Cook-Wissahickon Parents Planning Protest Friday

The following is a press release from the Cook-Wissahickon Elementary School Home School Association.

Parents at Cook-Wissahickon Elementary School*, a strong public elementary school in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia, are organizing a protest tomorrow morning--Friday, October 25th--at 8:15 around the schoolyard.
On top of losses that our school has borne over the past three budget cycles, and despite opening this September with what the District leadership has admitted to be a "bare-bones budget" that has left Philadelphia schools without adequate resources, we have learned that we will be losing two more teachers and our third- and fourth-graders will be placed in a split-grade classroom.  In addition, while we had 5 aides providing support in classrooms last year, with the cuts this year, we only have one.  As our children are pushed into crowded classrooms and split-grade arrangements, the lack of aides is even more distressing.

Over the past three years, the school has lost its school police officer, assistant principal (and later the replacement position of dean of students), noontime aides, bus aides, classroom support aides, counselor, librarian, a custodian, dedicated gifted programming, special needs staff, classroom teachers, Spanish teacher, full-time gym teacher, tutoring program for students below grade level, and close to its entire supply budget.

Despite all these cuts, we remain an award-winning, high-performing school, but we can't handle any more.  

Parents, students, and teachers will join in a demonstration against these cuts and the chaos they will bring to our children's classrooms.  Approximately one-third of the students in the entire school will have their classroom and teacher assignments rearranged, they will be placed in crowded classrooms and will have to restart the school-year in learning classroom routines and creating relationships with new teachers and classmates; those in the split-grade class will have their academic experience severely compromised.  

It is a disgrace that after $45 million was recently received by the district, Philadelphia schools, including ours, will be left in worse shape than on September 9th than when we started the school-year.  We call on Dr. Hite to rescind these cuts and to allocate part of the funds received to ensuring that schools do not lose further resources at this point and that there are no split-grade or overcrowded classrooms throughout the city.