No Child Left in School

My children attend public school in Philadelphia. I should say they attend sporadically. It's not that they don't like school. It's that school is often not in session. To wit:
September 7, 2006 First day
September 15, 2006 Staff Development
- 3 Hour Early Dismissal
September 29, 2006 Staff Development
- 3 Hour Early Dismissal
October 2, 2006 Yom Kippur
- Schools Closed
October 9, 2006 Columbus Day
- Schools Closed
October 26, 2006 Staff Development
- 3 Hour Early Dismissal
October 27, 2006 Staff Only
- Professional Development Day
November 3, 2006 Staff Development
- 3 Hour Early Dismissal
November 7, 2006 Staff Only
- Professional Development Day
November 13, 2006 Veterans' Day
- Schools Closed
November 23 - 24, 2006 Thanksgiving Holiday
- Schools Closed
December 8, 2006 Staff Development
- 3 Hour Early Dismissal

The school day is only 6 hours and 39 minutes long in the first place. From September 7 through December 24th is 77 days. There are 5 days off that not everyone else has. There are another 15 hours lost due to professional development, which is more than two full school days. (Why all the professional development, you might ask? Weren't they teachers in the first place?)

Let's forget entirely how difficult it is for the working family to deal with this logistically, or for the nonworking student single mom who can't afford to drop her kids in daycare every other minute. (Hey, my kids are probably getting a lot out of sitting through my classes. And as a sidenote, they're at least as prepared as some of my fellow students--bah-dum-ksh!)

But let's not forget that the time spent on holidays the rest of America doesn't get, to say nothing of the professional development, is the equivalent of 38 minutes being lost out of every school day in this fall semester. There are 399 minutes in a school day, which means that the lost 38 minutes is almost 10% (9.5%) of every day. I think that's outrageous. I'm pretty sure my kids, and yours too, have the right to more than 90% of an education.

If you told the CEO of any major corporation that 10% of his workforce's productivity or earning potential was going down the crapper each and every day, that would be the end of the story. Whatever was occupying that 10% would be gone before lunchtime. We apparently love to compare (but never contrast) education to business, so I have to wonder why this is OK at the chalkboard, but not the boardroom?

Source:
http://www.philsch.k12.pa.us/offices/administration/calendar/2006_2007/#calendar

Oops

I'm so sorry--On September 29th, I said 290 people had been killed in my city. My bad, let me rectify that. The number is actually 316, as of Friday night. Might be even higher by now.

What I'm still waiting to have answered is: how many more people have to die until my city does something about it? Do you live here? If so, why aren't you furious? And if you are furious, why aren't you acting? Where the hell is my deadass city council rep who only shows herself when it's voting time? When will this be important enough to put some effort into it?

And finally, can I please get some reassurance that if this were happening in the rich white areas of Philadelphia, the response would be equally anemic? I'm sure we'd all feel much better if we knew the lack of response was democratic.