Personal insults add so much to a discussion, dontcha think?
Aside from that, I honestly don't know why people hang on to the
ridiculous canard that people with no children should have no input or
interest in school district business. It's preposterous.
Frank
On May 27, 2008, at 11:39 PM, Anthony West wrote:
Two useful facts:
1) The boundaries of the Penn Alexander School were drawn by the
School District of Philadelphia. They are deeply integrated into a
longstanding bureaucratic structure that no childless dogwalker can
comprehend. Glenn's competence to comment on Philadelphia public
education is roughly that of his dog. I love dogs myself, but for
Pete's sake: woof! Pay off your trash tickets first, Glenn, and pick
up your dogs' poop; only thereafter should you advise the rest of us
how to educate our children.
2) Ray's interesting map overlays something that does not exist and
probably never will -- the putative Spruce Hill Historic District --
with something that has long existed -- the catchment area of the
Penn Alexander neighborhood school.
Ray's map demonstrates that any one neighborhood map tends to
overlap any other map of the same neighborhood. Paranoids love this
sort of geometrical toy, because they can use it to prove the
conspiracy theories that get their blood pumping.
However, there is NO EVIDENCE that housing values have run up inside
the PAS catchment area 1% more than they have in Cedar Park,
Powelton Village, Fairmount, Francisville, Ludlow, South Kensington,
Fishtown, Port Richmond, Queen Village, Bella Vista, Grays Ferry and
West Shore. I'm open to reading any such evidence. But one thing is
sure: a commentator who will not stray from his Locust Walk cubicle
will never learn the facts of Philadelphia real estate.
Until we read cross-neighborhood comparisons between University City
and comparable neighborhoods, UC-list seems doomed to be smothered
in the polemical ruminations of obsolete New-Left jackasses who
apparently can't locate the rest of the city even with the aid of
MapQuest. Personally, I'd rather read about the real neighborhood we
all live in today. Let's move past this bogus "gentrification"
hooey, and talk about a city that is suffering because too many of
its residents are poor people while too few are middle-class or
prosperous people. How can we Philadelphians make Philadelphia's
class demographics look more like those of America as a whole?
Obviously, all Philadelphians need this to happen.
But poor Philadelphians need it most. Middle-class and wealthy folks
don't "need" the inner city; they've shown they can live outside it
and without it. It is chiefly the poor who need to live within a
taxing body that includes the non-poor.
-- Tony West
UNIVERSITY*CITOYEN wrote:
Glenn wrote:
Philadelphia Weekly has a short interesting article (a
snapshot) about the confluence of education, real estate and
gentrification issues here in our upscale village.
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/articles/17058/news
In this short piece, it corroborates a point that was
widely discussed here. The description captures how the Penn
catchment area was drawn around the potential real estate
value of housing stock. The lines aren't drawn logically
around neighborhoods or existing residents, but instead are
obviously based on real estate value projections.
haha here's another 'snapshot':
http://tinyurl.com/3bgtk
..................
UNIVERSITY*CITOYEN
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