The current budget passed by the commonwealth left the Philadelphia School District looking at a $178 million gap. Fernando Gallard, the director of media relations for the district, says that cuts will be made in operating costs, not in the budgets of the schools themselves. He explained that jobs would be shuffled around, basically realigning the administrative offices.

In the Brewerytown and Strawberry Mansion neighborhoods, schools like Strawberry Mansion High School, James G. Blaine Elementary, Edward Gideon, John F. Reynolds and Robert Vaux High School are already underfunded.

Students have limited access to books and computers. Parents in the area …

Local residents convened Sunday afternoon at the Sedgwick Theater for the first annual Community Café. The event, co-sponsored by Neighborhood Networks and MARCHinG for Change, created a forum for people in the community to express their opinions on matters such as health care and safety and to suggest ways of promoting change.

Café organizers reached out to community leaders doing significant work within their fields to moderate a series of roundtables. “There are …

A heavenly aroma spills outs from a bubbling pot of potato squash soup in the basement of the Cavalry Church. Claire Smith quickly turns down the burner and goes back to preparing three large trays of savory brussel sprouts.

Paul Divido and Anna Jacobs take turns kneading dough to turn into luscious cinnamon buns. In an hour’s time the three volunteers have created a veritable feast to feed up to 80 people. All the food used was salvaged from grocery stores and bakeries across the city that would have otherwise been thrown in the garbage.

For the past 10 …

Last Tuesday, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the new West Philadelphia High School.

Located just a few steps from the current building, the new facility will replace what was once West Catholic High School for Boys at 49th and Chestnut streets.

The …

Dave Jordan went to 47 baseball games when he was a young boy, between 1948 and 1952. His team lost 41 of them.

On Wednesday the Philadelphia Phillies lost game six of the World Series to American League foes the New York Yankees. Though the fall of the beloved and dynamic Phillies will be one the city will come to terms with and accept in the next few ways and weeks, Jordan, a lifelong baseball fan, knows one pain that is much harder to get over.

“You get used to losing ballgames,” Jordan said, “but losing your whole …

Sitting on a patch of neatly trimmed grass on Germantown Avenue is a green sign carved with golden letters, which reads “Nicetown: Putting the nice back in ‘The Town.’” Though the motto doesn’t boast much creativity, it holds a lot of meaning, particularly for the people living there. “We have a lot of dreams and we’ve been working hard to achieve our goals,” says Majeedah Rashid, the chief operating officer for the Nicetown Community Development Corp. (CDC).

Rashid isn’t just referring to making Nicetown “nice” again, but she means bringing businesses and the community together through several development projects, an issue …

Imagine risking your life for the country you love by joining the military. After serving your time overseas, you come back healthy and uninjured, with a job lined up and waiting for you.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for many veterans who have served our country. The reality is that some soldiers returning to the United States have a tough time readjusting and are shocked to …

Karla Mota hectically runs back and forth through the Youth United for Change office carrying stacks of statistics. Hurrying to finish up her day’s work before she heads home, Mota, 17, understands the importance of her and her fellow youth leader’s assignments. Mota attends Kensington CAPA High School and has been a leader with Youth United for Change for the past two years, trying her best to improve the high schools in her community.

One can find many problems …

Linn Vaughters is in the last place she thought she’d be when she started her career: North Philadelphia.

As a private school teacher, she held a negative view toward Philadelphia’s school systems that stemmed from her parents, both teachers in the School District of Philadelphia for decades.  So when a friend she ran into by chance at a Starbucks suggested a job teaching Spanish at Community Partnership School.

“I was informed by the awful conversations my parents had at dinner about what went on in their classrooms, …

The Weaver’s Way Co-op is a community-owned market in Mount Airy. Among other things, the co-op has committed itself to addressing the epidemic of childhood obesity throughout northwest Philadelphia and does so through its Marketplace Program. The Marketplace Program is a partnership between Weaver’s Way and local area schools to recreate cooperative markets, which the students run. The goals of the Marketplace Program are to provide healthier alternatives to after school and lunch snacks, to promote healthy …