5 times ‘Abbott Elementary’ spotlighted Philly’s broken schools — and how teachers want to fix it | Opinion

ABC’s Abbott Elementary takes real issues facing the Philadelphia School District and turns them into comedy. Books so old they list George W. Bush as the last U.S. president? A staffing emergency that puts a Kanye-voting, illuminati-fearing janitor in charge of a classroom? A flickering light that reveals the school’s circuit breakers are named after Boyz II Men songs? It’s fun to laugh at these small moments, and in those seconds, the big problems fade.

Philadelphia, like other urban school districts, is underfunded, understaffed, and often underperforming. Abbott, which wraps up its first season next Tuesday, takes those challenges and plays them for laughs. But the takeaway of each episode is: The problem is still there.

And in real life, we can’t just laugh it off.

When she began her teaching career, Jan Cohen was one of thousands of teachers nationwide who posted a classroom wish list on DonorsChoose. Not anymore, she says.

“It’s not the responsibility of my friends and family to fund my classroom. It would be the same people year after year,” says Cohen, a Spanish teacher at Kensington High School. “There are things I’ll buy, but if I can’t provide it, I’m not going to beg my family and friends.”

On Abbott, Janine sees an opportunity to receive more donations by making a flashy video that will “break through the noise” of talking animals and alien conspiracies. With Ava’s help, she creates one that “looks like a Marvel movie” and sees her wish list almost completely fulfilled within days.

When veteran teacher Barbara Howard (played by Sheryl Lee Ralph, the real-life wife of State Sen. Vincent Hughes) says she doesn’t want to create a video, Janine asks Ava to do so. The result aims to play on people’s emotions, complete with somber narration from “Barbara Howard, the oldest teacher at the poorest school in America.” (Actually, it’s Ava impersonating her.)

Barbara is happy when her wish list is fulfilled, but she tells Janine she would have been just as happy if it wasn’t, saying, “Our job is to build them up, make them confident. Is it nice to have stuff? Sure. But my students do not need to feel less than because they do not have stuff. So, we talk about what they do have, not about what they don’t.”

» READ MORE: What Philly teachers want to see on ‘Abbott Elementary’ season 2 | Opinion

Cohen echoes that sentiment. “Teachers don’t want their students to know when they post a DonorsChoose,” she says.

To crowdsource or not crowdsource, that is the question. Where some see the practice as a necessity in a world of ever-shrinking school budgets, others say it’s unfair to expect educators to beg for basic supplies they need to efficiently teach and manage their classrooms. Teacher Quinn O’Callaghan wrote in a 2021 Inquirer op-ed that while he understands why others crowdsource supplies, he chooses not to because the need to do so “is a symptom of a society that has accepted it doesn’t have the wherewithal or will to fund obvious civic goods, like health care or education. … Teachers need more, not the opportunity to beg for more.”

Abbott doesn’t dive deeply into the source of public school funding beyond Janine complaining that the city says it has no money for schools — while it does “a multimillion-dollar renovation to the Eagles stadium down the street from here.” But educators have lots of ideas for improving the system.

In 2017, district officials concluded it would cost almost $5 billion to make all necessary building repairs. Problems include asbestos, lead paint, lead in the water, leaky roofs, mold remediation, out-of-date heating and cooling systems, insect and rodent infestations, and on and on.

Jerry Roseman, acting director of environmental sciences for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers Health and Welfare Fund & Union, who has spent more than 30 years identifying problems in schools and suggesting solutions, says tackling those repairs requires two things: money, and good management and oversight.

Kensington High School’s Cohen has some funding ideas: First, eliminate the 10-year tax abatement for developers. Philadelphia used to forgive property tax on new construction for the first 10 years. Since January 2022, the value of the abatement is the equivalent of five years’ worth of property tax over a period of 10 years.

“The 10-year tax abatement comes right out of the school budget,” she says. “I understand why a new homeowner would want that opportunity, but it shouldn’t be open to developers.”

Then, ensure the University of Pennsylvania, a nonprofit not required to pay property taxes, makes an annual payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) that’s commensurate to the amount of land it owns. In 2020, the university promised the school district $10 million each year for 10 years, an amount activists say is far below what a for-profit business would pay for equal property. It is also unclear what Penn will do after 10 years.

It’s a problem, Cohen says, “when the largest landowner in the city, new homeowners, and developers don’t pay property taxes.”

Money by itself won’t matter without good management and oversight, says Roseman, who thinks the scale and scope of the existing programs mean there are no comprehensive immediate solutions and could take as long as 30 years to sustainably address and fix today’s problems.

To start, he says, the school district must share the detailed information and data regarding the buildings and their needs. Then, ask those most familiar with the schools — teachers, staff, and students, then unions and neighbors — what they see as priorities and what needs fixing. The district has not effectively done that in the past, he says.

“If you engage and involve your direct and near-direct stakeholders, you’re going to get an improved set of efforts and solutions. You’re going to get necessary buy-in and recognition and you end up with the best chance of real success.”

Opponents of gifted and talented programs argue that separating students based on academic performance creates an academic caste system. It can lead to students believing they are “lesser than” and possibly hurts their academic growth.

“Gifted Program” manages to present multiple perspectives on such programs in less than 15 minutes. Principal Ava is thrilled when a student from “that smart private school, Elway Academy, with the orchestra classes and everything” transfers to Abbott. She imagines him one day thanking her for making him “the Oprah of Science” and sees an opportunity to boast that she’s a “Charles Xavier with legs, with hundreds of smart kids I didn’t give birth to, obviously.” She provides funding when Janine and Jacob start a gifted program like the ones they’d loved as students.

Problems begin when selected students include the “only kids who talk” from Gregory’s class. Jacob seems primarily excited by his opportunity to become an inspiring teacher who recites poetry from a desktop.

Things get worse when “regular” students see a gifted lesson that involves hatching chickens.

“Miss Teagues, I’m smart. Can I go to the chicken school?” one student asks. To balance the scales, Janine acquires some eggs for her class — and when they hatch, snakes emerge.

But it’s Gregory’s story of how not being part of a gifted program hurt him academically that definitively shows Janine the program’s drawbacks. Gregory says not being selected made him feel “like school was only for kids who were good at taking tests, which I was not. So I checked out.” He then shares a theory of multiple intelligences: A boy who isn’t good at math might have an affinity for nature. The girl who struggles with academics may be a musical genius.

Nancy Ironside, a teacher at Science Leadership Academy Middle School, says it’s “kind of icky” to have programs that designate some kids as more special than others. One of her own children was in second grade when he was classified as “gifted,” and although he benefited from the enrichment offered, “all along it felt pretty gross because of the other kids who weren’t identified or could have been or didn’t qualify. Why does your IQ mean you get a better experience?”

An alternative to a separate gifted program, she says, is offering project-based learning and using a Gifted Individualized Education Plan, which identifies students who need more of a challenge and adapts lessons to meet their needs.

Educators should aim “to offer meaningful content to all students, high IQ or not, and encourage them to explore the content in a more inquiry-based way,” she says. If, for example, a class is studying the water cycle, a teacher could support a “gifted” student’s project by encouraging them to pursue extra research on water filtration while at the same time helping other students work on a project with a more narrow focus. Having these students in the same classroom helps them learn from each other. In some cases, uninterested students find themselves caught up in a project because their friends are excited.

“The benefits go both ways,” she says. “Everyone wants to talk about equity. This is another form, not privileging IQ over effort and curiosity.”

In 2012, after then-Gov. Tom Corbett cut Philadelphia schools’ state funding by a quarter of a billion dollars, new superintendent William Hite responded by laying off school employees not mandated by law — including nurses and counselors — and eliminating many extracurricular activities.

A decade later, the schools remain lacking, Hite testified in January during the trial that could change the way Pennsylvania public schools are funded.

“It doesn’t instill a lot of trust in an educational entity when you talk about opening schools with just teachers and principals and without extracurricular activities and other things that for families and children would represent what schools are,” he said.

On Abbott Elementary, Janine volunteers her after-school time to offer a step class, explaining how a similar program offering when she was a student “provided me structure, you know, that I didn’t have at home.” Ava joins her in the effort, and although the two disagree on how to run their classes — Janine stresses “structure and discipline” while Ava favors “half farting around” to build relationships so strong someone “would have your back at 3 a.m. at the after-after-party” — the pair are both willing and able to put in the time.

That struck Maureen Boland, a school-based teacher leader at Parkway Center City Middle College High School, as unrealistic. Yes, Abbott is fictional, but at least other story lines have a degree of credibility.

“Teachers just don’t have it in them to run these programs because they are so overworked/overwhelmed by the day, especially post-pandemic,” Boland says.

Even schools that offer extracurricular activities may have trouble filling them. Some students can’t take part because of after-school responsibilities, including jobs, Boland notes. Others are attending schools outside their neighborhoods and face long commutes home that make staying later untenable. The district’s recent decision to push high school start times to 9 a.m. will likely further reduce the number of students participating in after-school events because parents won’t want children negotiating dangerous streets after dark.

Even with these challenges, Boland says, “we need to do more to nourish [students’] social and emotional well-being.”

Boland suggests inviting outside organizations to lead programs that teachers are too tired to do. Instead of planning this extra programming after school, perhaps there’s a way to offer it during school hours. She’s heard of some districts that dedicate one hour at the end of each day to extracurriculars, including sports.

“If all students had opportunities to pursue their passions from 2 to 3 [p.m.] each day, for example, school could become a much more joyful place for everyone,” she says. “I know from personal experience that this can really affect attendance because it can give certain kinds of kids motivation to show up.”

Special-education teacher Shayla Amenra was a public school student who ate her fair share of cafeteria lunches. Her takeaway: “The food sucked when I was in school, and it sucks now.”

Cafeteria food quality is the secondary story line in “Art Teacher.” After serving as cafeteria monitors, Barbara and Jacob decide to plant a garden to supplement student lunches. They don’t consider that it’s impossible to grow enough vegetables to feed all students or that even if they did have a bountiful harvest, cafeteria workers don’t have time to prepare the extra dishes.

A number of Philadelphia public schools have community gardens, but they aren’t meant to feed the student populations. They are supposed to teach responsibility, to build locomotion skills, to get children excited about biology, and to improve mental and physical health. Harvested vegetables are often given away to families who ask for them but are not served to students in the cafeteria.

Amenra has taught in schools where outside organizations come in to encourage gardening and healthy eating. In her experience, the “programs like that are there for a hot season, and then they disappear. It’s like the college-kid feel-good program. ‘Oh, we want to come to this neighborhood and show you what an eggplant is.’ There are no incentives or training to keep that going.”

On Abbott, Jacob is so desperate to do good that he stays up all night roasting zucchini to feed the students without considering that health guidelines would never allow food prepared in a private home to be served. He is surprised when a cafeteria worker dumps the trays of zucchini into the garbage can.

Amenra teaches in Frankford, where some students come from families with addiction issues. She doesn’t understand why some people are surprised when students don’t recognize a particular type of fruit or vegetable but do know the cost of certain street drugs. More important than widening student palates is keeping them fed.

When Amenra worked in a high school, she and other teachers kept snack areas in the back of their classrooms.

“I have kids who are hungry and they’re getting hangry in class,” she says.

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

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this piece contained an error about the timing of the Abbott Elementary season finale. The show’s first season ends on Tuesday, April 12.