November 20, 2025: Board Action Meeting
by Lisa Haver
The members of the Board of Education, as the governing body of the School District of Philadelphia, must be honest with their constituents. They must direct security staff at 440 not to let some people into the auditorium before others, then lie about whether they are going to bar people who are not on the speaker list. Board President Reginald Streater must stop announcing that people “blocking” the center aisle are in violation of the fire code. APPS challenged him months ago to cite the relevant provision in the city fire code; he could not, because there is none. The board should replace the almost 100 seats they removed from the auditorium, then they could no longer have their security claim that the room is “at capacity”. The board should stop holding long recesses during the meeting and “tech” issues. Most important: don’t promise the public for over a year that the facilities plan will be released in November, then go back on it when that time comes. Superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. should not write in district presentations in 2024 that closing schools is not because of budget issues, then the next year imply that long-term underfunding of the district is the reason. The stakeholders of the district deserve the truth.
Board, Administration Renege on Promise to Release Plan
The Watlington administration and the board promised, for over a year, to release the facilities plan this month. They didn’t. They didn’t explain why, nor did they apologize. Watlington announced that the plan would be released some time in January. The board could release the plan just days or weeks before it votes to finalize it at its January action meeting. And now they are going to conduct yet another online survey? Lisa Haver pointed out in her testimony both this month and in October that not one person in one of the public meetings APPS members attended over the past year spoke in favor of closing even one school. If you are going to ignore what parents, educators, students and community members have said in public meetings, she asked, why would you listen to people answering another survey? If the district won’t admit the public to their private committees, and won’t disclose what was said in any of those meetings, why would we trust them now? Philadelphia journalist Denise Clay Murray wrote about the devastating effects of the 2013 school closings on the community. Schools are community anchors; when schools close, community disruption ensues.Several speakers from the Stand Up for Philadelphia Schools (SUPS), a coalition APPS is a member of, spoke against school closings, including school psychologist Paul Brown, who urged the board not to bring the same disruption to communities that the 2013 closings did. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on APPS testimony: ‘ “Public education is not a business,” said Deborah Grill, a retired district educator and member of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools. “It is a civic obligation. The school district is not a business to be rightsized.”’
Parents Demand Basic Human Rights for Students
President Streater, like many district leaders before him, often repeats his assertion that this district is a “chld-centered” one. APPS has pointed out that a data-driven district, one that measures success of children and schools by standardized test scores, is by definition not child-centered. Members of Lift Every Voice (LEV) returned to the board to remind them that a district in which children do not have a right to bathroom breaks and recess does not truly value children. They repeated their demand that district policy clearly state that children “shall” have access to bathroom, water and recess. A policy that says they “should” have them is meaningless and unenforceable. Inella Ray and other LEV members stressed that this is a leadership issue and that they would not “scapegoat, report or target teachers.” The district must restore adequate levels of support staff so that children can safely travel in hallways and to school bathrooms.
CASA Members Show Up in Force
The contract between the district and the members of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators (CASA) expired Aug 31. Administrators are still working and have assured the district they would not strike. But CASA President Robin Cooper testified to the frustration of her members as they are no closer to a new agreement. Cooper told the board that her negotiating team had sat at the table for hours only to be presented with an proposal that offered nothing new. That is bad faith negotiation, she said. When you tout the achievements of the district, Cooper told Watlington, keep in mind that it is the principals, teachers and staff who make that success happen.
APPS Members Defend Public Education
Lynda Rubin testified about the board’s failure to make sure charter schools adequately serve their students and the community: “For years charter schools have resisted such oversight, and many have been allowed to continue without cooperating with meeting legally required standards.” Barbara Dowdall told the story of Ada H. H. Lewis, for whom the now-shuttered middle school in East Germantown was named. The school was at one time the largest middle school in the city. The School Reform Commission voted to close the school over ten years ago. The school has become an eyesore and worse because of the district’s neglect and its failure to sell or donate the building. For years, the community’s pleas to the district have gone unanswered. Earlier this month, the body of a young woman who had been kidnapped and murdered was found in a shallow grave next to the abandoned school building.
No Deliberation on Official Items
The board took less than one minute to pass twenty-one items. They approved total spending of $37, 126,417 without deliberation, question or comment. Action Item 10 sets aside $20,000,000 in a fund for “various vendors” to “…provide general supplies and resources for administrative use and facility repairs on an as-needed basis to schools and program offices.” Item 22 adds $10 million to the contract with McGraw Hill for K-12 Language Arts instruction resources for a total of $54,000,000 over six years. The board voted to take a recess one hour into the meeting; that recess lasted almost twenty minutes. The meeting adjourned at 7:35 PM.
December Board Action Meeting: Thursday, December 4 at 4 PM.
Goals and Guardrails Meeting: Thursday, December 11 at 4 PM.
[November 20, 2025 Action Meeting]
Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools 