e. >> did the head of philadelphia schools blink in his battle for more state funding? inside story starts right now. good morning everyone, i'm matt o'donnell. it is sunday, august 17, 2014, this is inside story, let's meet our insiders of the week, sharmaine matlock-turner, good morning, sharmaine. >> good morning, matt. ed turzanski, and larry platt. we're talking about the school starting on time.

william hite sent friday as the. he warned that 1300 school employees may have to be laid off. he warned that schools might not start on time. everything will happen, but with caveats, there will not be bus services, fewer school police, we asked the question off the top of the show, did william hite blink and not follow through, what do you think? >> i think it was a tough choice, i do. i think in the end he decided that after having a lot of conversations with a lot of the people including parents and legislators, that it made more sense for him to open schools on time with cuts and that the pressure was going to be maintained on the legislature to get it done in the mid part of september. he has the option to close

schools early and continue additional cuts through the school year, but i think, i think it was a tough decision either way. i don't think either way he want he was going to be an easy one make it work well for the school district. >> we haven't been privy to the conversations he's had with the governor and the leadership in the legislature is to what assurances he's received. would you be comfortable with these assurances that the money is coming? >> i think that governor corbett said he would front end certain payments and things like this. you want to open up the schools on time, because the kids and the parents have jobs, all the great teachers county legislature has to stand up. what he mentioned, the teachers union needs to step up. they are the only folks that

haven't stepped up the way other folks have stepped up. it's the pft leadership. the check comes around, and they look around, they need to step up in a way i know their members care about the kids, they have to say do the math, we have to do some things that are uncomfortable, which are unprecedented, but we need to do our part. >> he made clear he is not looking for across the board reductions in salary. he wants a restructuring of the benefit packagings. all the blue states where you have the municipal contracts that are pulling down the cities, because of school districts that cost is causing most of the problem, it was interesting that he want from talking about across the board reductions in samry to focusing on -- salary to focusing on the

benefits. >> i agree the teachers union has to come to the table, there's no question about that, taking a step back, you mentioned the math, no one has shown the work of the math. >> true, because what i am wondering how can $2.6 billion is not enough to educate 170,000 kids? the math doesn't work, the reason is that only 45 crenlt of a dollar of every dollar goes to instruction. 14% of that budget goes to debt service. that because of years of financial mismanagement. there's structural issues in the school budget that is never talked about when we get to these groundhog day moments of the fiscal crisis. >> add this piece to it there's misstatements of saying the state -- actually the state is spending more now then they did a few years ago. people compare the obama

stimulus money that was like womenning the lottery. if you won a ten thousand dollars prize you wouldn't say i bet you're going to use it every -- you're going to win it every year. thatthey used that to kick it cn down the road, that was a one-time stimulus money. >> we could go back and say did government and local school districts pay their fair share when they were supposed to pay. we could spend time pointing fingers. we are at a place where the district made numerous cuts, closed schools, everything that the state asked them to do was to look at everything and try to put everything on the table and try to make as many cuts as they could. we still have kids to indicate, we don't have enough money. the state changed the funding

formula, as to how it relates to pay for services for kids. we have to get a fair formula in place along with fair contracts, we should spend a lot of time talking about what it should have been, we have 133,000 kids to educate. we knee need police in the school and teachers who care about our kids and they need to be compensated. >> i would like to see the case made in a transparent way is to where the money goes. i think it was an inopportune time to announce that tom knox's son was hired as auditor for $85,000. i think it's wrong to higher people at 6 figure salaries in this administration when you're talking about funding cuts. >> remember when the phillies were in the world series in 2008 and some guy gets a call to talk

radio stadium. why can't us, grammatically incorrect, but that's what's going on, philadelphia wine and dines people from the democratic national committee this past week, they are hoping that the city gets the convention in 2016. we hosted back in 2000 for the republicans, we're up against four other cities, can it happen, should it happen, will it happen from what you've seen so far? >> it depends on what's most parent to the democrats. do they want to win a state that they think may be in play, ohio and nevada come to mind. >> arizona. >> and columbus. >> do they want the best accommodations the greatest number of rooms, if you're looking at the comfort of the guests you're very much looking at philadelphia.

brooklyn is in a deficit situation, they don't have the hotel rooms, the commute will be difficult. lots of amenities here, it would be great from the standpoint of people coming to the convention, and we're going to have raise $100 million to make it happen here, but there's a lot of will in this region. the question is, do you come to a state that you think will be in your column or do you go to another state that you think could be in play? bush when he did the two, when he was in the philadelphia, he did new york, he went to what he perceived to be the opposition strength to try to win a state? >> brian, if you were advising the democrats would you advise them to take columbus and have both conventions in the same state, and make this one huge battle, philadelphia we've got pennsylvania it's fine. >> you look at the historical,

you wonder if it has an impact when you look back on things. the republicans are going to cleveland, ohio, which reminds me of philadelphia. they are excited about it, because it's where philadelphia was in '97, '98. columbus isn't cleveland. phoenix would be an uncomfortable place to have this. the pope coming to philadelphia 89 year before, or within the year, some of the infrastructure improvements can be stretched over, i think it's exciting, and i think if that happens all of us are democrats that week that's for sure. >> could we do the world meeting of families, assuming the pope comes. >> he says he's coming. >> and the convention back here is this something that financially and theory reddicly philadelphia can handle? >> i think we can handle it.

we have positioning ourselves since the rendell years to be a destination city for large event. conventions we expanded the convention center. we got a ton of money for infrastructure for septa, we'll see improvement to our public transportation system. everybody is on board for this. we have the hotel rooms, we've got everybody excited about it, the real question will be what is the dnc require as it row late to money. if it is about money we'll be row peeght to new york about the the -- competing with new york. >> money over politics. >> money is politics. from a strategic standpoint phoenix makes sense for the democrats, but it's a right to work state. i don't see them doing that. >> revel casino in atlantic city says it's going to close in a month in september. it just opened in april 2012,

many saw it a grand structure of its bright future, instead it's a symbol of its rapid decline. it's one of four casinos to close in two years. big support from governor christie, monday morning quarterback time, why did they built this huge thing along the beach. why didn't people say this then? >> electric factor said this is a boondoggle. i mentioned groundhog day earlier. this feeling we're replaying these scripts over and over again, chris christie bears a lot of responsibility for this. >> should pennsylvania be watching this very closely, because there's still the chance

of a second casino opening in philadelphia and they want to expand gambling they think it will bring more revenue. >> as long as it's not public money i think so businesses can decide there's another casino license to be awarded and investors can decide what they want to do. with atlantic city, money went away since 2006, because there's not an unlimited number of amount of people that want to gamble. will also has the building that many say it was poorly designed as a casino. you're 60 miles from philadelphia, you have the ocean. atlantic city had a to rethink. it's education, eds and melds. that could be a -- medicines, they have to get off the gaming is the only way out. >> you've been making that argument from the very beginning when gaming came into atlantic city there were many folks in communities said isn't this going to be a great time to

rebuild atlantic city and what did we do? we closed off atlantic city, we blackened out windows in many of casinos and tried to ferret people in in buses and whatever so they couldn't see anything else as it related to the city. if we had built an atlantic city as opposed to a casino boardwalk, i don't think we would be having this conversation, because i don't think we would have made that same decision. >> they never marketed that which sets atlantic city apart which brian putted finger on which is the ocean. >> sharmaine's point the money they did get was not soundly vested in the surrounding area. by the way i would love to see what the business plan was and how a bank funded the money for this. >> and people can't get mortgages for 150,000 homes. >> the building i felt it's gorgeous from the outside, the problem the usable space on the

inside is not very adaptable. this is going to be very difficult to sell. they are talking about having to tear it down or tear down large portions of it. >> let me get you on this brian. the ice bucket challenge, everybody knows how it works. its raised millions of dollars for the als foundation, other charities would die for this, as an ad person how do you come up with something like that and become so success. >> it comes up from someone suffering from als 1k3eu9 captures the -- and it capture also the imagination of young people, my son took part myself. people didn't know will als a week ago. it's a very cool, so some people are lamenting and how about

other charities, i think it's great that als had their day today. >> jim gardner one of the participants. we'll be back with more inside stories. #

have you seen tom corbett's ads attacking me... get real. it's tom corbett who's been sticking it to the middle class on taxes. corbett cut a billion dollars from education... ...now almost 80% of school districts plan to raise property taxes. meanwhile, we're the only state that doesn't charge oil and gas companies an extraction tax. but corbett raised your gas taxes through the roof. i'm tom wolf, i'll be a governor who stands up for the middle class for a change. >> robin williams and the growing problem be of suicide. the actor's death put the light

on suicide and substance abuse. suicide among middle aged marriage or baby boomers up since 1995. suicide between 35 and 64 rose 30%. robin williams was 63. suicide deaths have surpassed death from motor vehicle accidents in recent years. the tenth leading cause of death in 2010. i'm sure they are trying to figure out the answer to this question, why are more and more people are killing themselves. >> i don't think there is any single answer. this is a combination of things, desperate times an erosion of a number of institutions, whether it's religion or other civic institutions where in the past people found meaning and solace. the irony is in the digital age when you're on social media, more and more, people have a

difficult time having human interaction with one another. i don't know that it's any one thing. but just on robin williams for a moment, i don't recall the last suicide death that sparked quite this kind of reaction. i think in large partly it was a suicide. we saw someone who made people laugh, who just seemed to be really whacky energic, you may not have liked all of his humor, but everyone liked some portion of it. he had a very wide field of work and many tender moments on screen that people go back to. >> goodwill hunting. >> you're talking about not as much family, social connections, sense of isolation. it's not talked about like breast cancer all the other kinds of things that you can imagine that people talk about.

you feel that moment of you letter sadness that somebody feels, trust me if you get 'til tomorrow you won't feel this way, it breaks your heart of somebody at that moment of utter utter display. because we know the next did a it's a little better. >> >> there's a stigma activism with mental -- stigma with melts illness. >> -- mental illness. >> we don't have an epidemic of suicide, you but of depression. it's in the closet as a legitimate illness. the there's a silver lining at all, this could breakdown the stigma. >> it's the idea that we as a society and community have to come to grips what does mental

illness look like and how to tackle it. people going through tough life changing situations, he had early parkinsons, he is aging, people make life transitions from being robust and being out there and now they have to be transition to something else. how does it affect people's mental behavior. this whole idea how our brains work and how we manage stress and problems and issues is something we have to come to grips where, i'm hoping if there's a silver lining in this we get back to how to deal with mental health issues more effectively. >> his friends say his aggression began in a marked way five years after heart surgery. >> dennis miller did something

brilliant this week, he said listen, what brian said no matter how bad it is, reach out to someone you love, stop to them and make it about them, symptom. that was bracing when he did that. >> there's a line in anything, but thinking make it so. whistles in high school reading that, and in many different ways. nothing is thinking about making makes it he so. >> mo anyway davis is the -- mo'ne davis of the taney dragons, she has baffled the boys at the plate. do you sense this is not as much of a story.

it's great that the boys can come with the girls. that's a great way to make the game work well. but i think the story is about extremely talented young person who happens to be a girl and isn't is that terrific and isn't that exciting. i have to tell you, i talked to a couple of weeks ago very disturbed early on when this team was going to other parts of pennsylvania we were getting racial push back about a team from philadelphia. i'm glad that seems to have gone away and that the love of this team has captured the spirit not only in our own town but the country. >> the team from chicago racial barriers. >> she is great they were interviewing some of the boys on the team, do you ever start thinking of her as a girl, no, only when she tell us what to do. >> she throws at 70 miles per

hour. she has a command of the strike zone that few 13-year-old girls ever see. >> it's her modesty. there's so many part of this you love as a story. there's so many part of this you love as a story. >> go dragons you need blinds. you know it. your neighbours know it. complete strangers passing by your house know it. don't be that house. do something about it. during blinds to go's 60th anniversary sale going on now. buy one, get a second at half price. blinds to go blinds for life.

celebrate blinds to go's 60th anniversary sale. buy one get 50% off one. because you know what they say: 60 is the new 50. they also say your're only as young as you feel. we feel great. how about those blinds of yours? blinds to go blinds for life. >> inside stories of the week we start with shar sharmaine. this week many of us were riveted to our televisions and watching ferguson, missouri the horrible situation that occurred there after a young teenager was shot by a police officer. see tanks in an american street in 2014 was disturbing. i wonder if they cruised that money for -- used that money for training police officers or

diversity program it would have been better used. a bad situation between netanyahu and obama, the white house has said that it in the state department has to sign off, hamas did an add talking about its new missile production, cause and effect of a breakdown between allies. >> the next economic crisis in which he has come out with an alga rhythm to -- algorithm to predict economic crisis. it's an important book published by the university of press. >> back what sharmaine was talking about, what a disservice to all the 98% of the great cops there are out there, when the 2 or 3% of the cops rough up the

washington post reporters out in furring on, it's almost like the corrupt one here's, it's a smart part of the total, but it does -- i see it down the new jersey shore when the cop passion his car in the middle of the street and let's the engine running. tone it down, a little emotional intelligence would go along way. >> thanks for watching we'll see next week on inside story, have a great sunday! gljth i'm nydia han,. >> more unrest in ferguson missouri. it's a slow operation high over center city as the pnb letters come down. >> the taney dragons prepare to take the field and city hall perhaps for another watch party.

those stories and

>> good afternoon, it's