Chester Upland got a reprieve; not a pardon.
The ailing school district is still on death row, but it's date with the executioner simply was delayed.
A federal judge yesterday ordered the state to release $3.2 million to the district. That means employees will get paid, and the doors will remain open.
For now.
You can read full coverage of another wild day in the district here.
But this much should be clear. Gov. Tom Corbett was not a big fan of this ruling, though he certainly will comply with it. It does not change the fact that his administration still does not believe in one more bailout of the longtime financially distraught public schools in Chester.
We focused on Chester Upland on last night's live-stream Internet broadcast, Live From the Newsroom. If you missed it, you can see the replay here. Originally we were supposed to be joined by a group of community activists, including longtime Chester Upland critic the Rev. Bernice Warren, head of Chester Eastside Ministries.
But the were involved in a daylong standoff at the Glen Mills offices of state Sen. Dominic Pileggi. Read about that here. They were demanding to speak to the Republican former mayor of Chester. Unfortunately, he was in Harrisburg. Eventually they were escorted out of the office last night. They are vowing to return today. We'll be there to cover it.
I am eternally grateful to Korri Brown, a representative from the Pennsylvania State Education Association, who joined myself and columnist Gil Spencer and offered a spirited defense of the teachers in Chester Upland who reported for work and kept the classrooms open despite knowing they likely would not be paid.
That situation has been resolved, albeit temporarily. They will get their paychecks this week. How long that will be the case is anyone's guess. You can pretty much bet the house (as they might say at Harrah's Chester) that we will be right back in this predicament in a month. That's about how long the $3.2 million wil last.
Make no mistake; Chester Upland is broken, the product of a faulty state funding mechanism made only worse by steep cuts enacted by the Corbett Administration last summer as well as years of fiscal mismanagement in the district.
I'm not sure how you fix it. I'm sure of one thing: You can't simply close the doors.
It's interesting that while everyone considers that a possibility, no one is exactly sure what would happen if it did. That's because it's never happened before. Anywhere. No public school has simply shut down.
Chester Upland just might be the first. Unless someone can come up with a plan in a month, expect the district to be teetering on the edge of the abyss once again a month from now.
That's because in Chester Upland, some things never change.
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