This organization also said in the title is the Philadelphia Student Union. The unions goal is to make Philadelphia schools better turn young students into leaders by demanding better education in Philadelphia's school system. The entire union is made up of students from all over Philadelphia who make positive changes. Your job in this organization will depend on what your skills are. What I did was writing news letters in the paper. I also showed up to many actions and show up to meetings that took steps to making better schools. 

The skills you might need may vary but the Union welcomes all students to be part of the Union. No skills are really neccesary but your commitment. What you'll be learning are leadership skills that can help you later on in your life. You will also be active in your community and helping pave the road to better education. I would reccommend this ILP for any person who is passionate about chaning the schools in the Philadelphia school district. 

Back in September Janice I. Solkov was brought in to be a new Principle for Morton McMichael Elemntary. She was hired by the state to manage the 20 lowest performing schools. Dr. Solkov was from the suburbs with an idea to change it all. Her idea was to privatize Edison. After 3 months into the school year and everything was starting to fall apart. The idea of privatizing public schools was a good idea but it just wouldn’t be possible in Philadelphia. For example Dr. Solkov wanted every student to have a computer to be able to use. That wasn't possible because she was only allowed to spend $880 per student. So those computers never materialized. Dr.Solkov was also never given an accountant which was promised to handle funds, or the second school secretary so she wouldn’t have to type her own meeting minutes and letters. She wasn’t even allowed to paint the school's peeling walls, or open the school library because of the lack of funds.

It was a big mess and after 4 months left the veteran principle in her office in tears. I've also done a little research on Dr. Solkov on whether she really was capable or not. It says that Dr. Solkov is 50 years old with a doctorate in education and has 30 years worth of experience.  She even turned down an offer to be a suburban school administrator. She was described by her Edison recruiter as ''extraordinarily talented, with an outstanding track record for success.''

It is said on the “Philadelphia Public School Notebook ” that Kensington and West Philadelphia high school are going to be replaced with new school buildings as part of the School Districts 1.5 Billion capital plan. Philadelphia student union members have looked at and researched new ways for how their new schools should be built. As part of a trip the Student Union members visited schools that have success that are in a similar environment. Some of the states they went to are New York, Chicago, and Oakland. What they found in each of these schools were small schools. Schools that are to big don’t do so well. So at West Philadelphia High they’re ideas of breaking the humungous school into different wings. When schools have 1,000 kids, to educate and support every student is unimaginable.

So the Union came to an agreement that there should only be around 300-500 kids per school.

It is said by a group from Washington D.C that says “Smaller schools correlate to improved student achievement and lower dropout rates.” It’s shown that having small schools can do numerous things. Such as raise student achievement, reduce incidents and violence, student isolation, increase attendance and graduation rates, elevate teacher satisfaction, improve school environment, and also much more cost efficient.

If your even more interested in how the structure for West Philly High will be, the ideas for it is to have each building have no more then 400 students with its own teachers, and staff.

The common building will have a library, lunchroom, gym, and auditorium that will be shared by all of the 4 wings.

The other 4 wings are business and commerce, health and fitness, automotive, and creative and performing arts. Each wing has different interests which are geared, and equipped with different ways to teach the students in what they are interested in.

Hannah Feldman
Blog Post 5

I have stumbled across a reason for strip mining, why companies thought it was a reasonable way to mine. Robert F. Kennedy Jr wrote an article on his father’s fight against strip mining, and it gives a bit of history on the situation. It starts with unions. In the sixties, there “were 114,000 unionized mine workers in West Virginia digging coal from tunnels and supporting the families and communities of Appalachia. Today, there are less than 11,000 miners in West Virginia taking the same amount of coal and only a fraction of them are unionized because the strip industry isn’t.” Strip mining requires heavy machinery that can do the work of many men. With more machines, fewer workers – union workers – were needed to mine the land. Non-union labor is cheaper, and having fewer workers to pay is cheaper, and companies certainly like a profit.

The initial reason for this practice to be thought up is explained as well: “The mining industry debuted strip mining in the 1940s in the Western States, to extract coal seams that lay a few feet below the surface and therefore inaccessible through traditional tunnel mining. To extract the wealth, all you needed was a bulldozer.” They were only thinking of immediate return, with no eye towards the future of the land.

Well, here’s the future:

The most shocking statistic I have read is from the same site. Strip miners set off 3,000 pounds of dynamite A DAY in West Virginia. Added up, it is the size of the Hiroshima bomb each week. The US Department of Energy estimates that 70,000 people died from the initial blast (Source ). Buildings were destroyed; everything was destroyed. If that’s how much one bomb did, and to humans and buildings, imagine the effects of one of those each week on the trees and natural elements.

Photo credit: Kent Kessinger

It’s been a pain trying to get an appointment and it’s mostly my fault. I went to Sayre’s high school like I do every Wednesday to meet up with Nijmie Durinko but at both times she wasn’t there. The first week I went there was an action so she left early, and the second time the Union meeting was cancelled for whatever reason. I’ll be going tomorrow so I should finally be able to talk about my ideas in person.
So far I’ve been able to find one or two more sources about the Union but I realized that they were way out dated. My plan is to talk with every member on the Union, which will include, Erika Almiron, Eric Baxton, Lawrence Jones, and Ms. Weinraub. I have a lot of people to talk to and even more work to do. I’m excited for the fact that I have everything I need. I have all my materials, now all I have to do is start the experiment.  

The question that people always ponder on is why are Philadelphia schools so bad? How would you assess the quality of Philadelphia public schools? Craig Weeks a highschool history teacher replied “If there was funding, the schools would run a lot better than they are now.”
On Activism Online it states that a typical class size is 30 kids, textbooks are ripped, pages missing, drawn on, not up to date, we have under qualified teachers, not enough funding, and much more. The Philadelphia Student Union is also working on these problems. The Union is doing everything they can, they’ve protested, done civil disobedience, went to Harrisburg and talked to the legislature. Talked to city reps, talked to mayor Nutter, been to SRC (School Reform Commission) meetings. The Union has really done just about everything they can to make Philadelphia schools better.
When President Bush's made the voucher plan which uses public money to send kids to privatized schools the Union was a bit surprised. What President Bush just did was putting public schools further down because they are taking money that we don’t have, and giving it to schools that have double or triple what we have. All of this information was cited at Activism Online.
The voice of the Philadelphia Student Union is screaming for help to have the right to education. But to only to be muffled out by the higher ups caught up in other matters. Isn’t the next generation important? If we’re not educated isn’t that a big deal? Why is this kept being pushed aside and not taken care of? These are the questions that stir in the mind of the students that are being abandoned.

One of the problems that the Philadelphia Student Union has is the fact that the Philadelphia School District is in the midst of a state mandated takeover. Which will privatize the district schools just so that the companies that take over can make a profit.
The Philadelphia Student Union greatly opposed this for many reasons. Craig Weeks who is a member of the Philadelphia Student Union and was part of the executive council for the Union said “It's not necessary for there to be a takeover. If there was funding, the schools would run a lot better than they are now.” I agree with Weeks and that basically put, the state is hiring people who don’t care about the students, they only care about how much money is going to their pocket. School is a non profit organization, and should be kept that way. If school ends up being another way to make money for people then the goals, and the intention of school wont be the same.
Education is supposed to be given to children, not a profit made out of. It changes the principles and entire concept of what schools should be. If school is another thing to make a quick few bucks off of how would the students feel? That their own education is just another way to make money. According to the “Activism Online” it states that this is the fight of Privatization.