"It's clear that the city has made some gains, but what really threatens those gains is the poor quality of the schools," said Ron Whitehorne, 74, a former Philadelphia teacher who is a member of PCAPS's task force. "If we are going to be able to sustain the kind of gains made in the last 10 to 15 years, we have to address the schools, and the only way to do that is to stop the tax abatement."