On first glance, Milena Velis’s carved pumpkin seems out of place.
A thick, padlocked chain marks an X in front of a fence. In the distance, the moon rises above a school building framed by bare, gangly trees.
It’s an image in stark contrast to the werewolf, skeletons, pumpkin heads, and haunted forest that comprised the entries in West Philly Local’s 2013 Pumpkin Carving Contest. But while Velis’s pumpkin may not show a spooky motif synonymous with Halloween, it could be considered the most frightening of them all.
After all, what’s more terrifying than the School District of Philadelphia shuttering 24 schools—including local University City High School and Alexander Wilson Elementary—and laying off nearly 3,000 staff members in the face of steep budget cuts and choked funding?
The chilling implications of the public education crisis on Philadelphia and its families is largely why Velis’s pumpkin, which took two days to design and nearly three days to carve, won Readers’ Choice in the contest. To the many West Philly Local readers who voted, her pumpkin symbolized the “scariest thing” to happen to Philadelphia this year. Velis said this was her intention with her Scariest Pumpkin category entry—to memorialize what happened at the beginning of the school year.
“Part of it is just that there’s something so unbelievable about the permanent closing of schools that it does take a while to process it. That’s true for a lot of people,” Velis, a 29-year-old Cedar Park resident, told West Philly Local. Continue Reading
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