Financial Crisis Solved, if We Know How to Work It...

Solving Our City’s Financial Crisis: Is It Really ALL That Hard?

By Brother Tracy Gibson…

First of all, I’m not putting my name to this material because something in Christ and other positive Spirits tells me that I didn’t come up with this by myself. Plus, people have a tendency to get in on the hating bandwagon when they see my name and put on their Oh-He-Thinks-He-Knows-Everything Cap instead of their Well-Now-That-Makes-Sense-I-Think-I’ll-Listen-UP Cap.  I need you to put on the latter, so these suggestions are being made anonymously.

One thing I have learned about money is that People LOVE money.  Another thing I have learned about money is that people love to give money when they can and when they have it—especially to causes that are wholesome and when there is a major crisis.  The Schools in Philadelphia are in a major crisis.  Some people think the solution is to spread the money out more evenly.  This will just create more hatred, consternation and animosity between races and people who have and races and people who don’t have.  This is a basic truth that needs to be accepted before this lesson even starts.

There is a funny thing about education also.  A good conversation is as much an education starter as reading something from a book.  In fact people, including children, love to talk and get into other people’s business.  This can be a learning tool instead of just idol gossip.  A good or great teacher can take a magazine, a book of poetry or a report from a child and get children talking and learning current events and social studies faster than a bad teacher with seven computers, a new-fangled lab, and lots of money.  This statement needs repeating. A good or great teacher can take a magazine or a newspaper or a report from a child and get children talking and learning current events and social studies faster than a bad teacher with seven computers, a new-fangled lab, and lots of money.

Another thing the Teacher’s Union needs to admit is that there are plenty of bad teachers to go around and a small group of them need to find other work.  Why not find financially efficient Ways to re-train bad teachers, after they get over the blistering ego crunch of facing this reality and get some therapy if they need it and get them other work instead of acting like this 900 pound Camel doesn’t exist while we all have to clean up after this beast and feed it our hard-earned tax dollars.  We have several leading universities, colleges and trade schools in Philadelphia and I’m sure they would lend a hand in re-training these poor teachers and finding them new, more appropriate and even exciting jobs where they [the bad teachers] wouldn’t have to lose a cent and could continue to contribute to our tax base, feed their families and be more productive Philadelphians. Fighting and hemming and haughing over this fact of their being bad teachers is like saying the sky is never blue and there is no pollution in the world that needs to be cleaned up. Let’s get over this and go on in a Way that doesn’t hurt the Teachers Union or lose or cost anyone a single job. 

The basic idea of the premise I am presenting to the School District, City Council and the Mayor is very simple and it take on the basic notion I mentioned at the outset of this article. People love to give money when there is a crisis and when they have the money. Why don’t we allow people to GIVE money to the schools in an open, anonymous Way  where the City is not twisting the arms of already strapped and stressed home owners and already strapped and stressed tax payers and get it instead from people who love to give openly and lovingly of their time and money.  Sometimes I think people in the education business are in it to make everybody think they are not smart and don’t need to teach. That needs repeating also.  Sometimes I think people in the education business are in it to make people think they are not smart and don’t need or want to teach.  The more degrees they get the less likely they are to find themselves at odds with the regular ole housewife in pink slippers and pin curlers [stereotype] who has little time to come down to City Council and fuss because she is cooking dinner, patching up a child’s bleeding knee, or frankly, is just captivated with something she doesn’t need to be watching on TV.  I hope I’m not boring you, but this needs repeating also.  The more educational degrees school administrators and teachers have the more they find themselves at odds with and unable to relate to regular old housewives and working people.  I’m not trying to be funny, but sometimes I think you get a stupid pill along with your Ph.D. and a Dumb Pill along with your Master’s degree that consistently tells you over a long duration that you are better than that lady in pin curlers and pink slippers or the man who drives a trash truck all day and has three children in the Philadelphia public school  system.  I’m here to tell you that your fancy degree won’t mean much in the Eyes of GOD when and if that gentleman or gentlelady ever really comes back to take a look at what is going on down here and starts handing out judgments. By the Way I am human like you.  Really religious and Spiritual, but I’m only human so I might be wrong in everything and anything I’m saying here, but I have been around the barn a while and these are my educated opinions and my honest thoughts. I think they make sense and save cents.

To get back to the point, why don’t we start a fund that has an open door policy on it where people who want to give can give.  If a person is rich and doesn’t want to give a dime and get a good feeling in their heart, and act like they don’t have a heart instead, they should be able to do that.  I don’t think money squeezed out of people in taxes, property taxes, fines and fees is any better than money given freely and openly with an open hand, an open heart and an open, caring mind that wants the best for all our children. Such people should want to help not just the children who are from rich families, rich neighborhoods and or who have a certain skin color.  In fact, the opposite is probably true. I must repeat this also. Money that is given freely and openly from people who care and have a loving heart and love children of all faiths, colors, and all skin colors is better, more graced money than that being squeezed out of people who have little to nothing and might have to move out of their neighborhoods and family homes because they can’t pay taxes and property taxes while some corporations go on ``crating jobs’’ down town and paying nothing in taxes. Let’s collect the dimes and quarters from the poor also, IF THEY WANT TO GIVE. THAT MONEY IS VERY IMPORTANT!!! BELIEVE ME!!! I KNOW!!! If you think the general tax-payer doesn’t know about this unequal system that helps certain people, well, you know the ole saying about that bridge in Brooklyn.

You mean to tell me there is no Way to create an quazi-city owned and operated organization that is more than adequately monitored, responsible, reliable, financially efficient and trusted that can raise money and share it with strapped school areas in a timely, on-going and consistent manner?  And that those funds can’t be given out in an equitable manner by trusted, reliable people including people from the Grass Roots who are trusted and reliable? And that these funds can’t be used to help our children go on to become productive, thinking, candidates for college, university and trade schools or good, honest city workers?  I hope you in government and in the School System are not telling me that because I think something is up besides what it looks like on the surface.  I don’t know if there are some ominous and hideous plans to make sure our inner city children fail. There are countless fine examples of how this thing works just fine, thank you, like Ms. Veronica  Joyner’s Math, Civics and Science Charter School on Buttonwood street that will prove this failure-theory wrong. And prove it wrong with consistency.  There are a few other such schools, but their names escape me right now. Wouldn’t it make sense to blueprint what is working and make it replicated and copied everywhere? I don’t get the rocket-science mentality that looks at the whole education thing in the wrong way, anyway.  Not at all. As teachers, administrators and politicians we need to ask the children what they want.  Opps!! Did I just call somebody out.? I went to a Black forum on education last year and they had all these fancy writers, teachers, education specialists and so forth and no students to speak for their selves. Huumm. Something was wrong with that picture.  If students want rap music give them rap music. There are success stories of educators and teachers using rap music to teach children in a wholesome, successful manner and the lessons stick because they got rhymes, chimes and beats to them that just won’t quit. GO TO **www.EducationalRap.Com and the songs on money and economics: ``Maximum Utility,’’ ``Regulation,’’ ``Study of Choice.’’

Back on the financial tip: I hope this simple idea will be really considered by our City leaders and City Mothers because as we argue and hold back state funds and act like, well, I’ll just say silly, egotistical people, the children are failing and the children are suffering.

I am sure there must be a Way to quickly and efficiently open up the financial process and allow people who want to give to do so and allow people who want to act like crab-apples to keep their money to do so also.  I’m tired of our children suffering and I’m tired of all the bickering, fighting and egos.  Let’s try something that works.  Look at all the things that are showing results and replicate them. That good teacher with a newspaper for our young men and young women to learn from is equally effective when teaching math, science and English—just let them have the classrooms. Most of those so-called standardized text books are white-washed of the facts anyway and don’t relate to the lives of the inner city child.  I know for a fact that there are White teachers who teach Black students and find themselves  ashamed to have to use those ole, beat up, standardized text books that are often brimming with lies, and racial animosity instead of truth, love, fairness, wholesomeness and decency.  There is no subject that can’t be treated with rap music, contemporary and even different teaching methods that will not be successful if given to the right teachers. [Watch a few ole episodes of ``Room 222’’ and check out Pete Dixson.]  Behavior problem students can be segregated for a Black male teaching squad that can handle them.  Asking a little Jewish Lady from Drexel Hill to take on such students from troubled homes and broken backgrounds is unfair, silly and useless to students, administrators and teachers.    Nuff Said, Yo. I’m out!!