As its final witnesses before a holiday break, the court heard its first witnesses from named petitioner William Penn School District in Delaware County on Wednesday – the district’s athletic director and a kindergarten teacher.
Located just outside Philadelphia, the district serves rapidly growing suburban communities including Darby, Lansdowne, and Yeadon; 57% of students are economically disadvantaged, and 88% are Black.
William Penn does not have the affluent tax base of some of its neighbors to support their schools. Residents are making immense efforts to support their students with local revenue, paying 35 equalized mills, the second highest tax rate in Pennsylvania. But insufficient state funding still leaves this low-wealth district short $4,836 per student from a state benchmark for adequate funding.
Raphal (“Rap”) Curry, athletic director
Athletic director Rap Curry was a 1990 William Penn graduate and returned to the district in 2003 as a business teacher and basketball coach, becoming athletic director in 2006. Curry starred in basketball as a student and earned a scholarship to St. Joseph's University.
“I think the role in education in general is you want to find young people where they are.” Curry said. He testified about the important role of athletics in furthering students’ education by building skills and confidence, and potentially accessing athletic scholarships. Curry works with counselors to ensure that student-athletes are taking NCAA-eligible college-prep classes and taking those classes seriously.
William Penn students, Curry said, are competing against students from neighboring districts with better resources, both in games and for a limited pool of college scholarships and opportunities.
“I say [to students] ‘hold on, these opportunities are out here for you,’ but it doesn't feel real,” he said, “it doesn't feel legitimate, because you know that the other schools who were a couple miles away have all of these things built in and you don't.”
The district recently eliminated all freshman sports, Curry said, and it has had to cancel games due to a lack of bus drivers. The district improvised a weight room facility in a former shower room but had to close it after the COVID-19 pandemic because it lacked sufficient ventilation, he said.
Curry shared that a district graduate is the current Atlantic 10 champion in high jump, attending Lasalle University. Yet the district does not have a high jump pit, Curry said. The student was able to practice jumping by showing up to track meets early and using other schools’ equipment.
The district’s football field does not have lights. Friday nights are the only game times that worked for most opponents and officials, Curry said, so the district has to rent portable lights for each game. The grass field needs extensive maintenance, Curry said.
William Penn’s football team was once the #1 seed in the state’s playoffs. But before a game following a snowstorm, the district’s field was deemed unfit for competition, Curry said. William Penn forfeited homefield advantage, moving the game to the opponent’s field.
“The kids felt like they lost the opportunity that they earned,” he said, “and we went there the next day and we lost.”
Curry said that he wanted to make the challenges that his students face clear:
“We're [not] saying look how bad we're being treated,” Curry said. “We're saying: Look how much work we have to put in to give our kids a fair enough opportunity to feel like that they can make it from their circumstance.”
Nicole Miller, kindergarten teacher
Nicole Miller is a kindergarten teacher at Evans Elementary School with 21 years of experience, lives in the district, and her three children attend school there.
“I think for me what’s unique to kindergarten is the fact that they believe they can do anything,” she said. Kindergarteners, she said, are “risk-takers,” always willing to try new things. All are excited to learn.
Miller testified that her biggest challenge is working with 25 students in a classroom by herself. About 60 percent of students in a typical year arrive without experience in pre-K.
She testified that students come to her classroom with a wide range of abilities: some cannot hold a pencil, and others are already able to read independently.
Miller said she regularly provides lessons in social and emotional skills, like how to manage frustration. She has her students make a list of strategies to use when they are frustrated, including getting help from an adult. But with one adult and 25 students in her classroom, she is not always able to be there immediately, she said.
In language arts, Miller’s students break into five groups. She is able to work with the group of students who need the most reading support every day but can see just one of the other four groups each day, rotating between them. She testified that she is able to work individually with each group for about 10 minutes.
The curriculum she uses was written with reading interventionists, aides, and other support staff in mind to work with students while they are in their groups-–support that Miller does not have.
Students have 15 minutes daily for recess, Miller said. They share a playground–four swings, two slides, and monkey bars–with 125 other students. The school does not have enough staff to supervise longer recesses, Miller said, and because of the limited equipment, her students are only able to use the slides and swings every other day.
In math, Miller is currently teaching addition, but some students are not yet able to recognize numbers up to 10, she said. Having teaching assistants or math interventionists would “absolutely” help those students catch up, Miller said, but Evans Elementary does not have such staff.
On a typical day, Miller said, there is no other adult in her classroom. The librarian Evans Elementary shares with other schools works briefly with a small group of students about once a week. One learning support teacher is also able to provide small group interventions about once a week.
Even 15 minutes once a week can make a huge difference, Miller said.
Miller testified that her ultimate goal is “to really preserve that energy and that enthusiasm and that love of learning.” But when she sees her former students as they get older, she said, she finds that they are often “discouraged” by falling further behind each year.
If she had more support, Miller said, she would be able to “fill those learning gaps and better prepare my students… for first grade and beyond, and would have the opportunity to do what I would love to do and preserve that enthusiasm about learning.”