Pretty sucky
The Education Law Center, Good Schools Pennsylvania (GSPA), and the Education Policy and Leadership Center (EPLC) are leading The Pennsylvania Education Funding Reform Campaign. This campaign will advocate for a state finance system that provides all children with the resources needed for an excellent public education. The results could lead to significant legislative changes in the inequitable funding formula the state uses now. First Person is pleased to support this effort by participating in the Campaign’s Share Your Stories effort.
My name is Mario, not your average eighteen year old (going to be nineteen soon) born, raised and still living in North Philadelphia. I went to Kensington High School (International School of Business), and am currently enrolled as a full-time student at Community College of Philadelphia. I work full-time as well, currently for a Para-transit company by the name of Transit Aid Inc.
Going through high school in an urban area requires a lot of patience. The classroom sizes are too small, and the lunches should only be served to axe murderers, gang bangers, and your average inmate as punishment. There were fights, the occasional bomb scares, and unorganized fire drills.
The school itself was okay. The main building was always too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter. It smelled musky, the water fountains spit out warm water that tasted like copper, and computers outside of the computer lab were scarce. The newer annex building had a better gym, working water fountains, and central heating and cooling.
Dances were a rarity. The school called them privileges. We usually had to have fundraisers and outside assistance for them, and they usually turned out pretty sucky anyway. Field trips were pretty rare too. Our graduation trip wasn’t anything to scream for either. We made it nice by having fun together as a senior class but it was bad was hearing about other schools going out of state for their school trips to amusement parks, other cities, staying in hotels, the whole nine yards.
We had baseball and softball, basketball, soccer, a bowling team, wrestling, even bowling, but no football. We never had a football squad. I asked about it once and was told that we didn’t have the sufficient funding for it, which I think is a sin. Aside from having an okay sports program, our equipment sucked pretty badly. The weight room looked like it came straight out of a bad news bear catalogue, and we had to travel to practice, and use a public recreational field, because we didn’t have a field of our own.
Imagining a situation where we had more school funding gives a prettier picture of what my high school experience would’ve been overall. More resources would’ve been available, educational or otherwise.
