John Hanger is continuing his efforts to be the progressive choice for Democrats to challenge Gov. Tom Corbett next year.
He plans to protest the Corbett administration’s budget and education policies, including funding for charter schools, on a tour of eastern Pa. The four-day trip begins Tuesday on the Capitol steps in Harrisburg.
As he did during his campaign kickoff tour, he will travel via a school bus.
“We are boarding our school bus at a crucial time as legislators and the governor finalize the budget which continues the education cuts,” Hanger said in a press release. “Funding for failing charter schools and Governor Corbett’s budget cuts has devastated education across the state.”
He also made clear his opposition to funding charter schools, believing instead that the funding ought to be given to public schools.
“I am the only candidate for governor calling to eliminate funding for failing charter schools so we can redirect that money back to our struggling public school systems and to charter schools that deliver a quality education,” he said.
He is slated to stop: in Carlisle and York on Tuesday; in Doylestown, Norristown and West Chester on Wednesday; in Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton and Reading on Thursday; and Philadelphia and Phoenixville on Friday.
The former DEP Secretary’s stop in Philadelphia coincides with the continuing struggle by the state government, the Philadelphia School District, and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers to mitigate the district’s enormous budget gap.
In response to over 3,800 layoffs in the district caused by the $304 million funding shortfall, four school staff members began a fast outside Gov. Corbett’s Philly office last Monday.
According to the Inquirer, there is no set end-date for the hunger strike.
Late last week, the AP reported that Hanger had visited the group’s tent on Broad Street in Philadelphia and would join the fast “sometime in the coming days.”
It is unclear whether this will be incorporated into Hanger’s stop in Philly on Friday as part of his tour.
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2 Responses
What John fails to understand or acknowledge is that charter schools are public schools and it would be discriminatory to close “failing” charters without closing the “failing” traditional public schools in Pennsylvania’s urban school districts.
Jim Foster of the Germantown Independent has documentation, including police and fire records, of dereliction of responsibility by Allyson Schwartz with regard to the Mt. Airy Commons and Edgewood which were in her Senatorial district. “She knew nothing”, of course.
Although I disagree with John Hangar’s policy positions, he strikes me as a decent person with integrity although somewhat superficial but Allyson Schwartz is not only Left but opportunistic. Recently the tragedy of failed L&I oversight resulted in deaths of six, one woman losing both legs at the pelvis and five more seriously injured. Below the radar, the same kind of neglect was happening in Sen. Schwartz’s senatorial district. There was a precedent for failing to inspect; much similar to failure to inspect Gosnell disgustingly substandard medical facility. When the traffic cop is looking the other way, avoidable accidents happen.