Philadelphia in the past few years.  Most if not all of them said while they were there that the school made cuts that hurt their learning and safety. Some of these positions were Teachers, Counselors, Secretaries and Lunchtime aids.  All of these positions are very important.  If you don't have enough teachers than you have to put more students in each class.  If you don't have any lunchtime aids there will be no one to watch the kids while at lunch.  The results I got really informed me on my issue because now I knew that the budget cuts of the school district just did not affect me but also my friends.

While most of the people who filled out my survey did have special classes like art and music…

Does/Did your middle-school offer...

Art               6  22%

Music/Band  5  19%

Computers   6   22%

Gym            5   19%

Health          5   19%

Over the past few years there have been lots of layoffs.

Over the past few years did your middle-school cut any of these positions?

Guidance counselor	2	15%
Secretary	1	8%
Dean	2	15%
Teachers	5	38%
Lunchtime Aids	3	23%

Now that I got my results I believe even more that this has to change.  The change has to happen now.  It is not fair for kids not to be able to get the best education they can get.  They can not get that without simple things like teachers and counselors.  As I was doing my research I started to wonder how many schools in Philadelphia were shut down and how many students had to be relocated because of that?

The next part of this project is called Agent of Change.  This is when go out into the real world and I go volunteer somewhere and try to have an impact on my issue.  As I said in my last blog post I will be going to my old school, J.S Jenks.  J.S Jenks have been badly hurt by the recent budget cuts.  My sister still goes there and she told me that they don't even have an art teacher anymore, that a dad that used to be an artist now comes in 2 times a week and teacher classes.  When I volunteer at the school I want to help out in a 6th, or 8th grade classroom.  I think I will have a big impact when I come because I the school needs as much as it can get. When I am at the school volunteering I hope to help the teachers in anyway I can if that means making copies or help teach the lesson I will try my best.

     

Seal of J.S Jenks

Stay tuned for part 3!

My bibliography.

My name is Jason Greene and I am a 9th grader going to Science Leadership Academy.  For my You and the World project,  I chose to talk about public education in the great city of Philadelphia.  I chose this issue because this is one of the many issues facing the city today.  Public education has a lack of funding. This is important to me because me and all of my friends are affected by the lack of funding for our school district.  Education is important and we need to find out how to fix this.

This is the headquarters of The School District of Philadelphia in Center City.

When my English teacher gave me and my class this project I started to think about what I wanted to do.  One of my goals in life is to become Mayor of Philadelphia.  Since I want to do that when I grow up I started to think about some issues that face the city today.  I decided to do my YATW project on public education because I feel like it is the most significant.  Most of the money goes to charter schools and not public ones.  Because of this you can get a better education at charter schools.  We should care about this issue because most kids in the city go to public schools and it’s not fair that kids that go charter and private schools get a better education.  Coming from a public middle-school I know how these cuts feel.  At my old school we don’t have a music teacher no more.  I used to play trombone and was part of the all-city middle school band for three years.  Since my old school doesn't have a music teacher anymore there is no more band.  We also do not have an art teacher.  A parent that used to be an artst now comes in twice a week to teach.  Now I go to Science Leadership Academy.  This is my first year here so I don’t know how this school was effected but I am sure that a this school was effected.  I am just lucky that I can go to a school that can give me a great education.

This is the graduation rates of boys and girls who went to public schools from 2002-2011.

This is the graduation rates of boys and girls who went to charter schools from 2008-2012.

In 2012 The School District of Philadelphia had a 304 million dollar budget shortfall.  Because of this they had to close down they had to close down 23 schools and lay off 3700 teacher,nurses,music teacher,art teachers and other workers.  While all of this was happening according to labnotes.com 9 more charter schools opened and their budgets have been increased by 107 million dollars.  Why would they do this?  Instead of increasing the budget for the charter schools and opening new ones why don’t you use that money to fund public schools.  That 107 million dollars could have saved 9 public schools.  Now that makes more sense to me.  Over 10,000 students are at new schools this year because the school that they went to last year is closed now.

This is University City High School.  637 students went here last year.  0 go there now.

Going on with this project there are some things I want to learn.  I am going to go volunteer at my old school John Story Jenks Elementary School in Chestnut Hill.  When I am there I also want to talk to some of my old teachers to see how they are dealing with the budget cuts.  I will also talk to some of the students there to see if they notice anything different from last school year to this school year.  I hope to find out other thing while working on this.

This is J.S Jenks.  This is the school where I will be doing my volunteer work at.

This issue is very important to me.  This is important to me because this is effecting me and my friends.  This is also going to the kids that live in Philadelphia and get a public education in the future. I feel like no one really cares about this or say that this will change soon.  I don’t want soon I want now. We could change this.  If we come together and show that we care about we can change this.  

If you want to see my bibliography click here.