Philadelphia City Paper :: Citizen Mom

Citizen Mom: The Air-Quote Budget

Once upon a time, my favorite euphemism was "police-press relations," but after hearing Mayor Nutter's plan to extricate the city from its budget crisis, I'm tempted to change that to "temporary tax increase."

Also known as the "penny with a purpose," the 1 cent hike in the city's sales tax is one of the "temporary" increases Nutter is proposing to help the city make ends meet, without the steep cuts to services he's spent months threatening. The mayor says a three-year increase in sales tax, from 7 to 8 cents on the dollar, would bring in about $340 million. He's also calling for a one-time hike of 19 percent to the property tax, which would then drop back to a 14.5 percent increase next year, assuming an "economic recovery." Anybody see an economic recovery coming in two years? Only President Obama has that much hope. Yet in the final years of Nutter's five-year budget, the increases are phased out.

The city's history bears the fallacy of so-called "temporary" tax hikes: The Inquirer recently printed a list of city and state taxes, from levies on liquor to the wage tax, that were created decades ago as temporary measures, yet live on. At least one City Council member has suggested swapping a longer-term sales tax increase for the property tax hikes, though I can't really see how it's a choice between the two. It's more likely the new Task Force on Tax Policy and Economic Competitiveness (not to be confused with the already-extant Tax Reform Commission) will see a need for both.

"Temporary" taxes. Seriously, see if you can even say it without making air quotes around the word. Philly loves to call us folks from New Jersey names — some of you had choice ones for me after my last column (but more on that later). Still, one thing you can't call us is naïve: Here in Jersey, we're taxed by everyone from the state government to our local fire district commissioners, and if we know anything, it's that elected officials may co...

Citizen Mom: You've Got to Pay to Play

If there's been one thing even less fun this week than listening to New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine's brutal state budget address on Tuesday, it's been watching Philadelphia's ongoing money struggle. For those of us who don't live in the city but count it as a vital resource for work, play and the all-important "culture," Philadelphia's fortunes lie close to our hearts.

Over here, there's ominous talk of a two-day furlough for state workers, but most people can more easily run down a list of the deep cuts and higher taxes Mayor Nutter has threatened — first the libraries, then the city pools, then a possible trash fee. (That last idea, potentially workable but clearly not thought out, went in the Dumpster on Monday.) It's all over local media — Philly, after all, is the area's dominant economic and cultural engine.

Looking at the issue from across the bridge, it's hard to make judgments about what taxes the city should raise or which services it should cut. Many choices — pools or parks, libraries or homeless shelters, trash removal or a successful tourism campaign — will hurt city residents, especially the most vulnerable ones, most acutely.

But they have secondary effects for those of us who love the city but don't live within its borders. Closing a library may not hurt us, but an increased commuter tax would. Closing a city pool in July isn't going to keep me out of Philly, but dirty streets will. It's taken the city years to shake that "Filthydelphia" image; cutting back on sanitation is a surefire way to keep suburbanites, and our money, away. The increased fees for parking meters in Center City, at $2 per hour and set to increase to $3 in July, are already rapidly eroding my Smart Card, and this on top of the $4 Delaware River Port Authority cover charge just to cross the bridge.

Of course, at this point you're thinking, "OK, then stay in the suburbs," which sounds about right until you actually think about what would happen if all my brethren from the 'burbs suddenly kept all of our parking, eating, drinking and ...

Citizen Mom: What Boys Want

I'm reasonably certain it was only a coincidence that in the space of a few days last week, Blackwater Worldwide changed its name to "Xe," and the Walt Disney Company renamed its Toon Disney channel "XD." But there's something creepily familiar about the two events, both designed to rebrand a familiar yet struggling enterprise.

It's pretty clear why the private army now formerly known as Blackwater took the step it did: The controversy over its involvement in Iraq during the waning years of the Bush administration were hell on the company's image. Using the Philip Morris/Altria principle, a newer, vaguer name was called for hence, Xe.

Similarly, the name XD doesn't mean anything, but is meant to convey a sense of cool. Disney picked it to reach out to the minds and allowances of the 18 million American boys between the ages of 6 and 14.

Having perfected the High School Musicalization of an entire generation of little girls, Disney is turning the hot breath of its marketing on their brothers. They've tried a bit already on the Disney Channel proper, with efforts like The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, in which smarmy identical twin brothers run amok in the hotel in which their mother works and they all live. There's also American Dragon: Jake Long, about your average 13-year-old boy with a secret life as a powerful, evil-fighting dragon. They're both wholesome, if cheesy, even by kid-fare standards.

The shows would fit right in on XD, which is attempting to brand itself with boy-centric themes like action, adventure and achievement, according to Disney executives. And since boys in the XD range haven't quite discovered girls and sex yet, sports acts as a stand-in, with "brother network" ESPN providing kid-themed sports news segments. So far, the commercials on XD are mostly for the new set of Pokemon cards and Reese's Puffs cereal, both perfect lead-ins to the advertisements for natural male enhancement and NutriSystem they'll see on ESPN later on in life.

It all just reeks of synergy. But will it...

Citizen Mom: Tales of Journalism Frozen in the Past

I recently began teaching a college journalism class on media ethics, and yes, you may insert your own "Hey, isn't that an oxymoron?" joke here. As part of their homework last week, I asked the undergrads to pick a story from the recent news which they felt raised some kind of ethical question for the reporter or photographer involved.

Examples aren't terribly hard to find, but last week had a couple of doozies. One was Minnesota sports columnist Larry Fitzgerald Sr. sitting in the press box in Tampa covering a Super Bowl in which his son, Larry Jr., was playing. I admire the character it took for Larry Sr. to remain planted in his chair like a good, impartial journalist while his son streaked down the field for the Arizona Cardinals. But to me, the more genuine move would have been to attend the game as a spectator and revel in the moment as a proud parent, and maybe write about it from that perspective, rather than choosing to put himself in the position of having to prove an unnecessary point. I'm sure Mr. Fitzgerald could have scored a ticket.

But the big gimme last week came out of Detroit. Charlie LeDuff, a reporter for the Detroit News, got a tip about a dead body in an abandoned building a few blocks from his office, and went to investigate. He found the report was true: The body of a man, mostly submerged in a frozen pond that had formed in the building's basement, had been there for who-knows-how-long. Yet even the macabre sight of a pair of legs sticking up out of a block of ice hadn't been enough to motivate any of the homeless men or "urban explorers" who had seen it to notify police. "Frozen in Indifference," the headline screamed, accompanied by a haunting photo by the paper's Max Ortiz.

The body was later identified as a 56-year-old man who worked as a handyman and had sheltered in the building. The story and photo made their way around the Internet, bouncing from Facebook to Twitter and back again, accompanied by the ex...

Citizen Mom: We Are What They Eat?

You probably missed this amid all the other breathless coverage and seemingly more weighty issues that surrounded Barack Obama's inauguration, but the Bushes left something behind when they cleared out last week. Actually it's a someone: Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford, who has headed the White House kitchen since 2005.

Comerford, 47, is the first woman and the first minority — she's a naturalized American citizen, born in the Philippines — to hold the job, since taking over for longtime White House chef Walter Scheib. Imagine a foodie version of the "Which breed of puppy will they choose?" frenzy and you get an idea of the months of speculation over which chef the Obamas would pick. Yet unlike the dog thing, the question of what's cooking in Obama's kitchen actually has a larger meaning. Here's why.

After all we heard over the last eight years about George W. Bush's love of low-brow dishes like grilled cheese on Wonder bread, BLTs and hot dogs, and his dislike of "anything green or wet," it wasn't surprising that hard-core foodies — most notably, sustainable food guru/chef Alice Waters and Gourmet magazine's Ruth Reichl — assumed the Obamas would choose a new chef, one who would not only make more responsible food choices for the First Family but bring a more public face to the White House kitchen. As food and cooking blogs obsessed over which celebrity chef the Obamas should choose, Waters and Reichl offered to serve as an informal "kitchen cabinet" to the Obamas, consulting on healthy eating and sustainable living, even calling for the creation of a White House vegetable garden.

Too bad they didn't know what they were talking about. Turns out Comerford, who started on a restaurant salad prep station and later studied cooking in Europe, has worked under the direction of now-former First Lady Laura Bush to serve healthful organic meals made with locally grown and sustainable ingredients in the Peoples' House. And she'll be staying on to do the same for the Obamas.

Scheib, writing on the Obama Foodor...

Citizen Mom: Pull It Off Your Bumper, Baby

Where are you going to be when Barack Obama takes the oath of office? Supposedly, it'll be one of those moments our grandkids are going to ask about, so it might be worth taking a second to consider how you'll mark the occasion. It's not surprising there's already an Internet meme urging people to take a picture of themselves, wherever they happen to be at the climactic moment, then post the snapshot to Twitter with the tag #ByeBush. I know, you're rolling your eyes at the Twitter part, this being the same pop cultural Crock-Pot from whence sprung the ill-considered "Day Without a Gay" in December.

Still, there's something I find intriguing about the "Bye Bush" idea. If enough people participate, the compiled photos would make a nearly instant and undoubtedly compelling document chronicling a significant moment in the country's history. Myself, I think I'll use the moment to peel away the Obama-Biden stickers from the back of my car and the front of my MacBook. It feels like time.

Why now? Am I turning my back on the guy I voted for?

Not really — it's more that I'm protecting myself from the inevitable disillusionment coming my way. It's like this: Remember last year when Mike Nutter was the coolest guy in Philly? The black mayor who wasn't all, "the brothers and sisters are running this city" like John Street, but who talked about how Philadelphia's new renaissance period had begun? He just seemed to get it — I mean hello, bike czar! — and was bound to save the city with the sheer force of his own awesomeness. Fast-forward a year later, and people seem bewildered, as if Nutter's actions are something alien, like he threatened to cancel the Mummer's parade because the city's broke. Oh wait.

Anyway, it turns out Mix Master Mike is just a man after all, just a politician, seemingly content to be quietly liked, as he told the Inquirer, until the political wind shifts his way again. Now, multiply that by eleventy billion or so and that's what we'll have when Obama begins making — through necessity or political ex...

Citizen Mom: Working Through my Caroline Issues

Maybe it's just the season, but every time I think about Caroline Kennedy seeking the Senate seat from New York, I get this picture in my mind of New York Gov. David Paterson as Santa Claus, handing out a powerful office as a political reward like a Lexus with a super-size red bow. Kennedy gets the seat because she's just been such a good girl this year. A lovely holiday tale, to be sure.

It's not that I have anything against Kennedy — if anything, she's been the most consistently nonembarrassing member of that whole clan. And it's not as if I'm so naïve that I think money doesn't buy political power, or that it's unheard of to reward someone for party loyalty with a plum appointment.

So why do I begrudge her this Senate seat?

Is it a lack of accomplishments? Because Caroline Kennedy largely shunned the limelight these past years, choosing to raise her three children as relative noncelebrities, I could be assuming she hasn't done anything worthy during that time, or at least not anything that really counts. But that's a classic mommy trap, and not true: She's got a law degree from Columbia, has done charity work, authored and edited books (including A Patriot's Handbook, one of my favorites). She's also done the neverending work of carrying the name and legacy of a deceased celebrity parent, a special kind of baggage only the Lisa Maries and Frances Beans of the world ever bear. No, Kennedy's done plenty — certainly more than some other senators.

Is it because of a dearth of relevant experience? Honestly, if the question is whether Kennedy has the "experience" to be a senator, it's not a stretch to say she does. Besides the diamond-encrusted resume, Kennedy can certainly hang, intellectually and professionally, with the veterinarians, exterminators and lawyers currently serving in Congress. She's well-educated, comfortable in political circles and has a personal narrative seemingly beyond reproach.

Is it because her positions are unknown? Well, we learned this week that Kennedy supports g...

Citizen Mom: See What Having a Life Gets You?

I remember the exact moment I decided to quit my job and stay home with my son. My husband and I were working for the Asbury Park Press in central Jersey, and there was news breaking. Both of us had to work, and our baby-sitters were inaccessible. So I stayed in the newsroom writing about the unfolding chaos of Sept. 11, 2001, with my baby in his stroller next to my desk.

To be honest, what really made me know The Moment had come wasn't that my work-life routine had failed that day; parents accept pretty early on that their best-laid child care routines will go off the rails every now and again. What really burned my ass was not being able to spring up from the desk, notebook in hand, and get out to cover the story. Taking feeds over the phone and writing blurbs for the Web site, while necessary in the overall news coverage, just wasn't cutting it. Something had to give, and in that instant, it did.

My last day at work was a few months later, on Good Friday, 2002. See what having a life gets you?

Last week, Gov. Rendell was caught on a hot mic suggesting that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano was a perfect Homeland Security secretary because she has "no life," meaning no husband, no kids and none of the accompanying domestic complications. Because she's single, his logic went, Napolitano can work basically around the clock — a not-unreasonable expectation for the Homeland Security chief. Still, under attack from Campbell Brown-type feminists, Rendell clarified, telling every cable news outlet that would give him a lapel mic that what he meant was that "Janet is a person who works 24/7, just like I do. She has no life. Neither do I."

The rhetoric that followed seemed to focus on two questions: One, would Rendell have made the same comment were Napolitano a man? And two, had he made the comment about a man, would it have been newsworthy?

We can't get inside Rendell's head, but I suspect he wouldn't have made the comment about a man. Certainly nobody asked Mike Chertoff (the outgoing Homeland Security chief) how he'd b...

Citizen Mom: Twittstorm

I've always bristled at the phrase "mommy blogger," even though I've been blogging throughout most of my son's life. When I started way back in 2004, "mommy blogger" meant something a little different than it does now. People understood that blogging had potential as a method of personal expression and as a tool in social media, but it hadn't yet gone corporate. These were the days before Dooce was a registered trademark and proprietress Heather Armstrong was just a new mom with a sharp tongue who'd been fired for blogging about her co-workers.

Things are a bit different today. There are still plenty of Cool Things My Toddler Did blogs, but in 2008, thanks to what we now know about the sheer number of women reading blogs and this group's value to advertisers, the mom blogger is a marketing force, her site a place to find product reviews and giveaways and even big-time advertisers, rather than simply camaraderie and catharsis. Mom bloggers are professional, accomplished. They're adept not just at writing and storytelling, but at delivering audience, and they're rightfully taken seriously.

They can also be a serious pain in the ass, as the makers of the painkiller Motrin found out last week. On Sept. 30, McNeil Consumer Healthcare launched an online ad for Motrin featuring a "Mom-alogue" in which a woman kvetches about how "wearing your baby seems to be in fashion" but "these things — the slings, schwings, pouches and other carriers loaded with your offspring — put a strain on her neck and back and shoulders. "If I look tired and crazy, you'll understand why," it read. It wasn't especially funny or edgy, despite efforts to be both.

Sometime around Nov. 15, as accompanying print ads were running in Real Simple and Lucky magazines, some mom bloggers with big audiences noticed the ad, and were not amused. They decried the ad's "condescending tone" and railed against McNeil with a startling fervor. What ensued was a mobilization that began on the blogs but really took off on Twitter, where the so-called "Motrin Moms" jugge...

Citizen Mom: No Need for Special Effects in the New Real America

You'll have to forgive me for something. I had hoped to be able to deliver this column to each of you readers sort of personally, appearing as a hologram in your home or office, or next to you while you're sitting on the can. But dammit, CNN beat me to it, beaming reporters (and Will.i.am) right into its studio as holograms, giving them a bluish halo, like a streaking hockey puck on TV. And since there's nothing people hate more than a hologram-come-lately, I'll just stick to words.

As I write this, it's early Wednesday morning, and a lot of people are waking up, turning on their TVs and seeing an America reflected on the news that so far we've only ever seen invented, in fiction. We elected a black man president of the United States, and he isn't Dennis Haysbert or Lou Gossett Jr., though like them he's got a good voice and isn't tough on the eyes. Forget the West Wing comparisons; to me it felt more like Revenge of the Nerds: The Big Man on Campus teams up with the Hot Chick to try to defeat the Geek/Minority/Other. The competition gets ugly — vicious words, dirty tricks, intriguing sub-plots and ridiculous minor characters — but in the end, the Nerd makes a stand, the Crowd has an epiphany, we realize that we are the Nerd, the Nerd is us, and everybody leaves the theater feeling good and thinking sequel.

On TV, every corny storyline played out, from his granny's poignantly timed death to the 112-year-old black man finally voting for someone who looks like him. Sarah Palin held the best press conference of her short political life, wearing her own clothes, standing outside Wasilla's city hall and refusing to cop to voting for John McCain. Did she write herself in for president? Did she vote for Obama? Did she vote for McCain and just not want to give him the satisfaction of knowing? I was waiting for a swell of Wurlitzer organ music as the whole thing ended. Remember, it's always someone scorned in Part I who comes back to play the villain/villain-turned-friend in the sequel. Y...

Citizen Mom: Palin's Future in "Real America"

When you're done figuring out where the "real America" is, see if you can decide which is the real Republican presidential campaign: Is it the one John McCain's running, which is heavy on clenched teeth and true tales of heroism? Or is it the Sarah Palin Show, where xenophobia is repackaged as small-town charm and a well-timed wink is mistaken for statesmanship? Oh, the two are still saying nice things about each other, but at this point they seem like a couple whose passion has worn off and are now waiting on the divorce. Like Madonna and Guy, but with even more kids.

McCain seems to be still going through the motions, at least, of trying to run a campaign that appeals to reality-based Republicans. On Monday, his own campaign staff squared off against supporters spouting "Obama's a Muslim" nonsense at a rally in Virginia. Meanwhile, Palin's the leadoff batter in the World Series of Crazy.

She feeds her crowds like a mother bird, spitting up chunks of cultural paranoia candied with "straight talk," enabling their feelings of being put upon by That One, by Those People, the ones who aren't "pro-America." It's as if the 100,000 people who turned out for Obama in St. Louis are The Other, some less authentic version of America. And if it's not The Other, it's about stopping the socialist menace, another crumb to toss at those who fear wealth redistribution even as McCain talks about the government buying up home mortgages.

The rhetoric is wacky, but the presentation is gaining polish. She still hasn't held a press conference, but Palin is stepping up to the traveling press corps at events and on the plane, freaking out her handlers and overshadowing Joe Biden, who's been sticking to stump speeches and hasn't held a press conference in weeks. Clearly, Palin is trying to go somewhere politically. But the folks she sucks up to, the Joey Ventos of the world who pelt CNN reporters with packs of gum, aren't ever going to take her to the White House. She'll figure that out eventually.

In the meantime, give her credit for pluck: Obama's surging, McCai...

Citizen Mom: The Ones Who Schooled Citizen Mom

Although Ms. Quinn wrote the article "Back to School in the Suburbs," which made me a little confused, it all started to get in my head when she came in to talk to us to make her statements a little clearer. I could absolutely feel where she was coming from, even though she said [the article] was made so that we would be angry, but deep inside I felt exactly the way she did.

See me, I did attend a private school that my parents spent lots of money for but it just got to the point where they couldn't afford it any more. My next choice wasn't to come to Strawberry Mansion, but at the same time I had a baby and this was my closest neighborhood school. So here I am, in a whole different curriculum that I have never been exposed to, and if I want to make it I have to do what I have to do for me to succeed — no matter how bad the school is.

This is my second year here and my grades are awesome. It's not that the teachers aren't teaching, it's the kids that don't want to learn. So if you want to be something in life, start trying to make a change now before it's too late.

—Charde L.

Amy Quinn came in to my school today, and we had a discussion about her article that she wrote about public schools. After she explained why she wrote her article, I see her point of view on public schools so I am not upset. Furthermore, she was just trying to get us to see how other people look at us. We had an interesting discussion and [Quinn] feels that we can do something about our education.

—Latashia W.

I think Amy Quinn's presentation was good. We were able to get our point across to her. On the blog I would like to say Strawberry Mansion is not what you think it is.

—Jack C.

I think [Quinn] coming here was nice, but her paper was very disrespectful. She's an OK person but I really don't know her, so I won't pass judgment. But I thank her for coming.

—Dayleesha R.

So there's this woman named Amy Quinn, she wrote an article on her outlook on public schools and I felt as though she was being judgmental looking from the outside in. She actually came into the school many may t...

Citizen Mom: The One Where Citizen Mom Gets Schooled

Be Strong

We are not here
To dream or drift
We have hard work to do
And loads to lift
Shun not the struggle for it is God's gift!
Be strong, be strong, be strong!

—Pledge of the Mighty Mansion Knights, read to Strawberry Mansion High students as classes begin each morning

If you're ever in need of an attitude adjustment, I highly recommend spending a few hours with some teenagers, preferably ones you've pissed off by calling their school an "institution of last resort." That was the phrase I used in my first column for City Paper, where I talked about why, for so many parents exploring educational options for their children, the Philadelphia School District isn't an option at all.

As we used to say in Manayunk, "that's a fight in my neighborhood," and as I expected, plenty of people had plenty to say about the column. Most — including several school district teachers and many folks who suddenly "got Catholic" when their kids reached school age — agreed with me that Philadelphia's schools are too often not worthy of the students who attend them. Some thought I was full of shit, including some friends whose kids are in city public schools. Still others, in discussions on local Web sites, did everything up to and including accusing me of racism. Perhaps not surprisingly, the more vociferously a person disagreed with me, the less likely he seemed to actually, y'know, have children, much less be making the adult decisions that go along with having a family.

The most intelligent, articulate and, frankly, relevant responses came from a class of seniors at Strawberry Mansion High, one of the schools classified, in a report I cited, as "persistently dangerous." Social Science teacher Ben Hesse gave his students a copy of my column and asked them to write their reactions; react they did. Some of their responses ran on CP's Web site, and Hesse invited me to come and hash things out with the class.

Str...

Citizen Mom: Am I a Wal-Mart Woman?

So, you know how I hate to be a contrarian, but it's worth disagreeing with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who last week told City Paper's Tom Namako that the upcoming election is "not about Sarah Palin." I know what Dean meant, of course — that Democrats have to focus on running against John McCain, not the Moose Shootin' Mama.Except it looks like the Republicans never got that memo, because their campaign is still very much about Palin, and females thought to be like her — the broads who canbring home the bacon, or at least serve it up in your local diner, and look cute doing it: the Wal-Mart Women.

The Wal-Mart Woman is the soccer mom of this election cycle, but aside from gender the two figures have little in common. Soccer moms were a solidly middle-class kind of suburban wife (now leaning toward Obama), while a GOP pollster coined the term "Wal-Mart Women" during the primaries to describe the cohort Hillary Clinton was doing so well with. These are women who tend to be less educated and more likely to work hourly wage jobs than those elitist, now-liberal Soccer Moms, who presumably shop at Target. According to one survey, 41 percent of frequent Wal-Mart shoppers said they made below $35,000 a year, and 39 percent have a high school diploma or less.

In reality, Palin, being college-educated and flush with enough cash to buy her kid a (pre-owned) tanning bed, doesn't quite fit into the demographic. For political purposes, though, her conservative persona is supposed to fit Wal-Mart Women like a 100 percent polyester acrylic, made-in-Vietnam, plucked-off-a-clearance-table glove.

This has not gone unnoticed by the world's largest retailer, which recently unveiled two 15-second in-store videos encouraging the 136 million Americans who crawl its aisles each week — particularly the women — to vote. By way of explanation, a female Wal-Mart executive talked about how "pollsters have found that our core shoppers, Wal-Mart women, are an influential demographic in the upcoming presidential election." <...

Citizen Mom: The Birds and the Bees at the RNC

After three days that contained enough absurdist theater to qualify for the Fringe Festival, the image I'm left with from the Republican National Convention is of the future Mrs. Levi Johnston — you know her better as Bristol Palin — standing onstage with her family and the McCains, being showered with the kind of wild-eyed applause usually reserved for that other rock star in the presidential race.

There she was, all of 17, having sprouted a baby bump and a sketchy-looking fiancé since arriving in Minneapolis, and feeling the love from an arena — and a nation — full of Republicans who drenched Jamie Lynn Spears with scorn when she got herself in the family way. To them, Bristol was a hero, and her pregnancy a "blessed event" rather than an unfortunate episode in some tacky political telenovela.

The whole thing gave me a weird flashback to when I was 15, standing on a church altar and holding my best friend's baby — Laura had a son at 16, and a daughter at 19 — while he was baptized. I certainly don't recall applause, however, and while I heard Laura called many names by many people during those difficult years, "hero" wasn't one of them.

Hey, I thought, maybe times have changed; maybe social mores are not what they used to be. I decided to consult an expert: a 15-year-old girl named Jackie, who's just started her sophomore year. Jackie isn't old enough to vote, but she's at exactly the age when topics like reproductive rights start to mean something in the concrete: Cousins get pregnant, or that girl your sister knows drops out to have a baby. The Palin family drama, she tells me, has already been a topic of discussion in her Catholic school. I ask if anyone has called Bristol a hero.

She smiles, rolls big blue eyes. "Uhhh, no." In fact, she says, kids talk about Bristol the same way they talked about Jamie Lynn last year — in a "can-you-believe-this-idiot" kind of way. At Jackie's school, the only officially sanctioned talk about sex is that it should occur in the context of officially sanct...

Citizen Mom: Back to School ... in the Suburbs

Exactly 73 steps separate the front door of my family home in Manayunk from the Philadelphia public school across the street. James Dobson Elementary, built in 1929, consumes the entire block between Hermitage and Wright streets, off Umbria, its concrete schoolyard serving as the unofficial backyard of a neighborhood with few real backyards to speak of. It's where I learned to roller skate and to ride a bike, where I jumped double dutch (not well) and, later, sneaked cigarettes and kissed boys in the long shadows cast by its heavy iron fencing.

What I never did there was attend a class. In 36 years of life, 22 spent growing up on Dobson's doorstep close enough that its squawking afternoon dismissal bell would wake a napping baby I've never gone into the building beyond the auditorium that serves as the local polling place, or the claustrophobic basement gymnasium where my nephews played floor hockey. My parents sent their six kids to one of the local parochial schools and let's not pretend it was just for the religious instruction.

When my husband, young son and I were moving back to the Philadelphia area from Central Jersey a few years ago, not once did we seriously consider moving into the city itself. Like many couples we know, we moved to the suburbs specifically so we could send our child to public school there. In fact it's probably fair to say we pointedly and unapologetically avoided the city of Philadelphia. You want to know why? Let's start with two words: persistently dangerous.

An annual Pennsylvania Department of Education report issued last week classified 20 Philadelphia public schools as "persistently dangerous," an ominous-yet-efficient bureaucratic descriptor for seats of learning where students are at risk of robbery, assault, rape, weapons crimes, kidnapping and other "dangerous incidents" every time they walk through the door.

Go back to Dobson for a second. It's not on that dangerous-schools list, and never has been (nor has the neighborhood's public secondary scho...