Hear Me in Philadelphia for fair education funding
This article was originally published by Hear Me, one of Kidsburgh’s community partners. An initiative of the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, Hear Me asks students to contribute their voices to meaningful conversations through media-making projects. Hear Me’s platform connects student voices to audiences to inform policies and practices and raise awareness around youth issues.
The Hear Me team recently traveled to Philadelphia to interview students for the Campaign for School Funding. This campaign is in partnership with the Education Law Center, and is part of the Campaign for Fair Education Funding, a statewide effort of 40 organizations to ensure students’ access to quality education.
The team’s first stop was the Education Law Center’s Philadelphia office, where Hear Me interviewed nine young people from various Philadelphia high schools. The students discussed closing schools, adjusting to school mergers, budget cuts, class size and the benefits of well-funded schools. Listen to these stories here. The night concluded with a group conversation over pizza, where students talked about empty classrooms, transportation and school administration.
19-year-old filmmaker Jay Frye, who visited Pittsburgh for last year’s Hear Me 101 screening to showcase his own documentary, photographed the visit and shared his stories.
The following morning, the team split up to go to Palumbo High School and Lingelbach Elementary. At Palumbo, Hear Me’s Ryan Hoffman met with Eileen Duffy, a school nurse and a member of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools. Eileen shared Media Mobilizing Project‘s video, Our Schools Are Not For Sale, which documents the school funding crisis in Philly.
The three students interviewed at Palumbo echoed the view of the documentary–something must be done to save public education in Philadelphia.
Jess and Alex interviewed eight students at Lingelbach Elementary about the effects of budget cuts on their education. Lingelbach had recently been in the news for having an annual discretionary budget of only $160 for the 2014-2015 school year, which equals about 40 cents per student.
The Hear Me team regrouped in the afternoon at South Philadelphia High School to interview 11 students about resources and funding at their school. Throughout the interviews, many students talked about the importance of their guidance counselor and stressed the need for additional counselors. At SPHS, there is only one guidance counselor appointed to both the junior and senior classes.
In total, Hear Me covered over 600 miles and visited four collection sites in just over 36 hours. Look for all the stories on Hear Me’s website. Also, use the hashtag #FairFundingPA to follow the Campaign for Fair Education Funding in Pennsylvania.
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