Chalkbeat

Meet the new boss: Philly school board picks leaders after clash over nominees

2024-05-09T21:53:53+00:00

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After a campaign to oust him from the Philadelphia Board of Education failed, Reginald Streater was unanimously reelected president of the body on Thursday.

At their first meeting as a new board, members also made a surprising decision by electing first-time board member Wanda Novalés to be vice president. The position was contested and required the board to vote twice. Members Sarah-Ashley Andrews and ChauWing Lam were also nominated but did not garner enough votes.

“I have no written comments as I didn’t think this was going to happen,” Novalés said after she was elected. “But I am so excited to serve the students.”

Speaking before the vote, Streater hinted at the potential for holding board “office hours” and “reimagining” meetings in the future, as well as focusing on “our facilitation of tough and public conversations that we must have.”

Philadelphia’s school board nomination process became Mayor Cherelle Parker’s first big political struggle with the City Council. Although the council approved Parker’s eight other school board nominees, several members strongly opposed Joyce Wilkerson’s nomination. Their reasons for doing so remained relatively vague, but allegations of racial bias in the charter school authorizing process came up during a tense council hearing on Parker’s nominees.

Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas also indicated a desire to seek accountability for the actions of earlier iterations of the board and its predecessor, the School Reform Commission.

Wilkerson is the longest serving board member and has been both board president and chair of the School Reform Commission.

Ultimately, a behind-the-scenes campaign to oust Wilkerson and Streater fizzled. After Wilkerson’s nomination stalled for several days, Parker announced that she was asking Wilkerson to remain on the board anyway — without the council’s consent. Wilkerson agreed to do so. In response, Thomas has called for hearings to “explore possible reforms to the school board nomination, confirmation, and governance processes.”

All eyes will be on this new board in the coming months, and special attention will undoubtedly be paid to their votes on whether to approve applications for new charter schools, or proposed charter expansions.

Novalés, the new VP, founded Philadelphia’s Pan American Charter School.

With budget negotiations ongoing in the City Council and in the state capitol, the school district’s financial position is also being scrutinized by councilmembers and legislators. Several state lawmakers on Tuesday signaled their support for Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed increases in education funding that would benefit Philadelphia schools. But until the budget process is settled, those increases are far from secure.

One concrete piece of good news for the district came on Wednesday, when the credit ratings agency Fitch Ratings upgraded the district’s outlook. But Fitch cautioned that the district’s enrollment has been “adversely impacted” by a soaring number of students switching to charter schools and cyber charter schools over the past decade.

“This shift has led to an increase in spending to fund charter schools which accounts for a significant portion of the district’s spending,” representatives from the credit ratings agency wrote in their explanation for the rating change. “These charter school payments pose a significant limitation on the district’s ability to manage its expenses.”

Former board member Mallory Fix-Lopez wished the new members well and cautioned the board Thursday to “please be mindful of even the appearance of improprieties” because of its negative impact on the district’s primary mission and its students. She also issued a warning.

“You are in for a wild ride,” Fix-Lopez said.

The new board’s first action meeting will be on May 30.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia mayor plans to go over City Council’s head, put contested nominee on school board

2024-04-29T21:49:48+00:00

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A power struggle has erupted in Philadelphia between Mayor Cherelle Parker and City Council leadership that could have serious implications for Parker and impact one of the country’s largest school districts.

The person at the center of that tug of war is longtime Board of Education member Joyce Wilkerson. After a public back-and-forth, the City Council voted Monday to pull Wilkerson’s nomination to the school board from its agenda for the second time. Council President Kenyatta Johnson said Wilkerson still did not have the votes to be confirmed.

But Parker is not backing down. She sent a letter to Wilkerson Monday asking her to stay on until a new appointment is made, which Wilkerson has agreed to do. The rest of Parker’s school board nominees were approved by the council April 19 and are due to take their seats Wednesday.

It’s not entirely clear what effect the dispute over Wilkerson will have on the board and the school district. But during a hearing on the nominees, several councilmembers pressed them about their views on charter schools in the city, and indicated that they would like to see the school board approve more charters, especially those with Black leadership. The board hasn’t approved a new charter school since 2018.

If the relationship between Parker and the council deteriorates over Wilkerson’s fate, it could have significant consequences for the school’s budget and the council’s support for long-term education plans from both the board and Parker, who has proposed year-round school for the city’s students.

Wilkerson is the longest serving member of the board, and served as its president from 2018, when the district shifted from state to local control, until 2022. Before that, she spent two years as the chair of the School Reform Commission that ran the district after the state took it over.

A smiling Wilkerson read Parker’s letter to reporters after the vote. The letter called her a “laudable” public official during her time on the board.

A separate statement from Parker’s office confirmed that she had asked Wilkerson to continue serving past Tuesday.

The mayor’s office said it has a legal opinion that spells out her authority to keep Wilkerson on the board, but did not release it. The City Charter requires the City Council’s “advice and consent” on board appointees.

And the council — specifically Johnson and Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas — appears to be signaling that the body will not be a rubber stamp for Parker’s administration.

Some officials don’t view nominee as ‘beloved friend’

Various councilmembers have told Chalkbeat they don’t have passionate positions on Wilkerson either way, but are voting with Johnson and Thomas against the backdrop of important budgetary negotiations.

Despite the role charter schools played during the hearing on Parker’s school board nominees, Councilmember Kendra Brooks denied that her concerns about Wilkerson stemmed from the board’s unwillingness to approve new charters or its approach to charters in general.

“I’ve never been a supporter of charters, so the notion that this is about charters, I push back against,” said Brooks in an interview. She started her public career as an education activist fighting for adequate resources for her neighborhood schools, among other causes, and said she would have voted no on Wilkerson’s nomination: “The years I’ve been doing this education work, Joyce was never our beloved friend.”

Pressed further, Brooks said that if Wilkerson’s presence on the board “is the only thing saving the state of education in Philadelphia, we are doomed.”

Thomas also issued a statement Monday saying he does not support Wilkerson “because our schools have been inadequate under her leadership.”

“This is bigger than one person. This is about the need for change and doing what’s best for our children and families,” Thomas wrote.

Johnson has repeatedly rebuffed questions from reporters about the reasons for the opposition to Wilkerson’s nomination. Critics of the council’s move have noted that Dawn Chavous, who is married to Johnson, also serves as spokesperson for the African American Charter Coalition, which first leveled the allegations of racial bias against the school board regarding Black-led charters.

Chavous did not respond to an email from Chalkbeat on Monday.

Before calling for a vote to remove Wilkerson’s nomination from the agenda, Johnson said that members had heard from many members of the public, including but not limited to charter school supporters, expressing concerns about Wilkerson.

“I will not make those concerns public out of respect for Ms. Wilkerson,” he said.

Councilmembers, by a voice vote, also rejected a motion to make their positions public through a roll call.

Curtis Jones was the only councilmember besides Johnson to speak publicly Monday about the situation and he expressed misgivings about the process by which Wilkerson’s nomination was being held up.

“We are barely past 100 days,” Jones said, referring to Parker’s time in office. “And we’re not allowing the mayor to have the benefit of the doubt.”

“I trust my mayor and trust my leadership,” Jones added. “If you’re asking her to cook the meal, she should be allowed to buy the groceries.”

For her part, Wilkerson said she is “delighted” to have Parker’s support and to remain a member of the board.

“When Mayor Parker announced my nomination, one of the things we talked about is the significance of continuity,” Wilkerson said.

Legality of mayor’s move is in question

Still in question is whether Council will challenge the legality of Parker’s move.

The Home Rule Charter states the nine members of the board “shall be appointed by the Mayor, with the advice and consent of a majority of all the members of the Council after public hearing.”

Parker’s Deputy Chief Education Officer Sharon Ward said the mayor interprets the charter to say Wilkerson can continue to serve until someone is named to replace her, since the council removed her nomination from the agenda but did not reject it. Parker could also choose to indefinitely delay nominating someone else, perpetuating Wilkerson’s term.

Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, an attorney with the Public Interest Law Center, said in an interview Monday there has to be a mechanism by which governmental bodies like the Board of Education can continue to function even in the absence of a traditional confirmation process. Parker is betting her push for Wilkerson to remain on the board would fall under that mechanism, he said.

Philadelphia is the only district in Pennsylvania with an appointed, not elected, school board. The City Council voted in 2018 to amend the City Charter to require the council’s advice and consent for school board nominees.

Donna Cooper, a former aide to Ed Rendell when he was Philadelphia mayor and governor and now executive director of the advocacy group Children First, came to the Council’s chamber to support Wilkerson and later said in a statement: “Clearly the mayor knows how to play chess.”

The newly constituted school board’s first meeting about its long-term goals and strategy is scheduled for May 9, and their first action meeting as a voting body is May 30.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Outgoing Philadelphia school board approves millions for new curriculum and asbestos abatement

2024-04-26T13:49:33+00:00

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Philadelphia residents got their first opportunity to publicly comment and ask questions about the school district’s $4.5 billion budget proposal Thursday night at the final meeting of the board’s current iteration.

Community members asked the board for more funding for extracurricular activities, music and art programs, improved air filtration, and building renovations, among other requests. The budget will be up for a full board vote at the May 30 meeting.

The most pointed question Thursday evening came from student board representative Cavance Snaith, who asked if all schools would be outfitted with heating and air conditioning by 2030 under the district’s five-year capital plan.

Oz Hill, the district’s chief operating officer, said the “cold hard truth” is that it’s unlikely. Hill said underlying infrastructure and electrical issues and longstanding funding gaps stand in the way.

Much of Thursday’s meeting was also devoted to speeches from four of the board’s nine members who will be replaced on May 1, when Mayor Cherelle Parker’s nominees take their seats. Outgoing members thanked their colleagues and district staff for their diligence and guidance over the years of their time on the board.

Board members also unanimously approved a resolution renaming the district building after former Superintendent Constance E. Clayton.

Board approves millions in curriculum, SEPTA contracts

In their last official action as a board, members voted to approve nearly $234 million in contracts and construction change orders, including:

Nearly $4.2 million for new StudySync English language arts curriculum resources. This money will come from COVID relief funds. The district already approved $20 million for the materials. This would be an additional allocation.
$82.7 million for private pre-K providers that partner with the district to provide 180 days of “free, full-day, developmentally appropriate PreK instruction from qualified staff,” according to the board, as well as free breakfast, lunch, and snacks for young learners daily.
$12 million for asbestos abatement and nearly $20 million for “environmental remediation and restoration” at Frankford High School, which has been closed since last year due to damaged asbestos.
$34 million for a contract with SEPTA to provide fare cards for students. According to the board, Pennsylvania reimburses the entire cost of the Student Fare Card.

Board changes “goals and guardrails”

Board members also voted to amend and extend the “goals and guardrails” targets for student achievement that were originally set before the COVID pandemic. The board previously expected the district to reach the old benchmarks by 2026 and have monitored progress toward these targets every month. The new metrics approved Thursday are expectations for 2030.

The new targets as written in the board’s resolution are:

The percentage of students in grades 3-8 who score “proficient” on the state ELA assessment will grow from 34.0% in August 2023 to 65.0% by August 2030.
The percentage of third grade students who score “proficient” on the state ELA assessment will grow from 31.0% in August 2023 to 62.0% by August 2030.
The percentage of students in grades 3-8 who score “proficient” on the state math assessment will grow from 20.7% in August 2023 to 52.0% by August 2030.
The percentage of students who score “proficient” on the state literature high school assessment by the end of their 11th grade year will grow from 53.9% in August 2023 to 71.0% by August 2030.
The percentage of students who score “proficient” on the state algebra high school assessment by the end of their 11th grade year will grow from 30.1% in August 2023 to 53.0% by August 2030.
The percentage of students who score “proficient” on the state biology high school assessment by the end of their 11th grade year will grow from 31.4% in August 2023 to 54.0% by August 2030.
The percentage of Career and Technical Education students who pass an industry standards-based competency assessment by the end of their 12th grade year will grow from 49.1% in August 2023 to 80.0% in August 2030.

Philly school board members say their goodbyes

Thursday’s meeting was the last for this iteration of the school board nominated by former Mayor Jim Kenney.

Board members Leticia Egea-Hinton, Julia Danzy, Cecelia Thompson, and Lisa Salley reflected on their years on the board and offered some advice for the new members. The status of longtime board member Joyce Wilkerson’s nomination is still uncertain; City Council President Kenyatta Johnson told reporters earlier on Thursday that she “doesn’t have the votes” to retain her position.

Wilkerson’s nomination has become a political flashpoint for the charter school debate in the city.

Board member Julia Danzy spoke out in support of Wilkerson, saying she “watched in horror” as council members interrogated Parker’s nominees last Friday about their willingness to expand and approve new charter schools, especially those with Black leaders.

After Thursday’s council vote, Johnson and Councilmember Isaiah Thomas vehemently denied that Wilkerson was being “singled out.” But her nomination has been the only one of Parker’s picks to be held up in the council hearing process.

“What I saw [at last Friday’s City Council hearing] was the litmus test for being a board member was, would you let the charter schools have what they want?” outgoing board member Danzy said at the board meeting. “There is something wrong with that.”

Speaking publicly for the first time since her nomination was deferred, Wilkerson also thanked the rest of the board in a speech mirroring the goodbyes of her fellow members, though Parker and Board President Reginald Streater shared statements on Thursday saying they would not be backing down on Wilkerson’s nomination.

“It’s a slate, not eight,” said Sarah-Ashley Andrews, a current board member and Parker nominee, noting she would not be saying goodbye to Wilkerson.

Egea-Hinton advised the new, incoming board members: that they’d better “put their seatbelts on.”

“It’s a rollercoaster ride,” Egea-Hinton said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia’s new school board members get City Council approval

2024-04-25T17:19:37+00:00

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In a chorus of “ayes”, Philadelphia’s City Council voted to approve eight members of the city’s Board of Education on Wednesday, leaving one seat open with the deadline rapidly approaching.

Councilmembers approved the nominations of current Board President Reginald Streater, Crystal Cubbage, Cheryl Harper, Whitney Jones, Wanda Novales, Joan Stern, Sarah-Ashley Andrews, and ChauWing Lam by voice vote on Thursday. All are expected to take their seats on the board starting May 1, as the city’s Home Rule Charter requires, and their first action meeting is scheduled for May 30.

Neither councilmembers nor Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration gave any update on Joyce Wilkerson’s nomination on Wednesday, however. Wilkerson, the longest serving board member, saw her nomination deferred at a tense hearing last week during which councilmembers interrogated board members about the board’s decisions not to approve or nonrenew several Black-led charter schools as well as the absence of a long-promised school facilities plan.

Council President Kenyatta Johnson refused to give details about the delay in Wilkerson’s nomination Thursday.

“She doesn’t have enough support or votes to go forward,” Johnson said to reporters’ repeated requests for more information. “We will continue having conversations with the [Parker] administration, and we’ll go from there.”

Members of the public spoke out in support of Wilkerson on Thursday, but a hearing date for her nomination has yet to be set. Several current board members as well as labor and advocacy groups issued statements and letters of support for Wilkerson this week, citing her fiscal prudence and years of experience leading the board and its predecessor, the School Reform Commission.

“I know there is inevitable push and pull between charter schools and the board that is supposed to provide them oversight,” Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, an attorney for the Public Interest Law Center said. “To serve charter school students, we must have oversight for charter schools themselves.”

The uncertainty over Wilkerson’s nomination is indicative of a broader test of mayoral and council power since Parker has taken office. Following her nomination announcement, Parker has been largely absent from the public debate surrounding Wilkerson, leaving space for councilmembers, led by Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas, to drive the conversation.

Nominating school board members is the most direct impact Parker can typically have on public education in the city, along with naming her education executives. School board seats also have powerful political influence especially against the backdrop of looming city budget negotiations.

In a statement following the vote, Parker said Thursday “I continue to support my entire slate of nine nominees, including Joyce Wilkerson. I selected nominees who wholeheartedly share my vision for public education in our city.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Charter school debate dominates Philadelphia school board nominees’ hearing

2024-04-20T00:10:53+00:00

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Following a heated interrogation by the City Council over charter schools, eight of Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s nine nominees to the Board of Education are moving ahead. But the future of Joyce Wilkerson, the longest serving board member, remains in limbo.

The Council’s committee of the whole voted Friday to approve eight of Parker’s nominees, including current board President Reginald Streater. Those nominees will now head to a full council vote next Thursday.

In addition to Streater, Crystal Cubbage, Cheryl Harper, Whitney Jones, Wanda Novales, Joan Stern, Sarah-Ashley Andrews, and ChauWing Lam all received Council approval. Wilkerson’s nomination was deferred. The new board must be seated by May 1, but it doesn’t have to be a complete slate of nine members.

Leading up to the hearing, rumors circulated that Streater, as well as Wilkerson, would not receive enough votes because of their recent votes in opposition to several new charter schools. Streater and the rest of the nominees, barring Wilkerson, ultimately earned a unanimous voice vote from those council members present to move ahead. However, the overall tenor of the councilmember’s questions and comments signaled many of them would like to see more charter schools — specifically Black-led charter schools — in the city.

After the meeting, the board nominees made it a point to say that they were sticking together as a slate.

“We have unfinished business,” said Streater, as Wilkerson stood beside him, adding that Parker “picked the nine people who she thought could get the job done.”

Wilkerson declined to comment on why she thought there was opposition to her nomination.

Council President Kenyatta Johnson gave no reason for delaying the vote on Wilkerson, and did not speak with reporters after the hearing concluded. But based on council members’ questions and comments, several members seemed to want to send a message regarding the board’s charter school policies.

They apparently focused on Wilkerson since she led the board from 2018 until 2022; during that period, no new charter schools were approved. She was also chair of the School Reform Commission for two years before that when the district was still under state control.

The school board is the sole authorizer of charter schools in the city.

After a six-and-a-half-hour hearing, Isaiah Thomas, the chair of the council’s education committee, told reporters that “we felt like it was best to continue dialogue” around Wilkerson’s nomination but did not give a reason for the opposition. “Once we have more of a consensus, I think that you’ll see a decision being made,” Thomas said.

In addition to the intense questioning about charters, returning board members were grilled about the “deplorable” condition of school buildings and the absence of a promised school facilities plan from the school district. They were also pressed about the new, lottery-based special admissions policy that has contributed to a surge in empty student seats in many of the district’s top schools.

Thomas led a particularly pointed line of questioning directed at the four incumbent board members about what he alleges is a discriminatory charter authorization process that’s resulted in the district closing an outsize number of Black-led charter schools in recent years.

Of the charter schools that board has voted to close, Thomas said 80% of those were founded or led by Black people, even though they comprise only about 25% of the 82 charters in the city.

“Those numbers aren’t racist?” Thomas asked during a particularly intense exchange with Streater.

In fact, from 2010 to 2021, the district’s governing body voted not to renew or revoke the charters of 13 charter schools. Eight of those — a little over 61% — were Black-led.

Political divisions over the treatment of Black-led charters in Philadelphia came to a head last year following the release of an independent report examining alleged bias in the charter school approval process.

The report determined that there was no intentional bias in the authorization process. But the authors did point to inherent flaws in the system that resulted in Black-led charter schools being non renewed or closed in “greater numbers than their peers.”

Several councilmembers and public speakers on Friday chastised the board for what they perceive as a failure to address any of the systemic flaws noted in the report.

Councilmember Anthony Phillips outright asked the board members: “Will you champion public charter schools as vital partners in creating a system of great schools that better serves Philadelphia students and families?”

None of the nominees answered that question directly. But board member Lam said: “Every charter decision made is a difficult one,” noting that while public dollars fund charter schools, the district does not manage them.

Councilmembers hold considerable funding power over the district, determining how much of city tax dollars are allocated to schools. The Board of Education has no taxing power of its own.

Parker never said explicitly during the campaign whether she favored the creation of more charter schools. But her close ties to charter consultant Dawn Chavous — who is married to Council President Johnson and served as chief of staff to state Sen. Anthony Williams, one of the state’s leading charter proponents — has raised eyebrows among traditional public school supporters.

Chavous also serves as spokesperson for the African American Charter Coalition, which first leveled the allegations of racial bias against the school board regarding Black-led charters.

Several public speakers expressed their support for Wilkerson including Loree Jones, the district’s former director of external affairs. She praised Wilkerson’s “brilliant competence and solid balanced approach” to decision-making.

Asked if Wilkerson’s nomination would be considered before the May deadline, Thomas said, “I’m not sure. I mean, negotiations are unpredictable.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board adopts preliminary $4.5 billion budget

2024-03-29T01:42:05+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education adopted a preliminary $4.5 billion budget Thursday for fiscal year 2025 that shows its yearly expenditures will outpace revenue but will be balanced with reserves.

The “lump sum” budget presented by Chief Financial Officer Michael Herbstman does not include any significant cuts at the school level. A five-year projection shows escalating shortfalls each year, starting with nearly $88 million in 2025 and ballooning to $745 million in 2029.

Those projections do not take into account any extra money coming to the city as a result of last year’s Commonwealth Court decision, which declared Pennsylvania’s current school funding system unconstitutional.

“Even as we face declining revenues, we are committed to doing everything we can to protect the classroom at all costs,” said Herbstman in presenting the numbers to board members.

Even though yearly revenue is falling behind expenditures, the district will end 2025 with a fund balance of $695 million due to the reserves, according to Herbstman’s numbers. Those reserves include what’s left of federal pandemic aid and other sources.

The budget does include proposed increases in education funding from Gov. Josh Shapiro and Mayor Cherelle Parker. Shapiro has proposed increasing state aid to education by $1.4 billion, about $240 million of which would come to Philadelphia. He called it the first downpayment on bringing the state’s school funding into constitutional compliance.

Parker has proposed a $100 million increase in the city’s contribution to the schools, while reiterating that the state should bear most of the burden of making education funding fair and adequate across the state.

Superintendent Tony Watlington made the case during the meeting that the district has made good use of additional funds, citing the results of a national study showing that Philadelphia recovered to pre-pandemic achievement levels faster than any other urban district. He noted that the state’s Basic Education Funding Commission determined that Philadelphia is underfunded by at least $1.4 billion annually.

He said that he planned to pilot in 15 schools an extended day and year-round school, which Parker proposed during the mayoral campaign. He did not put a price tag on the initiative.

He also said he planned to relaunch Parent University, which offers classes so parents can help their children with schoolwork, and start a major recruitment effort to get more Black and Latino male teachers.

The board approved the preliminary budget by a unanimous 8-0 vote. Board member Leticia Egea-Hinton was absent.

The district’s final budget must be approved by both the city, while the state’s contribution to education is still a matter of negotiation as it finalizes its spending plan. The board will hold a hearing on April 25, and city council will hear testimony on April 30. The city approves its final budget on May 30 and the state on June 30.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker picks 5 new members for school board

2024-04-01T18:13:19+00:00

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Mayor Cherelle Parker is pushing to remake the Philadelphia Board of Education by appointing five new people to the nine-member body, including two with strong past ties to charter schools and organizations.

But Parker, who released her nine appointees on Monday, also wants to keep the board’s president, Reginald Streater, along with three other current members.

The new names Parker chose are:

Crystal Cubbage, a former teacher and executive director for the Philadelphia Learning Collaborative.
Cheryl Harper, a former Philadelphia district employee and distinguished educator for the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Whitney Jones, the chief financial officer at Children’s Crisis Treatment Center who has also worked for the nationwide KIPP charter network and for a charter school consulting firm.
Wanda Novales, founding CEO and principal of Pan American Charter School.
Joan Stern, a public finance attorney and former special counsel for the district.

In addition to Streater, the current members chosen by Parker to stay on the board are Sarah-Ashley Andrews, Joyce Wilkerson, and ChauWing Lam.

Parker’s picks will now be submitted to the City Council, which will hold public hearings and vote on each nominee. If the council confirms her picks, as is generally expected, then the new board will take office May 1 to start four-year terms.

The Philadelphia school board has the power to drive education decisions in the city including voting on and monitoring the district’s $4.5 billion budget, hiring the superintendent, and influencing curriculum decisions including the purchase of new materials. It also has the power to authorize new charter schools, close underperforming ones, and expand charter seats.

Education advocates have been watching Parker’s decisions closely to see whether her administration would preside over a new era for charter school expansion. Since regaining local control from the state in 2018, the school board has not approved a new charter school but has allowed current charters to grow by more than 2,000 seats.

“I said I wanted a school board with a diversity of skills, from different neighborhoods, sectors and communities, some with deep knowledge, some with new ideas, a group that truly reflects my vision of One Philly, a United City,” Parker said in a statement Monday. “I’m confident we’ve assembled that board.”

Current members Leticia Egea-Hinton, Cecelia Thompson, and Lisa Salley sought to stay on the board and were among the 27 names submitted to Parker by the Educational Nominating Panel. But Parker didn’t reappoint them. Board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez and member Julia Danzy previously took themselves out of the running.

During her campaign last year, Parker indicated she may be open to growing the charter sector, which are publicly funded but privately run schools and enroll upwards of 70,000 students in the city. Thompson and Salley, who were not selected by Parker to continue on the board, voted several times in favor of renewing or approving new charter schools that other members opposed.

“I want quality seats and I don’t care where they are,” Parker said in an interview with Chalkbeat before the election, adding that she “will not allow anyone to act as if district-run and charter schools are warring factions.”

Alongside Superintendent Tony Watlington, the new board will also be tasked with determining what Parker’s promise for “year-round school” means in practice.

Watlington has said that he plans to start piloting year-round schooling this summer at 15 schools. At last week’s school board meeting, Watlington said plans for that pilot are still “under development” and he is “not yet ready to roll anything out.”

Parker said she would be appearing alongside her nominees in a press conference Tuesday. If confirmed, the new board picked by Parker will have seven women and two men.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s who could be chosen for the new Philadelphia Board of Education

2024-03-13T00:06:34+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education will have at least two new members, according to a list of candidates submitted to Mayor Cherelle Parker.

The 13-member Education Nominating Panel voted to approve its shortlist of 27 finalists at a public meeting Tuesday evening. The list includes former teachers and administrators, education advocates, business leaders, and labor union officials and appears to represent a range of ages and neighborhoods.

Otis Bullock Jr., chair of the panel, said the group was “just looking for diversity all around the board.”

“You need some folks on here with some gravitas … and legislative experience,” Bullock said. He added if the school district is looking to legislators in Harrisburg for additional funding for the cash-strapped district, “you need some folks that know how to do that.”

Parker’s board picks will have the power to set the education agenda in the nation’s eighth largest school district. Board members can authorize or deny new charter schools, hire and evaluate superintendents, guide curriculum decisions, and approve the district’s $4.5 billion budget.

Seven of the names on the panel’s list are current board members, but board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez and Julia Danzy were not on the list. Earlier this month, Fix-Lopez unexpectedly announced she would be resigning, and Danzy had previously indicated she would not be reapplying.

Which candidates Parker chooses to sit on the board — in conjunction with her budget proposal expected to be released on Thursday — will signal her education priorities for the city.

Parker has indicated she may be more open to expanding the charter school sector than her predecessor Jim Kenney. The school board has not approved a new charter school since 2018. Charters, which are publicly funded but privately run, now educate upwards of 70,000 students in Philadelphia, about a third of those enrolled in tax-supported city schools.

Indeed, many of the public comments at Tuesday’s meeting included calls for more charter seats and resources for those schools, a fair authorization process, and an end to charter school closures.

Many of the written comments, which were read aloud at the meeting, were identically worded, and echoed something Parker has said. She wants to eliminate the “us vs. them mentality” between district-run and charter schools.

Despite speculation that Parker’s nominating panel would try to load the shortlist with pro-charter activists, few of the 27 people on the list appear to have direct or deep connections to charter schools.

This is the first full school board nomination process since 2018, when former Mayor Kenney chose his nine appointees to replace the School Reform Commission. It had governed the city school district since 2001, when the state took over the district citing financial and academic distress. Since then, Kenney appointed a few additional members to replace some who resigned.

Lee Huang, a former board member, said Tuesday he would not “sugarcoat” that serving on the board was challenging at times. The position is unpaid, demanding, and comes with intense public scrutiny.

“It was long hours …. and you’ll get yelled at,” Huang said. “That’s part of the job.”

Parker will choose nine people (or request more names if she is not happy with the 27) and send those to City Council, which will hold public hearings. With its approval, the board members will take their seats starting May 1.

In alphabetical order, here’s the list. The mayor’s office provided biographies for each candidate.

Sarah-Ashley Andrews (current board member)
Nakia Carr
Timothy Crowther
Crystal Cubbage
Leticia Egea-Hinton (current board member)
Cindy Farlino
Mark Gittelman
Cheryl Harper
Keola Harrington
Michael Henderson
Jameika Id-Deen
David Irizarry
Dominique Johnson
Whitney Jones
ChauWing Lam (current board member)
Letisha Laws
Maddie Luebbert
Colleen McCauley
Cheryl Mobley-Stimpson
Wanda Novales
Michelle Palmer
Lisa Salley (current board member)
Marisa Shaaban
Joan Stern
Reginald Streater (current board president)
Cecelia Thompson (current board member)
Joyce Wilkerson (current board member)

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Who will be on the Philadelphia Board of Education?

2024-03-11T20:21:35+00:00

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This week, Philadelphia residents will get their first glimpse at whom Mayor Cherelle Parker could name to the Board of Education.

The 13-member Education Nominating Panel is expected to release its list of 27 potential candidates at a public meeting at 5 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall.

Philly’s school board is appointed, not elected, meaning Parker has the power to remake the entire board if she chooses.

Her picks will have the power to approve new charter schools, oversee the district superintendent, vote on contracts and major spending items for the district, and drive the conversation around local education issues. Tuesday’s panel meeting will be residents’ first look at whom Parker trusts to sit on the board.

The panel will recommend 27 candidates to Parker for consideration for appointment — three names for each of the nine board seats. It’s unclear if any of the current board members have reapplied for their positions. Sharon Ward, Philadelphia’s new deputy chief education officer, declined to say Monday whether any current board members are on the list.

Though the panel has been meeting quietly and mostly in executive session since convening on Feb. 1, there have already been some signals that big change is coming. Last week, longtime board member and Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez unexpectedly announced her resignation, citing a medical procedure and the time demands of the position.

According to a statement from Parker’s office announcing the upcoming meeting, the panel received applications from 121 people.

The panel considered those applications and conducted more than 60 interviews, Ward said. Parker will consider each one and make nine appointments with the advice and consent of City Council members following a public hearing.

Each board member’s term is four years and runs concurrent to the mayor’s. Once chosen, any new members will start in their role on May 1. Board members are only allowed to serve three full terms.

In these early days of Parker’s tenure, critics and advocates have paid close attention to her commitment to transparency in government. Her handling of the school board nomination process has been sharply critiqued by individuals including Lisa Haver, cofounder of the education advocacy group Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools and an outspoken advocate for deeper public inclusion in city government.

Haver told Chalkbeat the “whole [nominating] process was a sham,” and said Parker’s administration has not sufficiently included the public in the consideration of new board members.

“This is a completely closed process in which the public has absolutely no say,” Haver said. She pointed out unlike other school boards in the state, Philadelphia’s board is not elected meaning “constituents are already disenfranchised here.”

“Given that, the mayor should be doing everything she can to make this as open a process as possible,” Haver said.

In response to Chalkbeat’s questions about transparency, Ward said the Parker administration has been following the process established in the city’s Home Rule Charter, which she said is “very prescribed.”

“We have encouraged folks to speak out and to talk a little bit about what they want to see in a school board panel and what they would like to see in the school district,” Ward said. She said members of the public who want to add their thoughts should do so at the meeting tomorrow or online.

How to get involved

If you want to give feedback on the candidates for new school board members, the city has opened a public comment period which runs from March 5 to May 1.

People can sign up to speak at tomorrow’s public meeting or submit written comments.

The board is also currently looking for new, nonvoting student representatives for the 2024-25 school year. Current ninth and 10th grade students who are interested in applying or learning more can find information about the application process here.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board vice president resigns

2024-03-04T23:15:09+00:00

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Philadelphia Board of Education Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez has resigned, effective April 18, and has taken herself out of consideration for a future board appointment.

Fix-Lopez cited a planned medical procedure as the reason in a statement on Monday.

In an interview, Fix-Lopez said that with the turn of the new year she got “more concerned about the demand of time.” She has an 8-year-old attending Childs Elementary School in Point Breeze and a 4-year-old who will enter kindergarten there in the fall.

She said she initially applied to stay, but withdrew from the nominating process. “I had planned full steam ahead,” she said, but when she was filling out the kindergarten application, “I slowed down to reflect. The time is too much.”

This unexpected shakeup on the board — where the members are appointed by the mayor — could create an opening for what new Mayor Cherelle Parker intends for the future of the body. Parker has signaled she may be more open to expanding the charter school sector in the city than her predecessor, Jim Kenney, and she could be angling to appoint board members who share her perspective. The board has not approved a new charter school since 2018.

Fix-Lopez said that her resignation was unconnected to any future board appointments.

“I get the optics of the timing. But honestly it’s totally separate,” she told Chalkbeat.

The board serves as the sole charter school authorizer in the city and member terms run concurrent to the mayor’s. In the years when a new mayoral term begins, board terms start on May 1.

The process of naming a new board is underway but has been quiet. Until Fix-Lopez’s resignation announcement, the future of any board members’ positions has been uncertain and Parker’s office has repeatedly declined requests for comment about the process.

Parker has convened her Education Nominating Panel, which is interviewing 121 candidates who applied by the Feb. 1 deadline. The panel is charged with recommending 27 people, three for each of the nine seats. Parker, who took office in January, will make the final appointments, who then must be approved by City Council. The panel next meets on March 12, where it is expected to release their list of recommended candidates.

Parker has not indicated whether she intends to renominate any of the current members or remake the board entirely. Board President Reginald Streater has indicated that he would like to remain.

In a Monday statement, Parker offered “deep thanks” to Fix-Lopez for her service. Streater called her “an incredible educator … who has left an indelible mark on the board” by pushing it “to govern from a student-centered perspective with student achievement at its core.”

Fix-Lopez, who teaches English at Philadelphia Community College, was first appointed in 2018 by Kenney when the district was returned to local control by the state. At the time, a nine-member board replaced the School Reform Commission that had governed the district since 2001.

She was reappointed in 2020 and picked to serve as vice president in 2022 and 2023. Members elect the president and vice president each December.

In her time on the board, Fix-Lopez has been active in establishing and enforcing its Goals and Guardrails since they were approved in 2021 to monitor district progress around academics and set standards for creating welcoming school environments for all students. She took a special interest in district policy regarding transgender and gender-nonconforming students, and in expanding translation services for families who don’t speak English.

She also took the lead in evaluations for both Superintendent Tony Watlington and his predecessor, William Hite.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board denies charter school application for third time

2024-03-01T02:49:54+00:00

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Philadelphia Board of Education members voted to deny an application for a new charter high school Thursday night, citing declining academic performance data and several recent charter school closures in the city.

Board members voted 6-3 to deny the proposed Global Leadership Academy International Charter High School, which sought to enroll 150 students in ninth grade its first year and build up to 600 students in grades 9-12 by year five.

Board President Reginald Streater said the decision was a “hard one” because of the strong community support for the school. But he said he had too many concerns with the details of the application and cited his experience watching multiple charter schools “collapse” in recent years.

The board hasn’t approved a new charter school in the city since 2018. But Mallory Fix-Lopez, the board’s vice president, noted that the board has “expanded the charter sector by over 2,000 seats” since 2018. It remains to be seen whether the board’s stance on charters clashes with new Mayor Cherelle Parker’s vision for public education in the city.

Global Leadership Network CEO Naomi Johnson-Booker, a longtime Philadelphia educator, has tried for years to add a high school to the already existing two Global Leadership K-8 schools. But the board has repeatedly rejected her attempts.

One of GLA’s schools, Global Leadership Academy at Huey, is a Renaissance charter school. The district turned the school over to the network in 2016, but it has since failed to significantly improve student academic performance.

Peng Chao, chief of the district’s Charter Schools Office, presented academic data for GLA’s existing schools which shows sharp declines in the percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced proficient in English Language Arts and Math standardized tests from the 2017-18 school year to 2022-23.

Chao also noted the charter group’s proposed curriculum materials for high school English language arts, mathematics, and science “still do not fully demonstrate that the proposed charter school would meet all grade level requirements” set at the state level.

“There is a question there as to whether they would truly be able to achieve all of their academic requirements,” Chao said.

In defense of her schools’ performance, Johnson-Booker cited a flood in one of the school buildings that interrupted testing during one school year and the impacts of the pandemic that affected school performance nationwide.

Several students, parents, and elected officials testified in support of GLA and the proposed high school at the Thursday board meeting, saying the school community provides a safe and positive environment for students in the city.

But ultimately, board members said they had too many concerns with the application.

Board member Lisa Salley, who voted to approve the school, took a different view. She said the charter school office’s “analysis is anemic and needs work.”

The charter school approval process has come under fire in recent months for alleged bias against Black-led schools. However, an investigation found district leadership never deliberately discriminated against such schools.

In a statement following the vote, Ken Kilpatrick, a spokesperson for Global Leadership International, called the board’s decision “myopic and selfish” and said the organization “will be reviewing our legal options and will announce our next steps when prepared to do so.”

Logan Peterson, a spokesperson for the board, said the network can appeal to the state’s charter appeals board or resubmit their application.

Meanwhile, Parker’s assertions that “high quality” charter seats would be valued as much as traditional district seats during her tenure as mayor have raised questions as to whether the school board would begin approving charters again.

The board’s decision could have significant political ramifications. Parker has convened her Education Nominating Panel to consider reappointing or remaking the board to reflect her priorities. She’s given no signal yet whether she intends to replace any of the current members. Parker could decide to replace none, some, or all of them.

The next public meeting of the Education Nominating Panel is scheduled for March 12.

Board approves contracts for parent stipends, nurses

In addition to the charter decision, the board voted to approve more than $230 million in contracts for classroom furniture, payments for substitute nurses, stipends for parents who drive their kids to school, and more.

Here are some of the items included in those contracts:

$60 million for “furniture and classroom fixtures.”
$50 million for “educational resources” including textbooks, gym supplies, science materials, and other items. This does not include core curriculum items.
$10 million for ESS Northeast, LLC for payments to substitute nurses and other school staff.
$10.5 million for a contract with The Home Depot for custodial supplies and equipment.
$36 million for monthly payments to parents who drive their children to school. According to the district, there are approximately 14,000 households or parents that are enrolled in the program for the 2023-2024 school year.
$2.7 million for Catapult Learning, LLC and Littera Education, Inc. for a high-impact tutoring pilot in two middle schools serving grades 6-8 for the 4th marking period. (Less than 1% of students used these programs as of 2023.)
$10 million for furniture and equipment for “Digital Literacy Labs” including computers and “codeable robots.” According to the district, there are 113 elementary and middle schools that offer digital literacy in the city. The district wants an additional 74 schools to have access to these labs by the start of the next school year.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

In reversal, Philly school board votes to renew charter school amid shifting political climate

2024-01-26T03:14:10+00:00

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In a rare move, the Philadelphia Board of Education voted Thursday to reverse its previous decision not to renew a charter school, meaning it can continue operating for another three years — with 19 separate conditions.

By a unanimous vote, the board passed a settlement agreement that renewed until 2027 the charter of Southwest Leadership Academy, a K-8 school with nearly 600 students that had been having academic, operational, and financial problems, according to the board’s Charter Schools Office.

“I expect the school to make progress over the course of the charter term and build on the recent increases in academic achievement we have seen through the most recent data from the 2022-2023 school year,” said Board President Reginald Streater.

Streater noted that the Charter Schools Office recommended that the board vote to extend the school’s charter, although he also said he remained concerned “about the school’s current financial position.”

After the vote, the school’s CEO Leigh Purnell and Principal Christina Green hugged in relief.

Last June, citing operational, financial, and academic problems, the board voted 7-2 not to renew Southwest Leadership Academy’s charter, putting the school’s future in jeopardy. It has continued to educate nearly 600 students as the school’s appeal of the board’s decision has played out.

The board’s latest decision comes amid heightened pressure from lawmakers and advocates who have claimed Black-led charter schools, like Southwest Leadership Academy, face systemic racial bias in the city. An independent report released in October found no “intentional bias” from district leaders against those schools. But it called the rate of closure of Black-led charter schools “concerning” and said a problematic authorizing and evaluation process could lead to the perception of bias.

The decision also hints at a change in the political climate for charter schools under new Mayor Cherelle Parker, who during her campaign repeatedly said she would not tolerate competition between district and charter schools.

“I will not allow anyone to act as if district-run and charter schools are warring factions,” she told Chalkbeat in an interview.

The board hasn’t approved a new charter school since 2018.

Though they don’t outright control it, the mayor and city council hold a lot of sway over the school district. Parker has the ability to appoint all nine members of the school board; that process is set to begin soon. The city also controls local funding for schools since the school board has no independent taxing power.

On Thursday, Peng Chao, the director of the Charter Schools Office, told board members that the school’s trustees and academic team were working hard to straighten out its problems, and said his office would continue to help. He noted that six years ago, Southwest Leadership Academy was one of the highest-performing charters in Philadelphia.

Before the vote, several students urged the board to keep the school open.

“I would not be who I am today” without the education and guidance she got at Southwest Leadership Academy, said Renee Fernandes, who is now a senior at William Penn Charter, a private Quaker high school “I never saw a private school in my future, but SLA made it happen.”

Purnell and other speakers pointed out that the school is a haven for many students from the African diaspora in Philadelphia. Southwest Leadership Academy “is the very first school where I’ve been able to culturally connect with students,” said Arun Arungodade, who said she was a member of that diaspora.

Shirleen Thomas-Moore, who described herself as “guardian and auntie” to a fourth and fifth grader at Southwest Leadership Academy, said they both learned to read in kindergarten. “I am pleased with the education there,” she said.

In advance of the vote, Purnell thanked the board for letting the school continue. In an interview after the vote, she said, “Our proficiency scores are not where we want them to be, however we are able to achieve tremendous growth with our students.”

Charter renewal includes conditions for academics, financial controls

The board identified several serious concerns about Southwest Leadership Academy before members voted last year not to renew its charter.

A 2022 evaluation by the board’s Charter School Office found that the school didn’t meet standards for academics, organizational compliance and viability, or financial health. The evaluation also found numerous problems with enrollment procedures and employee background checks.

A month after the board’s June 2023 vote not to renew the school’s charter, Southwest appealed the board’s ruling to the state Charter Appeals Board. Critics of the board’s move at the time included Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who chairs City Council’s education committee.

The resolution approved by the board on Thursday offers a conditional five-year renewal of the charter. It is retroactive to 2022, so will expire in 2027. With the settlement, the state appeal is rendered moot.

The renewal agreement includes requirements for academic improvement, but the targets include more flexible options if the school can’t meet the most stringent stipulations.

The conditions say that ideally, math, language arts, and science test scores improve enough to be “no more than 5 points below the district average,” or the average for comparable schools based on grade span and demographics.

If the school doesn’t meet that standard, it will be renewed by the board if it meets average growth benchmarks set by the state, or if it achieves “an annual increase in the proficiency rate” in each subject, “year over year.”

According to state data, 24% of students scored proficient or advanced in English Language Arts on the Pennsylvania state test in 2022-23, up from 19% the year before. In math, 10.1% of students scored proficient or advanced, up from 5 % in 2021-22. Its science scores are somewhat better.

The resolution also said that the school must stop its “gender based lottery” process for admitting its students. The school has separate boys’ and girls’ classrooms.

Southwest Leadership Academy must also prove that all teachers and aides dealing with special education students have the proper certification. The school must also hire a consultant to help recruit and onboard new board members and assure that they are properly trained in “financial oversight and governance.” It also specifies that all board members submit all required financial documents to guard against any potential conflicts of interest.

Additionally, the school is under a tight deadline to submit a “financial and internal controls plan” by Jan. 31.

Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools asked the board for more transparency and consistency in the charter authorization and renewal process.

In 2018, shortly after the city regained control of the district from the state, the newly installed Board of Education reversed the decision of the School Reform Commission to close Richard Allen Charter School for poor performance. Instead, the board gave it a renewal with many conditions. The school is still operating.

Larry Jones, the founder of Richard Allen, is a leader of the African American Charter School Coalition.

At Thursday’s meeting, representatives of the African American Charter School Coalition urged the board to impose a moratorium on closing any charters until the renewal and evaluation process is fixed.

In 2022, the board issued a notice of nonrenewal to Laboratory Charter School, which also has Black leadership, but several months later reversed itself and renewed the charter for five years.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia district will announce changes to lottery-based selective admissions at end of July

2023-06-30T18:15:53+00:00

Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington announced Thursday that the school district will further revise its process for admission to its most selective schools, based on recommendations from a consulting firm hired to study the impact of a lottery system introduced in 2021.

That system was introduced in an effort to increase the proportion of Black and Latino students at the most selective schools — Masterman and Central — and replaced a long-standing process in which principals generally made final admissions decisions. Instead, all students who met minimal requirements based on scores on the PSSA state standardized test, grades, attendance, and behavior records could enter the lottery.

In other business at its monthly meeting, the Board of Education approved more than $205 million in contracts, mandated Juneteenth instruction, and voted not to renew the charter of Southwest Leadership Academy.

In the presentation on the admissions process for selective schools, the consultants, Accenture, recommended that a strict PSSA cutoff should be eliminated as a requirement for several of the schools. In selective schools that start in middle grades, they suggested, students should not have to reapply to continue through the ninth grade.

Accenture conducted a survey of counselors, principals, students, and other stakeholders, in which 45% of principals said they were dissatisfied with the PSSA requirement, Nahomie Louis and Nicole Newman of Accenture told the board.

Additionally, that process gave preference to students in certain ZIP codes, primarily in North and West Philadelphia, who were historically underrepresented at Masterman and Central. That provision has been challenged by a group of parents who say it is a “blatantly unconstitutional race-based system.”

The consultants said that only 20% of persons surveyed said they liked the lottery process. And, based on data so far, that system has made only halting progress in reaching its goal and had unintended consequences. While the demographics at Central and Masterman showed slight increases from 2021-22 to 2022-23 in the proportion of Black and Latino students, it left hundreds of vacancies in some of the city’s other criteria-based schools, mostly those that had high Black enrollment.

Students also don’t appear to be in favor of the lottery system. Accenture’s survey found that 54% of students said they wanted to remove the lottery, and 38% said if it continues, they wanted to be able to rank their schools of choice rather than just submit a list of five.

Under the current process, students can get into all five schools or none, and they could get into a school or schools they really don’t want to attend while being shut out of their first choice.

Accenture consultants studied the systems in other cities, including Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC as part of their review. They found those cities more precisely tailored their plans to local circumstances and preferences.

“Many other districts already optimized their systems and curated them based on the needs of students,” they said, recommending that Philadelphia similarly “customize” its process. They also said Philadelphia should hire a staff dedicated to overhauling the process and have revisions and improvements in place by fall 2025.

Accenture has a $298,000 contract to evaluate the school selection process.

Board approved millions for building maintenance, tech, asbestos abatement

The board considered 104 separate items. Through its consent agenda, in which many items are voted on in a bloc with little or not discussion, the board voted to approve more than $205 million in spending on school building maintenance, food, lease agreements, an “instructional management system,” and more.

Some of the big ticket items:

$26.3 million for Contract with NCS Pearson for Schoolnet Instructional Management System, which comes on top of a $70 million expenditure approved at the last meeting for new curricular materials in reading, math, and science.
$69 million on an agreement with a city agency, the Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development (PAID), to aid with capital projects involving the building and renovation of school buildings.
$24 million for “Contracts with Various Vendors for Asbestos Abatement in Various Schools”
$20 million for “Contracts with Various Vendors for Professional Environmental Design and Testing Consulting Services.”

Board member Cecelia Thompson voted no on several smaller spending items, including $6 million for snow removal and $300,000 for window shades, saying they came without explanation. Lisa Salley voted no on two resolutions to spend money on outside law firms.

The board also voted to terminate the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees (Salley dissented.

Board rejects charter renewal

The board also voted 7-2 not to renew the charter for Southwest Leadership Academy Charter school. The vote came after Rudolph Garcia, who presided over hearings following the board’s first vote to close the school in June, 2022, said Southwest Leadership has not improved its low academic record and is teetering on financial viability. Garcia presided over a hearing held in January and February contesting the board’s intent to revoke the charter.

Last month, the board denied the application to open a Global Leadership Academy high school. That vote and other denials have led some officials to allege that the board is biased against Black-led charters.

Before voting, board members repeatedly asked Garcia if there was any evidence of an upward trend. Garcia, unequivocally, said no.

“If I had seen some progress, if they were still performing below comparison groups, but catching up, I would have seriously considered that they be given more time to do it,” he said. “But that didn’t happen.”

He noted the pandemic was disruptive, but said all schools had to cope with that. “Everybody was affected, but the relationship between them and the other comparison groups didn’t change,” Garcia said.

The K-8 school, founded in 2007 with just over 600 students, was trying to expand, but “got ahead of their skis,” Garcia said. It bought property to build a new school, but were not able to enroll enough students to justify or pay for the expansion, he said.

Board member Lisa Salley, who voted no on the closure along with Cecelia Thompson, said she was concerned that the audit of the school’s finances seemed “biased.” “I don’t see the objective evidence to support” the nonrenewal recommendation, she said.

Parent Robyn Fernandes, who has children at the school, disputed Garcia’s conclusions, saying that the enrollment is 92% Black, and those students outperform Black students in other charters and in comparable district schools.

She upbraided the board members for never visiting the school or taking to parents and the community about its positive impact on students. “No one has had a conversation with us,” she said. “No one has set foot in the school.”

At its May meeting, the board voted down an application of Global Leadership Academy.

Peng Chao, director of the board’s Charter Schools Office, said that 14 charters are up for renewal this year with a total enrollment of 14,000 students, one of the largest cohorts ever considered at one time.

Chao gave more detailed information on five of those schools that do not meet standards in one of more categories: Deep Roots, KIPP North Philadelphia, Mastery Prep Elementary, Mathematics Civics and Sciences, and Christopher Columbus.

Mathematics Civics and Sciences also failed to meet standards for organizational compliance. And Chao noted that while the school reports a 100% graduation rate, the performance of its students on Keystone exams measuring proficiency in math, language arts, and sciences fall below comparable schools.

Christopher Columbus met academic standards, but failed to meet organizational compliance benchmarks.

He recommended that Columbus be renewed for five years with conditions, while the others be renewed for just one year with conditions.

At the meeting, Watlington also said that 10th through 12th graders at Frankford High School, which had been closed due to asbestos, would return in September to a refurbished wing in the school. Officials had previously announced that the building would not be open next school year and all students would be relocated.

Now, only ninth graders will go elsewhere, to the third floor of Clemente Middle School, Watlington said. An assistant principal and other staffers will be on that site and students will be provided transportation back to Frankford for afterschool and other out-of-school-time activities, said Associate Superintendent for High Schools Tomas Hanna.

Students will be required to learn about Juneteenth

The board also approved a resolution to make sure all students learn about Juneteenth, but amended the original resolution that said it should be taught “in all content areas” from grades kindergarten through 12th. It now says Juneteenth lessons should be taught “to all students where appropriate in the curriculum” starting in 2023-24.

Juneteenth is a national holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. Although President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared “all persons held as slaves” in Confederate states shall be free, on January 1, 1863, freedom for many would only be gained later. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers informed enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, that they were free people; and this event, eventually known as Juneteenth, became a celebration of independence for Black people.

At Thursday’s board meeting, Watlington, a former history teacher, noted that most persons of African descent lived under slavery for 246 years – from the first arrival of enslaved Africans to English colonies in 1619 to the abolition of slavery in 1863, and then under Jim Crow segregation for another 100. And their civil and voting rights “continue to be under attack” in some parts of the country, he said. .

The board resolution calls for the school district to collaborate with educators, administrators, and community partners to develop and provide age-appropriate instructional resources, materials and professional development opportunities that support the teaching of Juneteenth.

The district will also engage parents, families, and community members by offering resources, hosting events, and promoting dialogue to enhance understanding and appreciation of Juneteenth and Black history.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Passing a budget, praising a plan, telling a charter school no: Philadelphia’s long board meeting

2023-05-26T16:17:26+00:00

At a jam-packed meeting running deep into Thursday night, Philadelphia’s Board of Education adopted the district’s budget, reviewed Superintendent Tony Watlington’s proposed strategic plan, rejected a charter school application, and more.

But while Watlington presented a hopeful vision for the district through his strategic plan, dubbed “Accelerate Philly,” the running theme of the meeting was doing more with less. Officials said without more funding and resources, it would be nearly impossible to accomplish some of their loftiest goals.

Asked by a board member if the district has the staffing to make all of the programs in his strategic plan a reality, Watlington replied: “The short answer is no.”

“We don’t have the resources and the infrastructure” to accomplish everything the district needs to do, Watlington said. He added his administration is looking at how they can “massage” the resources the district has “before we ask for more,” from the state.

Still, board member Leticia Egea-Hinton said Watlington’s five-year strategic plan “certainly fills me with not just hope, but expectation” that the district can make gains in student achievement, safety, and well-being.

Board praises strategic plan work from educators, students

Watlington presented to board members the same summary of his five-year strategic plan his office published on Wednesday. After members of the public implored the superintendent and the board to release the plan to the public before discussing and voting on it, the board delayed its vote on whether to adopt “Accelerate Philly” from Thursday’s meeting until June 1.

One of the plan’s most notable elements is its year-round school pilot; Democratic mayoral nominee Cherelle Parker supports a move to year-round schooling in some form. Other proposals in Watlington’s blueprint include:

Replacing all security cameras at the 150 schools that have them.
Piloting a controversial “Opengate weapons detection” system for middle schools.
Expanding the Safe Path Program where adults are hired to monitor the streets surrounding schools to ensure students can walk home safely.
Recruiting and retaining certified school nurses for all schools.
Launching a “two-way communication system” to respond to parent and community member inquiries. Watlington said that many community members have complained they would reach out to the district and never hear back. Under the new two-way system, Watlington said, everyone who reaches out should expect a response.

The plan also proposes expanding the ninth grade On-Track (also referred to as Success Networks) program in an effort to boost graduation rates and reduce the number of students who drop out. According to Watlington, 3,609 students have dropped out of Philadelphia schools this academic year so far. As of October 1, 2022, total enrollment in Philadelphia public schools was 197,288, according to district data.

Board President Reginald Streater and other members largely praised the plan on Thursday and acknowledged the “sweat equity” from educators, students, administrators, and community members that went into writing the plan.

Board member Lisa Salley asked how the district will track its progress putting the plan into action. Watlington said he will create a new team within his office and will employ “external folks” to “advise a small and minimal staff” who will make sure the plan is carried out.

Watlington said he intends to give an update every January on how the district is making progress on the plan.

Board member Chau Wing Lam, speaking first in Chinese, also drew attention to the fact that there is nothing in the plan about “cultivating the diversity of the students in our system.” Lam said she would have liked to see specific attention paid to improving the district’s delivery of language offerings.

New $4.45 billion budget funds teachers, counselors

Watlington’s long-term vision got an early boost from the board’s Thursday vote to approve a $4.45 billion budget for fiscal 2024 that includes funding to:

Hire additional counselors for the highest-need schools.
Add 15 new safety officer positions.
Hire more general education teachers and special education teachers.
Purchase the new two-way communications system Watlington has touted among other costs.

Still, district officials said the money they have is not nearly enough to fund the district’s needs. Estimates from the Education Law Center and Public Interest Law Center have said “fair funding” for the city’s schools would require an additional annual funding of $1.1 billion and $318 million from the state and city, respectively.

And making progress on all of Watlington’s proposals in his strategic plan will become more difficult as the district approaches an anticipated fiscal cliff after 2024 when federal COVID relief money is scheduled to run out, Chief Financial Officer Michael Herbstman warned.

Millions in spending for new curriculum, tech, admissions

The board also voted to approve more than 70 separate items, including:

$50 million in contracts with various vendors for new curriculum in math and language arts.
$72 million for Apple and PC computers for all district instructional staff, school leaders, students and staff.
$289,000 for Accenture, LLP to conduct an audit on the district’s much-maligned lottery admission process at selective schools.
$500,000 to Teach For America to hire new teachers.
Millions more for summer programming, special education services, and other items.

The full list of action items can be found on the board website here.

The board also voted to approve an agreement with the city to reopen West Philadelphia’s Sayre Pool, which has been at the center of a citywide debate over swimming access for Black and brown children.

Board rejects charter high school application again

Notably absent from the strategic plan presentation was any board discussion of charter schools.

As written, “Accelerate Philly” does not include any proposals, programs, or policies specific to charter schools, although some initiatives appear to be broadly inclusive of all schools under district purview.

Charter expenditures in the district are increasing at “a much greater rate” than expenditures on traditional public schools, board member Joyce Wilkerson noted.

Watlington subsequently said the “elephant in the room” is that charter enrollment is rising as traditional public school enrollment is falling.

However, the school board voted Thursday to deny Global Leadership Academy International Charter High School’s application to open a standalone high school this August. The board cited issues with curriculum and dissatisfaction with the performance of other charter schools in the city under the Global Leadership Academy (GLA) name.

This is the second time the board has denied GLA’s application to open a high school. The school revised and resubmitted its application in April.

Peng Chao, the acting director of the district’s Charter Schools Office, said despite applying to open the new school for the 2023-2024 academic year, Global Leadership Academy did not “identify a school leader or include updated information regarding staffing a brand new charter school.”

There is a “growing concern about the viability of those start dates,” Chao said.

Chao also said the two current GLA K-8 schools in Philadelphia had “mixed outcomes” when it comes to academics. The application said the proposed high school should be evaluated as a separate entity from those schools.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

2023 election results: Democratic and Republican primary elections for Philadelphia mayor

2023-05-17T03:23:57+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free twice-weekly newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

This post will be updated.

Cherelle Parker, a former City Councilmember and state representative, is poised to become Philadelphia’s first Black woman mayor after securing the Democratic nomination in Tuesday’s primary election.

The Associated Press called the election Tuesday night for Parker, who cleared a crowded Democratic primary race. Parker will face off against Republican nominee David Oh in November’s general election.

The race was tight. In the lead up to Election Day, public poll forecasts put the top five Democratic candidates within a few points of one another. Philadelphia is a deep-blue city — registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly seven to one — meaning whoever wins the Democratic primary has a significant upper hand in the fall’s general election.

Parker was seen by many as the establishment candidate. She garnered support from some of the most powerful labor unions in the city and ran on a campaign promise to be a dealmaker in Harrisburg and bring back more state funding for Philadelphia.

Her election could have big implications for Philadelphia schools. She’s said she wants to reform the much-maligned lottery admissions process for selective schools, and work toward year-round public schools and a longer school day.

Parker will challenge Oh, the only Republican candidate on the ballot Tuesday.

With 72% of expected votes counted, the unofficial election results are:

Democrats

Cherelle Parker 32.89% (53,906 votes)
Rebecca Rhynhart 22.33% (36,600 votes)
Helen Gym 20.65% (33,842 votes)
Allan Domb 12.16% (19,925 votes)
Jeff Brown 9.47% (15,528 votes)
Amen Brown 1.41% (2,317 votes)
James M. “Jimmy” DeLeon 0.60% (985 votes)
Delscia Gray 0.23% (382 votes)
Warren Bloom 0.19% (310 votes)

Republicans

David Oh 95.77% (10,584 votes)

While the mayor has no direct governing power over schools, the mayor does appoint the nine school Board of Education members who oversee all policy and budgetary decisions made by the district. The board is also the authorizer for all charter schools in Philadelphia.

The current board members’ terms will expire when Mayor Jim Kenney leaves office in January. That means whoever wins in November can choose to remake the board in its entirety, or keep some or all of the current members.

At a 9 p.m. press conference Tuesday, acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said there were “only a few minor and isolated issues” reported “sporadically” across the state at polling locations.

Schmidt said staff at the Department of State responded to an estimated 600 calls to their voter hotline, “which is lower than recent comparable municipal election cycles.”

“We know everyone wants to result of the election as soon as possible,” Schmidt said, “but counties must first make sure that every eligible ballot is accurately and securely counted.”

More than 186,000 voters cast ballots in the primary election Tuesday; 56,394 of those were mail-in ballots and 129,944 were cast at polling locations, per data from the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ office. There are 1,025,354 registered voters in the city.

Tuesday’s election results are unofficial until the Philadelphia City Commissioners, the office that oversees the city’s elections, certifies results 20 days after Election Day.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board approval of contracts worth $183 million prompts transparency debate

2023-04-21T19:31:43+00:00

Long after people had left the school district auditorium, Philadelphia’s school board voted Thursday night to approve roughly $183 million for vendor contracts, including $336,000 for a consulting group to improve the board’s communication with the public.

Those contracts covered school building repairs, IT and technology equipment, office supplies, preschool programs, and water and sewer systems.

For years, outspoken members of the public and some education advocates have demanded more transparency from the board when it comes to their appointments and deliberations. Now, with multiple schools closing due to damaged asbestos, and gun violence claiming the lives of 23 students and wounding another 84, the board’s public approach to these and other crucial issues could help determine whether Philadelphia’s next mayor reappoints some, all, or none of the board’s current members.

Not long after he took over the district last year, Superintendent Tony Watlington drew public ire when the board (at his request) hired a consulting firm for $450,000 to help with his transition and guide the creation of a long-term strategic plan for Philadelphia schools.

While the 54-item consent agenda ultimately passed with little debate, board members Lisa Salley and Cecelia Thompson raised concerns about the process behind the $336,000 communications contract with Public Consulting Group in particular.

Thompson said she “wasn’t even aware” that the board was going through a selection process for communications vendors.

“We dont keep minutes, there’s no written documentation on what occurs … there’s no accountability,” Thompson said. “That should be a public conversation, not this secret stuff.”

Salley noted that the district has often been accused of “lack of transparency.”

“Strategic communication in general is very poor for the board and the district as a whole,” Salley said.

Public Consulting Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez said the contracts went through the usual request for proposal process. Several people from the board and district reviewed multiple vendor contracts, and ultimately decided to move forward with the ones that appeared on the consent agenda.

“The process is not over, we are in this final step of work, collectively making a decision,” Fix-Lopez said before the vote. “That is what happens when we vote for an action item.”

Funding for the contracts approved Thursday night came from a variety of sources including operating and capital funding from last year and next year’s budget as well as federal and state grants.

Board President Reginald Streater said the board followed the district’s procurement process “to the tee.”

Board member Leticia Egea-Hinton defended the Public Consulting Group contract and said the board needs urgent “help” connecting to the school community. “I don’t think we can wait much longer,” she said.

But those comments came too late to mollify Lisa Haver, founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools and a frequent critic of the board’s transparency efforts. Speaking at Thursday’s board meeting during the public comment period, she blasted the communications spending, which included $881,500 for “customer service” with a group called K12 Insight, as well as the $336,000 contract.

She questioned why the district was spending such money “to assist professionals and board members to do what they were hired or appointed” to do.

The full list of contracts can be found on the board’s website. Among the approved items on the consent agenda were:

$8 million for technology equipment through the state’s COSTARS cooperative purchasing program.
$11 million for replacing roofs at several schools
$32 million for “office supplies.”
$3.5 million to amend a contract with The Home Depot for “cleaning and custodial supplies.”
$9.3 million in contracts with the city water department and Vicinity Energy for water services and steam heat.
$79 million in federal and state grants for prekindergarten programs at community-based partner sites.
$6 million for boiler repairs.
$12 million to extend contracts with vendors doing HVAC repairs.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Where Philadelphia mayoral candidates stand on education issues: an election guide

2023-04-13T18:05:33+00:00

Update: View the 2023 Philadelphia primary election results

There are 10 candidates running for mayor of Philadelphia — a city with aging, asbestos-laden school buildings, serious budgetary needs, stubbornly low test scores, and a gun violence epidemic that has already cost the lives of 20 students and injured 100 this school year.

The mayor has no direct control over the schools, but does have the power to appoint the nine school board members. The current board members’ terms will expire when Mayor Jim Kenney leaves office, meaning that whoever takes office in January can remake the board from scratch, or can keep some or all of the current members.

While education has not been a major issue in the race, public safety, with a focus on youth and their families, has been high on voters’ minds.

Some differences have emerged among the candidates on key education issues, including charter school expansion, whether the district should get a larger share of city property taxes, and to what degree the mayor will seek to shake up the board and impact school policy.

The degree of mayoral control over the education in the city has fluctuated over the past decades and is now at its highest point.

From the 1950s to the 1990s, the terms of mayoral appointees to the nine-member board were staggered to minimize the power of any one mayor. In 2001, the state took over Philadelphia schools, citing fiscal and academic disarray, and installed a five-member School Reform Commission, with three members appointed by the governor and two by the mayor. In 2018, the commission disbanded and the Philadelphia Board of Education resumed control over city schools.

To better understand each candidate’s views on key issues, Chalkbeat Philadelphia asked them 10 questions about education, including several questions submitted by Chalkbeat readers. Six of the candidates responded.

Here’s what they said, in their own words.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

This article is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Lead support is provided by the William Penn Foundation with additional funding from The Lenfest Institute, Peter and Judy Leone, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Harriet and Larry Weiss, and the Wyncote Foundation, among others. To learn more about the project and view a full list of supporters, visit www.everyvoice-everyvote.org. Editorial content is created independently of the project’s donors.

Philadelphia school board seeking student applicants for advisory positions

2023-04-04T21:34:52+00:00

Attention ninth and 10th graders in Philadelphia district-run and charter schools: If you would like to be an advisory member of the Philadelphia Board of Education, you can apply between now and April 28.

For next school year, the board is making changes to its requirements for its non-voting student advisory members. Instead of seniors, it wants sophomores and juniors. And in addition to the two members, the school board plans to appoint an alternate.

The Home Rule Charter requires that the nine- member board have at least one student advisory member, but since 2018, it has had two.

The student members provide the board feedback about a variety of issues through regular reports, said Sarah-Ashley Andrews, the board’s liaison to the student advisory members. Each year, the student members have a different focus, from mental health to advocacy for more school funding. This past year, they participated in the superintendent selection process.

This year, the board is also making a special outreach to students at charter schools to apply.

“We are hoping one of the three spots goes to a charter student,” said Shakyra Greene, program manager for the board. “Charters are one third of the district, and it’s important they participate and have their voices heard.”

Of the more than 197,000 students who attend publicly funded schools in the city, some 64,500 are in brick-and-mortar charters, and another 13,000 are in cyber charters. Since 2018, only one student advisory board member has been from a charter school. (The five-member School Reform Commission, which governed the district between 2001 and 2018, never had student advisory members.)

Applicants need to have at least a 2.5 grade point average and “be actively involved in their school community,” according to the application.

The board is seeking sophomores and juniors to serve on the board next year “because we found seniors to be focused on the next stage for their lives,” Andrews said. “We don’t want that to be a deterrence and want them to enjoy their senior year.”

The current student board member is Sophia Roach, who attends the High School of the Creative and Performing Arts and is the editor-in-chief of the citywide student publication, The Bullhorn.

The board decided to add an alternate member because this year’s other student member, Love Speech, left the position for personal reasons. It’s the first time that has happened since 2018.

The addition of an alternate is “to make sure somebody is in place if one member” leaves, Andrews said. The alternate member will go through the same orientation process as the two others, and will be asked to attend all the board meetings, at least remotely.

At the March board meeting, Central High School student Jeron Williams II chastised the board for leaving Speech’s seat open.

“From day one, there was no plan to fill Love’s seat. The board has yet again shortchanged our students,” Williams II said.

Greene said that between 30 and 80 students have applied for the position in each of the past five years, and that the number has dipped post-pandemic. “The first few years, it hovered around the 70-80 mark, and we hope this year to get the numbers back up,” she said.

Student applicants for the positions are vetted through a committee that includes representatives from various youth advocacy groups including the Philadelphia Student Union, the Philadelphia Youth Commission, and UrbEd, as well as the mayor’s Office of Youth Engagement. These and other groups forward five finalists to the superintendent, who then chooses the members and the alternate.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

As students and teachers slam the district, Philadelphia school board passes $4.5 billion budget

2023-03-24T17:33:08+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education approved a nearly $4.5 billion preliminary budget on Thursday that officials said isn’t enough to properly fund the district. They also got an earful from frustrated students and teachers.

At a board meeting that lasted more than six hours, members reviewed district presentations and heard from more than two dozen student and community speakers about a variety of problems and concerns. These include over 3,000 student dropouts, rapidly decaying facilities, an inadequate funding formula, and — perhaps most damning of all — a growing number of students who say they don’t feel heard or cared for by district leaders.

“Will you continue to be the detriment of Philadelphia’s students? Or will this be the wake-up call where you pay attention to their wants and needs, their thoughts, feelings, and emotions?” Jeron Williams II, a Central High School student, asked board members.

Amid the challenges outlined at Thursday’s meeting, Superintendent Tony Watlington and Chief Financial Officer Michael Herbstman presented a $4.45 billion preliminary budget and accompanying five-year outlook. The board approved the proposed budget 9-0.

That budget doesn’t include capital costs for renovating or rebuilding school facilities, Herbstman cautioned, and a more detailed final budget is scheduled for a vote on May 25.

Still, Watlington and several board members noted more money is needed to address the district’s most pressing concerns. The Education Law Center and Public Interest Law Center estimate “fair funding” in Philadelphia would require an additional $4,976 per student. That would mean an additional $1.1 billion and $318 million annually from the state and city, respectively.

With that kind of money, Watlington said, the district could “update aging facilities” and address asbestos and lead concerns, raise teacher salaries and provide “comprehensive professional learning” opportunities, among other changes.

Watlington and Board of Education President Reginald Streater said the next step will be to aggressively lobby city and state government officials for more funding. They said the school district only controls some 10% of their budget. The remaining 90%, including salary and benefit costs, is in the hands of negotiated contracts and city and state leaders.

Streater said the board and Watlington are having to “rebuild a district that was pulled apart piece by piece,” following decades of funding cuts.

“That’s important for the public to understand the scope,” Streater said. “We’re doing the best we can with what we have.”

Herbstman’s financial outlook for the district in fiscal 2024, which begins July 1, projects a 6.1% increase in revenue, but expenses are projected to increase 6.9%. And after September 2024, Herbstman said, federal COVID relief aid for schools will run out and the district will be facing “a significant deficit.”

“Absent major changes each subsequent year the annual deficit will continue to worsen,” Herbstman said.

Another long-term issue is the state of school infrastructure, which has been the subject of clashes between the district and city officials recently. Oz Hill, the district’s deputy chief operating officer, said that while the district has received 91 nominations for needed facility renovations, “the truth of the matter is we probably can only fund … a fraction of those projects.”

That kind of backlog did not sit well with board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez.

“I will be long gone from this earth and our students will still not have libraries, they still will have asbestos in their schools, teachers will still be working in 100 year old buildings … if we don’t get our young people the $1.1 billion they’re constitutionally owed from this state and $318 million from the city level,” she said.

Though the centerpiece of the board’s Thursday agenda was the budget, board members altered the schedule to accommodate a frustrated and rancorous crowd. They demanded board action on issues with the lottery admission system, charter school reform, asbestos in buildings, and what they called poor communication from district leadership.

“You’re killing us,” Kristin Luebbert, a teacher at The U School, told the board Thursday, referring to the unsafe physical condition of schools. “Our building issues have been decades in the making, but now is the time to make a plan to fix them.”

According to a district presentation Thursday, 3,373 students have dropped out of the public school system as of February — on par with last year’s count. The most recent district data shows there are about 197,300 students enrolled in Philadelphia public schools.

That prompted Sophia Roach, the school board’s sitting student representative, to ask what — if anything — the district is doing to bring the dropout rate down.

In response, Watlington did not offer details, but said “we are putting in place supports and processes to better address this issue.” He said he would have to do “a deeper dive” to look into what individual schools are doing to retain and support students.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Mayoral candidates present their visions for improving Philadelphia education

2023-03-22T20:29:35+00:00

In Philadelphia’s first mayoral forum devoted solely to education issues, eight candidates presented a few bold ideas about funding, facilities, and safety, but avoided talking about whether they would seek major changes in district leadership.

The biggest influence that the mayor has over the schools is the ability to appoint the school board members, who in turn select the superintendent. But with all nine board members sitting in the room – and in fact, sponsoring the forum – discussion of how they would shape the school board was virtually nonexistent.

The terms of the board coincide with the mayor’s, so the new mayor can decide to keep current members or appoint all new ones.

Candidates Warren Bloom, James DeLeon, Derek Green, Helen Gym, Cherelle Parker, Rebecca Rhynhart, and Maria Quiñones Sanchez attended the two-hour forum Tuesday night, half of which featured questions from students. Candidate Amen Brown stayed for one hour.

Jeff Brown and Delscia Gray did not attend. Nor did Allan Domb, who cited the board’s involvement as a deterrent. “I do not believe it is appropriate to participate in a forum held by a group I would have to make decisions about whether to reappoint when I become Mayor,” Domb said in a statement shortly before the forum convened. “There is no other forum I am aware of that is being hosted by mayoral appointees.”

At the forum, candidates made innovative proposals but didn’t fully explain how they would fund, enact, or otherwise see their visions realized.

In general, the candidates said all teachers should be paid more, to bring their salaries up to those in surrounding suburbs. Sanchez said that she would find ways to recruit more Black and brown teachers, including through additional incentive pay. Parker, meanwhile, said she would work toward year-round public schools and a longer school day.

Both these proposals would be costly and require some novel negotiations with the teachers union.

Gym said she wants to restore nurses, counselors, and school psychologists who were cut from schools in 2013 due to budgetary constraints and not replaced. She also promised to guarantee free transportation for students, including those who live less than a mile and a half from school and are currently ineligible for it.

She also proposed unifying the city and school district budget and “stopping the idea that we fund the number of teachers based on the number of students that we have, rather than on the learning environment students deserve to have.”

The current contractual maximum is 33 students per class in grades 4-12 and 30 per class in grades K-3, and teachers are allotted on that basis, although sometimes class sizes can go higher if there are vacancies.

“Every mayor before us has turned their back on our public schools or has failed to fulfill their promise,” Gym said.

The candidates also said they would advocate for more education aid from the state.

Bloom proposed taxing coffee as well as alcohol and tobacco to raise money for the schools. DeLeon called for more transparency in federal COVID relief money spending. And Rhynhart said her experience as city controller, city treasurer and budget director makes her uniquely suited to “get more money from the state” for the district.

She also said she will “appoint a school board that shares my vision for improvement and accountability in our schools.”

“We need a plan. We need goals. And then we need to measure success against those goals,” Rhynhart said

To help raise money for what would be costly proposals, Gym, Parker, and Sanchez said they would devote a higher proportion of city property taxes to public schools. Now, the schools get 55% of local property taxes. Sanchez noted that she had introduced in city council a bill to increase the district’s share to 60%, but it lacked support.

They also talked about redoing the property tax assessment system to ensure that people are paying their fair share; Rhynhart called the system “broken.” Philadelphia’s property tax is the single biggest source of local revenue for the school district.

Redoing that system, however, wouldn’t necessarily yield more tax revenue for schools.

Expressing frustration about the condition of school facilities, Sanchez said, “I am tired of debating the condition of buildings that we just need to knock down.”

Brown said in the first 100 days of his term he would “evaluate each and every school” building “to see what needs to be done, whether it needs to be knocked down, rebuilt, or if it’s a historical building, we’ll keep the building and relocate the school in that same area.”

“We shouldn’t have our students and our children learning in these horrible conditions where you feel like you’re in prison,” Brown said.

Green said he would improve communications between the city and school district. Earlier this month, city and school officials had a testy exchange about whether the district had been appropriately transparent about the safety of school buildings.

“We should not be seeing our tax dollars being used in a fight between two parts of our city government,” Green said.

Bloom’s position was one of delegation: at one point, he suggested he would appoint all of his fellow candidates to his cabinet and “adopt” their ideas.

All the candidates said public safety is a major issue in the campaign, especially for students and young people. They also noted how safe and effective schools are a key factor in determining the city’s quality of life.

DeLeon leaned heavily on his proposal for a Local Incident Management System to coordinate city responses to gun violence. Sanchez, meanwhile, said the city should have “an honest conversation around safety” and rethink the juvenile justice system that sometimes incarcerates children over misbehavior in school.

The system here “removes children from families more than anyplace in the world,” which worsens poverty and destabilizes families, she said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Schools need more money, Philadelphia school board tells mayoral candidates

2023-03-20T22:04:27+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education Monday is asking the next mayor to commit to a big increase in the school district’s annual funding, and to provide additional help in upgrading and repairing school facilities.

In an open letter released Monday, the board also asks for the city to devote more of its resources to addressing gun violence and helping the district to recruit and retain staff.

The letter is unusual in that the board members, who are appointed by the mayor, are publicly addressing political candidates to air their concerns about the district budget and other matters so close to an election. Generally, they make their budget case during a city council hearing in May.

The new mayor will have the ability to remake the nine-member board from scratch after taking office. City officials and others recently publicly accused Superintendent Tony Watlington of not being transparent about problems with school building safety, and threatened to withhold district funding.

Philadelphia is “the only school district in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that cannot raise its own taxes, and the district is completely dependent on our local and state elected officials to provide the resources necessary to ensure that every student in the city has access to a quality public education,” said the letter, which was signed by board President Reginald Streater.

In the letter, Streater said the board wants the city’s future leaders to commit to increasing the district’s annual local funding by $318 million within the next four years. Streater said this increase would help the district meet an estimate from the Public Interest Law Center and the Education Law Center that it needs to increase total spending by more than $1.1 billion annually “to meet the educational needs of our learners.”

The city contributes about $1.7 billion to the district’s roughly $4 billion current operating budget. Most of the city’s contribution comes from property and other taxes earmarked for the district, and some is through a special grant which this fiscal year amounts to nearly $270 million.

Philadelphia school officials used the $1.1 billion figure when testifying for the plaintiffs in a historic lawsuit challenging the state’s current funding system, which results in wide spending disparities among districts. Last month, Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer ruled the system unconstitutional and ordered an overhaul.

There are just under 200,000 students in Philadelphia’s 329 district-run, charter, and alternative schools.

“We are calling on city officials to balance the needs of our students with the needs of residents,” Streater said in the letter.

The party primaries in this year’s mayoral and city council races take place May 16.

The board’s letter comes shortly after the district was forced to close two high schools — Building 21 and Simon Gratz — within the past month due to the discovery of flaking asbestos.

While the letter doesn’t include a specific ask for facilities help, Streater cited a 2017 study estimating that the district has $4.5 billion in deferred maintenance costs and that “85 of our buildings should be considered for renovation, and 21 buildings should be considered for closure and replacement.”

On gun violence and student safety, Streater asked the city to increase safe corridors around schools, beef up libraries and recreation centers, enforce gun laws (especially as they relate to firearms possession by minors), and expand mental health services.

To recruit and retain more teachers, Streated suggested creating street parking around schools for staff, underwriting SEPTA passes for public transit commuters, and measures including loan forgiveness, housing vouchers, and other incentives for city residents who work in schools.

Two mayoral forums on education are scheduled for this week, one at the Free Library Tuesday evening, and another sponsored by the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators on Wednesday.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board rejects applications for four new charter schools

2023-02-24T17:33:10+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education Thursday night rejected applications to open four new charter schools, continuing its resistance to creating more of the publicly funded but privately managed schools.

Peng Chao, the acting director of the district’s Charter Schools Office, cited deficiencies in all the applications in his presentation to the board; Chao’s office evaluates the applications but does not recommend action to the board. The four charter applications originated from groups or organizations that have checkered histories when it comes to running schools.

Tensions flared at times during the meeting, which several charter supporters attended. At one point, state Sen. Anthony Williams, a Democrat and supporter of one of the charter applicants, said the district was not treating children in all neighborhoods fairly and was restricting academic opportunities.

Philadelphia’s charter schools educate more than 70,000 students, or about a third of those who attend publicly funded schools in the city. Since regaining authority over the school district in 2018 after 17 years under state control, the board has declined all new charter applications. The last charter school application to be approved was from Hebrew Public Charter School in 2018, shortly before the board resumed control.

But that has not stopped applicants from continuing to propose new schools. Sometimes, they have essentially resubmitted previous applications that the board had rejected.

Two of the new charter schools were proposed by ASPIRA, Inc. During the period of state control over city schools, officials gave ASPIRA control of Olney High School and Stetson Middle School. Both those schools, which were former district schools ceded to charter management organizations as a turnaround strategy, had their charters revoked after financial and academic problems, and the schools were returned to district control.

ASPIRA proposed creating the 1,200-student ASPIRA Bilingual College and Career Preparatory Academy, a high school in the former Cardinal Dougherty High School building in East Oak Lane. It also proposed the 1,000-student Dr. Ricardo E. Alegria Preparatory Charter School, a K-8 school in the Kensington neighborhood.

ASPIRA also runs the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School, as well as a cyber charter.

ASPIRA submitted similar charter proposals in recent years that the board had rejected. Chao told the board Thursday that ASPIRA’s latest applications were not significantly revised from the last submissions, despite feedback from the charter office on where they were deficient.

In both applications, he said, “the overall approach to operations management was confusing,” and in the case of Alegria, the proposed site would only accommodate the school for one year.

A group of educators and others — including Naomi Johnson-Booker, a longtime educator in the city and CEO of the Global Leadership network — applied to open Global Leadership Academy International Charter High School, which would eventually enroll 1,200 students in grades 9-12 on North Broad Street. There are currently two Global Leadership K-8 schools and Booker has long sought to add a high school.

The Perseverance Leadership Academy Charter School was proposed by the trustees of the Daroff and Bluford charter schools, which had been run by Universal Companies. But in August, Universal abruptly walked away from managing the schools in August, leaving families and the district in the lurch. Daroff closed before the school year began, while Bluford remains open, although the trustees promised to surrender its charter at the end of this school year.

The trustees are proposing to create a new charter in the Daroff and Bluford buildings. But both those facilities are owned by the school district and “not available for lease or license at this time,” Chao said.

In addition, the charter office raised red flags about the proposed schools’ ability to teach core academic standards.

The board voted 8-0 to reject the applications from ASPIRA and Perseverance Leadership Academy. On Global Leadership Academy, the vote was 6-2, with Lisa Salley and Cecelia Thompson voting against the resolution to deny the application.

State senator slams board over funding

Several parents and students testified at the meeting in favor of Global Leadership.

Williams, the state senator, also spoke on behalf of Global Leadership, and got into a combative exchange with Board President Reginald Streater.

Williams said he felt “frustration and significant concern” over the board’s record of rejecting new charters. He pointedly noted that he has fought in Harrisburg — the state capital — for more funds for the school district, but suggested his Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood, overwhelmingly Black and low-income, is not getting the funds it deserves and needs from the district.

“You should come and meet some of the people who reside in those communities,” Williams said. Most of them, he said, have children who “can’t get into Masterman or Central,” two of the district’s premier magnet schools. Parents in those areas, he said, want a chance for their children to be educated.

“Thousands are in prison for the simple reason they can’t read,” he added.

As Streater sought to interject during Williams’ comments, the senator cut him off, saying, “I’m not here to debate you.”

“Sounds like it,” Streater shot back.

Later, Streater apologized for his testiness. He said he had been distracted by reports of a shooting outside a school in North Philadelphia that injured five teenagers, a 31-year-old woman, and her two-year-old daughter that happened during the meeting.

But Williams wasn’t the only person who expressed frustration with the board. After the vote against Global Leadership, someone in the audience at the meeting shouted, “You need to stop playing with children’s lives.”

The board’s ongoing refusal to approve new charters isn’t the only issue creating tension between the charter community and the district. Black charter operators and other advocates have accused the district of discriminating against them, saying that while a minority of charter schools are run by Black people, they make up the highest percentage of those that are closed.

Both the Global Leadership and Perseverance applicant groups are mostly Black, while the ASPIRA applicants are Latino. Streater and Williams are both Black.

The board hired a firm to investigate the racial bias allegations in 2021, but has not said when the investigation will be completed.

Correction: This story has been changed to eliminate a reference to Global Leadership Academy Southwest having been non-renewed. Global Leadership Academy Southwest was renewed for five years in July. Another charter school with a similar name, Southwest Leadership Academy, is in the non-renewal process.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly Board of Education sues city, says new building code could delay school opening for thousands of students

2023-01-21T00:52:34+00:00

The Philadelphia school board has filed a lawsuit claiming a city building code designed to curb asbestos and other safety hazards will needlessly prevent many schools from opening next school year.

The board alleges that a code update in June gives power to a mayor-appointed committee to certify the safety of school buildings. The board worries that the committee, heavily representing unions but with just one seat representing the leadership of the school district, will lack the expertise and credentials to set building safety standards.

There are also seats for a City Council member, for several parents, including one who is an environmental advocate, and for one to three non-voting students.

Board President Reginald Streater issued a statement saying the amendment “could needlessly threaten the opening of many District school buildings at the start of the next school year, jeopardizing the health, safety, and welfare of our students.”

City officials strongly criticized the board’s decision to sue rather than work with them on building safety.

“Philadelphia’s schools have endured decades of disinvestment, and overcoming the challenges this raises requires partnership and problem-solving between the District, City, and other stakeholders. We believe this goal is best achieved through collaboration and not through litigation,” said Mayor Jim Kenney’s communications director Sarah Peterson.

City Council President Darrell Clarke and Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas issued their own statement calling the lawsuit “unfortunate.”

“We have seen firsthand the troubling disparities among schools,” the statement reads. “To respond to a plan to get rid of asbestos and other hazards with a lawsuit reinforces that the School District is working to maintain the status quo, rather than working collaboratively to bring our schools into the 21st Century.”

And former council member Helen Gym, now running for mayor and one of the amendment’s sponsors, said that instead of suing, “the school district should be reaching out to parents, labor partners, and the mayor’s office to take immediate action to address the deplorable condition of our schools. The lack of trust is a real and significant issue.”

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, called the lawsuit “disappointing” and also said collaboration would be a better way to ensure safer schools.

The law targeted by the suit was created by Bill 210685-AA. It sprang from years of concern, community mistrust, and controversy over asbestos hazards in the Philadelphia School District. The district closed several school buildings for months in 2019 to clean out asbestos, and the controversy flared up again in fall 2021, when City Council held hearings and introduced the bill.

Critics blamed the district for lacking transparency and failing to remediate dangers to students and staff. District buildings are on average 75 years old and house 130,000 students and 18,000 employees.

The city has long regulated school building safety. The update last year added asbestos to requirements covering electrical, water quality, lead paint and other potential hazards, and created the advisory board. The new rules would apply to one-third of the district’s 200-plus buildings next August, another third in August 2024, and the final third in August 2025.

“One of our concerns is this advisory board is allowed to consist of individuals with no specific scientific, technical or environmental expertise or licensing,” Streater’s statement said. “The District would be required to accept and meet these standards before a building is allowed to open,” potentially endangering in-person learning for thousands of students.

The 21-page district complaint notes that, as of now, nobody has been named to the board, called the Facility Safety and Improvement Advisory Group.

According to the complaint, the city’s managing director could adopt practices that would close schools “based on vague, undeveloped, and unidentified practices.” And it notes that state and federal environmental laws already apply to the district.

In the past, advocates also have questioned the safety of drinking water in schools. A report last year found that many school drinking fountains still had high lead levels.

Streater said in his statement that the lawsuit does not seek to avoid accountability. Instead, the suit, if successful, “should enable the District to focus its resources on the existing extensive federal, state and local regulations and on the goal we all share: maintaining nurturing, welcoming and safe school environments for all our children and staff.”

He said that last year the district completed more than 4,400 asbestos-related abatement actions in 241 buildings, that 168 school buildings have lead-safe or lead-free certifications, and that the district has installed 1,665 hydration stations in schools.

Jordan in his statement charged that the district has fought union efforts to create safer schools. “Data and information sharing, as well as remediation plans, have been spotty at best, and the bill passed by City Council allows a base layer of oversight into some of the most critical remediation processes.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia Board of Education elects new leadership

2022-12-16T01:50:08+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education elected new officers Thursday, installing Reginald Streater as president and Mallory Fix-Lopez as vice president during its annual reorganization meeting.

The two replace Joyce Wilkerson and Leticia Egea-Hinton, who have led the board since it took over from the School Reform Commission in April 2018. Wilkerson and Egea-Hinton will remain members of the board.

The board unanimously chose Streater, 39, while Fix-Lopez, 38, won by a 7-2 vote over Lisa Salley.

In announcing that she would not stand for re-election as board president and was instead nominating Streater, Wilkerson said, “I believe I was the right person to get us to this point, but I don’t think I’m the right person to take us forward.” She has led the board since it took over the governance of the district when it was returned to local control in 2018. Before that, Wilkerson had led the School Reform Commission, the body that ran the district under state control.

She said Streater was the right person, adding that he has a “unique and valuable perspective” as a graduate of Philadelphia schools — he went to Leeds Middle School and Germantown High School, both of which have since been closed — and as a parent of two children in the district. He has consistently advocated for students, Wilkerson said, and demonstrated his commitment to the board’s goals and guardrails, which sets achievement benchmarks and deadlines for reaching them.

The leadership transition represents a generational change.

Streater is an associate at the Philadelphia law firm Berger Montague, where he specializes in employment litigation. A graduate of Temple University and Temple Law School, he became a board member in February 2021. He also served as vice president of the Greater Philadelphia ACLU chapter and as a clerk/intern for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. He has often said that he believes education is “not only a civil right, but a human right.”

In a short speech after his election, Streater said he was deeply honored, and credited his experience in district schools as the springboard to leadership.

Streater, the only man on the nine-member board, said he would focus on creating safe and welcoming schools and educating the “whole child.” He said he opposes lowering standards even if students face barriers.

He also thanked his family and Wilkerson, calling her his mentor.

He said the district needs to continue to invest in teachers, get its financial house in order, and work more closely with the city and state while focusing on its own ambitious objectives such as doubling the percentage of students reading on grade level.

In her remarks, Fix-Lopez said the district was moving in the right direction. She is the parent of two small children, one at Childs Elementary, and has taught English as a Second Language at Temple, the University of Pennsylvania, and Community College of Philadelphia. Earlier she also taught social studies and English as a second language in the district. “I have devoted my career to public education in Philadelphia,” she said.

She and her husband also own and operate a restaurant in the Point Breeze section of Southwest Philadelphia.

Both Streater and Fix-Lopez praised Superintendent Tony Watlington, who was hired by this board and took office in June, as the right leader for the district.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Watlington transition team makes recommendations to improve Philadelphia schools

2022-10-20T23:41:48+00:00

Student achievement, communications, school repairs, and district funding are some of the top challenges for Philadelphia schools targeted in a 91-recommendation report released Thursday by a transition team formed three months ago by Superintendent Tony Watlington.

The report from the team, composed of more than 100 local and national educators, parents, and union and non-profit leaders, was presented before the school board meeting. The team was charged with identifying strengths and weaknesses in the district that Watlington wants to see become one of the fastest improved in the country.

Key areas for improvement

The report pointed to three main issues:

A need for improved communication and customer service strategies. Recommendations included launching a two-way communications and discussion management tool, as well as developing a customer service training program and establishing a process for communicating the district’s priorities.
Greater coordination and collaboration within the district to operate more efficiently. The plan recommended maintaining work groups to solve problems, creating opportunities for teachers to collaborate, and establishing a development team to find partners for the district.
Shared accountability and evaluation for student outcomes. The team’s report recommended developing tools like dashboards and infographics for use by students, families, and staff. Other recommendations including launching more frequent data collection for non-academic areas and increased daily monitoring of different areas related to schools in an effort to track progress.

Of the 91 recommendations, 58 are considered short-term and should be accomplished over the next year or two, and 33 should be implemented over the next three to five years.

Though he doesn’t know how much the district would need financially to accommodate the recommendations, Watlington is prepared to seek more local and state money to fund improvements from City Hall and Harrisburg.

The team identified the following strengths for the district: establishing fiscal stability, dissolving the former School Reform Commission, staff’s efforts to support the students, and public and private partnerships.

Watlington said he will address the recommendations in the five-year strategic plan that’s scheduled to be released in Spring 2023.

The one recommendation Watlington said that he’d never considered was adding a small group of principals to his leadership team.

“That caught my attention, because I’ve never read that before in a transition team report, and have never done that or considered it but it’s one that really caught my attention,” Watlington said.

Sub-groups studied critical topics

The team was broken into five sub-groups that studied student achievement, operations, anti-racist district culture, community engagement and communications, and well-rounded school experiences for students.

The student achievement sub-group stressed the need for an alignment of district people, the ability to articulate a clear curriculum, and the need to launch a textbook adoption process in ELA/English that includes teachers, principals, and special education leadership.

The operations sub-group recommended the district implement a transparent budgeting process, execute a master facilities plan, and develop a teacher career ladder.

The culture sub-group recommended the district create equitable access to criteria-based schools and develop an anti-racist learning center.

The community engagement sub-group would like the district to expand its organizational capacity, and re-envision the district’s approach to data and information gathering.

The school experiences sub-group recommended every school have a no-cost, after-school program and ensure all students have access to after-school athletic programs.

The team was led by co-chairs Andrea L. Custis, former president and CEO of the Urban League of Philadelphia, and Guy Generals, president of Community College of Philadelphia.

According to the district, 14% of the team members were school leaders, 11% local education experts, 9% parents, and 7% were national education experts. Seventeen students provided feedback as transition team advisors.

The team included familiar names, such as Uri Monson, district chief financial officer; Henderson Lewis Jr., former superintendent of New Orleans Public Schools, and Camika Royal, associate professor of urban education at Loyola University and author of “Not Paved for Us: Black Educators and Public School Reform in Philadelphia.”

Support for the transition leaders was facilitated by former Nashville superintendent Shawn Joseph and former Washington County Public Schools superintendent Elizabeth Molina Morgan. A month after Watlington’s hire, the school board approved $450,000 to pay Joseph’s firm, Joseph and Associates, to help with the transition.

“Absolutely. I think it’s worth every penny we’re spending,” Watlington told Chalkbeat Thursday. “It’s premature to say right now, but very likely, we’ll be able to reduce the forecast of that contract. I feel really good about the work that’s happened today. And I think we’ve been very good stewards of the public’s tax dollars.”

Five-year plan due in spring

In the next phase of Watlington’s transition process, Joseph’s firm will craft along with the superintendent and other district staff a five-year strategic plan in the spring of 2023.

Watlington ended the first phase of the transition process earlier this month by releasing his findings from his 100-day listening and learning tours, in which he met with parents and teachers on what needed to be done to improve the district’s learning environment. The tour got mixed reviews from parents who either thought the sessions were helpful in getting to know Watlington personally or, conversely, felt the superintendent didn’t answer their questions.

“The tour gave me the opportunity to learn what people really think and what we aspire to be in the future. I want to say thank you to the nearly 3,000 individuals who took the time to be engaged in the process,” Watlington said at Thursday’s school board meeting.

There was no presentation of the Board of Education’s system of accountability called “goals and guardrails” at Thursday’s board meeting in order to focus on the transition team’s report.

Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly stated Watlington never considered developing stronger partnerships between schools and the superintendent and the district.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board gets earful on ‘out of touch’ masking policy

2022-08-19T20:05:57+00:00

Speakers at Thursday’s Philadelphia Board of Education meeting said the district’s policy requiring students and teachers to wear masks for the first 10 days of school is unwarranted, out of step with the times, and harmful to children.

School districts across the country and around the world are dropping mask mandates, the speakers noted. The share of U.S. schools requiring masks for students or teachers fell from 75% to 15% over the course of the last school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Philadelphia is requiring all students and staffers to wear masks for the first 10 school days. After that, masks will be optional except under certain circumstances, such as an increase in the COVID-19 transmission rate or the period following an extended break.

The district says any student or staffer who tests positive for COVID-19 must isolate for five days. After that, there’s a “mask-to-stay” policy that requires the person to wear a “high-quality mask” and eat in a designated area or isolate at home for 10 days.

Chief Medical Officer Kendra McDow said a typo in an earlier version of the guidelines indicated students with COVID-19 symptoms who test negative would have to stay home until they were symptom-free and diagnosed with something other than COVID. She said that in fact, students would need to be symptom free or be diagnosed with a non-COVID condition in order to return to school, not both. This error has been corrected on the district’s website, McDow said.

But masks were the focus of many of the comments about the district’s COVID protocols. Parent Robert Ziegler called the district’s mask policy “out of touch with our current reality.”

“Districts all over the world are eliminating mask mandates, and so should this one,” Ziegler said.

Others echoed that view, saying the policy might cause families to consider leaving the district for neighboring communities with no mask rules.

“Where is the absolutely necessary risk-benefit analysis?” asked parent Vincent Feldman.

Feldman said he has two children in the district and is president of the Pennsylvania chapter of Children’s Health Defense, a Robert Kennedy Jr.-led group recently suspended by Facebook and Instagram for violating community standards on misinformation.

Other speakers who protested the mandate also identified themselves as affiliated with groups opposed to some COVID protocols. They included Lynn Landes, co-founder of HealthAlertPhilly.org, and Diane Soucy, director of the Activities for Daily Living Center. Suzanne Shaheen, a parent who was featured on “Fox & Friends First,” told the board her son was “put in isolation” because he “cannot wear his mask.”

“Students with disabilities or a medical condition that prevents them from being able to wear a mask can seek accommodations,” McDow said.

Only one speaker praised the mandate. “I’m here to thank you for maintaining at least some level of COVID precautions in our schools,” parent Stephanie King told the board. “It’s a pity that COVID is so politicized that saying, ‘We should try to protect people from catching a potentially deadly illness with unknown long-term side effects,’ is seen as a radical proposition,” she said.

King told Chalkbeat she decided to speak because she had expected groups opposed to the policy would rally parents to voice their concerns. “It’s what you do in school advocacy.”

Philadelphia schools are poorly ventilated and serve families that may be at higher risk for COVID-19 complications and have less access to health care, King added. “I think these restrictions reflect the reality on the ground,” she said.

Teacher leave policy causes concern

Meanwhile, board members questioned the district’s policy on so-called “direct quarantine leave” for teachers. Each teacher is allowed 10 days of leave for COVID-19, after which sick days, personal time, and vacation days must be used. Any time off after that would be unpaid, and absences would count as “occurrences” on an employee’s record, McDow said.

“I’m just concerned it’s going to cause people to come to work sick,” said board member Mallory Fix-Lopez.

Fellow board member Cecelia Thompson agreed, saying that people shouldn’t be blamed if they contract COVID more than once despite being careful and following rules. “Sometimes these things happen,” she said.

In response, Superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. said that the school community as a whole, and not just schools themselves, is responsible for managing and mitigating COVID in the community.

However, he said, “We are sensitive to the issue of not wanting anyone to lose pay by no fault of their own.”

McDow suggested the board “get an update” on the issue as it relates to collective bargaining agreements to “help everyone decide how to proceed.”

Staffing update

School officials at the meeting also updated the board on staffing for the coming school year. The district is about 97% staffed, “about where we were when we started the school year last year,” Chief Talent Officer Larisa Shambaugh said.

Principal roles are 99% filled, as are 97.4% of teaching positions, she said. That latter figure doesn’t include teachers scheduled to be on leave, and not every teacher is assigned to a classroom, she said.

The vacancy rates for non-instructional jobs, such as building engineers are higher, but new hires are in the pipeline waiting for their paperwork to be processed, she said.

The district has made “good progress this month” on teacher hiring, Shambaugh said. More than 700 new teachers attended a five-day orientation earlier this month, and the district made more than 30 offers to potential teachers in the five days preceding the meeting, she said.

“We’re still hiring,” though vacancies remain, particularly in special education and the middle grades, she said.

Philly schools forecasted to go from budget surplus to deficit in 5 years

2022-07-15T22:06:05+00:00

Although Philadelphia schools have a budget surplus that tops half a billion dollars, that rosy picture could turn very dark over the next several years, the district’s top financial official told board of education members Thursday.

The district is slated to have a $515 million fund balance in its nearly $4 billion budget at the end of this fiscal year, Chief Financial Officer Uri Monson said. But he added that, based on current conditions, he forecasts that the district will be in the red by fiscal 2027 and have a shortfall of $484 million that year.

The growth in the district’s costs are projected to outpace revenue growth over the next several years, Monson said, due to the end of federal pandemic aid coupled with current state and local tax policies and funding mechanisms.

If that sort of shortfall occurs, the district will ultimately face tough choices and may have to cut a variety of staff positions and programs, including those focused on countering COVID’s effects. That could mean reductions in mental health services, after-school activities, bilingual counseling assistants, and support for students who have been traumatized by gun violence. And while Philadelphia is putting federal pandemic education funding to a variety of uses, the district will eventually use up that money.

“If we want to keep those things, we have to identify additional sources of revenue,” he said. “If they are left in, we’ll be showing massive deficits very quickly.”

Monson noted that the district has no power to alter parts of its budget like payments to charter schools, which are dictated by the state, and debt service. He acknowledged that the district can’t claim desperation given its current surplus, but stressed that it will still “need help” down the road.

Philadelphia’s school board is the only one in Pennsylvania that cannot raise its own taxes, and is entirely dependent on the city and state for its revenue.

Earlier this month, Gov. Tom Wolf signed a state budget for the upcoming year that increased state school aid for districts for basic and special education by $850 million. About $177 million of that increase will come to Philadelphia next year, Monson said.

Board of Education President Joyce Wilkerson expressed appreciation Thursday for that additional funding, although Wolf had asked the General Assembly for an increase of $1.8 billion in education spending. Previously, Monson projected that Wolf’s budget request would have provided $204 million more to the city’s public schools than the enacted budget.

District officials are especially concerned about the long-term impact of charter funding on the district’s fiscal health. Wolf had asked state lawmakers for significant changes in how charter and cyber charter schools are funded in ways that would have benefited school districts’ budgets. But the legislature approved none of Wolf’s proposed charter revisions.

Monson said that Philadelphia’s charter payments for special education students “have grown exponentially and unrelated to the actual services provided.” Monson’s new five-year plan shows that charter costs for the district are projected to increase by 10.4% from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2027, while expenditures in district-run schools are projected to decrease by 1.9%.

“I don’t believe any other state awards dollars to charter schools the way Pennsylvania does, and I don’t think the current formula creates a sustainable environment for districts like Philadelphia with such a large charter sector,” said board member Chau Wing Lam, who has a background in government finance and whose daughter goes to a city charter school.

Despite the current surplus, some board members were very blunt Thursday about where things stand. Funding policies need “systemic change,” said board member Mallory Fix Lopez. Another board member, Reginald Streater, said the district is in a “perpetual state of robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in the city. She is a former president of the Education Writers Association. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly’s Black charter school leaders vow to push back after board votes

2022-06-27T22:39:55+00:00

Editor’s note: This article was updated to reword material that appeared verbatim in a Philadelphia school district press release.

The movement to preserve Black-operated charter schools won’t be deterred by the Philadelphia Board of Education’s votes last week to begin the process of closing two such charters, say members of a coalition who believe certain schools face racial bias in how they’re regulated.

The school board unanimously voted June 23 not to renew the charters of Southwest Leadership Academy Charter School and Laboratory Charter School, which both have Black leadership. Those votes followed the recommendation of the district’s Charter School Office.

The board also voted to proceed with requiring Memphis Street Academy at J.P. Jones, which is managed by American Paradigm Schools, to surrender its charter. Though Memphis Street is not considered a Black-operated charter, 96% of its students identify as Black, Hispanic, or multi-racial.

Officials said poor academic performance and other oversight issues drove their decisions, and board member Reginald Streater called charges that racial bias influenced the votes “factually false.” However, supporters of Black-led charter schools—including state and local politicians who led a protest outside district headquarters before the votes—say they’re not done fighting what they called the board’s unfair approach. The dispute comes amid an investigation into the city’s charter authorizing practices.

“We’re going to continue to stand up against any type of systemic bias, whether it affects charter schools, Black-operated district schools, private schools, bodegas, or car dealerships,” said Larry Jones, the CEO of the Richard Allen Charter School who also a member of the African American Charter Schools Coalition.

Southwest and Laboratory will remain open for now and in the fall. Charter schools can appeal to the State Charter Appeal Board if local boards vote to repeal their charters, and they can remain open during the appeals process. However, that process can take many months, or up to a year in some cases.

Leigh Purnell, the CEO and principal of Southwest Leadership, said the school plans to appeal the board’s vote. Purnell said the city’s charter schools office failed to work with Southwest Leadership to develop an improvement plan.

“I do not believe the school board received a well-rounded picture, a holistic picture, of our school,” Purnell said.

Ashley Redfearn, CEO of American Paradigm Schools, which operates Memphis Street, said in a statement that the school is currently open for summer programming and plans to be open for the 2022-2023 school year. Redfearn said her organization plans “to pursue every legal channel to continue to provide quality, well-rounded education and support” for the school’s students and community.

Closing Black-operated charters a thorny issue

The votes against the three schools come six months after the board authorized the law firm of Ballard Spahr to probe whether racial bias is a factor in the charter school authorizing process. These allegations came from the charter schools coalition, which represents 22 schools and has called for an overhaul of the district’s charter office, as well as new ways for the district to evaluate the schools.

Ballard Spahr is expected to release the results of its independent investigation this fall.

In a report to the board about schools whose charters are up for renewal this year, acting chief of the Charter School Office Pen Chao said Southwest Leadership failed to meet generally accepted standards of fiscal management and audit requirements related to short-term and long-term financial sustainability. For instance, the school was unable to provide documentation for 14 of 40 identified financial transactions, a 43% error rate, Chao noted.

Meanwhile, Laboratory Charter did not have a fully compliant enrollment process. It also failed to timely identify students as English learners; and failed to maintain and obtain FBI background and Pennsylvania criminal background checks for employees.

And Memphis Street Academy failed to meet the required academic standards set out in its charter. Chao said the school had previously agreed that if it did not meet any of those academic standards, it would voluntarily forfeit its charter.

Students, parents, and teachers spoke on behalf of the schools before the board votes.

Steven Bilksi, assistant principal and ESL coordinator at Memphis Street said that families served by his school have benefited from the “transformative initiatives” his school has put in place, in accordance with its charter.

“These initiatives have allowed us to provide all of our scholars and families with the necessary work to succeed academically, socially and emotionally,” Bilksi said.

And Jae Strothers, who works at Laboratory Charter, said that she loves “the work that we do at Laboratory, as well as the children’s parents.”

Local and state politicians, including members of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus, addressed the board in support of the three schools before the votes. In addition, state Sen. Anthony Williams and City Councilman Isaiah Thomas denounced the anticipated votes during a protest outside district headquarters.

“If they decide to ignore the state legislators who fund the school district, and to ignore the city council members who fund the school district, and still move in the way that they want to, it’s time for us to wage war,” Thomas said.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Philly schools lose out on property tax revenue after city council vote

2022-06-24T20:14:17+00:00

At his first Board of Education meeting Thursday, new Superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. reiterated his goal to make Philadelphia one of the fastest improving urban districts in the nation. But to achieve that goal, he and district officials will have to make do without tens of millions of dollars they might have been counting on, due to recent decisions by city leaders and the courts.

The same day as Watlington’s first board meeting, the City Council passed a fiscal 2023 budget that gives the school district $25 million less in property tax revenue than the district planned for, based on Mayor Jim Kenney’s original proposal. And a state Supreme Court ruling earlier this month about commercial properties means the district will have to repay $35 million to taxpayers, all of it coming out of the 2023 budget.

The combined $60 million hit to anticipated district revenue will impact some budget projections for both fiscal 2023 and the district’s five-year plan, district finance director Uri Monson told the board.

The Board of Education cannot raise tax revenue on its own. It is entirely dependent on the city and state for the funds it needs to operate. The $60 million represents roughly 1.5 percent of the district’s proposed fiscal 2023 budget of $3.9 billion. The school district gets 55% of the city’s property taxes, which account for just over $1 billion of the district’s budget.

Board member Mallory Fix-Lopez said that the city’s decision “will absolutely lead to cuts of staffing” at some point. Monson said in an interview that layoffs are not imminent, but said the decision will make it “challenging if not impossible to maintain an array of investments” made with federal COVID relief funds, and that the cut’s impact would grow over time..

The $25 million gap between the district’s revenue assumption and what Philadelphia is providing stems from the City Council’s decision to increase the property tax homestead exemption from $45,000 to $80,000, and to make adjustments to a program capping taxes for longtime homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods, all to ease the impact of the city’s first property tax reassessment in three years. That reassessment led to property values rising by an average of 31%.

Joe Grace, a spokesman for City Council President Darrell C. Clarke, said in a statement that the council “heard from homeowners loudly and clearly” regarding the impact of the reassessment on them. “This decision wasn’t made lightly, and Council understands the importance of property taxes in funding our schools,” Grace said.

Donna Cooper, executive director of the state education advocacy group Children First, expressed disappointment that the council made tax changes in a way that puts the brunt of the consequences to the school district.

Kenney and the council could have softened the effect on the district by allocating more money for schools out of the city’s general fund, but didn’t, she said.

Some of the investments made with federal COVID aid that may not be sustainable in the long term include additional counselors, accelerated building repair, more discretionary positions for schools, and enhanced before- and after-school programming,

Separately, the district must repay $35 million to taxpayers due to an adverse court ruling on June 8. In that case, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied the city’s right to appeal a 2019 lower court decision that the city violated the state constitution’s “uniformity clause” by reassessing only commercial properties in 2018, not residential properties.

A state funding picture in flux

Grace said that it was time for the state “to more equitably and fairly fund public education.” But such a change, coming from the state legislature or the courts, is far from certain.

Gov. Tom Wolf, who’s in his final year in office, has proposed a $1.7 billion increase in K-12 education spending for fiscal 2023 to more than $15 billion overall. Most of that would come through a hike in basic education aid to school districts from $7 billion to $8.6 billion. He also wants a new funding formula that would redistribute revenue in a way that would likely benefit Philadelphia public schools.

But statehouse Republicans — who support more charter schools in struggling districts like Philadelphia — are proposing a smaller increase, less than half what Wolf wants and more in line with past increases, according to Cooper and other advocates who are monitoring the negotiations, despite a state budget surplus close to $14 billion.

Wolf has also proposed changes to the charter school reimbursement formula that would save the Philadelphia district $145 million by, among other things, tying payments for special education students more closely to their actual needs. Under the current formula, the district must pay charters about three times per student for special education students than for regular education students, regardless of the severity of the child’s disability.

Philadelphia has half the charter schools in the state, and its charters educate close to 80,000 city students.

But Republican lawmakers, who control the legislature, are likely to reject such changes to the formula. And they are also proposing a big increase in the state program that provides tax breaks to corporations that subsidize scholarships for students who attend private and parochial schools.

The deadline for a final state budget is the end of June.

Meanwhile, an ongoing lawsuit (which Grace highlighted) seeks to overhaul Pennsylvania’s funding system so that low-wealth, high-needs districts including Philadelphia would get more aid.

Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Jubelirer is expected to rule in that case in the fall. But the ultimate resolution, after likely appeals, isn’t expected for well beyond that.

Consulting firm will get $450,000 to help new Philly superintendent

2022-06-21T20:19:40+00:00

At his swearing-in ceremony on Thursday, Philadelphia’s new superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. unveiled a 100-day plan to help him transition to his new role.

What Watlington did not mention during the ceremony is the consultant who will — at a cost well into six figures — support that transition. The firm is run by the former head of Tennessee’s second-largest district who left that school system before his contract was up.

Last month, Watlington asked the school board to hire Joseph and Associates, a Tennessee-based education consulting firm near Nashville, to assist with his transition. The board unanimously agreed to pay the firm $450,000 for its services with little discussion at its May meeting. Funding for the contract will come from the 2022-23 operating budget.

The board has hired Joseph and Associates in large part to help Watlington to develop a five-year strategic plan for the district. That plan is due to be finalized at the end of next May. In addition, the firm will help assemble a transition team to help Watlington assess the district’s ability to meet its overall vision for schools known as “goals and guardrails.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Watlington said the consultant will also help him connect with people who can identify what’s working and what’s not working in urban school districts across the country. Watlington’s aim is to make Philadelphia one of the fastest improving urban school districts in the U.S.

“I’ve asked that external consultant to be an adviser to me, as I launch my 100-day entry action plan,” Watlington said.

The school board said in a statement to Chalkbeat that hiring such a consultant is “a best practice.”

The president of Joseph and Associates, Shawn Joseph, served as the first African-American superintendent of Metro Nashville Public Schools from 2016 to 2019, leading an 86,000-student district. Local media outlets reported that Joseph won praise for his focus on students of color while he led the district, but that his response to allegations of sexual harassment against school employees provoked controversy, as did certain contracts and a clash with principals.

The Nashville school board bought out of his contract after he served three years of his four-year contract. Joseph received a $261,250 payout when he departed his position.

In response to questions from Chalkbeat about his Nashville tenure, Joseph said it came to an end because “I did not believe that the climate supported a successful continued focus on achieving equity and excellence” in the district.

Two former school board members in Nashville vouched for Joseph’s leadership skills. Current Nashville school board chair Christiane Buggs said Joseph’s departure was due to “personality conflicts.”

“There were board members who were unable to reconcile their desire for their district with how Dr. Joseph was approaching it,” she said, adding that the contract buyout was a mutual arrangement.

And Will Pinkston, who served on the board during Joseph’s tenure, said it was a “really complicated situation” and that Joseph “was trying to do exactly the right thing and, frankly, exactly what the board asked him to do on the front end.”

The Philadelphia school board’s move to quietly hire the consultant drew some criticism. Lisa Haver, co-founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, argues the board should have discussed the matter further and doesn’t like the price tag.

“We’ve been saying for years that the board has spent way too much money on consultants and outsourcing, so this would not be out of character for any administration in this district,” Haver said. “They should not have considered this if they picked Dr. Watlington, if he had the knowledge and experience.”

In addition to leading Joseph and Associates, Joseph is an associate with Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates, an education consulting and executive search firm, and has worked and supported superintendent transition teams in two Maryland counties, Prince George’s County and Baltimore County.

Joseph founded his consulting firm in 2019, the same year he left his job as Nashville superintendent.

“We are supporting Dr. Watlington as he learns about the district quickly and aligning the work that he’s doing with goals and guardrails and facilitating the writing in a report, which will provide short-term and long-term recommendations in achieving the goals and guardrails,” Joseph said.

Joseph said the transition team for Philadelphia will have between 50 to 60 people, including committees made up of district teachers and principals in the school system. There will also be outside experts, including people from local universities who have experience in supporting education leadership transitions.

Betty Morgan, who once led Washington County Public Schools in Maryland, will be responsible for writing the transition team’s report.

Watlington’s 100-day entry plan will include a listening and learning tour, a school board retreat, a senior staff retreat, and other activities to engage with the community.

From early September until the end of November, Watlington and the transition team will evaluate the district’s capacity to achieve the school board’s vision, with specific attention to the district’s organizational structure.

Starting Dec. 1, Joseph and Associates will focus on the five-year strategic plan Watlington wants. The plan is expected to be ready by May 30 of next year.
This story has been updated to correctly identify Joseph and Associates as a consulting firm and not a law firm.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia mayor names two new school board members

2022-05-24T22:00:23+00:00

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney appointed two new members to the city’s Board of Education on Tuesday: Sarah-Ashley Andrews, a family therapist who founded a suicide-prevention organization; and Chau Wing Lam, a former district administrator, charter school parent, and official of the Philadelphia Academy of School Leaders.

They will fill vacancies on the nine-member board left following the resignations of Angela McIver and Maria McColgan. The appointees must be confirmed by City Council.

The board had been operating with just eight members since McIver’s resignation last July until this month, when McColgan’s resignation left the board with only seven serving members. Kenney’s appointments of Andrews and Chau Wing mean the board still has only one male member, attorney Reginald Streater.

In a statement, Kenney said the two “have dedicated their careers to supporting children and families, and I know that they will each make important contributions to the Board’s leadership and Philadelphia’s public schools.”

Andrews graduated from W.B. Saul High School before attending Bloomsburg University, where she studied mass communications, before earning a degree in biblical studies, with a minor in human services, from Lancaster Bible College. She also has a master’s degree in counseling from Lincoln University. She now works for TAG Inspires, which provides therapeutic counseling.

Andrews was previously a social worker with the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation, a nonprofit public health agency.

After a friend died by suicide a decade ago, she founded Dare 2 Hope, which has educated more than 4,500 young people on suicide awareness and prevention, according to Andrews’s biography on the TAG Inspires site.

She also co-hosts the weekly “Black in Therapy” podcast, dedicated to “normalizing mental wellness in the Black community,” according to the bio.

In a statement released by the mayor’s office, Andrews said that in addition to being a product of the school system, she is “a product of advocates who fought for my educational opportunities” who now stands “committed to educational equity for every student in Philadelphia.

“I am concerned about the whole child, how we can challenge and change unfair systems and norms, and advocate for life-changing educational opportunities,” Andrews said in the statement.

Chau Wing is currently the Director of Operations for the Philadelphia Academy of School Leaders, and spent six years working for the district in its Office of Evaluation, Research, and Accountability, according to her biography on the organization’s website. The academy trains principals for leadership in district, charter, and archdiocesan schools. Before that, she worked for the firm Public Financial Management advising governments on management and budget practices.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she also served as the assistant director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. She started her professional life teaching English in a middle school in Japan. Her bachelor’s degree is in psychology and her master’s degree is in social policy and practice, both from Penn.

Chau Wing is a charter school parent, as was McColgan, who she is replacing.

“Public education is the backbone of our society,” she said in a statement. Education achievement must be measured by more than test scores, she added, noting that at “high quality schools, children discover passions, integrate learning, resolve conflict, dream big, and most importantly, they matter.”

Chau Wing said that on the board she will draw from her experience in public finance, policy, leadership development and change management.

Mayor Kenney selected the appointees from a list of eight nominees recommended by the Educational Nominating Panel on May 16. Those eight were chosen from 62 applications, according to the mayor’s office.

The Philadelphia Board of Education is the only one in Pennsylvania that is appointed rather than elected. The mayor also appoints the nominating panel, which this year was led by former city solicitor Sozi Pedro Tulante.

Critics of the nominating panel, including the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, say it lacks transparency and undermines the democratic process in Philadelphia. The organization filed a right-to-know request for the names of all 62 applicants.

“People have a right to know who applied, and we have a right to know who the panel rejected,” said Lisa Haver, the alliance’s co-founder.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board member Maria McColgan says she will resign in May

2022-04-14T22:08:26+00:00

Philadelphia Board of Education member Maria McColgan announced Thursday that she will resign in early May.

McColgan, who was appointed to the board in 2018 by Mayor Jim Kenney, serves as chair of the policy committee. Neither she nor Board President Joyce Wilkerson gave a reason for her exit, or disclosed what she will be doing next. McColgan’s resignation will be effective May 6.

In response to McColgan’s announcement, Kenney asked Philadelphia’s Educational Nominating Panel to provide candidates for McColgan’s spot on the school board, as well as another vacancy created when board member Angela McIver stepped down from her role last summer.

The panel, chaired by former city Solicitor Sozi Tulante, convened April 4 to fill McIver’s position. But in order to give Philadelphians more time to apply for the board seats, the panel extended the application deadline to April 29. It is charged with providing Kenney with three names for each vacancy.

“We are looking for dedicated, effective leaders to be champions for our city’s schools and student success,” Kenney said Thursday.

The last members appointed to the board by Kenney were Lisa Salley, Reginald Streater, and Cecelia Thompson in 2020.

The group holds public meetings at the beginning and the end of its nominating activity, but its deliberations about the candidates it is considering are private.

Some community members have criticized the process for a lack of transparency.

Lisa Haver, a founder of the advocacy group Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, reiterated her group’s ongoing opposition to the manner in which the panel operates.

“People have a right to participate in the same way they participated in the superintendent search,” she said. “They have a right to participate in the search for public officials who are going to vote on a $3.9 billion budget.”

Haver noted that when the panel initially convened, “they said we’re picking at least one, or one at this time,” raising the possibility that there would be more vacancies. Now, she said, “We need to know if two is the number. They’re not hiring employees, they are choosing people to serve on a governing body. There is no legal reason for them to be in executive session.”

Kenney thanked McColgan for her service. “I appreciate her years of leadership and thank her for her contributions and commitment to the board,” he said in a statement. “I wish her the best in her continued service to children and families.”

Four years ago, McColgan, a pediatrician who lives in Northeast Philadelphia, was one of the first nine members Kenney appointed to the school board after the city succeeded in returning the district to local control after 17 years under a state-dominated School Reform Commission. She sends her children to charter schools, and her husband is the principal of Philadelphia’s Neumann Goretti Catholic High School. Her brother, Val DiGiorgio, is the former head of the state Republican Party.

Philadelphia is the only district in the Commonwealth where the school board is picked by the mayor, rather than elected. Pennsylvania’s 499 other school districts all have elected boards.
Senior writer Dale Mezzacappa contributed to the reporting

Philly school board adopts preliminary 2023 budget despite opposition

2022-03-25T22:26:20+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education approved a preliminary $3.9 billion 2023 budget on Thursday, despite protests from several principals and their bargaining unit that it doesn’t invest enough in schools.

This was only the first board vote, on the so-called lump sum budget. Next, there will be hearings before the board and city council in April and May. The board is required to adopt a final budget by May 31. The preliminary budget passed 8-0 as part of the board’s “consent agenda.”

The board also heard a plea from City Councilmember Helen Gym to embrace a bold new vision and fund the district from a growth mindset, not one that assumes a shrinking student population.

The Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, the principals’ union, also challenged the estimate underlying the allotments that enrollment will decline by 7,000 students next year compared to before the pandemic.

“We’ve got a question of whether we truly invest in and value the children and families and communities here in our city, or whether we’re going to leave them behind,” Gym said. “That’s not a question for Harrisburg, that’s not a question for city hall, that’s going to be determined right here in this building, and determined by all of us.”

A dozen principals and other district staff members also criticized the budget and spoke at the board meeting how their schools will be affected.

“The problem is they use numbers as opposed to needs” to create cookie cutter budgets that will harm schools, said Tangela McClam, principal of Cassidy Elementary School in Overbrook. Her school, with 250 students, will lose six teachers, she said, or about 25% of her staff.

She had been able to limit class size to about 15 students, but now will have to double some in size, she said.

“We should not have to beg every year for what students need,” she said.

Gym, McClam, and others said that enrollment decline will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if schools continue to be underfunded. ”We’re not going to accept these lower enrollments,” Gym said.

One of the resolutions the board approved Thursday was to hire contractors for three new school building projects. One of those projects is the construction of a new building for Cassidy that will hold 600 students – more than double the enrollment there now. McClam said when she arrived in 2014 there were 400 students, a number that has declined steadily since.

The budget estimates the number of students in district-run schools will be around 110,000 students next year, with more than 80,000 in charter and cyber charter schools. As recently as the 2016-17 school year, the district’s enrollment was close to 130,000.

And while Philadelphia has had steady population growth over the past decade, it had a 25,000 population decline between July 2020 and July 2021, according to census data.

Chief Financial Officer Uri Monson told board members that the budget added $170 million to schools and will fund additional climate staff, more bilingual counseling assistants, and more robust special education services.

He explained how he had applied equity standards to the budgeting process. Small schools like Cassidy had been receiving as much as $1,900 more per pupil than larger schools because of the way positions are allotted. For instance, there is a mandate of having one counselor for every 600 students, but even if a school has fewer than 600 students, it has a counselor, meaning that small schools disproportionately benefit.

This year’s funding system sought to correct for that imbalance and reduced that per-pupil gap by about two-thirds. There are 68 schools in the district with enrollments under 350 students, and 24 with fewer than 250 enrolled.

Not all schools lost staff and other resources, but neither CASA nor district officials could estimate what percentage of schools came out ahead.

Monson’s preliminary lump sum budget and five-year outlook show a fund balance for next year of more than $500 million. But that will occur only if the Republican General Assembly approves Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposed state budget, which calls for a record increase in state basic education aid to districts. It also revises how charter schools are funded. The changes Wolf wants would bring about $550 million in additional funds to Philadelphia’s schools next year.

But Harrisburg Republicans have pared down Wolf’s proposed education spending request each year, and have stalled on making changes to the charter funding formula, making it unlikely that this windfall will come through for the city.

In addition, Republican legislative leaders, via a landmark fair funding lawsuit, are opposing efforts to require the state to devote more state revenue to education and distribute it differently, in order to close the gap in spending between wealthy and low-income districts.

Monson told the board that he was careful to use the infusion of federal pandemic aid on non-recurring expenses, like school construction and repair. That money must be spent or obligated by September 2024..

Unlike every other district in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia has no taxing power of its own and must rely on the state and the city for most of its revenue.

But overall, Monson agreed with board member Lisa Salley when she said, “In essence, we are dividing a pie that is too small.”

The principals’ association had asked that every school, regardless of size, be assigned five positions – an assistant principal, a climate manager, a math and literacy coach, and a special education compliance manager. That request is not included in the budget, but schools did get discretionary money that principals could use to pay for these positions, although in most cases not enough to fund all of them, or even one.

Kahlia Johnson, principal of Overbrook High School, told the board that every school needs people in these important positions.

She explained that one day, as she was finishing up required paperwork, a student named Shelly walked into her office and said she had nowhere to live because her mother threw her out. The student said she stayed at school as late as she could, then she and her sister rode SEPTA until 11 p.m. They slept in an abandoned building. Johnson dropped everything to help her.

“Shelly’s life is difficult,” Johnson told board members.

Gym, who launched her political career as an education activist and is considered a potential mayoral candidate next year, urged the board not to repeat the scenario that occurred when Superintendent William Hite took over the district in 2012. At that time in the face of plummeting state aid, the district eliminated all nurses, counselors, and librarians, among other major staff cuts.

The district was under state control at the time, and Hite spent his first few years dealing with the ramifications of the cuts and the rest of his term attempting to rebuild. Hite is leaving in June, and a new superintendent will start in July.

“We lost thousands and thousands of staff members, and we lost a chance to really see our city grow and thrive,” Gym told a rally outside the building before the meeting started. She noted that it was “a movement of teachers, of educators, of school staff, loving community members, of union workers, and people who believed in investing in this city” who “turned that whole narrative upside down.”

The city took back control of the district in 2017 after the state determined that it was financially stable and no longer in acute academic distress.

Philly school board rejects calls to reopen superintendent search

2022-03-18T20:18:35+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education will not reopen the search for a new school superintendent, despite some public disappointment with the selection of three men from outside the city as finalists to succeed Superintendent William Hite.

The board said in a statement Thursday that it “conducted a thorough, professional and transparent search” and has “proudly presented the three strongest candidates, all of whom have the experience, capabilities and track record that Philadelphians said they want in the next leader of the district.”

The board said it whittled down a pool of 400 prospects to 35 people who they vetted more deeply, and then narrowed the list to 11 preliminary finalists. Of that group of 11, six were women and three “had experience in the Philadelphia education ecosystem,” the board said.

But none of those people made the cut down to the three finalists. About a dozen protesters outside district headquarters Thursday said the board’s decision to consider only men from outside the city represented very poor judgment. And a member of the city council also expressed dissatisfaction with the results of the process so far.

The board plans to announce the next superintendent the week of March 21. Philadelphia has not had a homegrown superintendent since Constance Clayton, who served from 1982 to 1993.

The finalists are John L. Davis, chief of schools in Baltimore; Krish Mohip, a former Chicago school official who now works at the Illinois State Board of Education; and Tony C. Watlington, superintendent of the Rowan-Salisbury district in North Carolina.

This week, each finalist met with parents, students, and educators, and also participated in a town hall with the general public.

The search was run by the firm Isaacson, Miller, with support from an advisory committee comprising 13 Philadelphians “representing diverse communities and constituencies across the city,” the board’s statement said.

Megan Smith, a spokeswoman for the search, said Friday that the board would announce the new superintendent next week, but there’s no date or time yet for that announcement. The choice will be announced at a press conference, not at a board meeting, Smith also said.

The board will deliberate privately over several meetings, said Smith. As part of their deliberations, board members will have written feedback from people who participated in the parent, student, and educator meetings, as well as the town halls.

The Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, the school board’s most vocal critic and watchdog, held Thursday’s rally urging the board to start over.

Protesters chanted “continue the search” and held signs on the steps of the district’s headquarters at 440 North Broad Street.

“It’s kind of shocking” that the board couldn’t come up with a single woman or Philadelphian among the finalists, said Robin Lowry, a longtime health and physical education teacher in the district.

In addition, state Sen. Tony Williams, a Democrat who represents Philadelphia, wrote an op-ed on Wednesday calling for the choice of a new superintendent to be delayed until a new mayor takes office, which will not be for another two years.

City Councilmember Helen Gym stopped short of asking for the search to be reopened, but expressed disappointment in the results.

“I think many people feel the pain of not seeing a woman or a local candidate in the mix, and I hope this knowledge leads us to prioritize investing in our local talent, as we clearly have not done enough on this front,” she said in a statement. “The next administration’s senior leadership should showcase the exceptional talent present within our District, particularly from women of color. Given the lack of local ties among any of the finalists, this is non-negotiable.”

Gym added that of three finalists, Watlington is the only candidate she is open to supporting.

Later Friday, the advocacy group Our Cities Our Schools also expressed support for Watlington.

“He was the only candidate who convincingly talked about bringing stakeholder communities together and empowering people,” the group said in a Facebook post, adding that members had spoken to school communities in North Carolina and “gotten glowing recommendations.”

Philadelphia saw a surge in midyear teacher resignations, data shows

2022-02-25T23:12:25+00:00

Editor’s note: This article was updated to remove material that appeared verbatim on the PHEAA website.

A labor shortage that marred the beginning of the school year in Philadelphia has continued and could get worse, with a midyear increase in teacher resignations, according to district data presented at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

According to the data, 169 teachers left the school system between Dec. 1 and Feb. 15 — double the number of teachers who resigned during the same period last year. That figure doesn’t include the 178 teachers that are currently on leave or sabbatical. The district employs about 9,100 teachers.

That’s also a change from the start of the year, when resignations were largely from the central office, not the teacher workforce, officials said.

Teacher attendance is also lower this school year, with a 20% increase in daily teacher absences compared to last year. Sixty-eight percent of teachers attended 95% of class so far this year. Amid a COVID surge following winter break, for instance, many schools shifted to remote learning to cope with sick teachers and staff.

Asked if he would characterize this year’s loss of district employees as a trickle or a water main break, Superintendent William Hite said the current staff shortages were the latter and were exacerbated by other absences.

“It all depends on the positions. At the beginning of the year transportation felt like a water main break right? Because we were not able to just get candidates into those roles. But as we start to work on the problem, then it becomes more manageable, but I do think it depends on both the positions and in many cases the places,” Hite said.

Some positions are harder to fill than others, said Larisa Shambaugh, chief talent officer for the school district. The areas with the largest number of vacancies include: special education, elementary, math, English, English as a second language, and science.

Shambaugh noted that teacher vacancies vary significantly by school. For instance, 162 schools have a “fill rate” for teachers of more than 95%; the rate is the ratio of the number of hires per month to the number of job openings. Fifty-three schools have rates of 85% to 94% for teachers. And seven schools are below 85% for teachers.

Teacher diversity has also been a concern in the district’s teacher recruitment efforts. More than 70% of the district’s students are Black and Latino, yet teachers are mostly white. Black teachers make up 24.5% of the 9,100 teachers in the district, while white teachers make up 67% of the teacher population, according to district data.

The labor market also has affected school staffing, officials said. Wages are increasing, making the market more competitive for employers. Some employees who might have worked for the school district can find other jobs, causing the district to work harder to recruit staff.

To attract climate staff, for instance, a role where the fill rate dropped from 92.7% last year to 62.4% this year, the district is proposing temporarily removing the requirement for a high school diploma and conducting a ZIP-code targeted marketing campaign.

Substitute requests also are higher with 982 substitute requests, on average, per day — that’s 726 more per day than last year. It also has been increasingly difficult to get the number of substitutes needed each day, district officials said.

To address substitute numbers, the district has tried several strategies, including offering daily bonuses to substitutes and hiring 143 full-time building substitutes to support schools on a daily basis.

District officials also said they were looking at strategies to address teacher vacancies, including higher salaries, retention bonuses, a comprehensive marketing strategy, early notification of intent to retire or resign, a pipeline of teacher residency, and more staff and support to the recruitment team.

Some of those items would be subject to bargaining with the teachers union.

To attract school nurses, which also has been an area with vacancies, the district announced a student loan relief program this month.

The current fill rate for nurses is 89.4%, compared to 97.8% last year, even though the district has hired 32 nurses since August. That’s an area the teachers union has drawn attention to throughout the school year, as the COVID pandemic has increased the workload for nurses.

Hillary Linardopoulos, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said of teacher and other vacancies that “A lot of it will come down to ensuring students and staff have the resources that they need to really promote working and learning conditions that are good for staff and students. That’s critical.”

Kristen Luebbert, a humanities teacher at the U School, addressed the staffing issue during the registered speakers portion of Thursday’s meeting.

“Teachers don’t leave because of students. We don’t leave because of quote unquote tough neighborhoods or quote unquote, bad communities. We leave because of bad administration, crazy, meaningless paperwork requirements and toxic working conditions.”

At the start of the school year, a shortage of bus drivers, food service workers and others wreaked havoc on the system. Buses were late and trash piled up in school yards. Transportation and food services still were among the positions with the lowest fill rates as of this month, officials said.

From Aug. 16 through Oct. 1, the district saw a significant increase in resignations from central office and, to a lesser extent, nurses, general cleaners, and secretaries. But not from teachers, Shambaugh said.

But the district said the “great resignation” is not affecting all roles this school year.

School-based administrators were 99% staffed at the beginning of the school year and remain almost fully staffed at 97.5%. Building engineers are currently staffed at 70%, which is about what the fill rate has been for the past four years.

Anyone interested in teacher positions can visit www.teachinphilly.com or www.workinphilly.com.

Philly will announce its superintendent finalists next month

2022-02-23T00:56:41+00:00

The Philadelphia district has narrowed down its list of 400 applicants for superintendent to a small group of finalists and will announce their names in March, the city’s Board of Education said Tuesday.

Among them, 71% are male, 64% are Black, and 20% are Latino. One of them has held a leadership position in the district.

Current Superintendent William Hite will leave the job in August after 10 years to become the CEO of the educational nonprofit KnowledgeWorks and the inaugural superintendent in residence and executive fellow at Yale University. The search to find his replacement began in October with 17 in-person and virtual listening sessions across the city. A 13-member advisory committee of community leaders, business representatives, clergy, and educators was assembled in December.

The finalists will participate in meetings with district stakeholders and one public, in-person, live-streamed town hall where students, parents, teachers, and principals will be able to ask the candidates questions.

The candidates also will take part in three in-person group sessions, one for 11 parents, one for 10 students, and one for 11 teachers and principals. The board is inviting Philly residents to nominate themselves to be chosen for the small groups. Participants must be vaccinated. The meetings are scheduled to be live-streamed through Facebook.

The board will choose the new superintendent in the spring.
Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org

Near his exit, Hite picked to teach and mentor senior education leaders at Yale

2022-02-14T21:48:56+00:00

William Hite, who will step down in June as Philadelphia’s public school leader, has been named the inaugural superintendent in residence and executive fellow at the Broad Center at Yale University’s School of Business for the 2022-2023 school year.

On July 1 he will also begin his new job as CEO of the national education nonprofit KnowledgeWorks. It’s unclear if he will remain in Philadelphia.

In his position at Yale, Hite will lead content facilitation where he will moderate discussions and introduce activities for the cohort in the Fellowship for Public Education Leadership program during the 2022-23 school year

Hite also will teach in and support the master’s in public education management degree program and be charged with providing mentorship to members interested in district leadership roles.

The departing school leader has said he will remain in his role during the search process to find his replacement. When he announced his resignation in September, after serving for almost ten years, Hite said he would remain in Philadelphia until the end of this school year.

Leaders at Yale thought Hite’s background in taking on issues of race and equity in the classroom made him a frontrunner for the fellowship.

“From his laser focus on equity and inclusion to his innovative approaches to effecting meaningful change in underserved communities, he has proven himself to be a paragon of transformational leadership,” said Hanseul Kang, assistant dean and executive director of The Broad Center at the Yale School of Management.

In 2020, Hite wrote an open letter to the school community that grew into an antiracism program, the Equity Coalition, which is a participatory, inclusive group that would set recommendations around what the district’s equity work should be. The effort is aligned with the school board’s strategic plan in its “goals and guardrails.”

“With COVID, we were all virtual. We saw that was traumatic for many of our young people and for our city. Our leadership team had begun some general equity work; then we had the horrendous murder of George Floyd,” he said in an interview with Yale last year. It was the last straw, he said then.

“His impactful, inclusive, and imaginative approach is very much in keeping with the Yale School of Management’s mission to educate leaders for business and society,” said Kerwin K. Charles, an economics professor at Yale.

Though Hite has sought to bring equity to the district, efforts to enhance the selective admissions process have received pushback. In addition to a lottery, preference is given to students from five city ZIP codes that have sent few students to selective schools. The aim of the new system is to make the demographics at the most prestigious schools more reflective of the district’s student population, which is primarily Black and Latino. Student applicants who qualify from targeted ZIP codes and choose selective schools are automatically accepted.

But some angry parents have argued that the new process also has caused problems, as some students this year received no offers at their selected schools.

“I wish to congratulate Dr. Hite on being appointed as Yale School of Management’s inaugural superintendent-in-residence, effective at the end of June,” said Board of Education President Joyce Wilkerson in a statement Monday. “We remain grateful for his continued leadership and service to the school district. Hite is a key part of the plan to onboard his successor.”
The search to find Hite’s replacement is on schedule, according to Wilkerson. Following the finalist announcement next month the school board is expected to invite the final candidates to Philadelphia for a series of meetings where the public will have the chance to address them. A final announcement is expected in the spring.

Philadelphia school board OKs controversial media limits for district’s 20,000 employees

2022-01-28T03:43:56+00:00

Philadelphia’s Board of Education Thursday night unanimously approved a requirement that all school district employees get approval from the district’s communications office before speaking to the media.

When the policy was proposed months ago, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers said the move would limit teachers’ ability to speak to the media. Others argued it would infringe upon district employees’ constitutional rights of freedom of speech.

Superintendent William Hite offered an explanation for the policy in response to a question from school board member Julia Danzi.

The new policy, he said, would “provide the media with accurate information background and any other information that’s relevant to whatever it is that they are interested in reporting.”

The policy approved Thursday is much longer and significantly different from the one first proposed in November, which board member Mallory Fix Lopez called “a gag order.” That policy would have required all 20,000 district employees to clear all press requests through the four-person communications office before speaking to media representatives.

Fix Lopez said that the earlier version appeared to bar, for instance, a basketball coach from talking to a sportswriter after an important game without first contacting the media team.

The new version makes a distinction between when a person is speaking on behalf of the district and when they are speaking as an individual, and says that it is not meant to interfere with employees’ First Amendment rights.

New sections lay out rules for “speaking in an official capacity” and “speaking as a private citizen.” If the latter, the employee is expected to do so after school hours and to “not make public statements known to be false.”

Another new sentence states that the district “endeavors to … support and empower employees to communicate with media about district matters” while promoting “accessible and accurate communication.”

One section says that principals shall notify in advance the media relations team about any “arranged media visit or invitation,” but doesn’t say that the invitation has to be cleared with the media team before it is extended.

“The Media Relations Team…shall work with members of the news media to encourage news coverage that is sensitive to the diversity of district families and staff, and is free of bias concerning race, ethnicity, education, income, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or disability,” according to the policy.

The last time the district adopted a media relations policy was in 2011, when it was under the control of the state-dominated School Reform Commission.

After long road, Philly board renews Universal Audenried’s charter

2021-12-10T22:36:19+00:00

Months after Philadelphia’s Board of Education vowed to investigate allegations that Black-led charter schools have been targeted for closure, the board voted to renew Universal Audenried Promise Neighborhood Partnership Charter School’s charter.

Though the board voted 7-1 in favor of the popular Black-led charter school in South Philadelphia, it came with pushback that may affect the process in the future of how charter schools will be reviewed for renewal.

Board member Mallory Fix Lopez, who voted against the renewal, raised an issue about the actions of the former chief financial officer for Universal, who was placed on administrative leave in May 2019 yet continued to sign and authorize checks. She also spoke of the high number of suspensions and expulsions at the school compared to the district. “I felt they were too egregious to overlook,” she said.

There was a formal objection made by members of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, or APPS, stating in a letter that the board did not disclose the full terms of the agreement and violated Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act. “The board has denied the public to be heard on this agreement as the public has no knowledge of what it contains,” the objection said.

At last month’s meeting, the board voted unanimously to approve the renewal application for Universal Vare Promise Neighborhood Partnership Charter School in South Philadelphia, which is part of the same charter network, but delayed a vote on Audenried.

On Dec. 6, the school board was notified that the Board of Trustees for Universal Family of Schools approved the terms and conditions and executed the renewal charter agreement issued by the charter school’s office. The agreement is for a five-year term through June 2026.

The agreement included conditions related to expulsions, employee background checks, financial issues, and a surrender provision if Audenried fails to meet the conditions. The action item to exercise surrender of charter was withdrawn from Thursday’s agenda and was replaced with an action item for renewal.

“We will continue to perform at high levels and serve our scholars and community over the next five years,” said Penny Nixon, superintendent and CEO of Universal Family of Schools after Thursday’s decision.

Past revocations of Black-led charters have drawn criticism from the 20-school African-American Charter Schools Coalition, which has raised concerns about the treatment of schools with Black leadership. The coalition called for an overhaul of the district’s charter office, demanding fairness, transparency, and equity on evaluations, oversight and expansion of charter schools.

If a charter agreement is revoked, the charter is dissolved, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Students attending a dissolved charter school can then apply to another school in their district, regardless of application deadlines. Charters, however, have a right to appeal to the Pennsylvania Charter Appeal Board before being dissolved.

City Council member Isaiah Thomas criticized the board’s presentation in the spring, saying, “it was like a gloomy cloud came over when Black charters came up,” with talks about accountability reports and “making sure you bring the hammer down” when the board’s expectations are not met.

Philadelphia has 85 charter schools, with a total enrollment of more than 75,000 students, or about a third of those enrolled in the city’s publicly funded schools. The school district, through its charter schools office, is the sole authorizer.

Black and Latino charter leaders operate 19% of the charters in Philadelphia, according to the coalition, but account for 87% of those recommended for closure or nonrenewal over the past several years, according to the coalition.

The district says it evaluates charter schools based on academic, operational, and financial measures and that charters recommended for closure or nonrenewal often have not met state standards for student proficiency in reading and math, mostly measured by standardized test scores. Graduation rates also are considered for high schools.

In May, board members pledged to address the allegations made by the coalition and hire an independent investigator.

The board hired Philadelphia-based law firm Ballard Spahr LLP to lead the investigation. The firm, which is working pro bono, might hire a third-party consultant with experience in racial equity analysis to assist the investigation. If it does, the school district will pay for the consultant.

The results of the investigation are expected in the fall, according to the board.

Philly schools could thrive under Latino superintendent, some activists suggest

2021-12-09T15:32:45+00:00

As the School District of Philadelphia intensifies its search for a superintendent, members of the city’s growing Latino community are floating names of potential candidates and the agenda they should tackle.

Names mentioned include current state and city education leaders, as well as school chiefs in big cities elsewhere. Some value a candidate having experienced poverty — as many of Philadelphia’s students do — and someone who is true to their cultural identity.

The next superintendent should be committed to equity and equality in education, said Carmen Febo San Miguel, executive director of Taller Puertorriqueño Inc. located in Fairhill.

A name mentioned to be considered for Philadelphia superintendent is Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Education Noe Ortega.

That person “needs to be concerned with the disconnect that some kids feel in not being represented in schools,” she said. Her group focuses on preserving and promoting Puerto Rican arts and culture through community empowerment.

While Latinos remain a minority in Philadelphia schools, their ranks have grown by half since 2008, now reaching 22% of public school enrollment.

Names that have been floated include Noe Ortega, Pennsylvania’s secretary of education, and Heidi Ramirez, who sat on the now-dissolved School Reform Commission. Ramirez also was executive director of Educator Networks for America Achieves, a national non-profit, and served as chief academic officer for Shelby County Schools in Memphis, Tennessee.

Another name is Cynthia Figueroa, who recently accepted the position to lead the nonprofit JEVS Human Services. She was previously head of the city’s Department of Children and Families.

And an out-of-state school leader considered is Michael Hinojosa, superintendent of schools in Dallas, Texas.

Three of Philadelphia’s poorest ZIP codes — 19133, 19134, and 19140 — have the largest concentrations of Hispanic residents in the city, mostly living in the Fairhill, East Allegheny, and Juniata neighborhoods and attending schools like Julio DeBurgos, Luis Muñoz Marín and Philip Sheridan elementary schools.

Thus, it’s important for the next superintendent to have personal experience with poverty and with building systems to support children and families, said Nelson Flores, associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Julio Nuñez, an assistant principal at Sheridan, said that a Latino leader who embraces their identity and understands families’ struggles would validate students.

“When students in the district see this in a leader, they feel seen,” he said. “They feel like their identity is valued, their heritage, their language matters, and that all of this package can be an asset in their lives and careers, not a hurdle to overcome.”

Even more important is having a superintendent who will help Latinx students succeed, said Adam Sanchez, a history teacher at Central High School.

“Most crucially, we need a superintendent who is willing to confront the deep segregation in our school system head on,” he said. “We can no longer tolerate a situation where our schools with the largest Latinx populations have some of the greatest teacher vacancies and lowest graduation rates. These schools need more resources.”

The search to replace Philadelphia Superintendent William Hite, who announced this fall that he would step down next August, started in October. The district collected public feedback through November in councilmanic districts.

The board’s search firm, Isaacson, Miller, released the job posting Friday and plans next month to begin interviews. The school board could narrow the finalists from five to two candidates by February.

State Rep. Danilo Burgos, whose family migrated to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic, spoke highly of Hite and said, “It shouldn’t be about who is Latino or African American. We get too caught up in silos and forget that the overall goal is to provide the best options for our kids.”

Philly board selects advisory group to help search for new superintendent

2021-12-07T21:35:27+00:00

Philadelphia’s Board of Education released the names of 13 members who will sit on the superintendent search advisory committee: They are faith and business leaders, activists and a principal — and they will be charged with helping to find the city’s next public school leader.

Superintendent William Hite announced late September that he would step down in August 2022, staying through the process to find a replacement to lead the more than 120,000-student school district. The search started in October, with efforts to get public feedback going through November across councilmanic districts.

“On behalf of the entire board, I want to share how grateful and excited we are to work with the advisory committee, which will help us evaluate and review final superintendent candidates, and provide insight and input during the process,” said Leticia Egea-Hinton, vice president of the school board.

The official job listing was released last Friday, by Isaacson, Miller, the search firm the board hired to help with the selection process. Interviews are set to begin in early 2022, with the board moving from five to two finalists between January and February.

Advisory committee members:

Rebecca Allen is a student board representative for the district and a junior at Central High School. She is the alliance chairperson for the Philly Black Students Alliance, and the Vice-President and founder of U.N.H.E.A.R.D., which stands for Uprooting Negligence by Habituating Equity and Anti-Racism through Real Discussions. The group leads discussions about anti-racism, inclusion, and diversity. She is also a member of the Nexus team, which builds relationships at Central through restorative justice practices.

Ernie Bennett is the district’s leader of SEIU 32BJ, which represents approximately 2,000 district employees. He is also a member of the Men United Against Violence Network and the Veterans Multi-Service Center.

Virginia Field is a kindergarten teacher at William H. Loesche Elementary School, where she also mentors practicum students, serves as a member of the building committee, and supports the Cradles-to-Crayons program. She comes from a family of public school educators — her parents and sister all taught in the district — and her daughter and son are graduates of the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush.

Regina A. Hairston is the president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Her son graduated from Overbrook High School and her daughter attended Harambee Charter School.

Cindy Lee Hauger is operations director at Project Based Learning, Inc., where she is responsible for human resources, finances, and fundraising functions. Her husband has worked in the district as a teacher and principal for over 25 years. They have two children currently attending district schools — Science Leadership Academy at Beeber — and a child who graduated from The Workshop School.

Ayesha Imani is head of school at Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School and Executive Manager of Imhotep Institute Charter High School, where she teaches in intergenerational African-centered learning communities. She attended district public schools for her K-12 education, and all of her children and grandchildren have also attended Philadelphia district and charter schools, including the C.W. Henry School and Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School.

Pep Marie is coalition coordinator of Our City Our Schools, or OCOS, which is a growing education justice coalition, made up of two dozen youth, parent, school staff, and community organizations that work together on issues of investment, governance and funding to transform the district’s schools. Marie is also a graduate of the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, also known as CAPA, and the Philadelphia Student Union.

Marina Nunez is a bilingual family advisor at Hispanos Unidos para Niños Excepcionales (HUNE), a nonprofit organization that provides free bilingual English and Spanish training, technical assistance, and individual assistance to families of infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities, and to professionals who work with children. Her oldest son graduated from Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School, and her two youngest children attend High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA).

Armando Ortez is a student board representative for the district and a senior at Northeast High School, where he takes dual enrollment courses at Community College of Philadelphia. At Northeast he also participates in track and lacrosse, and recently attended Access Engineering, an enrichment program presented by University of Pennsylvania students to introduce high school students to engineering.

John W. Spencer is the principal of John F. McCloskey School and a member of Teamsters Local 502/Commonwealth Association of School Administrators (CASA). He is a second-generation principal in the district, and an alumnus of Germantown High School. All of his children have attended district schools, including one who graduated this year.

David E. Thomas is vice president of strategic initiatives and community engagement at Community College of Philadelphia, where he designs, implements, and leads the strategic initiatives and programs of the college. He is an alumnus of Central High School, and his son graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School. Dr. Thomas is a board member of Youthbuild Philadelphia Charter School and a steering committee member of Project U-Turn.

The Rev. Mark Tyler is senior pastor at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church. His youngest two children were educated in the district, including Julia R. Masterman School and Science Leadership Academy.

Christiana Uy is senior director, legal and paralegal, at PREIT Services, LLC, the management affiliate of Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT). She has two sons attending the A.S. Jenks School and another son who will enter the district next year. Uy is a member of the Parent and Community Advisory Council to the Board of Education, and also participates in A.S. Jenks’ Home and School Association.

‘Problem solver,’ ‘change agent’: Philadelphians describe what they want in next school leader

2021-12-03T00:12:03+00:00

A coalition builder with educational experience and an unwavering commitment to equity.

A leader committed to transparency, effective communication, and setting the benchmark for Philadelphia students to compete in a global society.

A person with a track record of listening to, engaging with, and working alongside diverse communities in an urban setting.

These were some of the values and qualities Philadelphia’s Board of Education heard often from the public over 25 days of gathering input on what Philadelphians wanted to see in the next public school leader.

The findings were released Thursday in the board’s community engagement report, which detailed feedback from nearly 6,000 residents on what they desire in the next superintendent. It also highlights the strengths and challenges of the district, a snapshot of the last 10 years, and points in its accountability plan to improve student achievement, called “goals and guardrails.”

Superintendent William Hite announced late September that he would step down in August, staying through the process to find a replacement to lead the more than 120,000-student school district. The search started in October, with efforts to get public feedback going through November across councilmanic districts.

The board engaged directly with 1,317 participants via five school-based surveying sessions, six in-person listening sessions, and 37 virtual listening sessions.

“We need someone who is committed to communication with school communities, transparency with parents and the public, and accountability for themselves and senior staff,” said one unnamed participant in the Oct. 27 listening session.

The board heard a desire for the next superintendent to have experience building a strong cabinet. These leaders, the community says, must be able to see where gaps exist and fill them; the superintendent must be able to recruit, retain and manage a diverse team and hold them accountable.

Equally important to residents is the next superintendent’s track record of running a major system similar to that of the school district. They want knowledge of finances, facilities and infrastructure, and equitable distribution of resources.

They also want a leader who can manage predictable and unpredictable events, such as staffing shortages, transportation issues, and internal district relations.

“We can teach the artist to be a technician; we can’t teach the technician to be an artist. We need someone who will understand the important roles of teachers, families, and students to this district,” said an unnamed participant in the Nov. 4 listening session.

Most individuals want the new superintendent to be an effective communicator — a “problem solver,” a “change agent,” with a “people-first approach to decision making.”

Philadelphians shared a desire for the next schools leader to “understand.” The board also heard that families are looking for a superintendent who sees inclusion as an imperative.

Diversity was evident in who participated in the engagement process — well over half of the participants self-identified as Black, Hispanic or Latino, Asian-American, Pacific Islander or multi-racial.

Of the participants, 25.23% were parents or guardians, 22.98% were teachers, 18.46% were district staff, and 11.31% were students.

SInce the process started, the board worked 53 community organizations to host or participate in 48 surveying and listening sessions across the city. Groups included the Center for Black Educator Development, the Chinese Disabilities Project, and the Muslim Youth Center of Philadelphia.

The official job listing is scheduled to be released Dec. 3 by Isaacson, Miller, the search firm the board hired to help with the selection process. Members of the superintendent search advisory committee, or SSAC, are scheduled to be announced Dec. 7.

Interviews are set to begin at the beginning of 2022.

Philly board hires firm to investigate racial bias in charter school authorizations

2021-12-01T23:05:52+00:00

Months after the Philadelphia school board vowed to look into allegations that Black-led charter schools have been targeted for closure, the board announced Wednesday that it’s hiring a local firm to investigate racial bias in how charter schools are authorized.

The board has tapped Ballard Spahr LLP, a Philadelphia-based law firm to lead the investigation. The firm, which is working for free, might hire a third-party consultant with experience in racial equity analyses to assist in the investigation. If it does, the school district will pay for the consultant.

The results of the investigation are expected in the fall, according to the board.

“The board takes allegations of racial bias seriously, and we want everyone to know that we are looking transparently at what we do in order to continuously improve our work on behalf of Philadelphia’s students,” Board of Education President Joyce Wilkerson said in a statement. “We also want our minority founded and led schools to know that we recognize the value their voices bring to the table as we continue to strengthen charter authorizing practices.”

The announcement comes after the school board delayed a vote last month on whether to close Universal Audenried Promise Neighborhood Partnership Charter School, a popular Black-led charter school in South Philadelphia. That vote now is scheduled for Dec. 9.

At last month’s meeting, the board voted 7-1 to push back the vote. The dissenting vote was from Mallory Fix Lopez.

At the same meeting, the board voted unanimously to approve the renewal application for Universal Vare Promise Neighborhood Partnership Charter School in South Philadelphia, which is part of the same charter network.

Universal spokesperson Devon Allen said the school has no comment about the upcoming vote.

Past revocations of Black-led charters have drawn criticism from the African American Charter Schools Coalition, a group of 20 schools, which has raised concerns about the treatment of schools with Black leadership. The coalition called for an overhaul of the district’s charter office, demanding fairness, transparency, and equity when it comes to evaluation, oversight and expansion of charter schools.

City Council member Isaiah Thomas criticized the board’s presentation in the spring saying “it was like a gloomy cloud came over when Black charters came up” with talks about accountability reports and “making sure you bring the hammer down” when the board’s expectations are not met.

Philadelphia has more than 80 charter schools, with a total enrollment of more than 75,000 students, or about a third of those enrolled in the city’s publicly funded schools. The school district, through its charter schools office, is the sole authorizer. According to the coalition, Black and Latino charter leaders operate 19% of the charters in Philadelphia, but account for 87% of those recommended for closure or nonrenewal over the past several years.

The district says that it evaluates charter schools based on academic, operational, and financial measures and that charters recommended for closure or nonrenewal often have not met state standards for student proficiency in reading and math, which are mostly measured by standardized test scores. Graduation rates are also considered for high schools.

In May, members of the board pledged to address the allegations made by the coalition and hire an independent investigator.

In the case of Audenried, charter officials are discussing provisions under a “surrender clause,” meaning the school must meet certain conditions for renewal or it will forfeit the school’s charter. According to the school board, if Audenried fails to comply with two of the conditions for renewal under the surrender, then board may vote for closure by June 30.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, if a charter agreement is revoked, the charter is dissolved. Students attending a dissolved charter school are then able to apply to another school in their district, regardless of application deadlines. Charters, however, have a right to appeal to the Pennsylvania Charter Appeal Board before being dissolved.

Proposed Philly media policy called a ‘gag order.’ District says it’s ‘standard operating procedure.’

2021-11-09T00:46:11+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education is considering a proposal that would require all school district employees to get approval from the district’s communications office before speaking to the media.

Board member Mallory Fix-Lopez called the proposal a “gag order” during a committee meeting last week, where the issue was discussed. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers tweeted that the proposed revised policy constituted “egregious and reprehensible attempts” to limit its members’ ability to speak to the media, and promised to review its legality.

And Lisa Haver, president of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, told the board that teachers and staff “do not surrender their Constitutional rights when they become employees of the School District of Philadelphia.”

But Monica Lewis, a district spokesperson, told Chalkbeat Monday that the proposal to have all 19,000 district staffers go through her office before speaking to the media was “standard operating procedure.”

“I don’t understand where the confusion is,” Lewis said. “Any person who has worked for the school district, we’re asking that they let us know when they’ve been contacted by the media.”

Lewis said district employees will not be punished for talking to the media without her office’s consent. But the revised language doesn’t address consequences for violating the policy, and the school board’s communications office seemed to leave the door open on that point.

In response to a question from Chalkbeat, Janice Hatfield, a board spokesperson, said the policy is a “framework to guide the superintendent who will create a procedure that could or could not include disciplinary action.”

The public will have two more opportunities to comment on the proposed revision to the district’s media policy. The proposal will be discussed again at a board meeting in December and will come before the board for a vote in January, Hatfield said.

Board member Maria McColgan defended the revision to the district’s media policy, saying that it was common practice at businesses and universities.

The proposal states “staff members shall not give school information or interviews requested by news media representatives without prior approval of the Office of Communications.”

But district staff members struggled to answer how staff members should address specific scenarios in practice. Fix-Lopez, for instance, offered a hypothetical situation: The Temple News calls a high school basketball coach to ask about Friday’s game. The coach has to call the office of communications before responding?

Neither Alicia Prince, the superintendent’s chief of staff, nor Lewis could clarify what the proposed policy would require in that situation.

“By all means, we would want that information to be shared, this is simply a method to make sure we are engaged with media relations, that is our responsibility,” Lewis said.

Board members agreed that the proposed policy needed clarification, although McColgan said that she viewed the proposed changes as codifying existing norms.

“I work at several universities, and this is standard practice,” when staff members receive interview requests, she said. But she agreed that more details were needed for specific situations, such as what to do when approached by a reporter at events, as well as a better description of who is considered media and who is staff.

“I can see the intent, but this clearly needs additional work,” said board member Lisa Salley.

“I don’t think it’s a gag order per se, but I can see the issues,” board member Reginald Streater, who is an attorney and former board member of the Philadelphia ACLU, said during last week’s committee meeting.

At the committee meeting, board members discussed 14 proposed policies, including on weapons, searches of students, and immunizations. Board members sought changes or clarifications to several of them. The revised media policy was one of the 14.

Philly school board to vote on search firm to help find new superintendent

2021-10-26T23:56:34+00:00

Philadelphia’s Board of Education will vote Thursday on whether to approve a contract with a search firm to lead the effort to find a new district leader.

Superintendent William Hite announced last month that he will step down next year.

The firm Isaacson, Miller, which is based in Boston but has an office in Center City, will be paid up to $190,000. The firm has led leadership searches for a variety of public and nonprofit organizations, including colleges, foundations, arts and cultural groups, and other public school districts. It also has worked for educational organizations on issues involving social justice and advocacy.
Six firms applied during a public RFP process, with proposals due last week. Isaacson, Miller scored the highest during a review, according to a school board representative.

In Philadelphia, Isaacson, Miller has led executive searches on behalf of Drexel University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Foundation, and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. It also most recently completed the CEO search for the Free Library of Philadelphia.

“During this public input process, we have continued to hear that the next superintendent needs to understand Philadelphia,” said Board Vice President Leticia Egea-Hinton in a press release Tuesday. “Following a rigorous review process, Isaacson, Miller emerged as a clear choice, both because of their exceptional reputation and their deep experience working with diverse institutions and communities across our city.”

Once the contract is authorized, the search firm will collect candidate resumes, list the job description, and vet potential candidates. In February, an advisory committee will interview the top five candidates.

The board has not said who will sit on the search advisory committee

Public forums with two finalists are expected by February or March, with a new leader hired in the spring. The new superintendent will likely start in August.

School board members promised last month to have a robust public process to choose a successor to Hite, who is leaving after nearly 10 years leading the district. Hite said he plans to support the transition until the end of his contract on Aug. 31. The public process started earlier this month, with a survey to allow the public to share what qualities they would like to see in the next superintendent.

In the last 16 days, the board has hosted or participated in 34 listening sessions, connected with 832 people, and received 1,002 completed surveys, according to the school board. Megan Smith of Brownstone Communications was hired to oversee the community engagement process.

The board will review the feedback collected in the sessions and surveys, and evaluate it alongside the objectives of its accountability system known as “goals & guardrails.”

What’s next in search to find Philly’s new schools superintendent

2021-10-16T00:13:03+00:00

Amanda Jones started teaching at Muñoz-Marín Elementary School in North Philadelphia about 10 years ago — a year before outgoing Superintendent William Hite was appointed to lead the Philadelphia school district.

Jones, who now serves as the school’s principal, thinks Hite’s replacement should be someone who prioritizes equity. The 610-student school is located in the 19140 zip code, the second most economically disadvantaged area in the city, and access to resources is a concern.

“When we talk about who’s going to lead the district moving forward, all schools should have access to quality education and resources,” Jones told Chalkbeat Friday. “Despite our zip code, all of our students should have quality education.”

Hite announced late last month that he would step down in August, staying through the process to find a replacement to lead the more than 120,000-student school district. The search started this week, with 17 in-person and virtual listening sessions planned across councilmanic districts to seek the public’s input. Students, parents and community members have been invited to share what qualities they would like to see in the next superintendent.

Like Jones, Board of Education member Reginald Streater also has his eye on equity, and points to other important events that are coinciding with the district’s search for new leadership.

“We’re hoping that with the fair funding lawsuit and the federal grant money, we’ll have the opportunity to remake the district to create the 21st century learning environment all children need,” he said.

The seven-year-old lawsuit, in which six school districts and several parents allege state education aid is inadequate and unfairly distributed, is scheduled to go to trial next month. Pennsylvania has one of the biggest gaps in spending between richer and poorer districts in the country. Although the Philadelphia school district is not one of the plaintiffs, Hite has said he plans to testify.

Philadelphia also is set to receive $1.2 billion in federal dollars as a result of the pandemic.

Board members were among those helping to get input from parents outside schools this week. The Board of Education is circulating a survey at sites across the city.

Streater stood in the schoolyard of John S. Jenks Elementary School in Chestnut Hill Friday afternoon, providing assistance with the surveys to parents who were picking up their children.

There are many ways to fill out the survey, online or by attending one of these school-based events — designed to catch parents at school pick-up time — and completing it on paper. People who show up at the school-based events can also scan a QR code into their phone to access the survey.

The survey asks respondents to rank 13 characteristics they would like to see in a superintendent, including “visionary,” “promotes equity,” “listens to community,” “independent thinker,” and “collaborative decision maker.”

It also asks them to rank factors such as whether the person has experience as a teacher or principal, has worked with diverse communities, has worked for the school district, and is from Philadelphia.

It also asks respondents to rank the person’s most important prior accomplishments, from “raised student performance for students from many backgrounds,” to “expanded opportunity for historically underserved students,” to “improved and maintained safe school buildings,” and “is able to connect with students and families.”

The ability to connect with families is important to Jimmaya Sweet, who has children in third and fourth grade at Jenks.

“We need someone who is family oriented and comes out and speaks with us to explain their plan and communicates in a way where you can get feedback,” said Sweet, who is especially concerned about transportation issues.

Board member Lisa Salley, who volunteered Thursday and Friday at Overbrook Elementary and Jenks Elementary, said she felt confident the effort is engaging with people. She said the board would like to see overlap between Hite’s tenure and that of the next superintendent.

“This helps us ensure that there’s a smooth transition that continues to keep the ‘goals and guardrails’ and student achievement at the top of mind,” she said, referring to a new five-year strategic plan focused on improving student performance.

Streater, who appeared at the event along with Salley, said the choice of a new leader is an acid test for the board.

About 602 surveys were completed as of Friday afternoon, not counting printed versions filled out at the school-based events, said Megan Smith of Brownstone Communications. The Board of Education hired the firm to oversee the community engagement process.
Councilwoman Helen Gym said she hopes the district uses the search process as an opportunity to empower communities. “A true community driven process will recognize the shared vision for growth,” she said.

In addition, 77 people have participated in three virtual listening sessions thus far. Monday’s session was in partnership with Urban League of Philadelphia, while Tuesday’s was in partnership with Congreso, and Wednesday’s was in partnership with The PEAL Center and HUNE. There are more than 50 community organizations engaged in the process, including Children First, formerly called Public Citizens for Children and Youth.

Glenda Lopez, who picked up her kids at Muñoz-Marín Friday, said that more “can always be done” by the next superintendent. “They need to focus their energy on different things like extracurricular activities. Things that a lot of inner city schools don’t have,” she said.

Philly parents and teachers wonder what’s next after Hite announces exit

2021-09-30T21:01:43+00:00

After a tumultuous start to the school year in Philadelphia, with delayed buses, labor shortages and trash piling up around schools, some parents and teachers were relieved to hear the news earlier this week that Superintendent William Hite plans to step down next year.

Andrea Gaskins-West McMichael, a Philadelphia teacher and parent of two students, said it’s time for someone new to lead the city’s school district.

“There have been so many circumstances that have happened over the past few years that have exposed some of the differences, some of the inequities between schools in the district — everything from facilities to materials to funding. It’s time to just bring in somebody new that can maybe look at this from a different lens, bringing a different perspective. Hopefully bring about some change in all of this,” she said.

Others were reluctant to blame Hite for reopening challenges, which have affected school districts nationwide.

Brandon Archer, who was a senior at Julia R. Masterman High School last year and now studies at Swarthmore College, spent his last year of high school mostly online, but was cautious about putting all of the blame on Hite for virtual learning. He said it was “impactful seeing a Black man lead a large school district.”

“It is an extremely difficult job when the future of over 200,000 kids is in your hands every day. I do think that I’m excited for the new direction of leadership. But in choosing the new leader there needs to be community and student involvement,” he said.

Hite, who has led the Philadelphia school district for nearly 10 years, announced late Monday that he would leave in August 2022, staying on this school year to allow for a “full and complete” search for his replacement. Hite is the latest superintendent nationwide to leave during the unprecedented educational disruptions of the pandemic, following high-profile departures in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. He said he had no plans to seek another job as superintendent, and he will remain in the area. He said his replacement should love the city.

At a press conference Tuesday, the Philadelphia Board of Education promised a “robust” public process to find the next superintendent. The search will begin immediately, members said.

Some parents, students and elected officials in the city have called for that selection process to be centered on the input of families and the greater community.

Jemille Duncan, a senior at Multicultural Academy Charter School, said he hopes the process is transparent and student focused.

“Given all that’s happened the past two years with the pandemic I don’t blame him,” he said of Hite’s decision to leave. “I understand how arduous it has been to be the head of a school district so large and going through so much throughout the pandemic. I think it’s about resources and funding.”

He added, “Whoever they pick should be open to feedback. And having a superintendent that is humble enough to listen to students whose his or her decisions will directly impact I think is one of the best qualities one could have for any superintendent.”

Hite has been credited with bringing some stability to a chronically underfunded district charged with educating mostly low-income children, often with significant needs. In the spring of 2020, when schools across the country closed, Hite took Philadelphia’s public schools virtual. Last year, after months of remote learning, he pushed to get students back into classrooms in phases, beginning with early learners.

But teachers protested and threatened to boycott over ventilation and unsafe building conditions. A third-party mediator ultimately sided with Hite that buildings were safe.

This year, after reopening all schools on Aug. 31, the district has faced a firestorm of criticism after shortages of bus drivers, food service workers, nurses, classroom aides and other essential workers caused chaos in the first weeks of the year.

Five public schools and part of a high school also were temporarily shut down because of COVID cases barely two weeks into the school year. Parents complained the policy to close schools was too stringent. The guidance from the health department has since changed.

Sherice Sargeant, a parent of two district students, thought the district handled the return to school “too fast and inappropriately.”

“The parents’ voice was not considered. And I think the district needs to get back to that old slogan of ‘parents are partners’ versus just pushing information for us to do. Since they formed the new Board of Education to allow parents to speak in the best interest of their children, there seems to be a disconnect at 440 [North Broad].”

Gaskins-West McMichael said she wants more connectivity between the district and the teachers in the decision-making of finding a new superintendent.

“Being a teacher, a lot of times we find other information after the parents and sometimes both. I would like to see clear communication with the staff of the buildings and someone who kind of sees the differences and is making adjustments to address those differences.”

Denise Ortiz, who has two children in the district, a fourth grader at Richmond Elementary and a seventh grader at AMY 5 at James Martin Middle School, was affected by one of the school closures. Students at Richmond returned to school Monday.

She said: “Everything is not going where he said they were going — everything is going the opposite. He was in such a rush to open the schools.”

Philadelphia Board of Education promises ‘robust’ process to find new superintendent

2021-09-29T00:19:48+00:00

Philadelphia Board of Education members promised a “robust” public process to choose a successor to Superintendent William Hite, who announced Monday that he will leave in August after nearly 10 years leading the district.

Board Vice President Letitia Egea-Hinton said the search process for a new superintendent will begin immediately, and the board already has posted different opportunities for public participation. The board plans to hire a search firm.

Egea-Hinton said there will be 17 public sessions in 18 days starting Oct. 11, at least one in each of the 10 councilmanic districts, as well as a “virtual listening session” for anyone unable to make an in-person meeting. A citywide survey also will be available to everyone, she said, and the search committee will seek input from state and city officials.

Once the input is gathered, the formal search process will start in November, with final candidates vetted by an 11-member search advisory committee. The committee will include a teacher and principal, two parents or guardians of students in district schools, two students, and representatives from the charter school community, organized labor, higher education, business and an education advocacy group.

“We commit to deliver to the public timely communication throughout the search,” Egea-Hinton said. “We encourage you to take advantage of the ... opportunities available to you.”

She stressed that the process will be driven by the board’s “goals and guardrails” focus on academic achievement above all else in steering the district’s direction and seeking new leadership.

Hite made his announcement late Monday, saying he decided to share the news now to allow for a “full and complete” search for the next superintendent. At a press conference Tuesday, he agreed with Mayor Jim Kenney and Board of Education President Joyce Wilkerson that it was time for him to move on.

After nearly a decade, Hite outlasted the average tenure of a big-city superintendent as described in a 2018 report and was closing in on the record in Philadelphia for longest serving superintendent. Constance Clayton served as superintendent from 1982 and 1993.

Hite, who said he doesn’t plan to seek another position as superintendent, said whoever replaces him “would have to love Philadelphia.”

“My wife and I love this city and I’ve loved people in this city whether they are complimentary [of me] or frankly, not so much.” He said he plans to stay in the area.

Wilkerson thanked Hite for “10 years of strong and stable leadership.”

Kenney cited several milestones of Hite’s tenure, including progress in early literacy and college readiness milestones, the creation of 17 “community schools,” in which social services are integrated into school buildings, and expansion of free Internet access for students through the citywide program PHLConnectEd. He also led the district through its transition from state to local control, achieved largely because it attained a degree of financial stability after years of funding shortfalls.

“This is a legacy that has benefited countless families throughout our city,” Kenney said. “His diligent leadership and service to our city’s children for nearly a decade has made it possible for Philadelphia schools to begin a new chapter.”

Egea-Hinton said that the board is currently talking to search firms that specialize in superintendent searches and will have a decision “within the next few weeks.” She said there has not been a decision on how many candidates will be considered.

“We’re looking to cast a net across the country and look for people locally as well,” she said, adding that there is “no prejudging” on whether an inside or outside candidate would be preferable.

The plan is to present a list of five finalists to the search advisory committee, which will convene in December. She said the board will reach out to the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers for names of teachers to consider for the panel, but offered few details on how other members of the advisory committee will be chosen.

Final superintendent candidates will be identified “by mid-winter,” Egea-Hinton said.

Both fans and critics of Hite agree that the process should be guided by input from families and the community.

Council member Helen Gym, who was not invited to the press conference but attended as an observer, said Hite was accessible and sincere in his concern for students’ welfare, but faulted him for closing schools and continuing the “privatization agenda” of the state-dominated School Reform Commission, which hired him. Putting the district on a sound financial footing that allowed for the return to local control had a downside, she said, coming “at the expense of tragic understaffing that has jeopardized basic school operations.”

“We now have the opportunity to pick a leader that shares our transformative vision for public education and works to implement it in partnership with us all,” Gym said.

Council member Kendra Brooks said the announcement that Hite is leaving “comes as a relief because the community was made to feel like outsiders.”

“The district can no longer treat our students, families and school staff as if they are expendable,” she said in a statement.

Council President Darrell Clarke and Maria Quiñones-Sanchez, chair of the education committee, said Hite “earned our confidence and helped steer the path towards local control and fiscal clarity. Dr. Hite offered stability, and now will help lead the District through a critically important transition to a new leader next year.”

Clarke said he sees a search process that can be “the fulfillment of what local control actually looks like” through extensive public involvement.

Wilkerson, in an interview, called Hite’s long tenure “a gift,” and said his accomplishments, including increased access for students to Advanced Placement courses and dual enrollment in college courses, have been underreported. She said that the announcement of Hite’s departure this week was not triggered by the problems with school opening — noting that similar issues plagued many districts.

No matter who is chosen to lead the district, she said, “making deep and lasting improvements around academic achievement in the district ... is going to be heavy lifting, no doubt about it.”

Vaccine mandate gets approval by Philadelphia school board

2021-08-25T02:14:48+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education voted Tuesday to let Superintendent William Hite “develop and implement” a vaccine mandate for district workers.

The vote was 7-0 at the virtual meeting. Maria McColgan, who is a pediatrician, was absent. One seat on the nine-member board is vacant.

The terms of the mandate, which would apply to all who regularly work in schools — teachers, administrators, school safety officers, climate staff, food preparers, lunch aides, as well as some outside contractors and service workers — must still be negotiated with the district’s five labor unions. Any agreement is unlikely to be finalized before students return to school on Aug. 31, Hite said. Tuesday’s resolution also makes clear that any mandate would include the ability to request an exemption due to “certain documented medical circumstances or sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Hite said that the vote, which came after more than two hours of discussion, will allow his administration to start talking to the unions about deadlines and the consequences for non-compliance. He also said that the district plans more community outreach to counteract misinformation so “individuals are more comfortable” getting the COVID vaccine.

Dr. Cheryl Bettigole, the city’s acting health commissioner, said the city is compiling data on the percentage of vaccinated school workers. Her department can track the status of those who live in the city, but since many reside outside Philadelphia, the city is working with the state to determine vaccination rates. To protect privacy, the data would not include the vaccination status of individuals, she stressed.

Bettigole and Hite confirmed that parents would not know whether a particular teacher or school worker is vaccinated when students return to school.

Having mitigation strategies beyond vaccination is crucial, the acting health commissioner said. Policies now in place include mandatory masking, weekly COVID testing of staff, social distancing where possible, and air purifiers in every classroom.

She added that the most common way for children to be infected with COVID is in their homes, as people may be unvaccinated and lax about mask-wearing. She noted that in the city today, “we have more kids in the hospital with COVID-19 than at any point in the pandemic.”

While the leaders of the unions that represent teachers and principals have expressed support for a negotiated vaccine mandate, Nicole Hunt, the president of Unite Here, Local 634, which represents 2,200 cafeteria workers and noon-time aides, said she was opposed.

Her members are “in the most vulnerable population in Philadelphia,” said Hunt, with many being part-time workers and none making more than $30,000 a year. Many are women of color.

They fear that they will be fired if they don’t get the vaccine, Hunt told the board. “We should not be telling people what to do with their bodies; if they decide not to get the vaccine, that is their choice,” she said.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan issued a statement reiterating the union’s support for a negotiated mandate while stressing that another aspect of the district’s COVID mitigation strategy falls short. He again urged the district to test all students regularly for COVID whether or not they show symptoms. Right now, the district plans only to test symptomatic students or those participating in sports or performing arts activities.

“Regular COVID tests for students is one of the key ways that we can not only open schools but keep them open,” Jordan said.

Board members Tuesday did not discuss revising the student testing policy.

Hite said that the district would resume publishing a dashboard with the number of cases in each school, starting a few days after students return. That information will be based on staff and student testing and self-reports. Teachers returned to work Monday.

More than 20 people who testified in writing or person were split on the vaccine mandate. “COVID is temporary; civil rights are not,” said Christine Heying, a foreign language teacher at Girls High. “I will remain unvaccinated with medical approval.”

Parents who spoke were concerned about the ability to social distance in full classrooms and how students would eat lunch, when they would be unmasked. Hite said that each school would work out a plan, which could include eating outdoors and splitting up lunch periods.

Jonny Rashid, a minister with two children at Adaire Elementary School, said this is a lot to ask school leaders.

“I work in faith, and I want to continue to have faith that the school district of Philadelphia has the best interests of the students in mind,” he said. “We’re trusting you to keep our kids safe.”

Philadelphia schools to test only symptomatic students, but teachers union opposes change

2021-08-20T00:42:18+00:00

After randomly testing students for COVID last year, the Philadelphia school district plans to focus only on symptomatic students when school starts in less than two weeks — a change the teachers union opposes.

Union President Jerry Jordan said that testing “must include asymptomatic students,” or those who are infected but don’t show any signs of the disease.

But Superintendent William Hite said at Thursday’s board meeting that “it is more valuable for students to be in classrooms receiving instruction than to be removed for testing.” He said that the district wide student positivity rate was less than 1% during last year’s hybrid learning, when 27% of enrolled students returned to buildings in the spring.

The board also plans to hold a special meeting on Aug. 24 “to consider a resolution to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for employees and all contractors” who work in district facilities. Earlier this week, Hite said that he didn’t think the logistics of such a mandate could be worked out before the opening of school.

District officials expect most of the district’s 120,000 students to return for in-person learning when schools open on Aug. 31. To prevent the spread of COVID, the district plans to rely on “multiple layers of safety,” including universal masking, weekly testing of all staff members, on-site testing of symptomatic students, air purifiers in classrooms and other spaces, and regular deep cleaning. The testing program will cost about $36 million.

Hite said the testing policy is subject to change depending on circumstances and the recommendations of health authorities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends “screening testing” as a virus mitigation strategy in K-12 schools, especially when it will be difficult to maintain at least three feet of distance, as will be the case in many Philadelphia schools at full in-person enrollment. Screening, or regularly testing all or a sample of the student body, is meant to find asymptomatic cases or to catch COVID before people show symptoms.

But, in schools without routine screening, the CDC does say rapid testing of symptomatic students can help schools figure out who is sick and who was exposed.

In a statement to Chalkbeat, Jordan said he favors universal testing, universal masking, and vaccination. He said he plans to continue discussing the issue with the district. He noted that only students ages 12 and up are eligible for vaccination right now, meaning that each day “tens of thousands of unvaccinated individuals will be entering our buildings.”

At their first in-person meeting in more than a year, board members seemed satisfied with the new testing policy, but asked detailed questions about what will trigger a quarantine at a school. Hite said positive cases will be reported to the state Department of Health, which will make those decisions.

Some students participating in extracurricular activities, including athletes and band and choir members, also will be tested once or twice a week, although they can opt out if they provide proof of vaccination, Hite said.

The board approved two resolutions, one for $6 million and another for $30 million, with Dentrust P.C. and other vendors for COVID testing of staff on site, mobile sites for students and staff who are symptomatic, as well as providing other support.

It also approved its Health and Safety Plan required under the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, legislation, but only after an extensive discussion of what will happen if students must be quarantined due to exposure to COVID-19.

Among other provisions, there is a plan for 22 “quarantine teachers” to support regular teachers, said Chief of Academic Support Malika Savoy-Brooks.

Brooks said they are still hiring such teachers.

Board members were skeptical this plan would be adequate. “I don’t know why you just don’t turn on the cameras in the classrooms,” said board member Lisa Salley. “It sounds like a logistical nightmare.”

Hite said that all quarantined students would also have access to their regular teachers.

In a surprise, after lowering expectations on whether a vaccine mandate for staff could be reached before students return to school, the district announced late Thursday that the board would proceed with a vote Aug. 24, although Hite said there are still outstanding issues.

“We’ve been in conversation with all our union partners, and to a person all are in support of a vaccine mandate,” he told the board. “The thing we’re trying to resolve, all the information individuals need to get the vaccine and the consequences if in fact they choose not to.”

Jordan has said publicly he supports a negotiated vaccine agreement for his members. In interviews with Chalkbeat, so did Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, which represents principals, and Royce Merriweather, head of the Philadelphia union of school safety officers. The heads of two other unions representing custodians, food service workers and other school employees could not be reached.

Earlier in the week, Jordan criticized Hite’s administration for not opening talks about what a teacher vaccine mandate might look like, calling the lack of any serious discussion “absurd.” On Wednesday, he issued a statement taking a softer line, saying he and Hite had had an additional conversation. But Thursday afternoon a union spokesperson said they were unaware of the board’s plan to meet Aug. 24 on the subject of a mandate.

As part of its plan, the district has also installed air purifiers in all classrooms, gyms, auditoriums and other public areas, and is cleaning and sanitizing “walls, floor, furniture, doors, windows, bathrooms, fixtures and dispensers, railings, light switches and more” in every school, according to a district statement.

More than 1,000 touchless hydration stations are located in schools, and these are being tested for lead. Each school will also have touchless hand sanitizer stations and supplies “to support frequent handwashing, according to the district.”

Another point of concern is whether schools can maintain a social distance of three feet in classrooms, cafeterias and other spaces.

“While three-feet distancing is recommended and will be encouraged where possible, the priority from both the CDC and PDPH is the full return of students to in-person learning with multiple layers of safety in place,” the district’s statement said.

Some educators are nervous about the ability to distance when schools are at or near capacity.

Jeannine Payne, principal of the 350-student Richard R. Wright Elementary School in Strawberry Mansion, said social distancing — even at six feet — was not a problem last spring, when only 50 or so students regularly attended in person.

With K-5 students, nearly all Wright’s students are ineligible for vaccination.

”The district says because we are under a mask mandate, we can go under three feet. But they didn’t give us a number for how much. It’s been made very clear that the priority is bringing back the students and 100% in-person programming,” she said.

In reiterating the union’s openness to a vaccine mandate for its members, Jordan noted that “nearly 90% of educators nationwide have been vaccinated,” although no figures are available for those in Philadelphia. He said in a prior statement that the union “had no reason to believe” the figure in Philadelphia is any lower.

Both the principals and teachers unions are deep in talks about new contracts with the district as their current pacts expire at the end of this month. A teachers union spokesperson said that COVID precautions are not part of the contract talks, but still must be worked out in detail.

Cooper, the principals union president, agrees. “We think to the degree possible, folks should be vaccinated,” she said “We would also like to negotiate an agreement around vaccinations. We think it’s in the best healthy interest of everyone.”

She said the ideal would be to have an agreement in place before school opens, and said she has had just one exploratory conversation with Hite about a possible mandate.

It is not an easy ask, she said.

“To give [others] that kind of freedom over [a person’s] body is serious business,” she said. “While we recognize that vaccines are extremely important, we feel like there should be meaningful dialogue around it.”

Merriweather, president of the union that represents school safety officers, said he was “personally open” to a vaccine mandate, but has not been involved in active discussions.

“With everything that’s been happening, it’s a small thing to ask for someone to get a shot to protect themselves, their loved ones, and also the kids. I have two grandchildren that have gotten shot, two younger ones that aren’t able because of their age. It is a concern,” he said.

In a statement, the district called a vaccine mandate for employees “an additional layer of safety in our schools and offices,” while calling it “a complex matter that the district and school board are actively considering” in talks with “all of our labor union partners ... we will continue to have ongoing conversations with all appropriate parties to inform a final decision soon.”

Former Philadelphia school board member Angela McIver addresses sudden resignation, board effectiveness

2021-07-27T21:29:28+00:00

Angela McIver was one of Mayor Jim Kenney’s picks to sit on Philadelphia’s Board of Education after the state-run School Reform Commission dissolved four years ago.

Since being on the board McIver has been credited with creating the “goals and guardrails” initiative to focus on student achievement. So it came as a surprise to many when McIver announced her resignation earlier this month during a board meeting. At the time, neither McIver nor board President Joyce Wilkerson gave a reason for her exit or disclosed what she’d be doing next.

“I had no friction with board president Joyce Wilkerson or Superintendent Hite,” McIver told Chalkbeat Tuesday. “The decision was really difficult for me because I was committed to staying on and seeing through the goals and guardrails that the board put in place. I’m a small business owner and my business really did suffer from the pandemic.”

The Texas-born, New Mexico-raised educator fell in love with Philadelphia and decided to stay after graduating from Hampton University. She later earned her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.
McIver founded the Trapezium Math Club, which helps children build foundational math skills through after-school programming. But due to the pandemic the program had to pivot and reimagine itself and start from scratch.

“We were an in-person hands on face-to-face program that rejected technology so we had to pivot to technology to offer math online and keep our philosophy about learning and keep it as technology free as possible,” McIver said. “We had to close our brick and mortar location. We could not keep it open and to stay in business, we had to pivot to an online model.”

Her departure comes just months after Kenney appointed three members: Lisa Salley, Reginald Streater, and Cecelia Thompson. Now the mayor will need to find another board replacement with schools reopening for in-person learning in a few weeks.
The mayor’s office told Chalkbeat it will work with the school board and other stakeholders and develop a timeline to reconvene the Educational Nominating Panel, which will submit names to Kenney for consideration for the vacant seat.
The city will provide an update, including a timeline, when the panel reconvenes and the nomination process begins, according to spokesperson Sarah Peterson.
McIver said she has no plans on coming to the district in a leadership capacity. “But I absolutely loved being on the board, so if I could come back in the future I would accept that position again.”

She spoke with Chalkbeat about her time on the board and how the governing body can be more effective for the city’s students.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The board unveiled its goals and guardrails last year to focus on student achievement. What would make this system of accountability successful?

Implementation would make the goals and guardrails effective. I think it was very clear that everyone knew my stance on the goals and guardrails. I don’t believe we should be focused so heavily on reading and math scores. My theory of action is if we provide and invest in students and schools in the guardrails then the other pieces take care of themselves. To move the needle in reading and math test scores, you create school environments where students and teachers and families love to be, you give children options of extracurricular and athletic programs that keep them connected to the school and invested in the school and invested in coming. If you create that then the reading and math scores are an easy thing to improve.

Teachers opposing the anti-critical race theory legislation in Harrisburg want the school board to take a stand. They want the board to say regardless of what happens in Harrisburg, that it is going to continue to encourage teachers to teach about racism and teach about the truth in the past of this country. Do you agree?

Yes, they should. Critical race theory is just teaching history. We know that so much of history was taken out to present a particular point of view. And critical race theory is simply teaching the full history and it’s being used as a ploy of people on the right. I don’t even think it merits much conversation. But I can’t imagine that the board would not back that.

Is the district in better hands under local control as compared to being governed by the state when it was under the School Reform Commission?

Absolutely, 100%. When it was under the SRC the decisions and actions that were being taken were simply financial ones. Under the locally controlled school board, everything that drives the decisions has to do with students — it’s student centered and focused on equity and having deep, meaningful conversations about how we make this happen for students.

How can the school board be more effective in the future? Thoughts on how the mayor selects members?

So I just want to say that Mayor Kenny has been completely hands off. I’ve been impressed by how he picked the board and then let the board do its work without interference. So that is a wonderful thing that he has done. I think the board itself has worked really well together. I think a nine-person board is a good number. We bring diversity of thought, there is a lot of camaraderie and understanding and acceptance of differences of opinion. There are some things that I disagreed with and I think the board should consider, and I think for instance, the speaker’s policy. I think we would be better off if we let whoever wants to speak, speak. I think we should revisit the speaker’s policy. That’s not news to any board members. They know how I have felt about it. We are a democratic entity. We speak for the people, we represent the people, we don’t speak for ourselves. As board members, we represent the community, then we should give the community an opportunity to speak their voice.

Is the charter renewal process fair for schools with little resources?

I think it’s difficult for charters with fewer resources to be successful. No, I don’t think the charter renewal process is fair. I think that prior to this charter renewal process, we didn’t have a system in place that allowed us to look at schools across the board. That being said, we know the charter school organizations that have very strong boards that have wealthy boards that can support them are at an advantage. And the unfortunate thing is that those schools that are run by people of color don’t have access to those kinds of resources that put them on an equal playing field.

So there’s something that needs to be fixed there. I don’t think it’s the charter renewal process that’s the problem. It’s that running charter schools requires far more than just the money that schools receive from the district. It makes running a charter school very difficult. I helped start a charter school. And I’ve had people ask me subsequently to be part of a startup for charter schools and I always tell them you don’t want another charter school. You think you’re going to be doing these amazing, wonderful things with children and creating these exciting education opportunities and what you’re doing is spending time figuring out how to get a permit for the dumpster that goes behind the school and figuring out how you’re going to get the resources to pay for cafeteria tables.

You’re not running a charter school, you’re running a business. I would encourage people who think that they want to move forward and do charter schools to really think very deeply about it. And I think the process for authorizing and monitoring charter schools is good in helping prevent these problems from happening before they even start.

Let’s reflect on your accomplishments on the board. What do you look back on and are most proud about?

I am proud about my guardrail for extracurricular and athletic opportunities. I really wanted to stay on the board just to push for this because I believe to my core that the issues that we’re dealing with when you have to help when you’re hiring more school safety officers, when you’re putting more money into school safety officers than you are into supports and resources and opportunities for kids. We are doing the wrong thing and I think that I have been very loud and very focused on that piece and I am very proud of that and hope that somebody on the board picks up that mantle and continues to fight for this.

I was also the one board member who voted against the budget. It really came down to one thing that we’re spending three times as much, that budget has three times as much money put towards school police officers than it does towards athletics. And to me that makes absolutely no sense. We are creating the problem right? It becomes self-fulfilling when you hire more officers, the messages that you’re sending to schools become self-fulfilling and how we allocate our resources. It really says everything about who we believe our children are, what we believe our children deserve.

Schools were forced to close last year due to COVID. When you look back, your thoughts on the school year that was through the pandemic and how it was managed?

I think it highlighted the sheer discrepancy in resources. We would not have changed what we did last year, but we need to really consider how we make significant changes in our infrastructure and capital investments so that if something like this were to happen again, if we were to shut down again, we wouldn’t have to shut everything down and keep students home. That was not ideal. It highlights a far bigger problem and that is how schools are funded in our state. I think this is a much larger issue and people who are committed to equity across the board, whether they are in Philadelphia or suburban schools should be fighting for equitable allocation of resources because it did not have happened. It did not. We should have had access to our resources, should have been what our suburban counterparts had, and we should have been able to and we couldn’t. It just highlights the disparity in resources for schools.

I hope we don’t have to shut down again. The school district really needs to be thinking 10 years, 20 years out in terms of what our Infrastructure is going to look like. So how are we going to address that? We need to have bigger conversations about that and be more proactive than reactive, which I think we’ve been for the past decade.

Philadelphia school board member Angela McIver resigns, effective immediately

2021-07-16T01:02:17+00:00

Philadelphia Board of Education member Angela McIver announced her resignation, effective at the end of Thursday’s board meeting.

Neither McIver nor board President Joyce Wilkerson gave a reason for her exit or disclosed what she’d be doing next.

In 2018, McIver was one of the first nine members Mayor Jim Kenney appointed to the Philadelphia Board of Education. The board took over control of the district after the state-appointed School Reform Commission disbanded. McIver is credited with creating the board’s “goals and guardrails” initiative to focus on student achievement.

“Her contributions to the board’s evolution from the School Reform Commission have been invaluable,” Wilkerson said. “Dr. McIver was instrumental in the development of goals and guardrails.”

Wilkerson also cited McIver’s work on the board’s five-year plan to raise student achievement and her efforts to boost arts and music education, as well as athletics.

“I speak on behalf of the board and saying we’ve truly valued Dr. McIver’s perspective, both as an educator particularly in the area of math, and as a parent, as we worked on policies, budget, and strategic plans together,” Wilkerson said.

McIver, a former middle school math teacher, is the founder of Trapezium Math Club, which helps children build foundational math skills through after-school programming.

McIver thanked President Wilkerson for her leadership and expressed gratitude to other board members “who made me love coming to work every Thursday.”

McIver’s departure comes just months after Mayor Jim Kenney appointed three members: Lisa Salley, Reginald Streater, and Cecelia Thompson.

Philadelphia school renamed for Fanny Jackson Coppin, former enslaved woman and educator

2021-06-29T18:16:26+00:00

Editor’s note: This article has been edited to attribute phrasing previously published by Al Dia. It also was edited to properly attribute language that appeared verbatim on the Philadelphia school district website.

Many memorials, statues and buildings honoring past Confederate leaders and others who promoted or profited from slavery and racism have either been toppled or renamed across the country amid protests against racial inequality and injustice over the last year.

Four years ago, a group of community organizers in Philadelphia, led by Brian Kall, argued that Andrew Jackson Elementary School should not bear the name of the seventh U.S. president. Though he was not a Confederate and died before the Civil War, Jackson owned nearly a hundred enslaved Black people by the time he got in office. The school, which opened in 1924, is located at 1213 S. 12th St. and sits in a racially diverse area in South Philadelphia.

“Andrew Jackson has virtually no connection to Philadelphia, having only come to the city as a representative of Tennessee when Philadelphia was the nation’s capital,” Kall said in his petition for the name change. “There is no reason to continue honoring the legacy of this man when there are Philadelphians who more greatly deserve the recognition. He was a slave owner, and led multiple campaigns to purge America of its native inhabitants, both as a military leader and as president.”

Last week, the city’s Board of Education agreed and voted unanimously to rename the school after Fanny Jackson Coppin, a former enslaved woman turned educator with Philadelphia ties. The new name goes into effect Thursday.

“The School District of Philadelphia recognizes that school names are an important part of students’ learning environments and should cultivate a sense of pride in the history and traditions, to ensure that all students, staff, and families feel respected, seen, and heard,” the district said in a statement.

According to the district, the renaming came after several months of engagement with the Jackson Elementary School community, which included a series of surveys, focus groups and meetings. According to the district, more than 1,100 people responded to a survey about the school’s name in the spring. Coppin was the top name out of four options. This was the culmination of a five-phase naming process.

Coppin was born into slavery in Washington, D.C., in 1837, according to Al Dia.

After gaining her freedom as a child, Coppin moved to Rhode Island then eventually attended Oberlin college in Ohio, becoming only the second Black woman to graduate from there, Al Dia wrote. While at Oberlin, she organized evening classes for freedmen. She moved after graduation to Philadelphia, where she worked at a Quaker school called the Institute for Colored Youth. She became the school’s head principal, a title she kept until her 1902 retirement.

The Institute later moved to Deleware County and was renamed Cheyney University — the nation’s first higher education institution for Black people, according to Al Dia. In her later years, Coppin became a missionary, and her autiobiography, “Reminiscences of School Life,” was published in 1913. She died soon after, at age 76.

“Fanny Jackson Coppin dedicated her life to education, doing whatever was necessary to ensure that people from underserved communities and women had access to a high quality education,” said Jackson Elementary School Principal Kelly Espinosa. “She understood that education is the greatest tool in building a positive and productive life and this is a message that still rings true today.”

“The very principles that she fought to uphold nearly 200 years ago are ones that we instill in our students today and will continue to be what helps drive positive and lasting impact for generations to come,” Espinosa said. “This name is about recognizing the contributions of an educator whose work isn’t widely known, but it’s also about showing our students the impact they can have on the lives of others.”

Coppin is also the namesake of Coppin State University, an historically Black college in Baltimore, which was founded in 1900.

“As the fight for fairness and equality continues, my hope is that plans for renaming and other methods aimed to cure the many racial issues that we face are also accompanied by the work and resources necessary to move us forward, in a meaningful way,” Anthony Jenkins, president of Coppin State University, told Chalkbeat.

Linn Washington, a professor in the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University, called the renaming appropriate and educational.

“Having a school named after this widely respected educator is itself a ‘teachable moment’ that opens insights into inspiring historic accomplishments that are too often ignored,” he said.

Angela Crawford, a teacher at Martin Luther King High School, said “Fanny Jackson Coppin is the epitome of Black women teacher love. Her legacy is one that should be amplified.”

‘Sanctuary’ resolution aimed to protect immigrant students gets unanimous approval by Philadelphia school board

2021-06-25T22:21:50+00:00

Editor’s note. This article was updated to credit material previously published by the Associated Press.

Months after negotiations with an immigrant rights advocacy group, the city’s Board of Education unanimously approved a “welcoming sanctuary schools” resolution. The resolution vows to increase training for staff on how to respond to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and strives to ensure immigrant students and families will be safe from immigration authorities while at school, according to the Associated Press.

It also requires the school district to craft an emergency response plan, which would include counseling and emotional support for students affected by an immigration enforcement action in the community, the AP reported. Under the resolution, a plan needs to be in place within 100 days to provide training for staff, contractors and volunteers on how to respond to ICE.

The South Philadelphia-based immigration rights group Juntos pushed the district to pass the resolution as the first step in a larger platform “seeking language equity, improved cultural instruction and other educational justice reforms,” the AP reported.

According to the AP, ICE has previously designated schools to be spaces where agents are “dissuaded from conducting enforcement actions.” But some community leaders say ICE agents have not always followed this directive.

Edgar Villegas, who is the first-born son of immigrant parents and a recent graduate of the Creative and Performing Arts High School, said adopting the resolution is the first step to making sure immigrant students are safe.

“During my grade school years I have experienced immense stress,” Villegas said. “Many students feel uncomfortable sharing stories out of fear that the status of their parents could be used against them, which leaves students to rely on their classmates or other outside organizations for help. The resolution would protect students from ICE abuse and criminalizing forces.”

Villegas noted the arrest last year of a pregnant mother, Verónica del Carmen Lara Márquez, from Honduras, who was arrested by federal authorities after dropping off her 4-year-old daughter at Eliza B. Kirkbride Elementary in the Passyunk section of South Philadelphia. She was then told she had to leave the country within 45 days.

The mother’s arrest was a point of emergency for many in Philadelphia’s immigrant community.

Board members Mallory Fix Lopes and Letitia Hinton led the board’s effort with Juntos in creating the resolution. “We value our partnership and know that this must be a collaborative effort in the community and our schools,” Lopes said.

A survey conducted by Juntos of teachers and administrators about the district’s ICE policy’s last year found 75% of respondents said they had not been trained on ICE-related matters, according to the AP, while 73% said they didn’t know who to contact if ICE agents asked about students.

Guadalupe Mendez, who is a youth program coordinator for Juntos argued the abuse students go through in school is the reason why many of them drop out.

“The systemic oppressions our people face and lack of support offered are issues our students are faced with everyday,” she said. “For our students it’s exhausting to wake up everyday for school and prepare themselves mentally for the possibility of their parents being taken away. Sanctuary is not just about keeping ICE out of school, it is protecting the rights and innocence of all of our students.”
Also during the meeting, the board voted to approve the renaming of Andrew Jackson Elementary School in South Philadelphia to Fanny Jackson Coppin Elementary School and rejected the application for Philadelphia Collegiate Charter School for Boys. The board also installed two new student representatives Rebecca Allen and Armando Ortez for the 2021-2022 school year. Allen, is a rising junior at Central High School and Ortez, is a rising senior at Northeast High School.

Mayor Jim Kenney, who was in attendance to swear in the new student representatives, issued a statement saying the resolution “ensures all Philadelphia’s public schools are safe havens for immigrant students and their families.”

Philadelphia board and superintendent vow to combat racist practices in schools

2021-05-28T20:05:23+00:00

Superintendent William Hite told the Board of Education Thursday that embedded racist practices in schools are holding back Black and Latino students.

Black and Latino students are far less likely to qualify for admission to the district’s most selective schools and far more likely to be suspended for disciplinary infractions, Hite told the board. In the district’s most racially and economically segregated schools, far fewer students of all backgrounds meet special admissions standards.

“The district does not provide equitable opportunities for students to access academic rigor in the early grades and be prepared for secondary and postsecondary success,” Hite said in a presentation to the board as part of its effort to focus its attention on the quality of its academics, called “goals and guardrails.”

The meeting focused on the fourth guardrail, “addressing racist practices,” and looked at two areas: the admissions process for magnet schools and disciplinary practices.

“Acknowledging and addressing structural racism and holding individuals accountable to their implicit and unconscious biases have not been historically addressed and prioritized by the district,” the presentation said.

Hite said his administration plans to develop an “equity lens” by next month through which “to examine our systems and policies and ensure they are anti-racist.” Actions will include training staff members to recognize “implicit bias” and ensure that “all staff make decisions aligned with anti-racist practices and policies.”

In addition to raising awareness, the administration and the board are looking for ways to direct more resources to schools that serve the students with the greatest needs, such as by reducing class size and providing more counselors and other services.

Now, he said, “our system sets up the expectation that some schools can and do offer their students more opportunities to excel.” And those schools, by and large, enroll more white and affluent students than the district as a whole.

Board members repeatedly expressed the sentiment that students were being held back by schools that did not serve their needs.

While not every student needs to attend a selective school to do well, “the bigger issue has to do with the racist practice of how we allocate resources to schools that have high populations of Black and Hispanic/Latinx students,” said board member Angela McIver.

The superintendent presented data showing that the percentages of students who meet the special admissions standards differs markedly based on the demographics of the school they attend.

In the 58 elementary schools that are most racially and economically isolated – with 90% or more Black and Latino students – small percentages of students meet the special admissions standards, regardless of their racial and ethnic background: just 5.6% of Black and Latino students, and 8.3% of the other students in those schools.

Those schools, which Hite said were mostly located in Southwest, West and North Philadelphia, tend to have less experienced teachers, more turnover, and older facilities.

In contrast, a greater percentage of Black and Latino students who attended wealthier, less segregated schools, met special admissions standards. Of students of color at those 22 schools, mostly in Center City and the Far Northeast, 30% met the standards, Hite said.

Despite the disparities, last year the proportion of Black and Latino students who qualified for selective admissions schools grew from 33% to 40% of the applicant pool, largely as a result of revised admissions criteria brought about by the pandemic – the use of grades and standardized test scores from earlier grades, and the use of two years of data instead of one. This growth put the district ahead of the board’s goal that 52% of those qualifying for special admission schools will be Black and Latino by 2026.

With the new requirements, more students from all racial and ethnic groups qualified, but the disparities among them grew wider. The qualifying pool grew more diverse because Black and Latino students comprise 70% of the district’s enrollment.

For the 2022-23 school year, the district has decided to drop the use of standardized test scores entirely and is asking the public for input on what other criteria should be prioritized.

Hite said the decision has not yet been made on whether to drop use of the test permanently. At least one board member, Mallory Fix-Lopez, an educator, said she favors that approach.

“We don’t need standardized assessment to determine who can be admitted into our schools,” she said, adding that other factors about students are much more revealing of their potential and achievements.

Board members were particularly upset that the district’s single most selective school, Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School, had a high school admissions policy that requires students to have at least one year of Spanish or French. Masterman offers those language courses, but most of the city’s elementary and middle schools do not.

But almost all the students who are admitted to Masterman’s high school come from its middle school, which starts in fifth grade; very few students from other schools are admitted.

Board members did not question that exclusion. But they insisted the language requirement be dropped nonetheless, viewing it as a blatant example of inequity. There should be no such requirements — for languages, art, music or any other such courses — unless all students have access, Fix-Lopez said.

Hite agreed. In dropping the use of standardized test scores, the district will examine “what criteria are appropriate for special admission schools. Many on their own created criteria on their own to be very exclusive, and we understand that, but they do operate within a system, and we have to look at that system to ensure it is fair.”

At least one parent who spoke at the meeting expressed doubt that things would change. Parent Stephanie King berated the board for what she called a “laughably scant” plan to address racial inequities in the system.

King, who is white, has a child at Masterman, which is predominantly white and Asian American, and another at Kearney Elementary in her Northern Liberties neighborhood, which is predominantly Black.

“Half of Masterman’s admits are from private schools or from a handful of the whitest, wealthiest schools in the city,” she said. “This is not about ability. This is about where the students are. No amount of entrance interviews can overcome the fact that you have put the responsibility for adequately staffed and funded elementary schools back onto neighborhoods.”

She said the board should stop “making every decision out of fear that white parents would move to the suburbs if you don’t roll out the red carpet for them on the way to select schools. Dropping the [standardized test] is great, but I haven’t heard any proposals for real structural change that acknowledges your role in creating the problem.”

New school board member talks goals for Philadelphia students, lawsuit by former affiliate group ACLU

2021-04-13T20:07:17+00:00

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to properly attribute language that appeared on aft.org.

Reginald Streater was picked by Mayor Jim Kenney to sit on Philadelphia’s Board of Education, one of three new board members to join in December.

Streater attended two district schools that have since been closed, Leeds Middle School and Germantown High School. It’s that familiarity and his legal background he thinks will help make a difference sitting on the board.

“I truly believe that public education should be considered not only a civil right, but also a human right,” Streater said. “To serve Philadelphia in this manner is something I do not take lightly.”

Streater is an attorney at Berger Montague, PC, and served as the vice president of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.

The ACLU, however, has joined other groups, Offit Kurman P.C., UrbEd and the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, or APPS, in a lawsuit against the school board, saying its new policy limiting the number of public speakers at board meetings violates the Sunshine Act.

Streater talked with Chalkbeat about his mission for district students, the lawsuit by the ACLU, and why he chose to attend Germantown High School.

This is the first of three interviews with the new school board members. It has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

You are not originally from Philadelphia. Where did you grow up?

I was born in Columbia, S.C., and went to public school in the South. For my first and second grade years I moved to Philadelphia and then from that point, I went to private schools and then went on to finish my grade school education at Leeds Middle School and then Germantown High School.

Why did you decide to attend Germantown as compared to a magnet school?

It’s funny, because I actually got into Dobbins, which was a special-admission school. I do sometimes think, ‘What would my life have been like had I attended Dobbins?’ I thought I wanted to be an architect and Dobbins had a great architectural program at that time. I visited Germantown and remember saying, ‘I don’t want to get up at 5:30 in the morning to catch the train and the bus over.’ So while I was at Germantown making my decision, a brother walked up in an Air Force uniform and recruited me to Germantown’s Junior Air Force ROTC there. At that time I was looking for structure. The program entailed two days a week of full uniforms, military ranks, and drill team and color guard drills. And that is what sold to me to attend Germantown. I don’t regret it at all.

As a writer for the American Federation of Teachers wrote, “lessons Black male teachers bring to the classroom go far beyond academic content and pedagogy.” Do you agree?

100%. I do think, especially in the school district, that is becoming even more diverse. And young people, who may not come from our communities, may also not look like us. I think it would benefit us all for young people to see an iteration of a Black man who breaks a lot of the cultural norms. A lot of the stereotypes that have been put forth, growing up, you hear Black men are hyper-masculine and hyper-violent. It’s beneficial to all to see a Black man who is both caring and nurturing. That is a lesson that can be taught that can have profound impacts. Impacts that can be life saving. For example, somebody who was taught by a Black male may grow up to be a police officer, and perhaps they may make a different decision informed by the humanization via a memory of having a Black man as a teacher. I had four Black male teachers in my formative years in my school. I’d like to think that they made a huge impact on my life.

Talk about having to resign from the ACLU board and your thoughts on limiting time for public speakers at board meetings. Doesn’t that go against freedom of speech?

Without additional facts, I do not believe it goes against the constitutionally protected freedom of speech. Well, the lawyer in me is like, ‘I’m going to be careful about what I say’ because as a board member, I am one of the nine members of the board, which is the named defendant in current litigation related to this question, but I’ll talk about it as an individual who happens to be an attorney. Yes, I resigned as a member of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the Pennsylvania ACLU board. I did not have to resign, nor was I forced to. Also, the ACLU is representing two nonprofit organizations in a lawsuit against the board, in which I’m a board member.

From my personal understanding, the board is being sued for a violation of the Sunshine Act, not for a free speech violation.

After reading the complaint filed in this matter, I did not locate any arguments or counts as to an alleged free speech violation. From my reading of the complaint, the [basis] of the litigation is based on an argument as to one, the reasonableness of the opportunities that the board gives individuals to speak at action meetings, and two, whether the restrictions are so restrictive that it is no longer reasonable under the Sunshine Act.

From my personal understanding of free speech, I tend to think of what recognizes as “viewpoint discrimination.” For example, if a litigant were to allege that one, the board doesn’t want to hear from individuals because they don’t like the political or religious content of what the speaker has to say, and two, that the board is using the content neutral speaker policy as pretext for viewpoint discrimination, then maybe a free speech argument would be triggered.

In the most recent complaint filed, I have not seen this argument and I have not seen free speech expressly alleged by the litigants. From my understanding, the government may implement permissible time, place and manner restrictions so that it can conduct its business.

The district plans to spend nearly $1.3 billion of the relief money on buildings, academic recovery programs and personnel to help students deal with trauma from the pandemic. Is this the correct route?

If I could wave a magic wand, things such as ventilation and overall safety of buildings would be a reality, now. That stuff needs to be taken care of. As well as the other items you mentioned. Other than this, I’m not sure, because we haven’t really gotten the itemized portion of the budget. I don’t know the answer to that yet.

What’s your goal in coming on the school board?

So my goal was one to look at things from the diversity, equity and inclusion lens. I am particularly excited about the board’s goals and guardrails — as they provide our North Star for a school district that works for all of Philadelphia’s children. I’m looking forward to the prospect of the school district having a DEI officer who has some sort of semblance of independence to root out problematic practices within the district and at our schools. I also want to bring my perspective as a Black man, parent and lawyer to help problem-solve and get us from “no” to “how” as a village and district.

Philadelphia board rejects five charter school proposals

2021-03-05T03:29:15+00:00

With barely any comment, the Philadelphia Board of Education unanimously denied five new charter school applications Thursday after hearing scathing critiques of all of them from the district’s reviewers.

Christina Grant, head of the district’s charter school office, described all of the applications as deficient either in their planned academic program, operations, finances, or evidence of community support — sometimes in all four areas. The office doesn’t directly recommend denial or approval, but these evaluations had few positive things to say.

The five schools were seeking to enroll more than 4,300 students. The district currently has 86 charter schools that enroll over 70,000 students, more than a third of the 200,000 total in the city’s publicly funded schools.

Charter school expansion was the main reform strategy initiated by the board’s predecessor, School Reform Commission, which governed the district for nearly two decades after the state declared it academically and financially distressed. The board has not approved a new charter school since taking over its governance when the district was returned to local control in 2018.

More than $1 billion of the district’s $3.3 billion budget consists of tuition payments to charters — and the state’s charter school funding formula hasn’t been significantly revised since the law was passed in 1997. Combined with a declining state share of overall school costs, this means that charter and district schools compete for increasingly scarce resources.

“The district does not need and cannot afford any more charters,” said Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, which advocates against charters.

Two of the proposed new schools would have been operated by Aspira, Inc., which already runs five charters, including a cyber school. The proposed new schools were the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Preparatory Charter School, for kindergarten through eighth grade, and the Bilingual Business, Finance and Technology Charter High School.

The community development organization has a troubled history dotted with investigations into its management and financial practices relating to its charters — including its use of state and local per-pupil subsidies for the schools as collateral for loans to shore up other aspects of its operations.

Two of Aspira’s existing schools, Olney High and Stetson Middle, are former district schools that were converted to charters in an effort to turn them around under an initiative called Renaissance Schools started by the SRC. But due to mediocre academic performance and questionable finances and operations, the board voted in 2018 not to renew the charters and reabsorb the schools into the district. But Aspira appealed to the state and the schools remain under Aspira’s management.

Even the SRC, in 2017, voted not to renew Olney and Stetson’s charters.

No district school has been converted to a charter since 2016 under the Renaissance program, and board President Joyce Wilkerson, who also served on the SRC, has questioned the effectiveness of the model.

Grant’s critique said that the applications for both new charters would give Aspira “outsized control” and contained “numerous inconsistencies in anticipating per-pupil funding,” among other shortcomings. It was proposed that many of the employees would work directly for Aspira and not for the schools, which would present a problem in creating a cohesive staff and school culture, Grant said.

The three other proposed charter schools voted down Thursday were Empowerment Charter School, Philadelphia Collegiate Charter School for Boys, and Pride Academy Charter School.

Empowerment was proposed as a kindergarten to fifth grade school in North Philadelphia operated in conjunction with the educational leadership company Jounce Partners. Courtney Taylor, presented as the principal of the school, said it would be named for Shirley Chisholm and would nurture students to be “activists” and “reach beyond their potential” in a close-knit community.

Several parents and community members spoke in favor of Empowerment, not least because it promised to be staffed by people of color.

“One of the things that is important to me is that children see someone who looks like [them] as a teacher,” said Ruth Williams, a community member. “I didn’t see a teacher who looked like me until high school.”

But the charter office report said the application “did not present compelling evidence of the founding coalition’s ability to establish and operate a charter school.”

The Philadelphia Collegiate Charter School for Boys, proposed to locate in Mount Airy, would “prepare Philadelphia’s next generation of young men,” according to its application. It would be managed by an organization that runs a similar school in Baltimore.

“Being in an environment with leadership of men of color can be transformational in the lives of young boys they serve,” said Eric Worley, a graduate of the district and longtime city resident.

The district’s critique said, among other things, that the application did not clearly outline the role of the management organization and did not present a curriculum that would meet state requirements.

In rejecting this application, board members Julia Danzy and Reginald Streater said that they saw value in gender-specific education, especially for boys of color, but that this proposal fell short. “This application does not contain what we need,” Danzy said.

Pride Academy, a K-5 school proposed for Germantown, planned a project-based curriculum to help students develop life-long learning skills for the 21st century.

Jamie Meekins is a local small business owner and potential parent who had hoped to partner with Pride in its hands-on curriculum around nutrition. He urged approval, as did parent John Scarborough. “I believe in the vision of teaching through project-based learning,” he said, adding that he would enroll his child if it opened.

But Grant said its application lacked “a systemic approach for its educational philosophy” and did not show enough evidence of community support.

Among nearly 30 speakers, about half opposed charters on principle, while echoing the shortcomings of these applications, and the rest offered support for Pride, Empowerment and the Collegiate School for Boys. No speakers at the meeting spoke on behalf of the Aspira charters.

Philadelphia school board faces possible legal action over speaker limits

2021-02-25T00:04:04+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education’s decision to limit the number of speakers at its regular meetings is unlawful, according to the American Civil Liberties Union — and three City Council members are asking board members to reconsider the policy.

The ACLU warned in a letter sent to the board earlier this month that the new policy could result in a lawsuit. Asked if they plan to sue, Mary Catherine Roper, the organization’s deputy legal director, said “we are reviewing our options.”

The new policy restricts the numbers of speakers at each public meeting and shortens the time each has to deliver remarks, among other changes. It went into effect at the January board meeting.

City Council members Helen Gym, Kendra Brooks and Jamie Gauthier also urged the board, in a letter sent Tuesday, to amend the rules because they “restrict public input at a time when community voice, buy-in, and trust is urgently needed.”

Roper said in a Feb. 9 letter that the state Sunshine Act “guarantees the rights of residents of Philadelphia to provide public comment on matters that are or may be before the Board“ and “does not allow it to limit the number of individuals” who can speak.

In a letter of response, board of education President Joyce Wilkerson disputed the ACLU’s position, saying that the board’s new procedures are “reasonable and compliant under the letter and spirit of the law.”

The policy change was introduced in December as part of the board’s reframing of its leadership around “goals and guardrails” that prioritize student achievement. Key to the new focus has been an overhaul of what happens at board meetings. While the meetings have always included presentations, now the board spends between 90 minutes and two hours questioning Superintendent William Hite about newly developed reports around academic measurements designed to determine if students are on track to graduate with skills they need to succeed — and if not, what to do about it.

As part of the restructuring, the board also decided to limit the number of speakers allowed to comment at any one meeting to 10 students and 30 members of the public, and to cut their speaking time from three minutes to two. In addition, the window of time for getting on the speakers’ agenda has been shortened from two days to one. And speakers who spoke at the board’s prior meeting are put on a waiting list to see if new speakers fill out the available slots.

The new policy also eliminated two committees, on academics and finances, where the public could speak and engage with board members.

“The board is trying to diversify the types of input it gets and the opportunities to provide input,” Wilkerson said. When the district returned to local control in 2018 after 17 years under a state-run School Reform Commission, the city’s home rule charter was amended to allow for an advisory council to advise its members, she said. That council includes parents, community members, retired educators and others, she said, and has proven to be a valuable source of community input.

The board also accepts unlimited written comments on agenda items it is considering, she said, and is planning various neighborhood town halls to its regular public engagement.

That response hasn’t mollified the board’s most attentive critics, who say none of that is a replacement for comment on immediate action items at meetings that are regularly covered in the press.

“It’s wrong, it’s truly wrong,” said Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, a watchdog group, of the new policy. At each meeting, she and two or three other members, all retired district employees, critique board policies and items on the agenda for a final vote.

The organization sued the SRC under the Sunshine Act for holding an early morning meeting in 2014 to cancel the teachers’ contract. It also threatened to sue the board after it walked out of a raucous meeting that protestors had taken over and continued its business in another room.

On occasion, board meetings, which generally begin at 4 p.m., go on past midnight. Last July, 150 speakers signed up, almost all to protest the district’s plan to reopen for hybrid learning in September. Wilkerson said that the speakers weren’t representative of the whole community, noting that about 30% of parents chose hybrid learning in a fall survey.

She also said that eight or nine-hour meetings can be unproductive and exhausting for the members, who volunteer their time.

When the pandemic ends, she said the board will continue to allow testimony via Zoom for people who cannot travel or attend a particular in-person session.

Other school boards limit the length of their meetings, said Chris McGinley, a former Philadelphia board member who also served as a superintendent in Cheltenham and Lower Merion.

McGinley, who left the board in April, said that his main objection to the new procedures is the elimination of the committees, not necessarily the speaker limits.

“The goals and guardrails could have been applied to the existing committee structure to promote active dialogue between the public and the board,” McGinley said.

Haver said that one reason the public is so aggrieved has to do with when the policy change was put into effect.

“One problem is how they did it,” she said. “This is not the time, when people are isolated, to be isolating people even more.”

Council members offer support to three Philadelphia school board nominees

2021-02-10T23:22:45+00:00

City Council members questioned Mayor Jim Kenney’s three new nominees to the Board of Education Wednesday, offering all of them strong support and a word of caution about the difficulty of the volunteer position.

“It can be a thankless job,” said Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez, chair of council’s education committee. Council president Darrell Clarke concluded the 90-minute hearing with the words, “It will be a challenge for you.”

The three appointees are Lisa Salley, an engineer and businesswoman; longtime education activist Cecelia Thompson; and attorney Reginald Streater, who sits on the board of the Philadelphia ACLU. All three are lifelong Philadelphians who graduated from the city’s public schools. They are all Black, potentially making the board composition six Black members, one Latina, and two white members.

If the three are approved and seated, Streater also will be the only male on the nine-member board. The hearing was held in the council’s capacity as Committee of the Whole, which voted unanimously to put the nominees before the full body. A vote to approve will be held Feb. 18. The next board of education action meeting is Feb. 25.

The nominees will be helping to govern an underfunded, crisis-ridden school district that right now is struggling to resume some in-person instruction for early learners after nearly a year of all-remote learning during the pandemic. The district is marked by little trust between the district administration and its teachers union.

Last month Superintendent William Hite unveiled a hybrid learning plan that called for staff to return on Feb. 8 and students on Feb. 22. But Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan told teachers not to report, arguing that the buildings are unsafe and need improved ventilation. Teachers have been protesting instead, and a mediator is currently deciding whether the school district has fulfilled an agreement with the union that lays out required safety protocols.

Council members did not ask the nominees about the standoff, although they did ask how the three would build public trust in the board and the administration. They were also concerned about how they would work to assure equity across the district. The nominees said they would promote transparency and more robust public engagement.

“Community engagement will be in the neighborhoods so that you can get different perspectives. We are different neighborhoods and every neighborhood has its own unique footprint,” Thompson said.

Thompson, a graduate of Girls High, is the single mother of a son with autism, now 21, who went through the school system. For 15 years, she has been an activist offering her view on what needs to be done to make sure students with special needs are adequately served.

“But I’m an advocate for all children with or without disabilities,” she said. “I also advocate for children from low-income neighborhoods, because I am a family from a low-income neighborhood. I have the same struggles as my neighbors.”

Salley, also a graduate of Girls High, has had a varied career that has taken her around the world.

“As I hear news on the condition of the Philadelphia school district, I’m often saddened,” said Salley, who earned degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “I often wonder what happened to the district that prepared me to compete on a global basis. It was a district that worked well and served all abilities and all socioeconomic levels.”

She said her expertise is as someone who has been trained to promote new mindsets that will help solve “legacy problems.”

Streater attended Germantown High and Leeds Middle, both now shuttered, but which, he said “gave me a springboard to who I am today.” His two children now attend C.W. Henry Elementary School in Mount Airy.

Besides being a public school graduate, a parent, and an attorney, he cited as another qualification: being “a proud Black man.

“Just as many students in the district today, I had my difficulties in high school,” Streater said. “I was not focused on school, but on the many distractions that sadly many students in Philadelphia must overcome. These distractions include economic inequality, economic apartheid, food deserts, lack of funding, all substantial barriers to learning.”

Council members asked about subjects including how the district could recruit more teachers of color and whether it should get rid of school police.

In Philadelphia, the police are now called safety officers and they do not carry guns. While universally decrying what Salley called “a police-state environment” in schools, the three said they would need to be briefed further on the issue.

Philadelphia board promises change after report on low achievement, racial disparities

2021-01-29T19:47:35+00:00

A report presented Thursday to the Philadelphia Board of Education showed that just 32% of third graders read on grade level, with stark gaps among racial groups and particularly low scores for English language learners and students with disabilities.

The report classified 63 elementary schools as “off-track,” 64 as “near-track” and 21 as “on-track,” categories based on their progress toward meeting five-year goals in reading, math, and college readiness. The benchmarks for the report were gleaned through the district’s internal reading assessment, AIMSweb. Those considered on-track are likely to reach the goal of having 62% of students proficient by 2026.

In a stark example of inequity within the district, the board’s data show that schools considered on track enroll fewer than 5,000 students and are disproportionately white, while the near-track and off-track schools enroll more than 31,000 students in the grades studied, kindergarten to third grade.

At its first meeting since announcing its intent to focus on how the board can assure all students succeed, the board spent two hours questioning Superintendent William Hite about the poor results and discussing strategies for improvement. As part of their five-year “goals and guardrails” focus, they have set a goal for 62% of students to be proficient in English language arts by 2026. This is the first of many promised presentations on the goals and sub-goals. The next report will explore reading achievement for third grade through eighth grade.

Board members have promised to hold Hite and themselves accountable for making improvements, even if it means substantial changes in how they have traditionally operated.

“These trends are not surprising to any of us, now we have to talk about what we can do about it,” said Mallory Fix-Lopez, the board member who led the session.

Potential answers include abandonment of longstanding practices around teacher assignment and putting more resources into some schools compared to others, both of which have been largely off the table in the past. Hite said the findings would inform upcoming negotiations with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, whose contract spells out the terms for how teachers are assigned to schools, which still relies heavily on the choices of teachers.

He and Fix-Lopez said it might be time to offer incentives for teachers to go to and stay in challenging schools.

“We need to understand better what’s causing teachers to move,” Hite said.

Among the causes are school climate, including serious disciplinary incidents as well as student and teacher attendance rates. He pointed out that attendance in the top-tier schools is much higher, with 71% of students attending 95% of the time, compared to 54% in the near-track schools and 43% in the off-track schools.

Besides the numbers showing much lower student attendance, Hite said the bottom group of schools had much higher poverty rates, and more students learning English and with special needs. A higher percentage entered kindergarten already behind and without pre-kindergarten experience. The lowest tier schools also as a group had less experienced teachers, more teacher turnover, and a lower percentage of teachers rated “distinguished.”

At all the schools, regardless of overall achievement, there were racial achievement gaps, with Black and Latino students scoring below whites and Asians. Black and Latino students in the top-tier schools are on track to reaching the goal of 62% proficiency by 2026, with about half reaching the mark now. But two-thirds of white and Asian students in those schools are already there.

Even at the top-tier schools, English learners and special education students are not on track to reach the goal.

Board president Joyce Wilkerson said the district needed to have frank discussions around race, expectations, and “bigotry,” and the potential effect on student outcomes.

“I have this unease, when we talk about subgroups we seem to be masking issues of race,” she said. “I worry that we’re not tackling directly low expectations we have for some kids and the role that that might play....we said we will grapple with the role of structural racism, I worry that we’re glossing over the role of race, bigotry, low expectations, in talking about this in a very sanitized way...if we’re going to do the work, we need to do it in a very authentic way.”

Wilkerson asked whether the researchers controlled for factors other than race that could account for the disparities, such as homelessness. Hite said there were correlations with race, poverty, food insecurity, school attendance rates, and neighborhood conditions, and that the district would further probe that data. Wilkerson also promised to look into disparities by race in student disciplinary referrals and why the percentage of Black and Latino students has declined in coveted special admission high schools.

In response to Wilkerson, Hite also stressed the need for changes in teacher professional development that focus on long-term growth rather than “drive-by” sessions, and that more deeply explore attitudes and expectations.

And he also said that there would be changes in the reading curriculum based on the findings, moving from a “balanced literacy” approach to one that pays more attention to phonics and phonemic awareness.

As part of the “goals and guardrails” reorientation, the board changed its speakers policy, limiting it to 30 members of the public and up to 10 students, and giving them two minutes to speak instead of three. The changes did not go over well with those who spoke Thursday, many of them regulars.

They weren’t mollified by the board’s intent to hold regular town halls every two months, saying that is no substitute for letting people speak at the board’s monthly action meetings.

Jesse Godschalk, a teacher, said he applauded the “frank and open discussion” around the goals and guardrails, but said the change in the speakers’ policy is a “huge step in the wrong direction” that will short circuit any effort by the board to build trust with the community. “We see you replacing this public forum with smaller ones and new procedures that you have full control over,” Godschalk said.

Karel Kilimnik, a retired teacher and member of the watchdog group Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, also criticized the speakers policy and called the goals and guardrails presentation a “colorful rubric…[with] verbiage thrown at the wall to see what sticks.”

The board also indicated its approval for the district’s hybrid learning plan scheduled to begin next month, with six of the seven members speaking in favor of it as long as safety protocols are in place. Only Angela McIver said she was opposed.

She said she “can’t in good conscience” support reopening, planned for Pre-K through second grade students in late February, while “hospitals are overwhelmed by a virus our country has failed to control.” Several speakers also blasted the plan; one speaker called it “ridiculous” with the advent of new variants of COVID-19, another said the administration was forcing teachers to make “life or death” decisions.

“We will hold you responsible when your decision inevitably results in illnesses, deaths, and community spread,” said parent Sonia Rosen.

Mayor Kenney nominates three new members to Philadelphia school board

2020-12-30T18:58:05+00:00

Mayor Jim Kenney nominated three new members to the Board of Education Wednesday, choosing a pioneering scientist, a long-time special education advocate, and an attorney active in the American Civil Liberties Union.

These appointments would round out the membership of the nine-member board, which has operated with at least one vacancy since April. The City Council must now vote whether or not to approve the mayor’s selections.

All the appointees are Black, and Streater will be the only male on the board if all receive the Council’s okay.

The new appointments, all graduates of the Philadelphia district, are Lisa Salley, a metallurgical engineer and business executive who lives in Germantown; Reginald L. Streater, an attorney on the board of the local ACLU and parent of two district students; and Cecelia Thompson, the mother of a 22-year-old with autism who recently graduated from the system.

Philadelphia is the only district in the state where the school board is appointed by the mayor, rather than elected.

Salley, a graduate of the Philadelphia High School for Girls who earned degrees from Carnegie Mellon and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, started her career as a nuclear scientist. She specializes in energy innovation and public safety. Salley has worked for corporations including General Electric and Dow, and consulted with governments and organizations around business development and risk management. She also coaches girls soccer at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church and is a genealogy researcher who has delved into her own Gullah background

In a statement released by the mayor’s office, Salley said the COVID-19 pandemic has “taught us critical lessons that have implications for K-12 education,” exposing a stark digital divide. “We must provide all of our children the confidence to learn and an education that prepares them to be global citizens who embrace technology to make a positive impact on society,” she said.

Streater is an attorney at Archer & Greiner, P.C. who clerked for Chief Judge Theodore McKee in the Federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals and worked with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, which seeks to free wrongfully convicted prisoners. He serves as the Vice President of the Greater Philadelphia ACLU Executive Board and has spearheaded an effort to make the ACLU more accessible to the Black community by planning and executing programming and outreach in Germantown. He attended two district schools that have since been shuttered: Leeds Middle School and Germantown High School.

“I truly believe that public education should be considered not only a civil right, but also a human right,” he said. “To serve Philadelphia in this manner is something I do not take lightly.”

Thompson has spent 16 years as a special education advocate and has been a fixture at meetings of the board and its predecessor, the state-controlled School Reform Commission. She is chairperson of the Philadelphia Right to Education Local Task Force, secretary for the Governor’s Special Education Advisory Panel, a recent appointee to the Mayor’s Commission on People with Disabilities, and a member of the parent and community advisory group created by the City Council to advise the school board.

A graduate of Girls High, Thompson is pursuing a Masters in Special Education at Grand Canyon University.

“I strive to be a voice for the voiceless,” she said of her appointment. “I believe the greatest gift we can provide all our children is the gift of a high-quality education. And, the success of every student is the involvement and positive engagement of families, who are equal partners with the schools in educating their children.”

Kenney selected the appointees from a list of nine nominees recommended by the mayor’s educational nominating panel earlier this month. The mayor’s office said that 82 individuals had applied to fill the three board vacancies.

Each of his choices “will bring a valuable set of skills and diverse experiences to the table,” the mayor said in a statement “I was inspired by their passion for public education and their eagerness to take on this critical work.”

Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools has criticized the nominating process as lacking transparency and violating the state Sunshine Act. The nominating panel held two public meetings, an organizing session in November and then to announce the names of the nine people it would submit to the mayor. But its deliberations were all private and the names of all the applicants were not made public. Also, it was disclosed that one of its members did not live within the city, a violation of the city charter.

Haver said Thompson was “a great choice,” adding that she didn’t know the other nominees. But she reiterated that “this was a tainted process.”

Outside of Philadelphia, the state’s 499 other school districts all have elected boards.

The new members will replace Chris McGinley, who resigned in April; Ahmed Akbar, who left in September; and Lee Huang, who plans to step down as soon as his successor is seated.

The City Council is expected to take up the nominations after it convenes in January.

Nine candidates recommended for three Philadelphia school board vacancies

2020-12-17T01:28:11+00:00

A committee recommended nine candidates for three vacancies on the Philadelphia Board of Education during a sometimes tense public meeting Wednesday in which Mayor Jim Kenney was criticized for the selection process.

Speakers accused Kenney of holding private meetings and violating the state’s Sunshine Act. Kenney didn’t address the accusations during the public meeting.

The city’s home-rule charter, however, requires the mayor to convene a 13-member panel to put forward candidates to fill board vacancies. The mayor then appoints board members with the advice and consent of the City Council. More than 80 people applied to fill the three current vacancies.

Kenney will select three names from among the candidates. He has until Dec. 26 to request additional names from the committee, if needed.

In recent weeks, student leaders from UrbEd and the Black Student Alliance have pushed for student representatives on the school board to have full voting rights. They held a press conference Tuesday about the issue, where they also demanded an open process in choosing members of the board.

“It’s no coincidence that the city’s predominantly Black, brown, poor and working-class citizens in the only school district in the Commonwealth are denied their democratic right to vote for their school board,” Lisa Haver, co-founder and coordinator with the Alliance for Philadelphia, said Wednesday. “The very fact that districts across the state elect their boards should be made clear to Mayor Kenney there needs to be as transparent and participatory a process as possible.”

The students have received some support from teachers and city leaders.

“Our students deserve more than just symbolic gestures of inclusion, they deserve real power in decisions that affect their education,” said City Councilwoman Kendra Brooks on Tuesday. “Students can advocate for policies and practices and make sure our schools are equitable and just.”

Kenney wants to hear from them directly before determining if changes are warranted.

The candidates recommended Wednesday include:

Karima Bouchenafa, assistant director for the Honors Institute at Jefferson University
Tariem Burroughs, Community engagement specialist and program director for Bridging the Gaps at Temple University
Natalia Dominguez Buckley, vice president at Santander Bank
Gavin Keirans, partner at Rox Strategy, a management consulting business
Azeb Kinder, CEO of the Kinder Group
John (Jack) Lynch, former president of the Wallingford Swarthmore Education Association
Lisa Salley, a mechanical engineer
Reginald Streater, vice president of the Greater Philadelphia ACLU Executive Board
Cecelia Thompson, chairperson of the Philadelphia Right to Education Local Task Force

Student leaders also want more say in the appointment of student representatives and more transparency about board action items affecting students.

For student representatives to have full voting rights on the board, the students would need a ballot initiative to change the city charter and a change to the state school code, which requires board members to be at least 18 years old. That would require legislative approval.

The board’s current student representatives have said they don’t want voting rights.

Jemille Duncan, a junior at Multicultural Academy Charter School, and deputy director of policy, data, and research at UrbEd Advocates, said Wednesday to the nominating committee: “The mission to improve transparency coincides with our campaign to empower student representatives and our efforts to increase public understanding of what the Board of Education is doing.”

Philadelphia superintendent receives ‘needs improvement’ rating in two areas

2020-12-14T23:17:35+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education released its 2019-20 school year evaluation of Superintendent William Hite on Monday, rating him as “needs improvement” in systems leadership and in promoting student achievement.

This is the first time he has received a “needs improvement” rating in any category from either the board or its predecessor, the School Reform Commission, since he started in the 2013-14 school year.

The year “uncovered operational challenges,” the evaluation said, citing the botched co-location of Science Leadership Academy and Benjamin Franklin High School and the continued closing of schools with potentially hazardous asbestos.

It also said that while Hite is focused on student learning outcomes, “our data continues to show that students across Philadelphia are not achieving at the levels necessary to reach their fullest potential.” The board on Thursday announced it was reframing its own stewardship of the district around improving student achievement, an initiative it is calling “goals and guardrails.”

“We look forward to working with Dr. Hite to bring the focus of our city onto this critical issue in order to ensure all students are given an education that allows them to thrive, succeed and lead in a global society,” the evaluation said.

Hite got a “distinguished” rating in professionalism, financial management, and human resource management, and a “proficient” rating in communication and community relations.

Hite took responsibility for the building renovation project that resulted in students at SLA and Ben Franklin having to be relocated for half of the last school year, before the COVID-19 pandemic shut all school buildings. He also said he looked forward to working with the board on its “goals and guardrails” project.

The board also cited “the successes that should be celebrated under Dr. Hite’s leadership which included a system-wide pivot to accommodate the instruction of over 120,000 district children remotely, continuing to grow the number of teachers of color across the district, and receiving a reaffirmation of the district’s credit rating from Moody’s with the statement ‘the Philadelphia School District’s current financial position is the strongest and most stable of its recent operating history.’”

In 2017, the reform commission extended Hite’s contract through 2022.

Last month Hite said that he hasn’t been contacted about a cabinet post in a Biden administration after his name appeared on a short list of preferred candidates for education secretary.

Democrats for Education Reform, a group that was influential in shaping the education agenda of the Obama administration, sent an email to supporters with possible candidates for the country’s top education job, including Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson, head of Baltimore schools Sonja Brookins Santelises, and Hite.

“I’m happy to be named as one of those individuals, but I haven’t had a lot of time to focus on it,” he said. “And no, no one has reached out.”

Philadelphia school board unveils ‘goals and guardrails’ to focus on student achievement

2020-12-11T03:04:56+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education is embarking on an ambitious effort to reframe its stewardship of the school district around improving student achievement, outlining a strategy that will require big changes in the way it has traditionally done business.

Superintendent William Hite called it a “game changer.”

“It’s time to move beyond ‘system survival’ mode and to focus on the success of all our students,” Joyce Wilkerson, board president, said in unveiling the five-year strategic plan. The plan, she said, is the board’s effort to “deliver on the promise of local control, and it starts with the most basic question, ‘Why do our schools exist?’ They exist to provide every student with the tools and experiences they need to be successful.”

Board members said they spent two years on this project, consulting with the Council of Great City Schools and talking to their peers across the country. They also held town hall meetings with parents, teachers, and community members locally.

Part of that time was spent comparing Philadelphia’s test scores to other cities’ on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the “nation’s report card,” or NAEP. The test is given to a sample of students across the country and is widely viewed as one of the best benchmarks of student learning. It has no high stakes.

The bottom line for Philadelphia: When measured by national tests, the district scores far worse compared to other large urban districts with a large number of low-income students. Fewer than 20%of the city’s fourth and eighth graders met national benchmarks in math and reading on the last NAEP test, which was administered in 2019. That performance put Philadelphia – the nation’s poorest big city – behind 16 other districts in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading and math. In fourth-grade math, it was behind 19 other districts.

“Philadelphia is not keeping up with our peers,” Wilkerson said. “It’s sobering. It shows that as a whole, we are not doing what we need to for our students.”

She added: “We know it’s possible,” based on what other cities have achieved and the pockets of individual school successes in Philadelphia.

Calling their new direction “goals and guardrails,” board members plan to focus on making sure all students stay on grade level throughout their school careers and graduate high school with the “tools and experiences they need to succeed in the global economy.”

“I’m not sure whether those who are listening realize how this is a paradigm shift,” said board member Angela McIver.

The guardrails set “non-negotiable” conditions for schools, including a welcoming environment, access to “well rounded” experiences for all students, including arts and athletics, robust partnerships with students’ families, and addressing systemic racism.\

It is both “obvious and revolutionary…to focus on student achievement,” said board member Lee Huang.

The school board resumed control of the district in April 2018 after nearly two decades under the state-dominated School Reform Commission, an era that Wilkerson – who served briefly as the SRC chair – said paid little attention to student achievement, focusing instead on management tasks, such as approving vendor contracts.

“In one evaluation, the Council of Great City Schools estimates that the SRC spent just 10% of the time talking about student learning,” she said. “Let’s focus less on who gets what contract and more on the big picture.”

Even so, some progress was made in the reform commission era, she said. Based on state tests, more schools moved into the high-performing category and many moved out of the lowest performing category. The graduation rate went up.

Board meetings will look different from now on, with more public engagement and discussion of data, members said. There will be monthly monitoring in public, using data. The vision will guide board self assessments and the annual evaluation of the superintendent.

The first specific goal is to grow the percentage of third through eighth graders who read on grade level according to state tests from 35.7% to 65% by 2026. The board will also compare the academic performance of different subgroups of students, including the economically disadvantaged, racial and ethnic categories, English learners and special education students.

“Systemic racism is alive in our district,” Wilkerson said in a briefing for reporters on Wednesday.. “We’ll be tracking suspension data carefully,” she said. “We’re taking a look at everything in the curriculum…retooling the way we spend money and developing more effective academic programs and getting more out of the resources we have.”

The project is beginning in a time of crisis, when the district is looking at looming funding shortfalls due to the pandemic and still trying to determine how virtual schooling has further damaged students academically.

But Wilkerson and other board members said this is the right time to change direction.

“It’s essential to do this at this moment,” said Mallory Fix-Lopez.

Hite agreed. “It does provide us with a focused effort around student outcomes,” he said. “This changes how we look at data…and changes the types of questions we should be asking.”

Board member Julia Danzy said that this may be unsettling to teachers and others who work in the district. She said she understands that people are working hard and trying their best. But doing that and not getting the desired results “causes burnout,” she said. “Our actions are not indictments against you but a critical examination of the system.”

The board faces many obstacles trying to bring about dramatic change: It does not control its sources of revenue – it is dependent entirely on the city and state for funding — and, unlike other school boards in Pennsylvania, it has no taxing authority.

The teachers’ contract also dictates how teachers are assigned to schools. Fix-Lopez said that one issue they know affects student learning is class size, but changing the way teachers are allotted to direct more to the neediest schools would require agreement from the union.

At the board meeting, some members of the public were skeptical about the plan and urged stronger actions.

Community member Horace Clouden said the board should replace Hite, crack down on what he said was poor teacher attendance, and dismiss principals whose schools are underachieving. “Start firing people and not relocating them,” he said.

Cheri Micheau, who used to work in the district with English language learners and students who have immigrated, said she is not confident their concerns will be fully addressed, especially regarding their access to special admission schools.

“These failures are to be sure examples of racism, ethnic discrimination and linguicism. I urge you to mention these students specifically in this document since they are members of yet another group disadvantaged in their daily educational experiences in Philadelphia schools.”

Parent Stephanie King said the board has a long way to go to rebuild trust with the community.

“The goals are aspirational, the guardrails would be a welcoming environment to achieve those goals,” King said. “And I am here to tell you that you cannot achieve any of those things unless you repair the trust and relationship with the people in the schools. The students, the parents, and the teachers. You say you want every student at grade level for math and reading, but you refuse to listen when teachers tell you what they need.”

Mayor James Kenney is in the process of naming three new members to the nine-member board. Activist groups want more input into the process. Two members, Chris McGinley and Ameen Akbar, resigned earlier this year. Huang announced his intention to step down as soon as a replacement is seated.

Johann Calhoun also contributed to this report.

Groups allege ‘no transparency’ from mayor in filling Philadelphia school board vacancies

2020-12-10T14:04:40+00:00

A coalition of education groups on Wednesday called for Mayor Jim Kenney to conduct an open selection process for three school board vacancies.

The Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, Our City Our Schools Coalition and the Philadelphia Black Student Alliance also alleged that by directing the nominating panel to meet in closed session the mayor violated the state’s Sunshine Act, which requires agencies to deliberate and take official action in a public meeting.

“The mayor chooses his nominating panel with no public scrutiny,” said Alliance for Philadelphia co-founder and Coordinator Lisa Haver. “Now, the nominating panel is attempting to choose school board members without any public scrutiny. Why? Why is the mayor shutting us out?”

Students also voiced their displeasure about the process for filling the three board vacancies and the voting power of the board’s two student reps.

“As students we have great concerns about the lack of transparency and accountability in the nomination process,” said Youma Diabira, outreach coordinator for the Black Student Alliance. “We are here because that directly connects to our schools representing a diversity of perspectives and skills.”

Kenney launched the process to appoint three new members to the school board on Nov. 10. The schedule was delayed by vote counting in the presidential election. The city extended the application to last Sunday, three days after the original deadline. An additional 12 persons applied, according to a city spokesperson.

In a statement, Kenney said the city has received more than 60 applications and extended the deadline “to make sure all interested candidates have the opportunity to be considered.”

The city charter requires the nominating panel to vet candidates and submit to the mayor three names for each vacancy. The school board was revived in 2018, when the district returned to local control after 17 years under the state School Reform Commission.

Kenney has been criticized for the lack of public input into who serves on the nomination panel and the pool of candidates.

Dana Carter, a member of Racial Justice Organizing Committee Melanated Educators Collective and founder of Parents Organized for a Better School District of Philadelphia, aimed her frustration at Kenney and the Black members of the nominating panel.

“To the Black people on the nominating panel, I ask you, are you demanding transparency?” Carter asked. “Are you too afraid that you would lose your position for what is right?”

She advised committee members to quit, unless the process becomes transparent.

The school board, which is appointed by the mayor, has lost two members since the spring, with one soon leaving. Christopher McGinley, who was appointed in 2018, resigned in March. Ameen Akbar, who was appointed to the board in May, stepped down in October. And Lee Huang, who also was appointed in 2018, was reappointed in May and announced his resignation in November. Huang is still a legal member of the board and still attends meetings. He will remain until his replacement is sworn in.

The board includes President Joyce Wilkerson, and members Angela McIver, Julia Danzy, Mallory Fix Lopez, Maria McColgan, and Leticia Egea-Hinton.

Kenney’s 13-member nominating panel convened in November and is reviewing the applications. This panel is chaired by Wendell Pritchett, provost at the University of Pennsylvania. The nominating panel members are:

Bonnie Camarda, director of partnerships, The Salvation Army of Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Dan Fitzpatrick, president, Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware

Peter Gonzales, president and CEO, Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians

Derren Mangum, director of Institutional Giving, Opera Philadelphia

Maura McCarthy, executive director, Fairmount Park Conservancy

Michael Mullins, secretary treasurer, UNITE HERE Local 274

Barbara Moore Williams, educational consultant

Stephanie Naidoff, board member, Fund for the School District of Philadelphia

Ivy Olesh, executive director, Playworks

Ellen Kaplan, citizen at large

Kimberly Pham, community activist and member of the National Council of Young Leaders

Sean Vereen, president, Steppingstone Scholars

A Dec. 7 letter signed by Haver and Our City Our Schools Coordinator Pep Marie called on Kenney to direct the panel to conduct all deliberations in public and to include interactive public testimony at its next convening. The panel did not allow public testimony at its Nov. 17 meeting, according to the organization’s leaders.

The letter also requested residential and financial information for all members of the nominating panel. The organizations contend that not all panel members are registered to vote in the city as required by the Philadelphia charter.

Parent Tonya Bah expressed her frustration on Wednesday with the selection process.

“Transparency and fidelity must be at the forefront of any selection involving those appointed to govern our most precious resource which is public education,” Bah said.

Philly mayor, school board objected to COVID fund distribution

2020-12-09T00:42:38+00:00

Mayor Jim Kenney and city council president Darrell Clarke sent a letter to Gov. Tom Wolf in August complaining about how the state distributed $174 million in coronavirus relief funds to school districts, saying it denied the Philadelphia school district, the state’s largest, its “fair share” of the money.

A report issued this week by two state education advocacy organizations said that districts serving low-income, mostly Black and Latino students were shortchanged by the process. The groups urged state leaders to distribute any additional federal funds by using the state’s basic education formula, which takes into account factors such as poverty and the number of English language learners.

The letter from Kenney and Clarke called the formula the state used “inequitable” and called for Wolf to use his emergency education money to fix the disparity and “ensure Philadelphia students receive their fair share of state funding.”

Republican legislative leaders devised the formula used to distribute the health and safety grants — giving each of the state’s 500 school districts a baseline of $120,000 and then allocating the rest based on total enrollment. The result: Philadelphia received less per student than any other district, according to the letter.

After the Keystone Research Center and Education Voters PA released the report, Wolf, a Democrat, said he agreed the money should have been distributed using the state’s basic education funding system, also known as the “fair funding” formula.

“The District’s share would increase from $13 million to more than $40 million if the Fair Funding Formula was used to distribute these funds,” the letter said. The district’s chief financial officer, Uri Monson, told the board last week that it may have to do layoffs or furloughs because of shrinking revenue and rising costs from the coronavirus pandemic.

The Philadelphia Board of Education first objected to the distribution method when the money was allocated last spring. Board president Joyce Wilkerson said the formula “benefited wealthy suburban schools at the expense of large, urban schools. These are the same school districts that face the biggest hurdles and expenses related to reopening.”

There is still time to apply to sit on the Philadelphia Board of Education

2020-12-04T23:10:45+00:00

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, who is looking to fill three vacancies on the nine-member Board of Education, extended the application deadline by three days, to Dec. 6.

“We’re pleased that more than 60 Philadelphians have applied to serve our students in this important capacity,” Kenney said in a statement, noting the deadline was moved “to make sure all interested candidates have the opportunity to be considered.”

Under the city charter, the Education Nominating Panel must vet candidates and submit three names to the mayor for each vacancy.

The Board of Education was revived in 2018, when the district was returned to local control after 17 years under the state School Reform Commission.

One of the current vacancies dates back to May, when member Christopher McGinley resigned for personal reasons. McGinley was one of the original members appointed by Kenney in April, 2018.

But amid the pandemic, Kenney made no move to replace McGinley throughout the summer. Then Ameen Akbar, who had just joined the board in May, announced in October that he was leaving immediately to care for his father, who is in declining health.

Last month, Lee Huang said that he would leave due to new work responsibilities after he was named president of his firm, Econsult Solutions. He said he would serve until a replacement is seated.

All the remaining six board members are female.

Wendell Pritchett, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania and a former member of the School Reform Commission, heads the nominating panel. It will hold a meeting to submit its nine recommendations to the mayor on Dec. 16.

The meeting will be held virtually, and members of the public can submit written testimony using this form.

The mayor will offer his selections to the city council for approval on Dec. 21. The mayor has the option to ask the nominating panel for more names, but mayoral spokesperson Deana Gamble said, “We hope that won’t be necessary.”

The new members will likely be seated in January and will serve a term concurrent with the mayor, who leaves office at the beginning of 2024.

Anyone interested in applying for a board seat can do so here. The deadline is 11:59 p.m. on Sunday.

The nominating panel convened on Nov. 17. Its meeting was not public, though a recording of that meeting has since been published on YouTube.

Lisa Haver, of the watchdog group Alliance for Philadelphia Public Education, renewed her objections that the process is conducted largely behind closed doors.

“This is an important public position that controls a $3 billion [school district] budget,” she said. “Why can’t everybody know who is applying? It’s like we wait for the puff of white smoke.”

Mayor begins process of filling 3 Philadelphia school board vacancies

2020-11-11T00:04:24+00:00

Mayor Jim Kenney launched the formal process to appoint three new members to the city’s nine-person school board Tuesday, the same day board member Lee Huang resigned.

Kenney had planned to begin the process on Monday, but that was pushed back due to last week’s election and citywide unrest after police killed Walter Wallace.

The board, which is appointed by the mayor, has lost three members since March. Ameen Akbar, who was appointed to the board in May, stepped down earlier this month to take care of his ailing father. Christopher McGinley, who was appointed in 2018, resigned in March for personal reasons. Huang, who also was appointed in 2018, was reappointed in May and resigned Tuesday.

“In order to support my family and my professional work, I am not able to serve in this role for an entire second term,” he said. “And, I believe that the coming adoption of the board’s goals and guardrails and the mayor’s current nominating process make this the best moment to step down so that new individuals can seamlessly move this important work forward.”

“Lee Huang has been instrumental in the successful transition to local governance of the School District of Philadelphia,” said board president Joyce Wilkerson.

For a while, it was unclear if the mayor was going to fill McGinley’s seat, which has been vacant for eight months. Huang was the only man on the board after McGinley and Akbar made their exit.

The current six-member board, in addition to president Wilkerson, includes Angela McIver, Julie Danzy, Mallory Fix Lopez, Maria McColgan, and Leticia Egea-Hinton.

The nominating panel will convene on Nov. 17, according to the mayor’s office. The application process began early this week and there is a three-week application window.

“We’re seeking candidates who understand the complex needs of youth and who are ready to hit -the -ground running to help implement the School Board’s established goals,” Kenney said Tuesday.

Applicants must fill out the online form by Dec. 3.

The city charter requires the nominating panel to send the mayor three names for each board opening, which the panel will do on Dec. 15. He then has 10 days to request additional candidates from the panel. The mayor will send the nominations to City Council on Dec. 21 for approval.

“Strengthening our public schools is one of the top priorities of our administration,” Kenney said Tuesday. “I urge Philadelphians from all backgrounds who are interested in serving on the Board of Education to apply.”

This year’s panel is chaired by Wendell Pritchett, provost at the University of Pennsylvania. The nominating panel members are:

Bonnie Camarda, director of partnerships, The Salvation Army of Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Dan Fitzpatrick, president, Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware

Peter Gonzales, president and CEO, Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians

Derren Mangum, director of Institutional Giving, Opera Philadelphia

Maura McCarthy, executive director, Fairmount Park Conservancy

Michael Mullins, secretary treasurer, UNITE HERE Local 274

Barbara Moore Williams, educational consultant

Stephanie Naidoff, board member, Fund for the School District of Philadelphia

Ivy Olesh, executive director, Playworks

Ellen Kaplan, citizen at large

Kimberly Pham, community activist and member of the National Council of Young Leaders

Sean Vereen, president, Steppingstone Scholars

Mayor hopes to have list of candidates for Philadelphia board vacancies in December

2020-10-30T23:59:51+00:00

In two weeks, Mayor Jim Kenney plans to begin the process to fill two vacancies on the school board. The nominating panel, which consists of mayoral appointees, will consider candidates starting Nov. 9, and names could be submitted to the city council as soon as December.

The nine-member board, which is appointed by the mayor, has lost two members since March. Ameen Akbar, who was appointed to the board in May, stepped down earlier this month to take care of his ailing father. Christopher McGinley, who was appointed to the board in 2018, resigned in March for personal reasons.

For a while, it was unclear if the mayor was going to fill McGinley’s seat, which has been vacant for almost eight months now. But it’s a critical time for the Philadelphia School District, as a recent racial reckoning that began with the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and has intensified after Monday’s fatal police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr.

In a school district that is 73% Black and Latino, the current school board has no Black men. There are three Black women — board president Joyce Wilkerson, and members Angela McIver and Julie Danzy — two white women (Mallory Fix Lopez and Maria McColgan), one Latino woman Leticia Egea-Hinton, and one Asian man in (Lee Huang).

Akbar is Black and McGinley is white.

Kenney’s office said in a statement that he would consider appointing a Black man: “all forms of diversity are extremely important to the mayor when it comes to balancing the make-up of the Board of Education.”

“It’s critical that the board represents Philadelphians,” the statement said. “This includes our Black community, and Black males in particular, whose voice and perspective is critical to quality public education. He’s certainly open to filling both seats with Black men, and encourages all qualified candidates to apply when the application is released.”

The mayor is looking for candidates who are “ready to hit the ground running,” his office said.

“Have a sincere understanding of the demands of the position and appreciate that there could be difficult decisions on the horizon in the coming years,” according to the statement. “Have a firm grasp of the needs of our community and our youth.”

Akbar, who was appointed in May, was one of 27 board candidates whose names were sent to the mayor by the educational nominating panel. Council members then voted on the mayor’s appointments. McGinley was appointed in 2017. McGinley left Philadelphia in 1999, where he served as an elementary and middle school principal, to be the assistant superintendent in the Cheltenham Township district, where he was promoted to superintendent in 2003.

“While Mr. Akbar has been a board member for a relatively short time, we have truly valued his voice as a native Philadelphian, public school graduate, and career educator and student advocate,” said board president Joyce S. Wilkerson earlier this month.

After the School Reform Commission was dissolved three years ago and the city took over control of the district, Kenney appointed a school board with six women and three men that included social workers, a pediatrician, several educators, one expert in finance, and another in governance.

Some critics complained throughout the process that the public should have had input into the selection. The Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools also said the public should have had the ability to get to know the candidates before they were appointed.

The mayor at the time made his selections from 45 names by the education nominating committee, another body he appoints.

At the time the SRC dissolved, Superintendent William Hite declared the action “a historic vote,” promising to “continue to advocate for the necessary resources to increase our successes, maintain our stability, and advance the positive momentum we have been able to achieve.”

There’s a requirement by the City Charter for the nominating panel to send the mayor three names for each board opening.He has 10 days to request additional candidates from the panel.

During the first board member selection in 2018, Kenney did for more names, but at that time, he was appointing a whole new board.

Philadelphia school buildings will not reopen if they don’t meet health, safety measures, Hite says

2020-10-23T01:37:06+00:00

Superintendent William Hite promised Philadelphia board of education members and the public on Thursday that school buildings will not open “for in-person learning unless we have confidence that every health and safety measure is met.”

Hite made the statement at the board’s monthly action meeting at which he presented his latest reopening update, including more details on the district’s ventilation inspections and results for city schools.

The district is planning for hybrid learning, a mix of virtual and in-person classes, to start Nov. 30 for 32,000 students in pre-kindergarten through second grade. Staff and teachers are scheduled to return on Nov. 9 to prepare.

Some parents and teachers questioned the plan, but there was nowhere near the same level of outrage and opposition that occurred in July, when Hite proposed opening schools in September using a hybrid model.
Board members asked several questions and sought more information, particularly around adequate ventilation in schools, but seemed largely satisfied with the report and the timetable.

Hite and the district’s new chief operating officer, Reginald McNeil, shared information on the ventilation assessments and air quality balancing occurring in schools. Hite said 119 schools have complete readiness reports conducted by contractors hired by the district, including ventilation, and 102 “are completely ready” for occupancy. Another 105 reports still need to be completed, and he promised that all reports for schools slated for occupancy will be available by Nov. 12. There are 80 reports online now.

Without identifying them, he said there are 25 schools, 17 of them elementary schools, that need major work to meet industry and public health ventilation standards, and they either will be kept offline or be equipped with fans as a temporary fix.

Parents have to decide between Oct. 26 and Oct. 30 whether to choose hybrid learning or continue all virtual.

“Verified air balancers are used to determine the number of people who can safely occupy a space,” McNeil said. The ventilation reports will include safe occupancy signs for each classroom based on the ventilation report and social distancing requirements,.

On July 30, the district passed a Health and Safety plan required by the Pennsylvania Department of Education outlines detailed protocols lans for maintaining safe conditions.

Hite said 99% of new cleaning positions have been filled and that 99.4% of all personal protective equipment, including masks, have been delivered.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan said his team had received building reports on Thursday. The union reached a tentative agreement with the district Wednesday night that includes a “memo of understanding” that outlines detailed safety protocols the district must follow.

“Given the district’s years of deferred maintenance, and massive district-wide ventilation issues, reopening in any capacity will be enormously challenging, and our analysis of the ventilation reports and other standards will determine the feasibility of these efforts,” Jordan said.

Talk of closing schools, tax breaks top Philadelphia school board meeting

2020-09-18T23:39:22+00:00

During a contentious six-hour meeting the Philadelphia Board of Education unanimously passed a controversial corporate tax break, while one member proposed closing schools and another said she was “disgusted” by newly restrictive speakers’ policies.

“If you really believe that Black lives matter, having that conversation about closing schools right now was utterly ridiculous,” said teacher Keziah Ridgeway, a member of the Melanated Educators Collective, or MEC,. “Y’all have money, in the words of Tupac, to fund everything else, but you don’t have money for our schools.”

Fellow educator and MEC member Dana Carter told the board it needed to stop planning service cuts and start holding Superintendent William Hite accountable for documented missteps.

“The miseducation of Black children leads to Black deaths,” Carter said. “How are we discussing school closures without talking about the $51 million we fumbled at Ben Franklin?”

During the meeting on Thursday, Hite updated the board on plans for reopening and online access, and vowed to reexamine controversial online policies that require hours of screen time for young students. “We’ve heard a great deal [from] teachers and families about the struggles,” he said.

The board also formally swore in two new non-voting student representatives, Keylisha Diaz of the Philadelphia Military Academy and Toluwanimi Olaleye of Carver High School for Engineering and Science. Member Leticia Egea-Hinton urged the pair to ask “tough questions” about district policy and practice.

“When you talk, we listen,” Egea-Hinton told the new student reps.

But the evening’s bitter discussions, which featured a new policy to mute public testimony when speakers stray from their registered topic, left many feeling that the board created three years ago is doing no better than the School Reform Commission, its state-run predecessor, at delivering equitable education or holding executives accountable.

“Board members seem to salivate over the closing of public schools,” said Kelsey Romano, a teacher at Saul High School and a co-chair of the district’s equity committee. “We will not forget the $600,000 office renovation and the employee paid for two full-time jobs in two districts. The trust is all but shattered.”

The evening’s most contentious debate concerned the proposed Keystone Opportunity Zone tax break for Hilco Redevelopment Partners, which board members approved with one abstention, pleasing trade unions and economic development officials, but infuriating advocates who saw it as a needless giveaway.

The session also featured a sobering financial presentation from chief financial officer Uri Monson, detailing millions in new costs - including rising cyber-charter payments - and millions more in lost revenues, thanks to plunging tax collection projections. Monson’s gloomy forecast was followed by a surprising suggestion from board member Lee Huang: that the district begin considering closing schools to save money.

“We may be forced to have that conversation,” Monson replied.

Huang acknowledged that closures can be “highly traumatic,” and critics swiftly countered that they wouldn’t save money either. Councilwoman Helen Gym called Huang’s suggestion “a terrible take” that doesn’t take history into account.

“Multiple studies on mass school closings around the country AND here in Philadelphia challenge the assertion that mass closings improve finances,” Gym tweeted.

The evening exposed other rifts. Led by Robin Cooper, the head of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, or CASA, a string of principals and school staffers blasted the district for what James Murray, head of Rowen Elementary in West Oak Lane, called “systemic racism and inequality.” Among CASA members’ concerns: inadequate personal protection equipment, an overly aggressive push to reopen buildings, and discriminatory hiring by the district.

Tension among board members was also apparent. Members Mallory Fix-Lopez and Angela McIver spoke against the new policy to mute public testimony that veered off topic. Board President Joyce Wilkerson defended the policy as reasonable, but Fix-Lopez said it left her “disgusted.”

The evening was not without its bright spots for officials. Hite’s decision to suspend “leveling” of school staff earned him thanks from parents and teachers.

Education advocate Tamir Harper, a 2018 Science Leadership Academy graduate, praised the Hite administration’s recent work and assured the board, “we will get through this.”

After Ben Franklin IG report, Philadelphia board members challenge Hite on trust

2020-08-21T04:45:51+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education met Thursday for its final action meeting before the start of the school year, approving a large staff-training contract, rejecting a proposed tax break, and unanimously endorsing the inclusion of a Black Lives Matter “Week of Action” in the annual school calendar.

The board met just a day after the release of an internal inspector general’s report that leveled scathing criticism on the administration of Superintendent William Hite over its handling of the renovation of Benjamin Franklin High School and the co-location of Science Leadership Academy.

The report detailed flawed planning and project management, missteps that endangered the health of staff and students and forced the two schools to abandon the building for months while the botched job was completed. In their opening remarks Thursday, board members raised serious questions of trust, communication, and accountability. None challenged or criticized Hite directly, but several suggested that their trust in his administration has been shaken.

“Right now we should feel connected to … communities,” said member Mallory Fix Lopez, but instead the board feels disconnected and “pulled in every which direction …. due to continued missteps by management.”

Fix Lopez said the lack of clear communication around the Ben Franklin fiasco is part of a larger pattern in which the board is given incomplete and misleading information about complex initiatives.

“I strongly feel the board was left in the dark ... We cannot accept this. It is not isolated, is not an anomaly,” said Fix Lopez. “We need to be able to trust what we are told. That’s no longer easy for me.”

Board member Maria McColgan wanted assurances that “measures [will be] put in place” to ensure that district leaders are told “when there are multiple concerns flagged … so we don’t have this happen again.”

Vice President Leticia Egea-Hinton told Hite that better communication will be “super critical” to allow the board to believe that “with future projects that … some of these things will be corrected.”

Member Lee Huang said the report had revealed “a need for a drastic change away from a culture that rushes things,” and doesn’t always give the board the information it needs. Angela McIver likewise called for “a dismantling of the culture” that made the Ben Franklin failure possible.

And member Ameen Akbar said he was troubled by gaps between the administration’s words and its actions. “Change happens at the speed of trust,” Akbar said. He encouraged Hite to make good on his administration’s many promises, not just with construction projects but with social justice and anti-racism efforts. “No matter what plans we have, trust is an issue across the board,” he said.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Hite responded, adding that he “regrets” how the project was handled. “It’s going to be our actions that have a lot more to do with [building trust] than our plan,” he said.

Hite outlined steps already taken, including the hiring of a construction management firm to supervise major projects, and promised new “systems” for “constant feedback” from stakeholders and contractors.

He also vowed to improve the overall culture of the central office. “I do think we have to reorganize ourselves … so that people aren’t just hustling around trying to complete tasks as quickly as possible,” he said.

But while the board avoided directly challenging Hite’s performance, public speakers were not so shy. Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools (APPS) said her group believes it’s time for Hite to resign.

“If the meeting were held in the auditorium, I would be standing up and screaming,” said Haver. “The Ben Franklin and SLA students were collateral damage in the Hite administration’s struggle to save face … if Black lives matter to this board, they will use their power to hold Dr. Hite accountable.”

Long Night

It was another long night for the board and the public, featuring 68 registered speakers, along with about a dozen submitted written testimonies. Many speakers raised concerns about the return to digital learning; others called for removal of police from schools and increased spending on counselors and other student supports.

Robin Cooper, head of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, or CASA, the principals union, said her members remain frustrated by district leaders who are asking them to simultaneously prepare to reopen school buildings and prepare digital learning plans. Principals and staff need better training and guidance around digital learning, she said.

“Union input is never authentically considered” when district officials make their plans, Cooper said. “While [principals] are in buildings schlepping boxes, their minds are on virtual learning.”

Cooper said the district’s failures in the Ben Franklin/SLA project are emblematic of its overall approach.

“There was no plan B. They put all of their eggs in one basket, and they were destroyed.”

In other news:

- The board rejected a request from the City of Philadelphia to approve a tax break for a South Philadelphia development project. The proposal would allow the creation of a Keystone Opportunity Zone for a portion of the massive, now-shuttered refinery near the Philadelphia Airport. The KOZ proposal would guarantee the district an annual payment equal to 110% of the property taxes, while allowing the property owner, Hilco Redevelopment Partners, to avoid paying other taxes.

The board declined to approve the KOZ proposal in a 4-3 vote (one abstaining), based largely on concerns that promised jobs and job training opportunities will not materialize. (A majority of five votes is necessary to pass board items.) Numerous community members spoke against the project, citing Hilco’s controversial record in other cities. Board president Joyce Wilkerson said the rejected measure will now go “back to the [Kenney] administration” for revisions.

- The board unanimously approved a resolution to support an annual “Black Lives Matter Week of Action.” Member Maria McColgan tried to table the motion, out of concerns that teachers and principals had not had a chance to weigh in, and that the measure would prove a mere “Band-Aid.” But following a short but spirited debate, with no second for her motion, McColgan agreed to support the resolution.

Member Akbar assured McColgan that the vote was the beginning, not the end of the social justice conversation. “We vote on it because it’s been years in the making,” Akbar said. “We are committing to do all of the work that Black Lives Matter includes.”