Yep this is the reason.

There are a lot of inactive fountains all over the city in various parks that haven't been turned on in decades, all because the city doesn't give a shit about them and puts in no effort to maintain them.

The city lost an ADA lawsuit over the state of the sidewalks and they point blank still refuse to do anything about enforcement.

No enforcement for poorly maintained sidewalks, no enforcement or illegally parking on sidewalks, and no enforcement for illegally parking and blocking crosswalks and intersections.

It's a fucking joke.

That is fucking wild

It's not, I know households in South Philly where everyone in the house owns a car, and drives everywhere in the city. It's stupid, but it's definitely not a suburban this.

Again that's just pure bullshit, as I pointed to already in terms of recent and coming major capital projects.

The Philadelphia board members have veto power, they have disproportionate power on the board compared to the other members, additionally most of SEPTA's capital spending had been on city projects.

Everyone in here trying to push this conspiracy theory that the SEPTA board has it out for Philly, and that the suburban members block funding projects in the city is an idiot who who clearly doesn't know shit about SEPTA, how it operates, how it's funded, what it's agency objectives are, and what it's done already.

Quite frankly so many of the takes in this thread are from people who just to moved to Philly 5 minutes ago. That or they're actually still children who don't know shit about how SEPTA works and what it done just in the last 20 years.

They certainly don't know the dynamics of the metropolitan region, or how major infrastructure projects get done in the real world.

This is bullshit, SEPTA does not block Philadelphia projects.

SEPTA rebuilt the entire elevated section of the MFL line not that long ago, just signed a contract for a new trolley fleet, is making all subway stations ADA accessible, and is looking for a new fleet of subway cars.

They should be.

Bail fund organizations that bail out a repeat violent offender who goes on to murder someone should be open to a liability lawsuit from the victim's family.

Well that would require department overhaul, and implementation of more efficient practices, which the police union has been fighting very successfully for decades.

Well as another commenter suggested for one of the possible reasons there are so many charter applications from the Northeast, is that they're multi general residents with family and friends who live around them, and they don't want to give that up, so they pay for private school.

It's a personal choice where finance isn't the sole factor for decision making, factors such as proximity of your support network, the inconvenience of moving versus the quality of the neighborhood you're currently in, etc.

Otherwise you're right, if one was to make a choice purely based on finance and quality of government services, moving to the suburbs is the better option every single time without question.

I overall agree with you.

I'd be hesitant to say almost all center city kids with good grades and attendance will get into one of the magnet schools though. The school district is changing the admissions and selection criteria for the magnet schools to be based less on academic merit and more on zip code.

A change which I would understand parents looking at, and opting instead for private schools or moving, rather than rolling the dice based on previous admissions standards.

The way the school district functions is a major disservice to families looking to raise their kids in an urban environment, and the city as a whole. Hopefully it will improve in the future so families don't have to have these discussions or have to be financially well off enough that it's not an issue.

I think the article would have been better if they also referenced in the current number of school age children in the city, along with public and private school enrollments compared with pre and post pandemic to really get a picture of what families with children are doing.

I think the idea that parents who went to private during 2020 because they open and have just opted to stay in them, is also a good theory.

These are all valid reasons to stay in the city with kids. Although the Northeast is pretty car dependent, so I don't think that's a factor here in the number of people opting to apply for charters.

I think the article would have benefited from also listing total school age children within the city, and the numbers going to public and private to get a real sence of what families are doing.

For my partner and I we've already agreed that we won't be sending our kid to the public schools here. I grew up here and went to the city schools, and it wasn't great back in the 90s. The in school violence and out of control behavior has only got worse since, and the academic quality was bad then and it's bad now. My partner went to school in the burbs and hearing about his and his friends experiences honestly makes me jealous. I don't want my kids to go through what I had to here, especially when my partner and I can afford other options.

It's either we win the lottery and get into one of get into one of the good charters (unlikely), go private, or move to one of the few streetcar suburbs around the city to get a walkable environment. The magnet school lottery isn't something I like, and basically would require that after elementary we either win the lottery and get into one, pay an ass load of money for private, or move out to the burbs for the secondary school grades.

Moving out for schools historically is what people have opted to do in Philly, but that may be changing, which is why I thought the article was interesting.

Makes sense, I do remember reading catholic and other private school enrollment spiked during the pandemic because they went back to in person learning as fast as possible while the public schools stayed closed.

The highlights:

>More than 26,000 students applied for seats for the 2023-24 school year at the 72 Philadelphia charter-school campuses participating in a centralized application process — up from two years ago, though still below pre-pandemic levels, according to the nonprofit that manages the system. ...

>About 7,600 of this year’s applicants received at least one offer to attend a charter, leaving more than 18,000 students on waitlists, according to Elevate215, which manages the Apply Philly Charter website. ...

>Much of the demand appeared to be concentrated at several charter schools in the Northeast, where the three MaST schools likely account for about half of the wait-listed students. ...

>Fewer students are applying to charters than before the pandemic. The number of applicants grew from 29,500 in 2019-20 to more than 34,000 in 2020-21, then fell to fewer than 24,000 the next year. Over the last two years, the number of applicants has rebounded to more than 26,000, though it has yet to reach the levels seen several years ago.

The interesting idea here

>“These are areas where families are traditionally engaging at looking at different options,” Peterman said, adding that the number of charter applicants “shows a desire to stay in the city. ... I think that’s something that can’t be overlooked or underappreciated right now.”

I hadn't thought about this before, curious what others think on the idea, that charters encourage families who would otherwise move out of the city for schools, to stay in the city.

Personally I'm not convinced about that idea, but with the explosion of housing costs in the suburbs since 2020, perhaps families on the edge of being able to afford a place in the burbs are taking this into consideration.

It does when you're blaming the problems on the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

It's the anti stadium people being forced to acknowledge, at the very least to themselves, that thier opposition is as dumb as my statement makes it out to be.

Ya probably the same people who get upset at me pointing out the reason housing costs have gone up in Philly isn't because cApiTAliSm bAd, it's directly because of NIMBY zoning policies restricting new housing creation for all the people who moved here.

But that would mean acknowledging that their misguided opposition to development has directly resulted in pricing them out of the location they would like to be in.

Plenty of cheap housing in the badlands, yet these people bitching about lack of cheap housing in Fishtown or Rittenhouse don't consider living there.

In addition most people don't need to go to college, if they do it should be local community college or state schools if what they're doing isn't STEM related. Most degrees are useless debt traps, and unnecessary in the real world. Many companies and municipalities are finally rolling back degree requirements for jobs that only need a high school education and Microsoft Office training.

In addition one of the primary drivers for the increasing cost of colleges is administrative bloat and useless highly expensive infrastructure projects like luxury dorms, which basically treat colleges as an extended adolescence.

All of that can and should be cut and the funds redirected to the core function of academia, research and education. Which means firing whole departments of useless administrators and taking that money to pay grad students, researchers, and TAs.

I also canceled my subscription because of the shit quality articles they put out and blantent conflicts of interest.

I don't care about a politician's vibes, I care about what thier qualifications are, what thier vision for the city is, and how they will implement it.

This is self inflicted by the city.

No one is getting kicked out of their row house, people choosing to sell is a voluntary choice.

Rent is getting more expensive because the city uses restrictive zoning to block development, which restricts supply from meeting demand.

The city tax rate hasn't changed, real estate taxes go up because the housing and land got more valuable due to the city's nimby policies.

I don't see why you're being downvoted.

Presenting a contract you know won't be approved is a pretty normal and part of the negotiation process.

Additionally Temple is vulnerable to all the problems and headwinds that are coming at the higher education system in general, in addition to location specific issues they have. Cost containment is absolutely an issue the school faces.

However they're looking at it wrong, the grad students produce actual value for the school, and they should be paid for it.

Where the school can look to cut costs is the bloated administration, which is full of bullshit jobs that should be eliminated. College administration bloat is a well known phenomenon, and adds a significant cost to tuition.

Gonna have to bump the cherry blossom festival up.

But this will destroy Chinatown!

As we all know Chinatown must remain mostly parking lots with ever more teardowns and never see any development in or near it.

/s

Yes, dramatically so.