Last year, Governor Rendell closed the budget loophole by selling off access to state forest lands to natural gas drillers. Since the 50s, any lease revenues went into Conservation. Governor Rendell's legacy will include this longstanding best-practice in forest stewardship.

Environmental champ and Delaware County legislator, Rep. Greg Vitali, has introduced HB 2235 to prevent the Governor from doing it again. He wrote about it in today's Inqy, on the same day as the Governor's Budget Address. Here's an excerpt:

Fracking a single well typically requires millions of gallons of water. Several acres of land must be cleared for the drilling pad. Access roads, a water sediment basin, and other infrastructure are installed, and a high volume of truck traffic is required to transport drilling equipment and water to and from the site. All this activity has an impact on the forest as well as on water quality.

Right now, there are only a handful of Marcellus wells producing gas on Pennsylvania forest land. About another hundred wells are planned or being drilled. Five to six thousand more will be drilled in the next 15 years, according to conservative estimates.

No one knows what the cumulative environmental impact of this drilling will be. We need to stop leasing state forest land for the purpose until we can better assess the consequences.

I would encourage everyone to check out this article from the Notebook about Meade Elementary School, located in North Philly. A reporter from the Notebook spent half a day there, and, check out some of the things he says (heavily edited):

But Meade is not just doing breakfast well. Evidence of a positive and nurturing school climate is everywhere…

The halls are warm and inviting - filled with end tables, lamps, rocking chairs, fish tanks, lots of plants, and interesting student work. A "wall of respect" is being constructed…

We visited the mask “factory” where artist Leroy Johnson and a cohort of three other artists from the Clay Studio work along with students and their teachers in creating the masks and mounting them. “This is about conflict resolution and building cooperation,” Johnson explained…

We observed 6th graders seriously engaged in helping the 1st graders. The room was a beehive of activity, with a large group of students, teachers, and the visiting artists…

We also visited several math and reading classes, all of which were characterized by skillful teaching and students on task….

A 4th grade music class blew me away…Students not only enjoyed the lesson, but demonstrated remarkable mastery…

Sounds pretty amazing, right? Meade appears to have mixed everything from wellness (with a well-regarded breakfast program), to interpersonal learning (conflict resolution, older kids working with the babies), to creative use of the arts (including music and mask making) and to teaching the standardized curriculum. I have no idea how many schools there are out there like this. But, if this is the standard for our elementary schools, I feel better about where we are headed as a city.

But, guess what? It turns out, Meade has a target on its back. And it appears that its creative learning is about to be sacrificed to the sacred lord of No Child Let Behind’s standardized testing, and the School District’s Renaissance Schools. Why? Because Meade is now considered a “Rennaissance Alert” school, and the ramifications for all that creative teaching are about to be felt by the students and teachers of the school:

The school recently made AYP in successive years and so it is not a school where restructuring is mandated under No Child Left Behind. Last year it narrowly missed it, meeting 12 of 13 targets, and putting it in "Warning" status. Fifth-grade scores dropped. In small elementary schools where some grades have only one class, this is not unusual – a veteran teacher goes out on maternity leave or illness, someone who turns out to be subpar comes in on special assignment, and down go the scores. A problem, sure, but not the basis for making a sober judgment about school progress.

Meade may well escape the Renaissance treatment but as a result of being on the Alert list it is now an Empowerment School. That means Corrective Reading and Math and the Empowerment version of an after school program. It means say good bye to much of what the school on its own has designed and implemented. From talking to teachers it is clear that morale is taking a big hit.

Get that? An elementary school in North Philly that appears to be doing everything right is about to have its creativity stomped on, because it only met 12 of 13 of the No Child Left Behind goals. Are you kidding?

As the author of the piece says: even if you are for testing, or data driven analysis, sometimes, we have to use something a little more basic: common sense.

A very interesting article from It's our money

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/our-money/How_Phillys_amnesty_compare...

Question one: The article compares various tax amnesty programs from various cities and various states, and reports that unlike many of those other amnesty programs, the one coming up in Philly does not include a payment plan. Why is there no payment plan in the Philly tax amnesty? Is there some basis in research for a determination that a payment plan will result in less tax paid in the end?

Today US Rep. John Murtha passed away today due to complications resulting from gallbladder surgery. The US House of Representatives and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania lost a great leader today. Rest in peace, Mr. Murtha.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35299741/ns/politics-capitol_hill/

This is where we get to ask questions, and they will provide real answers. More than seventy local community and advocacy groups, led by Neighborhood Networks and the Coalition for Essential Services, will be holding the gubernatorial candidates' feet to the fire on February 18 at 7 PM at the Arch Street United Methodist Church, 55 N. Broad St. This is the debate you'll want to be at, so put it in your book now. We will be sure the snow stays away so you don't have to.

About 24 hours have passed since the massivee snow storm. 72 hours until the next one begins. I am not sure if I am surprised, or what, but in my neighborhood Philadelphia, and Philadelphia government did its just really, really well.

• On Friday, everyone parked, and stayed off the streets on Saturday.
• On Saturday, most people shoveled their sidewalks, and did so pretty quickly. And the plows were going pretty quickly. I walked to Center City on Saturday afternoon, and just about every sidewalk was clear, and every major street was plowed.
• Then, at some point yesterday, even the sidestreets (except for the very small ones) saw plows rolling down, too.

When I was a kid, and we got out thirty inches of snow, the city shut down for a week. Now? Take away the snow banks, and you would never know what happened. We are in a period of recession-driven, shrinking revenues. Paying the millions it took to clean up so thoroughly like this is not simply a mandatory response, because at times in the past, we have been told that a through clean up costs too much money. Instead, it was a conscious decision made by the Mayor, which will have ramifications on the bottom line of our budget.

But, this kind of thing is worth it for two reasons. First, on a very basic level, a week of snow-misery sucks, and, it is nice to not to have to deal with it. And second, and most important, it is good for people to see city government functioning, and functioning well.

There are going to be a lot of pitched battles over the next year- from the budget to union contracts- and it will force the city into another year of our municipal budgeting nightmare- seemingly without the inclusiveness that we saw the last time. As we think about cutting services, or better targeting some taxes (like the BRT change proposed by Stan, and studied by Councilwoman Quinones Sanchez and Green), or whatever else we consider, it is heartening to head into the process with a clear demonstration that in one of its most basic functions, the city’s government can perform really, really well.

Courtfighter: Delaware County Judge Maureen Fitzpatrick A Bigot? You Judge How Often Bigotry Occurs In Media, PA

The following is an official complaint filed with the Philadelphia, PA, NAACP located in North Philadelphia.

Governor Ed Rendell will release his proposed state budget for 2010-11 on Tuesday, February 9 at 11:30 a.m. The new spending plan has been crafted in the midst of a continuing recession, a growing current year budget deficit, and higher demand for basic services.

Look to the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center for ongoing information and strategy around the state budget:

• See our news release which puts the state budget in perspective and frames the choices facing state lawmakers;
• View a PowerPoint presentation on funding essential services in Pennsylvania; and

U.S. Commitment Sets Positive Tone for Debt Relief at G7 Meetings this Weekend

Washington, D.C.—ONE called today’s announcement by U.S. Department of Treasury to support comprehensive multilateral relief of Haiti’s debts “critical” in advancing Haiti’s recovering in the wake of the devastating earthquake in January. U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s announcement comes on the eve of the G7 meeting of finance ministers in Canada where relieving Haiti’s debt is reported to be on the agenda.

Natural Gas Drillers are willing to do whatever they can to dispose of wastewater without getting shut down. They would love to have a way to dump it into the Philadelphia water supply. It's just a matter of time, in fact, until they do. This industry has only begun.

Right now, natural gas drillers are drilling away all over the state, generating more water than they know what to do with (and they really don't know what to do with it), water that's full of benzene, radium, hydrochloric acid, antibiotics and lots and lots of salt. All of this stuff kills fish and it isn't great to drink, either.

DEP has proposed a set of regulations that would lay out guidelines for the salt at least. It's the main problem, anyway, so that's not a bad start. The environmental community supports their salt guidelines (total dissolved solids, in the lingo). We support these guidelines, we just think they also need to deal with the other pollutants and make sure that drillers are accounting for all the water they take out of our rivers. If they don't account for it, that means that it's probably getting dumped untreated somewhere.

The industry is saying that the regs are too harsh. Please. They are fine, but the industry sees opportunity in Pennsylvania. We have the biggest, richest gas field, a governor who's easily swayed by industry and a Senate that's... I don't even want to say. So they have groused about every proposed requirement, because every bit of accountability they prevent is a dollar saved and that's more profit for the industry. Damn the torpedoes.

You can weigh in on these regs now. You have until Feb 12th. Go here. Remember, much of the water that gets dumped will eventually make its way into our water supply.

Other Marcellus News:

Stu Bykofsky wrote an editorial in the Daily News yesterday slamming calls for immigration reform and the current CIRASAP bill that was recently introduced in the House and has been signed on to by several local politicians. Stu’s essential argument: ‘This bill only helps people who are here “illegally;” if you want to fix the problem, just tell people to get to the back of the line.' This argument is flawed for several reasons. First, immigration reform doesn’t just help those who are here without documents—rather it creates order out of our immigration policy and treatment of immigrants that will help all Americans. Second, there is no line to get on to if you are from a poor country.

Comprehensive immigration reform is absolutely necessary to continue to keep our country functioning. As things stand, we have 12+ million undocumented immigrants in this country. While our legal system generally applies equally to everyone regardless of immigration status (e.g. minimum wage laws, criminal laws), undocumented immigrants live in constant fear of deportation. This fear makes them scared to call the police when they have been the victim of a crime or when they are being exploited by an unscrupulous businessman forcing them to work for half-minimum wage. With such a huge population being exploited on a daily basis, the quality of living for all of us suffers—failure to call the police in the face of crime makes our communities less safe; failure to report unscrupulous employers lowers the wage floor for everyone.

Send them all home, you say? Stu does:

Second, the "path to citizenship" is unpopular, according to a new Zogby poll. Among executives, 59 percent support enforcement to encourage illegal immigrants to go home, 30 percent support conditional legalization; 67 percent of small-business owners support enforcement, and 22 percent approve of conditional legalization. And in union households, 58 percent support enforcement while 28 percent like conditional legalization.

But where does that leave our economy? Living in fear, working for less than the minimum wage, having no healthcare, and not understanding the language spoken in a country are not the kinds things you do unless it is out of necessity—don’t kid yourself and think that undocumented immigrants are here living high off the government. Undocumented immigrants are here to work and working they are. They help to make our economy run. They work in construction, building our houses; as migrant workers, growing our produce; and they open stores, contributing to the local economy. And remember, when you work, you pay taxes, regardless of your immigration status. According to the 2008 report on Social Security, undocumented immigrants (who will never collect social security), will close 15% of the fund’s long term deficit. In 2005, undocumented workers were contributing roughly $7 billion per year into the Social Security trust fund. Money that they will never get back. I’m not saying that we should keep people in a position where they pay in to the system and get nothing back; I’m merely trying to counter the all-too-often repeated argument that undocumented immigrants are here suckling the government teat and giving nothing back. Both parts of that argument are just plain untrue.

And of course, none of this is to speak of all of the things that this bill does for people who are here legally. Wage theft will be reduced, leading to higher wages for all workers; the economy will see a boost of $1.5 trillion; and people like my friend from an unnamed African country will be able to get a visa, who, after a Masters degree in Physics and several nursing degrees all from esteemed US institutions may have to leave the country despite 10 years studying here. All of these factors are very important to our economy, security, innovation, place in the world, and soul as a nation.

And what about this line that we keep hearing about? People are supposed to get back on the line, aren’t they? Even Newt Gingrich understands that there is no sensible line to get on. It is really hard to get a green card, especially if you are from a poor country. Most recently, for WORLDWIDE immigration to the US, we are statutorily capped at about 400,000 people per year. Total. That includes family members, people coming for a specific job, people in the green card lottery, etc… In 2006, it was estimated that somewhere around 1 million people per year were entering the US without authorization. That means that unauthorized entries are more than double the number of visas available each year. That smells like a problem—our numbers should meet the demand from businesses and workers.

Finally, a few parting words:

• Stu assumes at the end of his article that everyone that he spoke with was undocumented. The only person he really documents is an Argentinean who said that he came here for 2 years, but then decided to stay. How do we know that he is not authorized to be here? Is it because he doesn’t speak English or isn’t white? Would we make the same assumption if a merry old Englishman told Stu the same story? Many Latinos are in this country and city as citizens; some of these people don’t speak any English. We cannot and should not assume that dark skin plus limited English ability = “illegal.” It isn’t right morally and it isn’t correct legally.
• Jen from the New Sanctuary Movement (whose work I fully support) says that being here without documentation is akin to jaywalking. With all due respect to Jen, I can’t buy this argument—it belittles the problem in a way that would make me think we shouldn’t take it seriously.
• Stu laments the fact that there would ever be an “amnesty” that would allow a path to citizenship for people who are here without documents. I ask Stu to Google “Tax Amnesty” and then re-ask the question as to whether it ever makes sense for the government to normalize relations with people who may have broken a law in the past. I think he may change his answer.

The Democrats and progressive activist groups that support health care reform need to rethink their approach to getting health care reform passed. If they do manage to keep the pressure on Democratic legislators and get something passed through Congress without finding a way to shore up support for reform among independents, these groups will find in the upcoming general election that they have won one battle at the expense of a severe set back in the ongoing war to improve the nation’s health care system.
What’s at stake is control of both houses of Congress. Right now, Democratic majorities look like they are in severe jeopardy this coming November, in part because the Party has failed to convince independent voters that the kind of health care reform they are pushing in Congress is equitable and meaningful to the average family.

There’s a lot happening over at the School District that every council member -and state legislator - ought to know. So if you haven't already, pick up the latest issue of the Public School Notebook for more information:

1. First up, Renaissance Schools – yet another list of failing schools (this time there are 26 schools:14 identified Renaissance schools, 12 “alert” schools), yet another set of promises to parents and children skeptical about the District’s insistence that this time it will be different. Consider the families at Douglass Elementary which has had 7 principals in 7 years, or Dunbar Elementary which, if chosen a Renaissance school, will be on its third manager in 8 years. Or Stetson, which along with Dunbar, was the first wave of promised change through privatization. Stetson too is listed as a potential Renaissance school.

   What’s the problem with Renaissance? My main concern has been that the District is stuck on seeing transformation via management and contracts, rather than defining what substantive changes are going to happen in the life of a child. I’d like to know whether Renaissance schools are going to reduce class size, offer more literary specialists, provide home-school liaisons, improve school food and provide a full library and build science labs? Are they going to revamp discipline, provide real professional development, analyze and publish studies on their improvement, and invest in their teaching force rather than threaten them into compliance? A number of Renaissance Schools have significant English Language Learner populations. Are they going to provide a model bilingual program, diversify their hiring, create a multicultural curricula that engages students? Are they diversifying their curricula overall? Or is it really just a change of names at the top of the masthead, a “trust us, we’ll get some good folks in there with a track record” which is basically what parents have heard for a decade now.

   The Notebook has done an excellent job compiling a full summary of information on Renaissance. In addition, look for the latest issue of the Notebook which focuses exclusively on understanding school turnaround. Renaissance School meetings are happening all around the city. We need city and state leaders present to hear the frustration parents and communities are feeling and to bring more accountability to the District.

2. School Choice: Research for Action has a new study out on the expansion of choice options in the district, which has cost the district hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade – it’s been the District’s single most decisive change – yet has led to limited choice options for the majority of students seeking a way out of their neighborhood high schools.
   

   70 percent of District eighth graders participated in the application process to begin ninth grade in fall 2007. However when the dust settled, only 45% were enrolled at any District school to which they applied. In other words there are not enough “seats” in schools of choice for the number of students trying to choose. This means that in most cases high schools are selecting students rather than students choosing schools, robbing students and families of the agency that school choice is supposed to provide.

   That’s a pretty serious indictment that needs careful review and consideration. Since 2002, the District has nearly tripled the number of high school options, and through charters has created the second largest school district in the state. The investment of resources and personnel has been tremendous. Yet for high school, more than 50% of kids seeking out of their neighborhood school can’t find another seat. It’s also worth noting that as the investment has spread to create options, disinvestment in our neighborhood schools remains a problem. In Imagine 2014 it was hard to determine how much investment there was for the average comprehensive high school. There were counselors to be sure, which was a helpful boost, but how significantly was life going to be different for the average high school kid at say, Gratz or Bartram?

   RFA’s report issues a strong call for investment in neighborhood high schools as well as provides recommendations for improving the high school selection process. Worth the short 8-page read.

The Inquirer has a story on school violence in Philly public schools, other than South Philly:

Trouble was brewing at Fels High School last school year: Asian students were jumped and beaten. Disabled students were assaulted.

"It was scary," Eileen Coutts, then an assistant principal, said of the climate at Fels.

Worried that the unrest might escalate, Coutts invited members of community groups to the school. Administrators, parents, students, and activists came up with a list of interventions - class discussions, peer mediation, mentors, an "international welcome squad," cultural sensitivity training for staff, a buddy system for new students.

The school, despite lots of problems, has made progress. In the fall, overall crime, including assaults, was down 40 percent from the same period a year earlier.

I'd encourage everyone to read the whole article. While I am sure that the schools featured in the article- Fels, Furness and Bartram- are far from perfect (and Furness and Fels are, in fact, still on the persistently dangerous list), there is a lot to be learned from the contrast of the principals in those schools, versus the actions of the principal of South Philly.

While academics still aren't where McAlister wants them to be, Bartram's climate is much calmer. This year, an African student, Makula Fofana, is senior class president.

"That never would have happened before," said McAlister, who handles racially or ethnically sensitive matters herself.

"As hard as it is and as hurtful as it can be sometimes," she said, "we as an administrative staff and as a school community refuse to ignore these problems."

The schools are far from perfect, and still are unacceptably violent. But they are improving. The point is an obvious one: When confronted with violence, especially violence along racial or ethnic lines, you work with students, you bring in experts to help, and you confront it head on.

Check out the article here.