Mayor plans to lease luxury suites at venues as a fundraising effort for School District Philadelphia.
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When asked about funding for the School District of Philadelphia while campaigning for Mayor, Mr. Jim Kenney admitted he didn’t have all the answers but said that no stone would be left unturned in the search for cash to benefit teaching and learning.
As a member of City Council, Mr. Kenney said he’s seen money spent on all sorts of projects—particularly sports complexes—and that if we, as Philadelphians, can’t find the money to spend on the City’s children, then we “should be ashamed of ourselves.”
There’s no Superman coming in from Harrisburg to save the day, Mr. Kenney stated often on the campaign trail. But there are resources owned by the City, he argued, that if leveraged in the correct way, can provide the things what we think are important.
If I can’t get the money from Washington or Harrisburg, we’re going to find the money here, Mr. Kenney said to a group of reporters on February 4th, 2015, after he officially announced his intentions to seek the Mayor’s Office.
On his first day as Mayor of Philadelphia, Mr. Kenney unveiled his immediate plan to raise money for the schools: leasing out the City’s luxury boxes at the sports complexes to large, cash-rich Philadelphia companies.
“These are the resources the City has control over that I don’t need to sit in,” said Mr. Kenney, who doesn’t perceive himself as a celebrity, but rather a regular guy from a working-class family who grew up in a South Philadelphia row-home.
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“Oftentimes politicians make a lot of promises. What I’ve learned about Mayor Kenney is he doesn’t just make promises, he acts on it,” Mrs. Donna Frisby-Greenwood, President/CEO of The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, said yesterday at a private reception and fundraiser at the Pennsylvania Convention Center where Mr. Kenney, along with Dr. William Hite, Superintendent of Schools, was in attendance.
The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia is a nonprofit organization, separate from the School District, which raises money on its behalf. Last night, after a $100,000.00 check from IBEW98 was presented to Mrs. Frisby-Greenwood, the former Knight Foundation Philadelphia program director, Mr. Kenney announced that roughly $650,000.00 was raised that evening.
A large part of the money will be used to build classroom level libraries to help K-3 students improve their reading.
Half of the students in K-3 aren’t reading on grade level, Mrs. Greenwood told Techbook Online in an exclusive interview.
Mrs. Greenwood said that the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, which she left the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to rebuild, is, at the moment, focused on impact. Moreover, Mrs. Greenwood is scouting out areas in which she and her team can have the greatest impact, and then cultivating donors, like the Lenfest and William Penn Foundation, around it.
And money isn’t the only currency being accepted by The Fund, as time is equally appreciated.
A lot of schools need partnerships, people willing to come in and read to students, said Mrs. Greenwood, who mentioned that even the smallest donation, at this critical point in history, can make a big difference in students’ lives.
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