What Philly teachers want to see on ‘Abbott Elementary’ season 2 | Opinion

Abbott Elementary is a big hit among area teachers and, yes, there have been viewing parties.

Below, local educators propose a few topics Abbott creator and native daughter Quinta Brunson might want to consider in season two:

Many people think uniform policies encourage better behavior and eliminate social constructs around clothes. Veteran teacher Kristin Luebbert doesn’t believe it.

“Enforcing dress codes falls on girls a lot more and Black girls particularly,” she says. If a girl is “a little more voluptuous,” or they’re tall and their long legs make their skirts look short, “they’ll get called out in a flapjack second.”

Punishing students for “improper” dress or hairstyles takes away from teaching time and often brands them as rule breakers. (Some are sent home. Others may have to wear a school T-shirt, like a scarlet letter.)

“I decided a long time ago that my relationships with students would not be squandered over clothing and hair, " she says. “It takes all the air out of a classroom.”

“There’s nothing worse than teaching in early September or in June with no air-conditioning in the classroom and it’s 90 degrees outside. Everybody’s sweating, everybody smells, and everybody’s miserable,” says Spanish teacher Jan Cohen, who credits her principal with bringing window air-conditioning units to Kensington High School.

And even when it’s cold outside, it can be sweltering indoors. “The heat seems to have only two options: On or Off,” Cohen says. “It could be January, 45 degrees outside, and you are sweating like a pig.”

When a school is short-staffed, the burden falls on the staff at hand, meaning teachers lose prep periods and lunchtimes. Sometimes it’s like having two full-time jobs. “People are out left, right, and center, and a lot of teachers — special ed, music, gym, health — we’re constantly getting pulled out of class,” special-ed teacher Shayla Amenra says.

» READ MORE: 5 times ‘Abbott Elementary’ spotlighted Philly’s broken school system — and how teachers think we can fix it | Opinion

Nancy Ironside raised her children in Springfield Township, Montgomery County, and the contrast between extracurricular and educational options between that district and the city is “stark,” she says. “You cross Stenton Avenue and you have all these different options,” she says. “We’ll probably never make it totally equitable, that funding is not there for city kids to have what the suburban kids get, but we can sure as hell try.”

Natalie Pompilio is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia and proud aunt of an incoming CAPA freshman.