Hundreds of teachers, students, parents and community members gathered March 7 to express outrage at the Philadelphia School Reform Commission’s impending vote on dozens of school closures that would devastate working-class and oppressed communities throughout the city.
The SRC is an unelected group of corporate-style managers who run the city’s school district. Under the SRC’s leadership, the district has been severely underfunded and subject to an ongoing wave of privatization with the explosive growth of charter schools.
In what they claimed was an attempt to balance the school district’s budget, last year the SRC announced a list of 43 schools that were to be either closed or relocated, in one of the most brazen attacks on the right to an education in the country. This was also a thoroughly racist maneuver; while Black students compose 55 percent of the district, 79 percent of students whose schools were targeted were Black.
Organized by a wide range of labor groups and progressive organizations, including the Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools, the protest began with an outdoor rally that shut down part of Broad Street. High-profile speakers like Randi Weingarten, national president of the American Federation of Teachers, addressed the protesters. She pointed out the absurdity of bailing out banks and corporations while closing schools, and denounced the preferential treatment given to charter schools. Weingarten correctly stated that “public education is under attack in this country.”
Students from a local middle school led the crowd in chants, including, “Fix our schools don’t close them!” and “They say get back, we say fight back!”
Protesters began filing into the school district headquarters as soon as police—who were out in large numbers to intimidate and control community members—finally started allowing people to enter. Demonstrators kept up the energy and resistance to the very end of the SRC meeting.
Nineteen community leaders were arrested and given citations as they blocked the entrance to the meeting hall in an attempt to prevent the School Reform Commission members from entering.
When it was time to make a final decision, the SRC voted in favor of closing 23 schools. Although this is significantly less than originally proposed—a testament to the strength of the fight-back—public education in Philadelphia has been dealt a major blow. However, new alliances were built, lessons were learned and the people’s accumulated experience with struggle grew. There is no question that the struggle against privatization will continue.
