This story was featured in the Philly Plain Dealer 2nd Print Edition.
As someone who’s a canvasser for a living, speaking with people at their doors, one thing I’ve noticed over the past year is that of the many issues people can relate to, no matter race, socioeconomic status, neighborhood, orientation or beliefs, the education system has become an all-encompassing problem.
The city has currently been battling school closures due to enrollment drops from the pandemic. The Philadelphia school district has seen a 12% drop in enrollment from a decade ago, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court declared the state’s education funding unconstitutional in 2023, and the state still has to bridge the $4.5 billion adequacy gap.
Philadelphia teacher Bianca Birney received her Masters in Education in 2020 and began working at a small private school in Philadelphia that same year, she worked at Philadelphia Classical School for two years, became an Academic Advisor at PA Cyber Charter school for one year. Now Birney is in her third year at Esperanza Academy Charter School teaching three sections of Academic Writing and one section of U.S. History.
“So far, my experience teaching in Philadelphia has varied widely. My first job, being at a small private school, was quite opposite from the school I teach at now. The main population of the private school was white and asian students, whereas now I have only taught Hispanic students at Esperanza,” explained Birney. “At the private school, the class sizes were very small, while my classes now are a bit bigger. Some as big as 27 last school year. I was expected to wear many hats at the private school. For example, they expected me to fill in anywhere and teach classes that I am not certified in and they expected me to stay after school to help with tutoring,” she continued.
When asked how the city can better support teachers, she responded “The city can help teachers by providing better pay and benefits. The job is an incredibly difficult job and the salary is low for one (who) has student loans and rent to pay. Right now, our PTO is only nine days. Each year I go over this PTO time because of sickness, doctors appointments, etc. Furthermore, maternity leave is sparse and some teachers at other schools have even had to donate some of their PTO to teachers so they can have a longer maternity leave.
Our HVAC system has been breaking down for the past three years and our copiers and printers consistently do not work. This makes a difficult job almost impossible some days when we have to bundle up in our frigid classrooms and when we cannot use the materials we created because there’s no access to a printer.
Lastly, during the previous school year, ICE showed up outside of my school. This is truly unprecedented times that we are living in when it comes to the use of ICE in America. Because of this, Philadelphia needs to prepare itself to show up for students and protect them and their families from ICE. It’s crucial that they are kept away from schools,” said Bianca.
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