Reprinted for the July 22, s026 edition of the Hall Monitor By Lisa Haver
This year, Philadelphia hosts the nation’s 250th birthday party. We celebrate our rights and freedoms as Americans, none of which are possible without the right to choose our leaders in free and fair elections.
Here in the birthplace of democracy, however, Philadelphians remain disenfranchised when those who make decisions that affect the daily lives and future of the city’s children are chosen: the Board of Education.
Unlike every other district in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia has never had an elected school board. The city’s Home Rule Charter empowers one person, the mayor, to choose all nine members of the board, through a process that shuts out the public completely. The mayor first appoints the thirteen members of the Nominating Panel, which, in secret meetings, reviews applications and selects a number of candidates from which the mayor chooses nine finalists. Nominees’ names are announced at the Panel’s final meeting, after public testimony is heard. Not until the board members give their opening speeches do we know what their positions may be on any issue.
Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools 