Philly teachers say they already give to keep schools afloat

Inez Campbell has paid for students' medicine. Kimberly Lent has footed the bill for prom tickets and class dues. Sharnae Wilson bought her own copier because her school's machine doesn't always work. Emily Cohen has shelled out for enough books to fill a small library.

For decades, Philadelphia School District teachers, counselors, nurses, school psychologists, and others made a trade-off, they say.

They got top-flight health insurance with no payroll deductions. But they were paid lower salaries than their suburban counterparts, and worked in tougher circumstances.

And, nearly universally, they spent hundreds - even thousands - of dollars every year on supplies the system and its families often don't provide.

So when the School Reform Commission smashed that deal on Monday, invoking special powers to unilaterally cancel the teachers' contract and impose a new benefits program that will have some workers paying as much as $600 a month, the district violated a trust, union members say.

What the district failed to calculate, they say, are the many little but important ways in which teachers support the system.

"The SRC makes it seem like we are spoiled with our 'Cadillac' benefits that we don't pay for, but we pay," said Kimberly Speed, a first-grade teacher at J. Hampton Moore in the Northeast who routinely spends on books, pencils, and other supplies. "We pay in so many other ways."

Stephanie Conaghan often buys coats and gloves for Ziegler Elementary students who lack them. She dug into her own pocket for nearly every item in her room, she said.

"It's insulting to insinuate we don't share in the sacrifice," said Conaghan, a kindergarten teacher for nine years.

Philadelphia teacher salaries begin at $45,000 and top out at $91,000.

Beginning last year, teachers lost promised pay bumps for years of experience and for earning advanced degrees. Many come in early, stay late, work weekends, and take on uncompensated duties such as running clubs and tutoring students.

The list of things Wilson has purchased seems endless: the copier, laminator, paper, notebooks, folders, books, crayons, weekly educational magazines, and more for the 29 kindergartners in her class at Barton Elementary in Olney.

"It's only October and I've already spent $500," said Wilson, a teacher for 15 years. "I usually spend close to $2,000 every year. I buy all the necessities - the parents don't have means, so I spend a lot."

Wilson has medical issues, so she can't buy the cheaper health-care plan the district offered. She'll have to spend extra for Personal Choice.

"I'm going to have to pay $600 a month," Wilson said. "They say there's no pay cut, but that's a pay cut. That takes away from what I can give back to students."

Lent, the counselor at Robeson High in West Philadelphia, resents the way the bomb was dropped - at a hastily arranged meeting with few members of the public present. And she resents SRC chairman Bill Green's message: that the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has not sacrificed, so he was going to force it to.

"It's a slap in the face," Lent said. "We're not treated as professionals."

To be clear: the district's financials are dismal. Schools came close to not opening on time this year, and the system already projects a $70 million deficit for next year. Green says there was nowhere else to go but into the pockets of union members.

Union leaders maintain the SRC's move was not just illegal - a court battle is already afoot - but also immoral.

Campbell, an 18-year veteran special-education teacher at Willard Elementary in Kensington, finds it "heartbreaking - shocking how we're being treated, with everything that we do for kids. Doesn't that mean anything?"

Campbell routinely shells out for notebooks, pencils, crayons, copy paper, and folders. She has bought food, clothes, and medicine for students. She has pitched in when families lost their homes to fire.

But when she runs the numbers of what her health care will cost her beginning Dec. 15, she's just not sure she can continue.

"I don't want to stop helping, but I have to take care of my family," Campbell said through tears.

Vanessa Dawson agrees. Because of a pay freeze, she is stuck at the starting teacher's salary despite having three years of experience teaching third grade at Julia de Burgos Elementary. A full third of her students usually have no folders, pencils, notebooks or book bags, and she has provided them.

She says the new health-care contributions will mean she'll have to stop reaching into her own pocket for her students.

"That means my kids don't get science [lessons]," Dawson said. "It means no field trips. It means when we run out of notebooks, I go back to the parents."

Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. emphasized that the union-benefits saving would go directly into classrooms.

But Cohen, an English teacher at Edison High in North Philadelphia, is wary of the district's promises. Even if the money does get spread out among schools, said Cohen, a nine-year veteran, "how much of that money will I see in my classroom? How much is that really going to impact my students directly?"

Cohen spends on books, trips, and food - she provides fruit every day and treats on Fridays. And she'll continue, even with health-care contributions factored in, because she feels she can't do her job without digging into her own pocket.

Brett Oslon, a history teacher at Motivation High in Southwest Philadelphia, says teaching in the city is "a calling," just like the one his father, a retired district teacher, had. And he won't stop helping his students.

"But I won't give a penny to the SRC and their cronies," he said. "What they're doing reeks of desperation. It reeks of very poor planning. It's unethical, it's crooked, it's depraved."

Source: Philly.com