Letters to the Editor | Jan. 10, 2023

Thank you to The Inquirer and reporter Kristen A. Graham for the article about Mastbaum High School, “Inside Mastbaum High, a refuge for Philly kids.” In spite of the continuing problems in the School District of Philadelphia and its schools, there really is some good news out there. There are principals, teachers, counselors, other school personnel, and students who are creating supportive learning environments where students are growing and achieving great things. Let’s have more stories like this! How about the transformations going on at Strawberry Mansion High School, or the fabulous learning community in and around Kensington Health Sciences Academy? And, I’m sure, there are more.

Dina Portnoy, Philadelphia, dinaportnoy@gmail.com

The Inquirer article on Mastbaum High School should concern every Philadelphian. This school and this principal are performing at a very high level under the most trying of circumstances. The area it serves is arguably the most drug- and crime-ridden in the entire city. The principal, teachers, and students struggle against steep odds every day. David Lon, the principal, tells us that he doesn’t have enough funding from the district to hire a building engineer, or to place security cameras in the stairwells. Suffice it to say, Lon doesn’t have nearly the resources he needs to run Mastbaum at anything near peak efficiency. There is something dramatically wrong with a school system that can’t/won’t supply a building engineer for an eight-story building built in the 1920s. In a district with a budget in the billions of dollars, it borders on negligent mismanagement to not supply a school like Mastbaum with the resources it needs to educate some of the most at-risk kids in our city.

Angelo Sgro, Philadelphia, agsgro@comcast.net

With all the recent horrific injuries, it is getting harder and harder to watch the NFL. Football is a beautiful game, and it just doesn’t seem right that young athletes have to risk their health and lives just to play it. One seemingly counterintuitive change the league could make would be to ban the use of helmets. Not only do helmets give players a false sense of invincibility, they are dangerous weapons. It’s like having 22 people smashing into each other with bowling balls. Without helmets, the style of play would change to be more like rugby and less like a human demolition derby.

Stefan Keller, Huntingdon Valley

Now that the sale of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education’s 24-acre wooded “Boy Scout” tract for a housing development has been staved off by a large, anonymous, last-minute donation, all would seem to be well in paradise. It’s not. The indifference with which center leadership has treated the community, its neighbors, its members, and even its own staff makes one seriously wonder: Who is really going to benefit by spending gobs of money on a museum in a bid to turn the Schuylkill Center into a “regional attraction”?

Brian Rudnick, member, SCEE, Philadelphia

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