School district making progress
As a follow up to my letter in last week’s Review (“Several problems with the BLOCS model”), I want to comment on this week’s report on the coming school district budget issue (“School district launches budget priorities survey“).
With all the talk about ending the federal Department of Education, the whole question of school funding is becoming a national issue. As a result the School District of Philadelphia is gathering more information to help plan a future school budget. They prepared the “Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Priorities Survey” to inform all financial decisions.
According to the Review report, this will be part of a five-year plan that is being adjusted to meet the needs of current students and schools.
I was encouraged to read that the school district is actually making progress thanks to the extra federal funding received during the pandemic years. There have been improvements in several areas including lower learning loss and increased attendance rates. So much for those who keep saying that funding has no impact of school success.
Thanks to the South Philly Review for providing the online address for the survey in 14 languages. We should all be rooting for this survey to provide more evidence of progress that the district has already made and will continue to reach thanks to proper funding, professional supervision and federal support.
Gloria C. Endres
Support small businesses
As more Americans help to spread the word about restoring jobs and America’s economy, everyone is urged to help us promote “National Small Business Weekend” on the first Friday, Saturday and Sunday of every month.
We began this special campaign in response to local businesses stating that they lost a lot of customers to larger stores and shopping malls. In order to help local businesses, we encourage our supporters to shop local more often and we began the National Small Business Weekend effort to bring attention to the fact that local businesses need your business. This effort has been very successful as it helped people know how important local businesses are to their communities and helped us focus more attention on the mission of the Buy American Made Campaign.
The fact of the matter is that there are millions of locally owned private sector businesses in communities across America. Locally owned businesses employ over 60 million American workers and they need your business throughout the year to keep the people employed. Additionally, 70% or more of every dollar spent at local businesses is re-circulated within your local economy. After restocking merchandise, business owners pay general operational expenses, taxes, employees and are able to support themselves. As you spend your dollars at local stores you also have the opportunity to speak with store owners and ask them to seek out larger selections of American-made products from their merchandisers.
As more American consumers shop locally and seek out American-made products, they help American-based manufacturing facilities remain open and expand manufacturing in the United States of America. As you and I direct our purchasing power to support American-made products and local businesses first, we are helping to save jobs for Americans and helping to make more job opportunities possible.
Thanks for helping us spread the word. America and American workers are depending on all of us. I welcome your comments and suggestions. Email them to Michael@AmericanWorkersRadio.com
Michael Blichasz
