lpahomov

By Melissa Alvarez and Isabella Mezzaroba

Staff Writers

At most high schools, lots of teachers change from year to year, but this year at SLA there’s only one new staff member on board.

History Teacher Jason Todd, who has seven years of teaching under his belt, came to SLA from Charles Carroll High School in Port Richmond. Carroll High School was one of the schools that was closed by the Philadelphia School District at the end of the 2012-2013 school year.

Mr. Todd attended University of Pennsylvania while obtaining his master’s degree in education. During this time he lived in West Philadelphia. Currently he’s been living in Northeast Philadelphia for the past seven years.

Mr. Todd heard about SLA’s open position through a process called Site Selection.

“I logged onto the School District’s website and saw the list of all the schools in the city that had openings for Social Studies and I saw Science Leadership was one of them and I clicked the box,” Todd said

Soon after, Mr. Todd received an email from Mr. Lehman offering a job interview. The day of, it turned out he was in for a pleasant surprise.

“Mr. Kay was there and it was weird because Mr. Kay and I went to middle school together,” he said with a chuckle. He wasn’t expecting any familiar faces.

Though still making the transition from black boards to laptops, Todd is already amazed by the ownership students take over their projects.

“The biggest thing about SLA, I think, is the technology and just the way students come into the classroom expecting to be the ones doing the work,” Todd said.

Overall, he is settling into the community with ease.

Mr. Todd is taking over for former history teacher, Juan-Gabriel Sanchez, who moved to Boston to pursue a graduate degree in Education. Sanchez taught 9th and 10th grade History, the position that Todd has now taken over.

“He’s coming from a very different school and needs to adjust to SLA’s way of doing things and to basically adjust the philosophy there,” Sanchez said.

Though Sanchez believes Todd has a lot of growing to do as a teacher, he has high hopes that he’ll do well as his replacement.

“His underlying goals and motivations are very much in line with what SLA is and aspires to be,” Sanchez said.

When asked, students also responded positively to Mr. Todd. They believe that he has potential as an SLA teacher.

“I think that in the last few weeks he is starting to understand how we work better. The first few weeks he was very district like,” said Sophomore Kristina Scalia-Jackson.

“Compared to Ms. Jonas, he is adapting at a slower pace but in time, he will get used to it.”

Other sophomores agree.

“I think he is adjusting well, though there is always room for improvement which I think will happen over the course of the year,” Sophomore Gina Sorgentoni said.

Freshmen also are excited about Mr. Todd’s African American history class.

“Our discussions are often fun and informative,” said Freshman Harrison Freed.

Overall, the SLA community seems to be welcoming Mr.Todd with open arms and expects him to fit in just fine.

by Dejah Harley and Nicholas Murray

Staff  Writers

On June 7th, 2013, 3,783 employees from across the School District of Philadelphia were laid off effective June 30, 2013, sending those schools into chaos.

Although SLA wasn’t affected as badly as other schools, there were three staff members who lost their jobs: Guidance Counselor Zoe Siswick, College Counselor Karina Hirschfield, and School Secretary Diane LoGiudice.

When the three SLA employees got the news, they had to decide whether they were going to look for another job.

“I did have to put my resume out there and go on interviews,”Ms. Siswick said.

Ms. Hirschfield felt torn about her situation. “I tried to be hopeful but still had to expect the worst,” she said.

Ms. Diane was even more direct. If she hadn’t been rehired,  “I don’t know what I would have done.”

Luckily, SLA got the opportunity to “buy back” these people at the end of the summer. The school district provided funds to individual schools to re-hire their staff members, and Principal Lehmann immediately got these three employees back.

Part of the reason they could be restored is that SLA is so small — all schools got back one secretary, so for SLA that meant a complete return.

With the counselors, SLA does not have any other support staff, and a second counselor was needed to help out at the new Beeber campus in West Philadelphia.

However nothing is completely set in stone. The School District is still having financial problems, and anybody who works at SLA could be laid off, once again, at any time.

Though they are happy to be back, they are also nervous and worried about what the future might bring.

“I don’t even want to think about next year,” Ms. Diane said.

All three of them also had a few choice words for the School District.

“What they are doing are hurting the children,” said Ms.Diane.

“Not having counselors can literally be deadly to the students”, said Ms. Siswick.

“Our children deserve more not less,” said Ms. Hirschfield.

Students at SLA feel incredibly grateful about having these staff members back.

“My head and heart would explode”, said Senior Ellen To responding to what life would be like without having these people back at SLA.

In response to what it would be like “I do not know what I would have done without Hirschfield. I would probably pray and cry and pray and cry,” said Senior Helen Kilmartin.

By Soledad Alfaro-Allah and Claudia Bonitatibus

Staff Writers

Unlike most schools, SLA did not lose any teachers through the recent budget cuts. This means that the nearly same variety of courses are being offered to students.

However, the budget cuts have had an effect on the elective courses that are offered, as well as who is teaching them.

What happened at SLA was something of a domino effect. Because teachers had to be rearranged. A complicated system was created to keep as many courses offered as possible.

English Teacher Matthew Kay gave a detailed description of this process.

“Because of the budget cuts we were unable to have me stay on as a history teacher. We had to find outside funding to keep me here period otherwise we would not be on staff at SLA this year.” explains Digital Video teacher Doug Herman

Mr. Herman was originally going to be laid off as a history teacher, but his position was saved by funding that that turned him into a full-time digital video teacher.

“By getting the outside funding we then had, I needed to be a full time teacher for that funding to take effect, therefore we added another section of digital video. We almost doubled the amount of media students at SLA.” said Mr. Herman

While some courses, such as Digital Video, have expanded in size, others have plummeted, resulting in many students being placed in electives that they were less than happy with.

“Many kids who wanted to take drama this year unfortunately could not because there was not a sufficient amount of space. Mr. Miles now teaches drama and computer science because I take on many more english classes so I only teach freshman drama.” Said Mr. Kay.

Some students who were disappointed in their electives found a creative solution to their problems.

“When I picked Journalism I put it as my third choice, and then I really wanted dig vid,” said Sophomore Greta Haskell.

“Then Bella Mezzaroba was like, ‘I wanted Journalism’ and I said I wanted dig vid. So we went to Miss Dunda and got switched.”

Even though there have been some changes in curriculum we are fortunate to be able to keep most of the courses open and keep all of our staff.  Schools all around Philadelphia have had to shut down and cut out courses, leaving many capable teachers unemployed.

Mr. Herman explains how the budget cuts have affected teachers in Philadelphia.

“I think generally speaking I have a lot of friends in the city, they’re teachers and most of my friends currently don’t have jobs as a result of the budget cuts. I was extremely lucky. I would have been among them, I would be on unemployment now, for the first time in my life. I would have to find a job, or I would have to be actively searching for a job, but when everyone else is laid off too. There is this big crazy crossover where everyone is looking for a job and since they haven’t signed the contracts yet there was a freeze on reinstating employees”

Sophomore Greta Haskell said “I think that at SLA, I thought things were going to change and then we raised all this money and I think everything’s okay.”