Documentary Tells The Story Of Chester Upland Schools.

Chester-Upland School District has a long history of trouble.

Located in the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania, just southwest of Philadelphia, the district’s history is the history of U.S. school segregation in miniature. In the first half of the 20th century, they were segregated as a matter of policy. Their first desegregation plan allowed white students to transfer out of certain schools, but not Black students. Their second de-segregation plan hinged on redrawing school boundaries, but upon segregated lines. By the mid-sixties, pressure was on for real desegregation, but by then redrawing of district boundaries and an exodus of white residents and major employers thwarted that.

Today, Chester Upland is a small district packed in among four other districts that are all wealthier and whiter.

When U.S, schools entered the age of test-centered accountability, one of the arguments in favor of massive testing was that it would allow leaders to target schools for assistance and support. Chester Upland is a fine example of how that simply didn’t happen.

In 1994, CUSD was named the lowest performer in the state. Instead of assistance, what they got was a series of state-appointed receivers and assorted private companies brought in to profit from CUSD’s struggles. None of it helped. Financial crises came one after another.

Next to swoop into CUSD were the charter schools. By the mid-2010’s, three charter operators, even though they only handled K-8, had enrolled half the students in the district. By 2019, one of the three, Chester Community Charter School, was pushing the state to let them take over all K-8 operations in the district.

You can try to capture all of this long, frustrating mess in text (my attempt, in much greater detail, appeared here last year). But to actually see it play out on screen elicits a whole other level of frustration and anger on behalf of the citizens in the school district, for whom the fight to save their school district seems never-ending.

There’s now a documentary available that does just that. Divided Attention was produced by PhillyCAM. The director is Stephanie Ramones, and produced by Nicole Mendez, Laura Deutch, and Sergio Galeano, with Ariel Taylor and Gretjen Clausing.

The film ties together two thread, looking at both the drive to charterize CUSD in 2020-21 and also the district’s mindfulness program for students. The seams between these two pieces of the film sometimes show, but the root idea still comes through—the stresses that CUSD has been put under affects real, live students and the ways they try to cope with the pressures of growing up.

There are interviewees in the film like Maura McIerney, legal director of the education law center, and A. Jean Arnold, a powerful voice of local activism, who provide an overview of the situation in the district, but perhaps the most powerful footage comes from the public meeting at which the charter companies were to present their proposals for taking over the schools.

There was frustration going into the meeting, as the full proposals for takeover that should have been made available to the public were not.

Members of the public doggedly question the charter groups. One woman points out that a charter’s test results are actually far below state averages and below what the CUSD schools are doing. A CCCS rep dangles the offer that they will buy two old buildings from the district, but an audience member notes they are offering less than half of the fair market value of the schools. He also notes they will build two new buildings.

CCCS CEO Vaughn Gureghian “appears” at the meeting only by phone. Gureghian has made many millions of dollars from his Chester charter business. He points out that their proposal will give the district new buildings; he does not note that his company will own those buildings.

Another parent asks a critical question. “So where does their choice go once the takeover happens? If I don’t want my child to go to a charter, where do they go?” The CCCS rep calls that a good question, hems, haws, doesn’t answer.

“We need someone to come in and support our growth instead of taking from what we already have,” says another parent. But charter schools are big money in Pennsylvania, particularly with our rules that reward charters with outsized money for students with even mild special needs.

This struggle over keeping public schools intact is juxtaposed with students who are trying to implement a simple mindfulness tool in their lives. Hence the movie’s tagline, “When the children who need the most get the least.”

The film is now available to the public for viewing on PhillyCAM’s website, and will be shown every Friday in October on PhillyCAM’s tv channel (available on Roku and AppleTV. At just over one hour, it makes for quick viewing that provides insights into the struggles that under-supported public schools face in the age of charters.