Department of Geography Coffee Hour
Speaker: Akira Drake Rodriguez, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design
- Lecture begin at 4PM at in the John J. Cahir Auditorium, 112 Walker Building
- Join by zoom: https://psu.zoom.us/j/904694608
In 2013, the School District of Philadelphia, under the state-run School Reform Commission, recommended closing 32 public schools following a report by a no-bid consultant. Following significant resistance by a number of education advocates, only 23 schools were closed. However, most were in Black and Latinx neighborhoods, eradicating another source of community stability in an increasingly inequitable city. In May 2019, the SDP announced they would again have a comprehensive planning process, this time in response to the city’s growing population and school enrollment. Much has changed between the two planning processes: the school board is no longer under state control; the consultants hired for the planning process were hired through a competitive bidding process; and the increasing transparency and multi-year timeline of this process allows for increased participation and intervention by community stakeholders. However, the process remains extremely exclusionary and technocratic: the goals are to maximize facility utilization while creating thoughtful transitions for students. Long-term educational and spatial justice issues of racial segregation, cognitive and lingual discrimination, school funding inequity, and environmental justice through lead and asbestos remediation are not addressed.
Issues of spatial justice and educational justice overlap in that they privilege the perspectives and interests of those who have been historically marginalized by spatial and educational processes. This talk will discuss how a multitude of interests - parent groups, community groups, immigrant groups, student activists, environmental justice groups, teachers and paraprofessionals, urban planners and education reformers - are mobilizing across and within school borders (catchment areas) to achieve these just aims. Using a participatory action research design, this talk will discuss preliminary findings of how different approaches to achieving just aims are received by those in power.
Coffee Hour is a weekly lecture hosted by the Department of Geography celebrating interdisciplinary scholarship and collegiality. Topics range from innovations in GIScience, to food security, to land use and justice issues, among others. All members of the Geography, Penn State, and Centre County community are invited to attend. Talks are recorded and shared here: Coffee Hour Mediasite Channel.