already doing it! I'm student teaching at a school in north Philly. My project is integrating environmentalism into the community. The activity is cleaning up the neighboring streets. I'm also taking the students to "John Heinz Environmental Refuge" by the airport. The education class I'm in at Temple was given a grant to use and I was able to pick the project I wanted to do. Student teachers bring a lot of programs like this. You'd have better luck asking your school to allow more student teachers to come into your school. Rendel is horrible. He could careless about programs in our schools. The school I'm at doesn't have any art or music classes. I think that is absolutely horrible.
FYI, Rendell is PA governor. Current mayor is John Street. As far as contacts, http://www.phila.gov/contact/index.html has the contact info for a variety of city issues.
Haha, no biggie. I've done crazier stuff... like the time I was asking someone a question (my mom or brother) while trying to write a paper, and I put a question mark in the paper... oops Anyways, good luck!