Church Member Beth Logue's Letter to the Editor in the Philadelphia inquirer

On July 18, The Philadelphia Inquirer published her letter to the editor in opposition to a proposed school voucher plan and in favor of fairly funding all public schools. The letter is copied below (and you can read the original here).

No to Yass

Jeff and Janine Yass get a full-page op-ed to extoll the wonders of school vouchers. Allow me to set them straight. Children in well-funded public schools do great. Well-funded public schools drive up property values, qualify students for local jobs, and keep neighborhoods safer. Pennsylvania’s system of funding has been deemed to be unconstitutional because schools with majority-Black and brown students are underfunded. The reason Philadelphia schools perform poorly is because of persistent underfunding. When Gov. Tom Corbett cut the education budget by close to $1 billion in 2011, poor districts suffered the most. The steady progress that Pennsylvania children had been showing became history.

Is the single mother with three children who the Yasses are proposing could spend half the amount allocated per child on better schools also going to receive money to buy a home in a better neighborhood? I’m not sure how their proposal is going to make her child’s commute home any safer. Most districts don’t bus outside their boundaries. In fact, most poor people don’t have the luxury of being able to transport their kids to schools outside of their neighborhoods. Will every school a parent chooses accept their child? How will the low test scores those children bring be accepted in, say, suburban Lower Merion schools? Educational freedom means having safe, well-maintained, fully staffed public schools that accept all children — right in your own neighborhood — regardless of race, disability, or economic status.

Beth Logue, Philadelphia