A10 | THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER | MONDAY, FEB. 18, 2019
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Terrance C.Z. Egger PUBLISHER AND CEO Stan Wischnowski EXECUTIVE EDITOR / SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT Gabriel Escobar PMN EDITOR / VICE PRESIDENT Michael Days PMN VICE PRESIDENT / DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION Patrick Kerkstra PMN MANAGING EDITOR Sandra Shea PMN MANAGING EDITOR / OPINION Pat McLoone PMN MANAGING EDITOR / SPORTS Kim Fox PMN MANAGING EDITOR / AUDIENCE AND INNOVATION Danese Kenon PMN DIRECTOR OF VIDEO AND PHOTOGRAPHY James Neff PMN DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR / INVESTIGATIONS Stephen Glynn PMN DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR / SUNDAY Brian Leighton PMN DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR / EDITING AND STANDARDS Michelle Bjork PMN DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR / OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS
Get election maps right
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an Pennsylvania’s politicians finally get the hint? For years, Democrats have been blaming Republicans for congressional and state legislative districts so lopsided that GOP incumbents get reelected with ease. Republicans and Democrats alike have gerrymandered their districts around friendly voters. It’s so easy to win reelection in those districts, politicians don’t have to compromise with the other party or even pay attention to voters — especially ones with differing points of view. But the table has been turned on Republicans, the party in power in the state legislature. Democrats have
| EDITORIAL
An independent commission created by the legislature would help ensure fair legislative districts. control over the state Supreme Court, which was controlled by the GOP the last time districts were drawn. A foreshadowing of that change came last year when the Democratic-controlled court redrew the state’s congressional districts. As a result, nine Democrats and nine Republicans split the state’s 18 seats. (Compare that to 2016 results, where 13 Republicans and only five Democrats won seats.) State and federal district lines will be redrawn again after the 2020 census. Some reform bills are percolating in the legislature to fix the system, and Gov. Tom Wolf created a study commission. The process for drawing congressional districts is written in the election code. That means the legislature can and should pass bills to form a mapmaking commission independent of petty partisanship. That system has the party in charge drawing maps on its own and keeping voters in the dark. It’s trickier for state legislative districts because that process is written into the
DAVE GRANLUND / PoliticalCartoons.com
COMMENTARY
Poverty doesn’t bestow virtue Voters are tired of rigged elections. But can lawmakers in Pennsylvania put aside petty partisan politics? AP state constitution and requires a constitutional amendment to change it. Legislators have to take two successive votes in two sessions on the amendment so it can be ready for voters to ratify in May 2021. That’s a tight timetable, but it’s well worth the effort. Now, legislative district maps are determined by two Republicans, two Democrats, and a swing voter appointed by the Supreme Court. Because the Supreme Court is in Democratic hands, Republicans would be wise to clean up the current system or watch their comfy districts go away. But that may be expecting too much. Republicans have refused to participate in Wolf’s commission, which doesn’t have the force of law, but it will be traveling the state to hear voter ideas and drum up support. In November, voters passed redistricting reform measures in Michigan, Colorado, Missouri, and Utah. In Pennsylvania, thanks to the work of activists, including FairDistrictsPa, Common Cause, and the Committee of Seventy, people are grasping the importance of choosing their own representatives. Republicans and Democrats should see that the public doesn’t want to be in the dark anymore. They should pass bills that would create an independent commission, composed of members of the public as well as experts. It would be far better for political leaders to be the vanguards of reform rather than protectors of the same old rotten system.
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he accountant prepared my taxes this week. Usually, I get a refund, something I can use to buy myself a few extra lattes and my monthly SEPTA pass. This year, thanks to changes in the tax code, I will now end up owing the government. In fact, I’m thinking that President Donald Trump will be able to use my contribution to build one steel slat at the southern border (you’re welcome, Donald). After the initial explosion of anger, I’m fine. But I’ve heard a lot of other people complaining about how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That very picture of the Union League flywell may be true, and I feel com- ing the Confederate flag, despite passion for the folks who normal- the fact that it was founded to ly would have gotten a refund to help destroy the Confederacy. He pay their property-tax bill or cov- created his work of art out of aner their kids’ tuition for summer ger. The anger was produced camp, and who will now have to when he was marching down figure out where to cut and Broad Street a few years ago with scrimp and make do. all of the other social-justice warBut I’m also annoyed at the riors who hate Trump, and saw a over-the-top rhetoric about billion- bunch of horrible people standing aires and paupers. That language on the balcony at the league, is regularly used by some of the drinking and laughing and smoknewest members of Congress, in- ing cigars. No felonious activity. cluding the Democratic socialist No bigoted displays of blackface. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — Not even someone munching on a Sandy, as her friends called her Chick-fil-A sandwich — before she became fawhich as we know would mous enough to have have angered our maythree names — wants a or, who wanted to ban 70 percent tax on those the fast-food joint from making more than $10 the City of Brotherly million, wants Medicaid Love because of its for all, and wants to get CEO’s stance on samerid of cows and airsex marriage. planes. Nope, the artist was Frankly, she’s not the annoyed because while CHRISTINE only one. I’ve noticed he was marching down FLOWERS over the last decade or the street, a bunch of arso that the real fault line guably affluent people in society isn’t race, or gender (all were having a very nice time. It 87 of them), or religion, but class. was the microaggression of the It’s so funny to realize that in a microbrew set. According to Borucountry based upon the idea that chow: “They were sipping martiyou can be whatever you want to be as long as you work hard nis, chomping on cigars, and enough, envy has become a funda- laughing at us. At the time, no one in our group realized that these mental value. Case in point: An artist named people were the ones we should Joe Boruchow decided to paint a be protesting.”
Artwork by Joe Boruchow that criticizes the Union League of Philadelphia by showing it flying a Confederate flag, at a bus stop on Broad Street. MARGO REED / Staff Photographer
I realized that this is exactly the type of animus that motivates Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and that 70 percent tax on the rich. It’s the reason that people erect those inflatable rats at construction sites if some entrepreneur commits the mortal sin of hiring nonunion labor. It’s the ridiculous idea that poverty bestows virtue, and that wealth is a sign of a corroded soul (and, yeah, I know that whole thing about it being easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than to get a rich man into heaven, but God got a little melodramatic there). I am not a rich woman. I will not have a cushy retirement, and I budget like pretty much everyone else I know. That may come as a surprise to the folks who write and tell me that I’m a wealthy lawyer and know nothing about suffering. Next time you see me on the Broad Street subway, say hi. But I’m not envious, either. I don’t begrudge someone for having a larger bank account than I do (unless that person came by it dishonestly). Bankrupting some to give to others out of a misplaced sense of entitlement is unAmerican. I mean, last time I checked, the guillotine was French. +cflowers1961@gmail.com
Teachers’ strikes a blow against good schools By Janine Yass and David Hardy
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ow that the Denver teachers who abandoned their classrooms for picket lines are back at work, parents here and across the country should remember how this and the Los Angeles teacher strikes revealed the true goals of teachers’ unions. They’re not striking to provide a better education for students — they’re striking to keep control over education in the hands of the powerful. The leadership, the teachers they represent, and the politicians they support must be thrilled with the outcome of the well-orchestrated strike. The teachers lucky enough to be included in this group will enjoy shorter work days, longer vacations, more pay, more pension money, better health care — all with no strings, like academic outcomes of students, attached. In fact, even before this new deal, in L.A. a teacher who worked for 10 years and made $75,000 to $85,000 for each of three years could retire at age 63 and receive $1,945 a month in perpetuity. If they’re lucky to live 30 more years, they’ll have earned $700,000 during their re-
tirement. That’s not something any other profession can boast. The unions must think it was well worth the six-day shutdown in L.A. or the three-day shutdown in Denver. And let’s not mention the L.A. stealth play to demand a cap on charter schools, guaranteeing that benefits, pensions, and vacation days will continue without the future threat of competing schools. But national followers of the teacher strikes would be remiss if we did not also express our sympathy to the losers of the fight: the families and students. In L.A., children have a 50 percent chance of graduating (without the bogus credit-recovery courses that makes the graduation rate look like it’s more than 80 percent). Only 22 percent of students in L.A. schools and 28 percent in Denver are proficient in math, according to the nation’s report card. In eighth grade, reading proficiency in both districts is also below 30 percent. If this is the blueprint for more strikes in cities across the country, our educators and families are in serious trouble. Over and over again, parents across the nation are told that their children’s poor academic
A teacher holds up a sign during a rally for striking Denver Public Schools instructors. DAVID ZALUBOWSKI / AP
performance is their fault. But they know, and the record shows, that their children can succeed if given the chance. For many, the only chance they have is to win a spot in a public charter school. But because parents go to work every day, and would lose their jobs if they walked out of work to protest, they cannot mobilize to advocate for better educational choices for their children like the victors of the strike. The wait lists for charters make it clear that families do not want the schools that the union has to offer. Elected officials at local, state, and federal levels have forsaken the families they represent in exchange for the power and money they receive from unions.
It’s time for the folks who are not benefiting from their educational system to steal the “draining resource” play from the union playbook. Districts that continue to fund failing schools actually drain resources from desirable charter schools desperately wanted by parents. The problem is not money, but the way it is allocated, and controlled, by school boards, unions, and political actors who value a system over student needs and parent desires. Across the United States, there are concerns about public education quality and attainment. Our most needy students are frequently trapped in schools that provide no meaningful academic programming.
The solution is no longer education reform. Public education must be redesigned. The model where school districts tell parents what school to which they should send their children must be replaced with parents having the ability to choose the best setting for their children from a selection of publicly funded schooling models. That will require more participants to serve those children, new models, along with the many charter, private, and religious schools that have capacity or could expand. And it will require that we change the way things are currently done. Our friends at the teachers’ unions may not like it. But it will work. Of course, that’s the nature of a good solution. It replaces something that is not working with something that does. One unanswered question to union members across the country, however, is after you finish your strikes, where will you send your kids? Janine Yass is a philanthropist and a founding board member of the Philadelphia Schools Partnership. David Hardy is founder of Boys Latin Public Charter School. Both authors have served on the board of the Center for Education Reform.