To keep young, fix schools

Jim Saksa

is a board member of Young Involved Philadelphia

We chose Philadelphia. We have bought homes here, started businesses, created nonprofits, paid our taxes, and fallen in love.

Some of us came for school or a job and now can't imagine living anywhere else. Others grew up here and don't ever want to leave.

We want to raise our families here. We want to send them to diverse public schools where they will be well educated in safe surroundings. But we face the threat of schools with no art or music, no sports or clubs, no guidance counselors or vice principals. We want to stay, but have $304 million reasons to go.

For the better part of the last half-century, Philadelphia was a city in decline. Starting in 2006, we finally reversed that trend. Today, Philadelphia is a vibrant metropolis undergoing an urban renaissance.

The modern-day Medici of Philadelphia aren't a family of wealthy bankers - the millennial generation is leading the city's nascent revival. According to the Pew 2013 State of the City report, the 20-34 age group grew from 20 percent to 26 percent of the city's total population, accounting for all of Philadelphia's population increase. Moreover, 37.5 percent of young Philadelphians have received at least their bachelor's degree - higher than any other age group in the city, higher than our peers in most other U.S. cities, and well above the national average.

Without educated young folks, Philadelphia wouldn't be the dynamic, innovative city it is today. It would be Cleveland.

As Pew put it, "Educated young adults are the people a city wants to attract and needs to retain."

So far, we've been attracted to Philly's myriad charms, but are absolutely repulsed by the thought of what the School District budget gap - that $304 million - would do to Philadelphia's schools. We worry not just for our own families, but for all of the city's children.

When asked by a different Pew study to name the most important things in our lives, 52 percent of millennials listed "being a good parent," more than the next two popular responses combined. Not coincidentally, education consistently ranks near the top of our priorities. According to the Center for American Progress, 94 percent of millennials agree that the failure to make needed investments in education is a serious problem facing America as a whole.

Despite this obvious imperative, the Philadelphia renaissance is imperiled by the cyclical public-schools funding crisis. Like the cicadas emerging from their slumber, the School District budget shortfall returns every year in late May to disgust and annoy us - and this year's broods of bugs and budgetary woes are the largest in recent memory.

Failure to close this budget gap won't merely lead to cuts in sports, arts, music, and other extracurricular activities - the usual collection of "nonessential" activities that enrich educations beyond the three R's of reading, writing, and arithmetic. It means cuts to basic educational services. Did we say the three R's? Philly will be able to afford only two.

Being young and highly educated also makes us highly mobile, and this generation prefers bustling cities to quiet suburbs, especially when many of those suburbs have also seen school funding slashed by statewide cuts. Meanwhile, Austin, Texas, and Boston both have unemployment rates near half Philadelphia's, and their schools are reasonably funded. Our love for the Phils and the Art Museum can do only so much in the face of better career prospects and better schools for our kids. And for those parents in Philadelphia who lack such mobility, the impact of these gruesome budget cuts is simply devastating.

School Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. has called for shared sacrifice - new revenue from Philadelphia and the commonwealth, and concessions from the teachers. We do not pretend to know what the right solution is. We simply hope that these words of warning will be taken to heart by the politicians purportedly elected to serve us. But we won't sit idly by, lazily lamenting a broken system. This endless cycle of budgetary disasters has to end. The schools need better funding now and from now on.

Already, our generation is taking action, joining, or founding, parent-teacher associations and home-school associations. Young parents in Philadelphia are fund-raising for their local schools before their children are even born. But even these parents wonder if it's not better to give up and leave Pennsylvania for a state that cares about education.

Young Involved Philadelphia will continue to advocate for Philadelphia schools, and we will host a series of events throughout this year and next until all of Philly's kids get the lasting solution they deserve. We invite all who care about the future of Philadelphia's children to join us.

We do not expect, or intend, to solve the problem at these events, but our generation can and must be a part of the solution.