The 2016 Presidential Campaign provides a pair of diametrically opposed choices for American voters regarding the future of their deteriorating cities.
On the one hand is Hillary Clinton, using the tried and true historically discredited Democrat model dating back to her formative years. With much media hype for decades a policy of good intentions with cascading promises, with the total disregard of basic economics while believing in the transforming power of wishful thinking has been a Media/Democrat partnership.
As Donald Trump has astutely pointed out, “words just words” has been the cover story for an economic model of epic failure for most of America’s inner cities. —Hillary Clinton has learned to execute the ultimate political conjuring trick from her warm embrace of the extreme left, words over actions –a perennial political gift that keeps on giving.
It is the old made new: the LBJ Vietnam escalation policy applied to the domestic scene in the declining hope of finally creating LBJ’s vision of a shining Great Society: More federal welfare money, more crime prevention money, more failing schools money, more failed housing money, more gun confiscation money, more federal money thrown everywhere to finally redeem the failed promises of Hillary Clinton’s youth.
On the other hand the voter has been given an unlikely vision for the renaissance of American cities from an unlikely but real agent of change:
Donald J. Trump, a hugely successful urban developer with no seeming political experience proposing a totally new deal for our inner cities combining private and public monies to redeem and reform those cities, and he mentions using charter schools as the jump starter for his multifaceted vision of that transformation.
Philadelphia is the ideal model for Trump’s vision, and already has the ideal charter school to start that transformation.
A critical choice revolves around whether or not inner cities can be rebuilt. So innovation and creativity is a necessity for action not words. With the US debt load hanging over the budget and constraining government action, there is little doubt that mobilizing private capital is a critical necessity.
The Trump campaign has focused on the need to do so, but the viability of mobilizing private capital for the task of rebuilding the inner cities is not just a pipe dream. In Philadelphia building real hope from a great tragedy there is already a success evidenced by such an approach.
Charter schools in Philadelphia have provided a paradigm shift in which the private sector not only delivers a competing and often better quality product to the citizen but does so by providing a completive measure of success for government provided services.
Charter Schools are win win for everyone, notably the students and parents of inner city Philadelphia.
Recently, we discussed this subject with John A. “Jack” Shaw, a very senior federal government official supporting Donald Trump with experience in four White Houses. Shaw, however, brings a unique heritage to not just his National Security professional career in supporting Donald Trump, we asked him why Philadelphia and Charter Schools?
His grandfather was the political boss of Philadelphia for two or three decades in the first half of the twentieth century when it was run by a Republican machine. Since Democrats Joseph Clark and Richardson Dilworth brought reform and transformation to the city in 1950 a decade of reform sadly gave way to over a half century of one party Democrat machine rule which remains in place today.
Shaw’s forty years in politics took place in Maryland where he was a major player in GOP circles, and state campaign chairman in 1979, and in Washington but he never lost sight of his Philadelphia city roots.
Question: The innovations that are happening today in Philadelphia are really a case study of a broader opportunity of shifting from the older government-directed Washington model of putting money up against problems versus a private investment approach that’s generating real money to go after the challenges.
There are promises that are often made by candidates that they will invest money when there is no money versus a more innovative approach, which can generate new ways of thinking about how to generate private capital to address the kind of public problems that we have.
The inner city schools in Philadelphia are certainly a case in point, the charter schools being examples. Talk a little bit about the general problem and how charter schools are really a kind of example of an innovative approach of taking private capital and generating new opportunities for the citizens of Philadelphia.
Jack Shaw: In Philadelphia we have probably the best example in the country of the way in which the problems of the inner city created the opportunity for a charter school to transform the culture in ways that went well beyond education.
My friend Russell Byers was a Kennedy-esque prince of a guy who had become a fixture in Philadelphia reform going across party lines, and might have even become Mayor if he had not been murdered in front of his wife picking up ice cream at a 7/11 after dinner in 1991.
http://articles.philly.com/1999-12-07/news/25479804_1_wawa-detectives-death-penalty
I first met Russell Byers in 1973 in Philadelphia when he was the young staff professional running the Greater Philadelphia Movement, a group of business leaders, mainly Republican, looking for ways to transform the city.
When Jerry Ford became president we both were assistants to senior people at the White House, and plotted to get great things done to bring sweeping change to the newly formed presidency and administration. We even shared a Georgetown house together at one point. He wanted to go back to Philadelphia where his wife Laurada still lived and had begun a career in developing major projects for the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel and generally playing an alter ego to Russell in his Philadelphia promotional inspirations.
Washington he said was a place where “he” could do interesting things, but Philadelphia was where “they could do great things together”. And so it turned when the President made him Director of the HUD (Dept. of Housing and Urban Development) Region III office, which included Philadelphia and most of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Russell spent a very productive year and a half not only promoting administration goals and also getting his close friend from Pittsburgh days, John Heinz, elected to the US Senate.
When the Ford Administration ended, over the next fifteen years Russell and Laurada Byers became a thoughtful and innovative team pursuing interesting Philadelphia oriented business and cultural development projects.
Russell was very smart and morphed into a crusading journalist for the Philadelphia Daily News. As a journalist Russell Byers worked to create a bipartisan way to real change for the good in Philadelphia.
Setting aside his reporting he ran Sam Katz’s campaign against the Democrat candidate for mayor. When the GOP candidate lost, Russell wrote to his opponent and asked how they could work together.
Laurada Byers has proven by her actions to develop a network of imaginatively innovative private efforts which helped promote the Russell Byers Charter School’s mission in transformation of the Philadelphia scene. It is tailor made for the Trump inspiration.
http://www.byerschool.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=258707&type=d
Laurada and many more like her around America in our inner cities have nurtured the private/public partnership that Donald Trump is proposing to create in the inner cities.
She and Russell’s children contributed the Mellon money from Pittsburgh that floated the school which was inherited from the children’s late mother.
You need to have somebody who has a history of making this happen independently of federal monies to generate real change. She has done this now on a smaller scale for so long that I literally can’t remember when it started. The Russell Byers School has been so imaginative and so effective that she has become the natural leader for Philadelphia in this remarkably successful education effort.
Donald Trump and his family have focused on the need to generate and amplify the availability of private monies to rebuild the inner cities with real and improved education and everything else that goes along with it. In fact his entrepreneurial daughter Ivanka helped forge the childcare element of his platform.
The Russell Byers Charter School is making Philadelphia into a poster child for such an effort; and building upon its remarkable success in Philadelphia could be the trigger for citywide change.
For the first time in many Presidential Campaign Donald Trump has offered a genuine choice for either more of the same or “what do you have to lose—Laurada Byers has proven she is a bi-partisan consensus builder engaging the political establishment of the city of Philadelphia.
There is really no alternative which will work.
The alternative is simply to continue the classic government “investment” approach and with a debt ridden government structure the money is not there.
And more to the point, the private investments and engagement is a key driver for the kind of innovation necessary to rebuild inner cities and bring education levels up and with it jobs and enhanced security.
It is not about abstractly debating about one’s values; it is getting on with real results for the new generation, and to give them a stake in society and becoming more productive citizens.
It is imperative to shape an approach where private sector capital can be mobilized, and that will not happen without the prospect for real results and creating a secure climate within which investment can attracted and secured.
It is not simply about giving up on the inner cities like Philadelphia and Detroit; it is about bringing results, education and jobs where real people live. It is not about idle promises of government investments that are neither there nor directed at solving problems with the direct engagement of the citizens.
This is why the Trump campaign is a movement, not a classic political contest. If anybody argues to me that Donald Trump can not generate X millions of dollars of private money to improve the inner cities, I would simply look at his business record.
Nobody has ever offered Philadelphia this sort of thing before.
The end result is that we could have a situation where there is a real opportunity for Philadelphia to take what has been done to date and build on it. This will begin with private money. Ultimately public money at could conjoin with it when the direction and effects are clear.
It is not just about dumping money at a problem; it is identifying clear successes and building upon them. And that can only happen with the direct participation of the local citizens.
The only possibility of Philadelphia becoming a launching pad for something in the inner cities is Donald Trump. His promises about charter schools and the transformation of the inner cities are the best hope for Philadelphia—and the county.
About the Russell Byers Charter School:
The Russell Byers Charter School is a public elementary school located in Center City, Philadelphia, with over 485 students from 43 neighborhoods. We offer 4K (Kindergarten for 4-year-olds) through 6th Grade, a student/teacher ratio of 13:1, and an innovative hands-on academic program, Expeditionary Learning.
Located in the heart of Center City, Philadelphia in our spacious building at 1911 Arch Street, the school reflects Russell Byers‘ values of academic excellence, civic responsibility and community service. The Russell Byers Charter School is a learning community, built on the structures and principles of its educational model: Expeditionary Learning. In the Russell Byers community, students learn by doing. Academic goals are linked to adventure, service work, teamwork, and character development. And education becomes a partnership between student and teacher, as supported by enlightened school leadership and committed parents.
This partnership is key to the school’s overarching goal: empowering students to take responsibility for their own education. At RBCS, students are on a journey of self-discovery and knowledge acquisition, and teachers provide guidance for this journey, drawing on experience, compassion, and respect for diverse learning styles, backgrounds, and needs.
Used in more than 160 schools nationwide, EL is both rigorous and fun! Our students learn by doing, spending up to 12 weeks studying a single topic both inside and outside the classroom where their natural curiosity can flourish. The students pursue their studies at many of the city’s nearby cultural treasures, including the Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Free Library—all within walking distance of the school.
Using the EL model, students are supported in developing new skills and achieving mastery of them. As their confidence grows, so does their natural curiosity—and their desire to try more complex assignments. This active engagement holds students’ interest in the classroom and over time, enables an even more important development: it changes their way of being in the world. It turns them into lifelong learners, ever-capable of taking on a challenge.
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