Cigarette Tax

So, Philadelphia received its long awaited cigarette tax! Whew!! Now we're just a ship a mile below the surface and not two miles! Whew!! What a relief!

I hope no one is sitting comfortably in 400, City Hall, or Harrisburg. The spring season will bring the same desperate begging, bargaining, and fighting for adequate, steady, and sustainable school funding that we've been fighting for!

During the normal discourse of what I call "Barbershop PhD" discourse, a guy sitting in the chair next to me asked me point blank, "Where's the money school teacher?? Tell me!" My response can be summed up like this, the problems are complex and so, too, will be the solutions, especially since Philadelphia is home to the two largest school systems in the state, with our charters being the 2nd largest! If they stay and if we will forever share the same pot of money and if money must forever be taken from the district's bottom line to go them, this crisis will not go away anytime soon! Period!