That's 'Professor' Street to you

THE PAST WEEK has been Mayor Nutter's most challenging in his short time in office. But one person says he can relate.

That would be Nutter's predecessor, John F. Street, now an adjunct professor of political science at Temple University.

Street's 3-credit undergraduate seminar, "Urban, State and Local Politics," taken by 60 students, will end Tuesday. Although Street and Nutter battled regularly when Street was mayor and Nutter was a city councilman, Nutter accepted an invitation to speak to Street's class.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily News on Wednesday, Street wanted to speak mostly about teaching.

Q: What was the topic of your class, and how did you teach it?

A: We covered largely the kind of big, urban political issues that are typical of most cities and regions, including the organization of government, the political process, the problems of education and crime and taxes . . .

Each of my classes was broken down into five sections, and each one of the sections had a city that was the subject of that section's research. And so, when we, for example, talked about public education as an urban issue, we had reports on the public-education challenges in Allegheny County, in Pittsburgh; and in Fulton County, in Atlanta; and Chicago and Cook County. . . . We had a little bit of an emphasis on Philadelphia, but Philadelphia was largely the starting point of our discussions. . . .

Instead of doing your traditional blue-book examination, we're doing a pretty comprehensive budget simulation in which the class is divided into the administration - with the mayor, and a commerce director, and a managing director, and a finance director - as well as a council president and council members, and then we have advocates in a lot of different areas, including tax reduction and education and re-entry and children, and all of the kinds of . . . issues that come up in a budget hearing.

Q: How have your students responded to it?

A: Well, they seem to be responding really well. We've had great class attendance. We've had four or five weekends where the students came to hear special guests.

Q: Did you require that they come to weekend sessions, or was that their choice?

A: Oh, no, that was purely voluntary.

Q: About how many of them went to those?

A: Probably half to three-quarters of them. Some of them had to work, and they had other obligations. In life, sometimes you have to make choices, so we tried to pick a time that was most convenient. And some people actually took off from their various other obligations just to be there. . . .

We paid a little attention to a couple of local races, and we even had one of the candidates in the First Senatorial District [who] came in and addressed the class. It happened to be the winning candidate [in the Democratic primary]. So I guess next time they'll know they'd better come to our class.

Q: That was Larry Farnese?

A: Yes, Farnese actually came in and addressed the class. . . .

We talked, for example, about the city-suburb relationships, and the challenges offered by that, and we had Commissioner [Joe] Hoeffel, who's a former congressman, come in and talk to us about Montgomery County, because he was a county commissioner and then he was a congressman, and now he's a county commissioner again. . . . We had the general counsel to the local Republican Party come in, Michael Meehan.

Q: How did it go when Mayor Nutter spoke to your class?

A: It went fine.

The mayor came, the governor [Rendell] came, former mayor [W. Wilson] Goode came. . . . I think people were enormously pleased to get a chance to hear from former mayors and governors and folks like that, people who are actually in the political process. But they had to come on the weekends for a lot of that. And they did.

I'll tell you: I thought that those speakers were just wonderful. Reverend Goode was just outstanding. He gave just a magnificent presentation. . . .

I actually think we're going to get a couple of elected officials out of [the class], too. We have two or three people who really seem to be very, very interested in the political process. And I think being in a class and getting to meet a lot of elected officials and hearing firsthand the value and the good that can be done, and the benefit of these offices, I think it really impacted a number of people in the class.

Q: Did you get the sense that these students hadn't considered public office before?

A: Well, I actually think some of them probably thought about it. . . . I agreed to talk to a few of them over the summer because they want to talk a little bit more about some specifics about how to go about it . . .

Q: What are your impressions of Temple students?

A: I had my reservations about Temple students, about all students, when I went there. It's been a long time since I've been in a college classroom in that kind of way. But I hear so much about students and about laxity and all that. I thought these students were enormously attentive and very, very interesting. . . .

But we worked real hard to make the class interesting and stimulating. . . . Our attendance was probably over 90 percent.

Q: I know you're an early riser.

A: Well, my early class is 8:40. And by then, half the day is over for me. But 8:40 is a real early class on a college campus. My late class is at 10 o'clock. And that 10 o'clock class filled up, they tell me, in maybe less than an hour. . . . One person told me that he stayed online to get in my class this semester, he stayed online continuously for five hours. Just waiting to see if someone would drop.

Q: It sounds like you were able to bring in contacts you had made as mayor.

A: Oh, yeah. I have some commitments in the fall from some of my friends that are mayors of other cities. Mayor Shirley Franklin [of Atlanta] said that she's going to come and visit my class in the fall. And all of the people who came in the spring said they would be glad to come back in the fall.

Q: Is there anything you would do differently in the fall?

A: I think I'll start the budget simulation a little earlier. I had made arrangements with Council President [Anna] Verna for the budget simulation to take place in City Hall in the Council chambers, and the mayor was going to be able to just walk in and use the chambers. But I ran into some scheduling problems at the university that I was unaware of. I just didn't know enough about the protocols in order to have anticipated it. And so my next semester, I'm probably going to start the budget simulation about halfway through the semester, so that we can actually do their presentations in City Hall. Oh, they were very disappointed when they couldn't do it in City Hall.

Q: Do you think your expectations for what the students would be capable of were pretty much on target?

A: The area where I was least comfortable was their writing skills. And I actually have my own very high standards in that regard. . . . Some of them . . . don't have the writing skills that I think they might have. But I have to take into account that they're young yet. I knew it was unfair to compare their writing skills to the writing skills of a lot of professionals that I've dealt with, and even my own writing skills. But I've been writing now for 40 years, and these young people are very, very early in their careers. And I think, by and large, that they've done very well.

Q: Did you talk to them about that?

A: A little. They don't like to be preached to. They don't like you to get too preachy on them. Although they are very, very open. And I found working with them to be just delightful.

Q: As far as comparing this to having been mayor, does anything stand out as being either somewhat similar to your time as mayor or drastically different?

A: Yeah, this is much more stressful.

Q: You're kidding, right?

A: Yes, I am kidding. Look, I'm partially retired, right? You can't even compare the two. I was on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for eight years, and now I'm partially retired. You know, I teach two days a week, and I spend a fair amount of time thinking about it and preparing for it and getting materials together, but it's nothing like being the mayor. I can only imagine. Look, I know exactly, I don't have to imagine, I know exactly what Mayor Nutter is going through right now.

Q: What were you thinking about this week?

A: Oh, I know exactly what he's going through. The hardest part of this job is having to confront the possibility that city employees - firefighters and police officers - will lose their lives in the line of duty and then you have to go and talk to those family members. It's very, very tough. It's hard. It's the hardest part of the job. The hardest part of the job.

Q: Aside from the difference in stress, is there anything else about teaching that you really enjoy that may have surprised you?

A: Not really. There was a time in my life when I only wanted to be a teacher. I graduated college with a minor in secondary education. I just thought the sun rose and set on teachers. I just have such tremendous respect for teachers.

That's one of the most underappreciated professions in the world today. . . . This country has almost no respect for them. We don't pay them. We don't take care of them, by and large. . . . I'm not talking about Philadelphia or Pennsylvania. As a country, we don't respect our teachers and our need to invest heavily in the education of our children. It's a disgrace. We should be spending way more money on it, and we will pay a price in the long run.