Hundreds protest Renaissance Schools plan

RATHER THAN head home after a long day of school yesterday, Taisha Martinez, a sophomore at Kensington Creative & Performing Arts High School, joined hundreds of others at a rally to support the district's teachers.

The throng of students and teachers from all over the district gathered at a Philadelphia Federation of Teachers rally outside district headquarters to tell the administration how they really feel about plans to overhaul 18 city schools.

"I'm here to stand up for my education," Martinez said. "If [students] don't stand up, who will?"

Under the Renaissance Schools initiative targeting underachieving schools, the district plans to convert eight schools into charters and more closely manage 10 others next year.

All of the teachers at those schools would have to reapply for their jobs.

Janice Melnick, a teacher at Grover Washington Middle School in Olney - which isn't included in the Renaissance list - said the shift to charters would "rape the public schools of their funding" and force them to discontinue programs like arts and music.

Mekkah McIlhenny, a student at Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, agreed.

"[Students] are just a statistic - just a number. That's all we are to [the district]," McIlhenny said. "And now they want to stop teachers from voicing their opinions? This isn't a dictatorship."

The district has caught heat for its handling of Hope Moffett, a teacher at Audenried High School banished from her classroom after speaking out against the plans to turn Audenried into a charter school. She has been stuck in "teacher jail" since Feb. 17 and the PFT has gone to federal court to block the district from firing her, as an administrator has recommended.

"This struggle is not just about us. This struggle is not just about unions," said Ted Kirsch, Pennsylvania president of the American Federation of Teachers. "This struggle is about democracy."

Moffett said she was amazed at the number of students and teachers at the rally.

"We're here to fight for our teachers, our peers and our schools," said one of Moffett's students, Audenried junior Maurice Johnson. "We want to let the district know that we're not going to take this kind of injustice."