My name is Cherelle Reed and I am currently a senior at Overbrook HS and a member of the Philadelphia Student Union.

Brown vs. the board of education was a trial in which a man by the name of Oliver Brown fought to stop the segregation in schools. The outcome of the trial was desegregation in all schools. His argument was that separate is not considered equal.  Now 55 years later I stand here before you today on the steps of our school district asking you are our schools equal?  Are they moving in a direction of equity?  How would we know?

Within Student Union I know that there are already huge inequities between our schools.  We have neighborhood schools and magnet schools, and charter schools.  These schools are all really different, even among each different kind of school.  Even though they represent different choices, not everyone has a choice.  If not every choice is a good choice, or if only some people have a choice – then what is the point of choice?

For the last several months we have participated in the District’s strategic planning process.  This isn’t the first time we’ve been involved in a process like this, and it probably won’t be the last.  The parts of the plan that we would like to celebrate are the increased numbers of counselors in our schools and the fact that Student Success Centers will be expanded to every high school.  The Student Success Center at my school, Overbrook High School, is one of the best places in the school.  I am in there a lot because the staff is good and they care.  They have helped me with my applications for college and my SAT’s, and they help students showcase their skills and talents.  They also helped me on my senior project.

Several years ago, members of the Philadelphia Student Union designed the Student Success Centers and organized to get them into our schools.  The Student Success Centers are an example of a transformation that came from the vision of students.  It increased the equity in our schools by giving students from 10 neighborhood high schools greater access to college guidance, and other resources that we sometimes don’t get.  Now this successful reform will be shared with other schools that need it.  We want to use this an example of what can happen when the district listens to students and shares what’s working across all schools to increase equity for all students.

One part of the strategic plan that we would like to respond to is the plan to shut down the lowest performing 30-35 schools and re-open them as Charter Management Organizations.  It seems like this plan is developed from a similar plan implemented in Chicago which they called Renaisssance 2010, and which they shut down 100 schools and re-opened 60 charters.  If the plan is not based on Renaissance 2010, then why are we talking about closing down schools and re-opening them as charters?

My school is among the list of schools at risk of being shut down or re-opened as a charter.  This won’t personally effect me but my younger peers would be at risk of being thrown out of the school with no promise that they’re going to get let back in, leaving them with no where to go.  There are some real equity issues when it comes to charter schools. There are community driven and corporate driven charters.  Charters have been known to push out English language learning students, Special needs students, along with poor students.

We’ve had seven years of the “diverse provider model” and 10 years of charter schools.  We must work to share what has been learned to improve the entire public school system.  We won’t close the achievement gap by creating different schools to track different kinds of students and different neighborhoods.  We need equal resources for all schools.  We have the chance to engage the entire community in creating a vision for education.

written by Cherelle Reed