Philly Student Union Wins Last Minute Modifications to Imagine 2014 Plan

In the days leading up to the School Reform Commission's vote on their 5-year strategic plan,  Imagine 2014,  PSU and other goups put forth a set of demands that needed to be met before the School Reform Commission could responsibly vote on the plan. Student leaders demanded that the District lay out clear priorities for the plan, that they release more details about how the Renaissance Schools section of the plan would be implemented, and that they release a budget for at least the first year of the plan.These demands were all met by the District before the School Reform Commission vote took place. 

Only hours before they voted the District released a tentative budget, presented a modified timeline for the Renaissance Schools process and included other modifications to the plan that PSU and other grassroots stakeholders requested. This was a victory for PSU and all the students, parents & community members that pressured the SRC to make these necessary changes.

According to Phuong Ninh, a member of PSU's Youth Leadership Team, PSU has never been either "for" or "against" Imagine 2014. "There are parts of the plan that we support, such as bringing more counselors into schools and expanding Student Success Centers  - which we designed and fought for" remarked Ninh. "There are also parts of the plan that students and parents are concerned about.  It was under Dr. Ackerman that 6 schools were taken away from failing Educational Management Organizations in June 2008.  So we have hope that the Renaissance Schools plan will be very different from the outsourcing that happened in 2001.  We also want existing community processes for school reform to be respected - like our community plan for the new West Philadelphia High School."

PSU members are not the only folks with nuanced positions on Imagine 2014-- most of the community members who spoke at the SRC meeting expressed both support and concern about different parts of the plan. But the School Reform Commission has made it difficult to engage in a real dialogue by creating a new rule that requires people to declare that they are "for" or "against" an issue when signing up to testify.

Martkeeta Hudgens, a student leader from Overbrook High School, articulated student's feelings when she testified, minutes before the vote, "I wonder why you have adpoted a 'with us or against us' attitude when that seems harmful and divisive. By labeling people who are testifying as being either 'with or against' the District, you are needlessly dividing the community. We all want the same thing, we want the best schools for the students of Philadelphia."

Now that the vote is over, the real work begins.  The path implementation of the plan will be guided  by the organized voices of students and community members.  "We look forward to working with Dr. Ackerman and district leadership to make sure that the plan is implemented in a way that is truly equitable to our communities," remarked PSU's Executive Director Nijmie Dzurinko.

As Markeeta Hudgens said, "Youth organizers are not going away. The plan is only a piece of paper. We will not stop until promises become reality, until words are backed up by decisions that do not repeat the mistakes of the past, until communities have real power to get what we need."

Student at the School Reform Commission