Can Cloud Technology Improve the Relationship Between City Officials and Residents?

As if mornings aren’t painful enough, a large pothole on your route to work can really put you in a grumpy mood.
Fortunately, for Philadelphia residents, they’ll no longer have to endure long waits on the phone to report such road problems (or to ask simple questions about recreation events or to lodge a complaint about garbage services). That’s because information services will soon improve since officials announced a partnership with IT services company Unisys to upgrade 311 through cloud-based hosting.
The new system, which hinges on technology from cloud platform company Salesforce, will give locals instant access to information services online, through social media services like Twitter or Faceboook or by calling and texting.
About 80 percent of 311 calls pertain to information about city services while the remaining 20 percent of calls are to report things like abandoned cars, potholes or garbage collection, according to Rosetta Lue, Philadelphia’s chief customer service officer and executive director for Philly311.
Mayot Michael Nutter first launched Philly311 in 2008, with the goal of making government services more accessible to residents. However, the economic downturn overshadowed making the service a priority, which is why Lue contends an upgrade was overdue.

“It was time for an upgrade, and the demand for our services outstripped our abilities,” she says.

Philadelphia continues to receive an increasing number of 311 calls each year, according to Lue, and the new cloud technology is equipped to help handle the influx while also organizing and mining the data to understand bigger trends. The platform will also let users track their requests.

“Because we’re planning on promoting the service in the future,” Lue says, “311 is another way we can implement the vision the mayor has for becoming more customer-centric.”

The pilot phase first launched in June and has been met with success, Lue tells the Philadelphia Business JournalPhilly311 is expected to be fully upgraded by the year’s end with added improvements to the website.

Once the pilot is off the ground, officials plan to launch a citywide assessment of the services, including 70 types of service requests and citizen engagement programs across the city.

Unisys is also in talks with the state of Pennsylvania for a $681 million contract to consolidate several different data systems into one cloud computing program.

“There’s always an adrenaline rush when you flip the switch and something goes live,” says Crystal Cooper, the vice president of Unisys Public Sector for North America. “And I’m excited, because the expectation is that citizens should be able to interact with their government 365 days a year.”

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What’s the Best to Spark Creativity Among City Workers?

Philadelphia has long served as a reminder of America’s past, but the city is hoping to be a part of the country’s future with the addition of a new innovation lab.
Mayor Michael Nutter unveiled the new facility on Friday, Aug. 1 as a new refuge for city employees, students and tech experts to get creative. Located inside the Municipal Services Building near City Hall, officials hope the lab will serve as a backdrop for future problem-solving and collaboration between government and technology sectors, including events like hackathons.
“The lab will bring the spirit of startups inside of city government,” said Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid. “The goal is to create a culture of innovation, to sustain it and grow it long term.”
Modeled on a lab designed at the University of Philadelphia, this version will cycle through different topics — ranging from public health to poverty— every 90 days, with the aim of solving a variety of problems the city faces. The new facility will be incorporated into the city’s Innovation Academy, a program launched earlier this year to educate officials and lawmakers in creative problem-solving and business innovation.
Philadelphia also hopes to attract experts in a range of subjects from the more than 80 nearby universities and other institutions, according to Government Technology.
“The lab is a way to show that government can solve problems, and it is also a way to attract new talent,” Ebeid said. “There are a lot of younger people who are choosing to help solve the problems of city government, rather than be on the outside. The lab and the academy show them that we are not your typical government.”
The city also plans to invite children to participate in lab programs, partnering with the Philadelphia school district to expose students to new technology, according to City General Manager Richard Negrin.
“You’re going to see city employees, for the first time, sitting side-by-side with children from our communities who are interesting in technology and innovation, and representatives of the local tech community,” Negrin told CBS.
Created with $100,000 of city money, officials are uncertain of how to sustain the innovation lab, but as a breeding ground for ideas, they’re likely to cook one up.
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When Families are Separated Because of Criminal Acts, This Technology Keeps Everyone Connected

Sure, there’s the adage, “distance makes the heart grow fonder.” But anyone who’s been in a long-distance relationship can attest that maintaining the connection is difficult — and a lot of work.
That’s particularly true of incarcerated parents who are separated from their children.
But a pilot program in Philadelphia is working to change that. For almost a year now, Riverside Correctional Facility (which houses about 800 women) has been allowing supervised video chats between inmates and their children.
This increased ability to communicate not only has the potential to enhance prisoner morale and family cohesion, but it also allows the parent to have more say in decisions regarding her kids. All of this is very much needed, which is obvious from this staggering statistic: Since 1991, the number of children with imprisoned mothers has doubled, according to Next City.
More families could soon benefit from this program, says Jessica Shapiro, DHS chief of staff in Philadelphia, and the technology could even spread nationwide this summer. 
With the huge increase in incarcerated mothers, video chatting has the potential to revolutionize and greatly improve the childhood of those affected. Although parents in prison cannot be physically present with their children, and in many situations, social workers have to get involved, this technology does allow for more involved parenting and better outcomes for the family as a whole.
One family recently used a video chat to hold a “family team conference,” notes Shapiro. “A mother and grandmother who were both incarcerated, [and] the children and grandchildren were able to attend the conference at DHS,” she said. “The conference was so emotionally powerful for all parties that the facilitator had to actually stop the conference several times.”
While videoconferencing should not replace vital, in-person visits between inmates and their children, it does have the ability to increase communication, something that the general prison population needs— cutting down on wait times and keeping families better connected.
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Put Your Hands Together for the Heroes Competing in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games

You’ve heard of the Olympic Games. And you’re probably familiar with the Special Olympics and the Paralympics. But have you heard of the National Veterans Wheelchair Games?
The games, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Paralyzed Veterans of America, has grown every year to become the largest annual wheelchair sports competition in the world. This year, a record number of participants — 660 athletes — have registered to compete in 17 different events that will be held from August 12 to 17 in Philadelphia.
One of the athletes is new to his sport: Ellwood “Woody” Allen of Philadelphia. During the Vietnam war, Allen served in Army and was stationed for much of his service at Fort Benning in Georgia, where he was a behavior-science specialist helping veterans returning from the war cope with what they had witnessed, what they had lost and how they would rejoin the civilian world. Two years ago, Allen lost his leg due to an infection.
After his leg was amputated, Allen was the one who needed help. As a means of recovery, he began cycling using a borrowed bike from a veterans group that sponsors adaptive sports.
Meanwhile, a Disabled American Veterans (DAV) chapter in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, was looking to donate an adaptive tricycle to a deserving vet. A member of the DAV, Bill Pinkerton, told Kristin E. Holmes of the Philadelphia Inquirer that they decided to donate a trike because, “it gives you mobility, hand-eye coordination and it gets you outside and meeting people. After trauma, you need to get out.”
A counselor at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center connected the DAV with Allen, who rejoiced over receiving the red adaptive tricycle. “The fact that they were willing to help somebody, I hate to say I feel emotional, because we’re grown men and we’re not supposed to,” Allen told Holmes.
Allen will compete as a member of the Philly Phever team at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. For him, victory will mean “not finishing last.”
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How HUD is Helping Four Cities Rethink Housing Projects

In our opinion, the best prize is always cold, hard cash.
And this year, that’s exactly what four cities are receiving from the federal government after competing for funding to support low-income communities. This year’s winners are using the money to rethink the potential of public housing.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded a total of $119.7 million (about $30 million each) to Norwalk, Connecticut; Columbus, Ohio; Philadelphia and Pittsburgh for its annual Choice Neighborhood Initiative.
These four recipients bested 40 other cities that applied for the urban housing program. Each will combine the grant money with private funding to transform aging public housing and depressed neighborhoods into mixed-income, mixed-use communities, Next City reports.
“By working together, with local and state partners we will show why neighborhoods should always be defined by their potential — not their problems,” said HUD secretary Shaun Donovan. “Together, we will work to ensure that no child’s future is determined by their zip code and expand opportunity for all.”
Donovan, who led President Barack Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Task Force, has made sustainable building a priority at HUD in the wake of recent natural disasters. The agency has collaborated with FEMA in redesigning recovery projects, which extends to Norwalk’s project: rebuilding a blighted public housing development devastated by Sandy.
New units will be built six-and-a-half feet above the floodplain and will be protected by FEMA-funded storm-proofing infrastructures. The new development will also include community gardens, fitness trails and parks with playgrounds and sports fields.
In Pittsburgh, officials will use the grant to redevelop two of the city’s low-income neighborhoods. Plans include a one-to-one replacement of 155 public housing units and development of the area surrounding the new, upscale Ace Hotel.

“It will be the most significant investment in low- and moderate-income communities in the East End in 75 years,” Councilman Ricky Burgess, who represents the neighborhoods, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

HUD began the initiative under President Obama’s order in 2011, awarding Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and New Orleans a total of $122.27 million in grants. Submission for applications for next year’s funding is slated to begin this fall.

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A Philadelphia Shop That’s Run By Vets For Vets

Imagine a store that comprehensively helps veterans.
Think it’s good to be true? The Camouflage Rhino Thrift Shop in Philadelphia thinks otherwise, and since it was established, the store has helped veterans in a number of ways, from employing them to supplying them with free furniture, household goods and job interview outfits. Plus, proceeds from sales go directly to running a local nonprofit called the Veterans Multi-Service Center.
Rose Brandau McGee is a remarkable woman behind all these efforts. Her father served in the Korean War, and she’s been working at the Veterans Multi-Service Center (VMC) for years. The nonprofit provides comprehensive help for veterans, including job training, housing assistance, rehabilitation from injuries, computer skills classes and more.
“It’s hard to transition back to civilian life,” McGee told Max Pulcini and G. Sandy Bukowski of the Spirit of the River Wards. “The Army breaks you down and builds you up so that you can be a great solider. But they don’t break you down from being a great soldier to a great civilian. So this is a place where that can be done.”
McGee launched the thrift store when the VMC was becoming overwhelmed with donations. Many veterans needed clothes for job interviews but the donations often weren’t quite the right size. “So we came up with the idea for the thrift store—we get the donations for the veterans, process them, everything gets checked out,” she said. “And one-third of everything that comes in to the store goes out to veterans for free.”
Last year, the store employed 22 veterans, training them in retail and jobs skills, and 11 of them moved on to better or full-time employment elsewhere. Parrin Terry, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, was finally able to transition back to the civilian world with help from the VMC and the Camouflage Rhino, where he works. “Places like this are important because they give us a sense of direction,” he said. “They work with you and they focus on you and your needs. That right there is a big part of what veterans need.”
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The Next Big App: Safer Walks to School Designed by Students Themselves

Imagine walking to school and constantly checking over your shoulder. This is the reality of the students who attend the magnet high school Academy of Palumbo in Philadelphia. Thanks to mass school closings and big budget cuts by superintendent William R. Hite Jr., walks to school have become longer and more dangerous for some students. According to the New York Times, 24 schools were closed and almost 4,000 public school employees were let go just last year, forcing more kids into less public schools.
Muggings and attacks are frequent in this area, especially for kids on their way to school. As a high school algebra teacher, Susan Lee, puts it, “It’s easier to grab them on their way here.”
But once Lee heard about the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest, a program that urges schools to raise interest in science, technology, engineering and math, she knew that her students themselves held the power to make their walks to school safer.
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Teaming up with her to work on this project was physics teacher Klint Kanopka and a team of 15 students. The group worked together after school for several months investigating the safest routes to school, interviewing and charting their peers’  data to create an algorithm that could be used in an app for students get to school safely.
The app gives scores, 1-5,  to different streets depending on recent crime data within 10 blocks of the school. The lower scoring a street is, the safer it is. If a shooting occurs on a certain street, that street will immediately jump up to a 5, meaning the students should avoid that street if possible.
The students’ project landed them a spot as one of five winners of the Samsung contest beating more than 2,300 other schools. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the winnings included $140,000 in new technology from Samsung and a free trip to Washington for the students and teachers.
As for the future of the app, Lee hopes it can be adapted and used anywhere across America. In the meantime, Kanopka is talking with University of Pennsylvania masters students specializing in urban planning and engineering about creating a program between the university and the Palumbo students this summer to help the students to continue refining and growing the safety benefits on their app.

Meet the Celebrity Chefs Cooking Up a Unique Way to Improve Literacy

As the old maxim goes, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
Now, a new literacy program in Philadelphia hopes this proves true not just for men, but for women and kids, too. And instead of romantic love, they’re looking to foster a love of reading.
In the City of Brotherly Love, more than half a million adults are illiterate or low-literate — that’s more than half of the adult population of the city. So the Free Library of Philadelphia is partnering with local Iron Chef alums Jose Garces and Marc Vetri to launch a non-traditional, cooking-based literacy program. The Culinary Literacy Center opened June 2, offering cooking and literacy classes to adults, kids, teenagers, and ESL students of all ages.
“The beauty of culinary literacy is that it’s basic literacy skills — math and science — and you get to make something. That tactile part of when you’re learning something is so important,” Siobhan Reardon, the president of the Free Library of Philadelphia told Francis Hilario of the Philadelphia Business Journal. “For us, the role of the library is about the grand experiment of bringing people to literacy, and that’s what we’re doing here.”
Garces, an Ecuadorian-American chef, restaurant owner, and of course, Iron Chef winner, has been helping immigrants for years through his Garces Foundation. He sees this venture as aligning with his foundation’s mission of helping kids and teaching people to read by following and writing recipes.
The Parkway Central Library in Philadelphia is in the middle of a major renovation that included adding the Culinary Literacy Center, with its three ovens, walk-in refrigerator and 16 burners. Currently, the library is working with Garces and Ventri to get a school curriculum developed for the fall.
With any luck, after their cooking classes, the new students will be inspired to take home a few books from the library.
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Confiding Isn’t Scary; It’s the Key to Feeling Safe for These Students

“If you really knew me, this is what you’d know.”
At the Freire Charter School in Philadelphia, that was the prompt given to two dozen students as they stood before 500 peers, sharing personal stories and intimate details about their lives. The concept sounds intimidating, but it is how Freire school officials create a campus environment of empathy and community among its students and prevent future violence and tragedy.
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“When a community can come together and celebrate the humanity in each of our kids,” said school head Kelly Davenport, “that gives each and every one of our students the right just to be who they are, and to make that OK.”

Violent outbursts often stem from feeling isolated, Davenport explains, and creating a public forum such as this lets students know they’re not alone in their struggles. The goal of these sharing assemblies is to give students a means of expressing themselves without feeling judged or criticized, school organizer Dave Shahriari told NPR.

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“Kids have a lot to say, and I thought it could be really humanizing and helpful for the school as a community if they could say it in a safe space in front of each other,” he adds.

Elijah, a tenth-grader, was among the dozen students to share his story at the nearby Unitarian church (the school does not have an auditorium large enough to accommodate its students). He explained he was fortunate to have a support network of friends and a good relationship with his grandmother — but that he is often troubled with depression and has thoughts of suicide.

Upon his confession, Elijah implored his classmates who really care about him and his issues to stand up. The church roared with a standing ovation. Weeks later, Elijah still feels the love.

“They hug me or they give me a handshake, and then they was telling me stories like, ‘Yeah, I know what you was dealing with. I went through the same thing,'” he said.

Another tenth-grader, Tyshierra, revealed that behind her humor and lighthearted personality, there’s a story of loss and hurt. The West Philly native confessed to classmates that her mother was a drug dealer and was allegedly strangled to death by her boyfriend.

Shortly thereafter, Tyshierra’s father passed away of liver cancer. After a whirlwind of meetings with child protection caseworkers and participating in counseling programs, she and her siblings were finally taken in by their aunt.

“Losing my mother was my biggest fear,” she said. “Since that has already happened, I fear nothing and no one. Ya’ll see me as goofy, funny or whatever else, but deep down inside, I’m hurting for the way my life is.”

But even Tyshierra has felt the powerful effects of the brave choice to share her story with her peers.

Before the assembly, “everybody just was like, ‘OK, we at school,’ ” Tyshierra said. “But now, it’s like we feel like a family, like we know all that about each other.”

Perhaps it helped that the students divulged their secrets in the calm sanctuary of a church. But regardless of the location, it’s empowering to see a school that’s making its students feel safe with something other than added security or more metal detectors.

When Budget Cuts Closed Their Kids’ Schools, These Parents Took on the System

Last year, Sheila Armstrong’s son Skylar, 12, walked one minute from his home to William H. Harrison Elementary School in Philadelphia, where he never had more than 25 kids in a class, and every teacher knew him by name. Armstrong, a single mother, didn’t worry about her son’s safety when he was at school, and springtime simply meant more time on the playground. She knew aides would look out for him during lunch and recess, and a school nurse was there if he should need help. Simple amenities, yes. But in Philadelphia, they are a lost luxury.
When Harrison Elementary shut its doors for good at the beginning of this school year, there was literally nothing Armstrong — or any other parents, students or teachers — could do about it. Harrison Elementary was one of 24 Philadelphia schools closed by the city in 2013 in an effort to help with a $304 million budget shortfall. The move was part of a district-wide slaughter, which included slashing extracurriculars, laying off 676 teachers and nearly eliminating guidance counselors citywide.
“Gov. [Tom] Corbett visited Harrison when he first ran for governor,” says Armstrong. “He spoke to us and promised he would do anything he could do in his power to keep it open. A year and a half later the school was shut down.” What many parents viewed as mixed messaging left them feeling frustrated and powerless. Since then, education funding has become a big problem for the Republican governor — and one of the biggest talking points for those seeking to become his Democratic rival in next week’s gubernatorial primary race in Pennsylvania.
Officials from the School District of Philadelphia (PSD) said they chose to close schools like Harrison based on factors like enrollment, the age of the facilities and the quality of the educational programming. Over the past decade, PSD has lost more than 50,000 students due to a declining birth rate and the rise of charter schools and other educational opportunities in the city, resulting in many schools operating well below their capacity levels. Harrison Elementary had major enrollment declines, expensive building repairs on the horizon and was operating at only 39 percent of capacity, according to educational planner Bill Montgomery. The school also failed to pass the Adequate Yearly Progress  tests that serve as a benchmark in the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
For the district, closing schools down was a way to save money fast. But what about the broken educational system that had produced these underperforming schools in the first place? Could anything be done to change it? Fortunately, Armstrong found a coalition of people who, like herself, were ready to jump in and help. POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower & Rebuild) began in the spring of 2011 with a handful of clergy and lay leaders listening to the stories of more than 1,000 people on the streets and in churches, mosques, synagogues and temples. The group identified the biggest problems affecting Philadelphians — poverty and education becoming top priorities — and set to work trying to fix them.
Today, POWER is a well-oiled interfaith community-organizing machine — with more than 40 congregations and 500 community organizers — funded by charitable foundations, some local unions, personal contributions from individual donors and congregational membership dues. The group’s successes have made national headlines: In November 2013, POWER won a new minimum wage for workers at Philadelphia International Airport in a highly publicized local win. Thanks to POWER’s lobbying, the city council will put a referendum on next week’s ballot that would expand the city’s minimum wage and benefits so that it applies to all workers, including those working for subcontractors.  Michael Nutter, Philadelphia’s mayor, has even issued an executive order raising the city’s minimum wage from $7.50 to $12 per hour starting in January 2015. The referendum will make sure that order stays put, regardless of who’s in charge.
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POWER’s plan for education reform in the city was to develop one-on-one relationships with parents. Armstrong was identified as a mother with leadership potential for her outspokenness, knowledge of the education system (she works as a teacher’s aide) and fierce determination to fight for her sons’ safety. POWER representatives asked her to help organize regular meetings where parents discussed their hopes and dreams for their kids and the barriers they faced. Building on these conversations, POWER planned to take parents’ stories and ideas to principals and district leaders, changing schools individually.
“We knew to organize around education we needed to work with parents because the people closest to the students need to be the ones calling the shots,” says Cecily Harwitt, POWER’s lead organizer for education. Recruiting parents turned out to be the easy part. “As we started organizing, we’d go to the principal with ideas we got from the parents,” Harwitt says of simple requests like adding an additional lunch aide to help with crowded cafeterias. “The principal would like the idea but then say, ‘right now we don’t have money for paper, so we really can’t talk about that.'”
Armstrong told the coalition about how drastically her son’s situation had changed since Harrison Elementary closed. Skylar’s new school is a 25-minute walk across vacant lots, housing projects and a major four-lane thruway where the traffic lights sometimes go out. Crossing guards are nonexistent.
And then there’s Skylar’s asthma. At school, “he is responsible for taking care of it himself,” Armstrong says. There is no guarantee that a nurse will be there to help her son out. Since the cuts, schools are lucky to have a nurse in the building one day a week. School policy mandates that students with chronic health problems like asthma store their medications in the nurse’s office. Principals and their secretaries are responsible for administering medication. It doesn’t always work: Earlier this year, a sixth-grader died of an asthma attack that started at the William C. Bryant Elementary School in Philadelphia, where there was no nurse on duty.
Though these initial conversations got parents talking, those involved quickly realized that the situation was too extreme to fix only on a school-by-school basis. Capitalizing on parents’ desire to act, not just talk, POWER tapped into its network of congregations and was soon holding rallies in churches across the city, organizing protests that shut down major thoroughfares and calling upon the mayor to act.
The first time Armstrong spoke publicly was at a rally of more than 300 people at Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church last August. She brought down the house with her emotional stories of students who were failed by Philly schools. “That rally was so much more energizing than the meetings,” Harwitt says. “This was a time when we said we’re tired of this crisis-to-crisis mentality, and we started thinking about fair funding.” POWER members realized they would have to change the system at its core by going after the very way schools get money across the state.
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Pennsylvania is one of only three states in the country, along with Delaware and North Carolina, without a fair funding formula, meaning that the state doles out money based on property taxes collected within each district — richer districts get more money. High poverty schools in Pennsylvania receive $3,000 less per student than wealthy ones.
Along with parents like Armstrong, POWER is fighting to make the lack of a fair funding formula the single biggest issue in the governor’s race, strategically engaging voters and holding candidates accountable. Before the Democratic primary next week, POWER plans to move 5,000 voters to the ballot by canvassing neighborhoods across the state and stocking phone banks with parent volunteers. The next planned phase will be mobilizing another 5,000 voters for the general election in November. And POWER has built a denominational network across Pennsylvania, working with interfaith organizations in Pittsburgh and Allentown to push forward the same agenda.
According to David Koppisch, a POWER fundraiser, the results have been surprising. “Nine months ago [when POWER first started engaging parents in their cause to change schools], the feeling was there was no way we could get the attention of the governor and the state legislature. Now it’s clear it’s the issue or at least tied for the top issue of the governors’ race.” In fact, every Democratic candidate has claimed to support a full fair- funding formula.
Even as the larger battles over fair funding still loom, parents in Philadelphia are counting small victories. Armstrong’s son is doing well in the sixth grade at the Spring Garden School, thanks in large part to his mom and other parents. Armstrong has helped to organize a “safe corridor” staffed by a network of parent volunteers. Every day after school, parents stand at corners along the route from Spring Garden to faraway neighborhoods along these displaced children’s commutes. They shepherd students home, keeping behavior in check and dangerous elements like rowdy teens, drug dealers and violence at bay. Parents have also started volunteering during lunch hour now that the weather is warmer so that children can have the proper supervision to get out for recess. But with the sun and warmth, Armstrong starts to worry.
“With the warmth comes chaos. Right now there is a lot of violence in the high schools, and they don’t have the staffing to make a difference,” she says. When those high schools let out, the students start to linger on the Spring Garden property, fighting with the younger kids and causing trouble. Without the resources to provide adequate staffing and supervision, Armstrong and her small army of parent volunteers have been filling in to make up that difference — for now. She hopes her efforts toward fixing the route of the problem will pay off and those resources will be restored with a fair funding formula.
“Schools don’t have the proper resources on a state level. These children are our future taxpayers. What is our future going to look like if we’re not educating them properly?” Armstrong says.
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