by Diane Payne
Policy Committee Meeting, September 10, 2020
The Board’s Policy Committee scheduled a special meeting just one week after its regular quarterly meeting. The Board did not explain on September 3 why it was having a separate meeting on September 10 or why the three policies on this agenda could not have been discussed the week before. Members of the public who signed up to speak could only guess about the Board’s intentions about revising or deleting Policy 141, the Renaissance Charter Initiative. By the meeting’s end, however, it became clear that the purpose of the meeting was to assure charter operators that their interests would be protected.
The only mention of the enormous costs and few rewards came from public speakers. None of the Board members responded to the information, both statistical and anecdotal, that community members offered as evidence of the program’s shortcomings. The expensive and failed Renaissance experiment, enacted in 2010 as part of Superintendent Arlene Ackerman’s controversial “Imagine 2014” privatization plan, targeted neighborhood public schools for takeover by charter companies, most managed by business people with no experience in education. Committee Chair Maria McColgan, ignoring the facts brought by community members, took every opportunity to repeat her assurance that the program would continue in the interest of providing a “quality” school in every neighborhood. It appears that neither McColgan nor any member of the Board has done even a cursory examination of the Renaissance charter evaluations. (Julia Danzy had to ask Charter Chief Christina Grant what NCLB stands for.) If so, they would see schools that fail to meet basic standards in all areas–academic, financial and organizational. They would read the repeated citations for barriers to enrollment and failure to provide due process for students in discipline matters. They would find that only a handful of the twenty-one Renaissance charter operators have fulfilled their promise to “effect dramatic change” in the schools they lobbied hard to take control of. McColgan never acknowledged the reason the Board has proposed deleting the policy. Is one reason to attempt to erase its dreadful history? Or to relax the standards even further?
Committee Schedule Shuts Out Educators
Chair Maria McColgan, Committee members Lee Huang, Julia Danzy, and Board President Joyce Wilkerson attended along with Board members Leticia Egea-Hinton and Akeem Akbar. Three policies were listed for discussion: Policy 141, Renaissance Charter Initiative; Policy 400, Charter School Monitoring Structures; and Policy 401, Charter School Authorizing Functions. As noted above, the Board provided no explanation or context prior to the meeting, so it was impossible for members of the public to fully grasp the intent of the Board’s examination of these policies or make informed comments about it. APPS will continue to demand that the Board hold meetings when parents, students, and staff can attend. Although this special meeting was held at 4 PM, the scheduled time for the quarterly meeting is 1PM. Important policies are revised or deleted, but many of those affected, including District teachers, staff and principals, cannot attend or testify. Policy committee meetings should be scheduled for a time when the majority of District stakeholders are able to attend.
Charter Policy Rewritten, Not Reformed
Christina Grant, Chief of the Charter School Office (CSO), narrated a slide presentation on the three policies under discussion. [Videos of Board meetings can be viewed on the District website.]
Grant stated that the CSO had proposed elimination of Policy 141. The Charter Schools Office is the only District department under Board control, so we assume that this proposal originated with the Board itself. The District has not placed a public school into the Renaissance program since it gave control of Wister elementary to Mastery in 2016. Grant reassured the Board that no existing Renaissance school would be affected or closed if the policy were eliminated. Why was elimination of the Policy so urgent that a special meeting was scheduled? Grant provided no explanation. No Board member raised the issue of how Renaissance schools that fail to meet basic requirements continue to operate. The Board has approved renewal of several Renaissance schools over the past two years with no discussion of the financial and educational costs. APPS has called on the Board to hold hearings on all 5-year renewals. We have asked the Board why it protects charter operators who collect tens of millions of taxpayer dollars but remain exempt from public accountability.
Grant stated that Policies 400 and 401 were replacing seven existing policies in the 400 series of Charter School business. No presentation was provided on the policies being eliminated or how only two new policies will adequately cover the many specific provisions covering charter school business. When questioned about the seven existing policies, which were not part of the official presentation, Grant said they would look into providing information on the policies being eliminated.
In one of his last actions as a Board member, Chris McGinley introduced a resolution from the floor to officially end the Renaissance Charter initiative because of its failure to provide quality education to students. He told the Board that many should be returned to the District as soon as possible because of consistent failure to meet academic, financial, and organizational standards. Wilkerson, incorrectly citing Sunshine Act concerns, persuaded McGinley to withdraw the motion. The Board reached a consensus that they would address McGinley’s proposal within six months, using that opportunity to examine the success and failure of the program. That turned out to be an empty promise. In fact, McColgan assured everyone that the Board did not intend to make any commentary about the schools in the program or about the program itself. McGinley’s good faith agreement to withdraw his proposal so that the Board could take the time later to conduct an in-depth analysis was rewarded with this perfunctory presentation. Although the Renaissance Policy 141 will be deleted, many of its provisions will be added to other charter policies, including Policy 401. There was no Board recommendation to consider taking back substandard Renaissance schools. McColgan used her position as Chair to repeatedly state that the existing Renaissance schools were in no danger of being returned to District control.
Mastery Schools operates the largest chain of Renaissance Charters in Philadelphia. Mastery CEO Scott Gordon, according to the most recent federal tax information, was paid $261,154.00 in 2018 to manage fourteen charter schools. In contrast, Dr. Hite is paid $317, 000 to oversee 210 schools. Last year the Board, unanimously and without deliberation, approved 5-year renewals for seven Mastery charters at an estimated cost of $441, 650, 780. The Achievement scores for all seven placed them in the lowest category–Intervene.
Mastery has a number of corporate contributors, including those affiliated with the Philadelphia School Partnership (PSP), whose outsized donor capabilities have influenced practice and policies of the District for years.
Many parents understandably support their home school. But when considering policy the guiding factor should be the overall good of the District. When the metrics indicate failure and when the charter school payout harms remaining public school students, it is the duty of the Board to protect all students, not the adults with financial and political interests.
Board Hears Community on Renaissance Charters
The Board finally responded to APPS members’ requests, in letters and in testimony, to stop hiding behind a full-screen countdown clock during the public speakers’ portion of the meeting. As we suggested, a small clock now appears in one square with Board members visible in the others.
Former Board member Chris McGinley spoke first on the topic of Renaissance charters. He pulled no punches, calling the program “an expensive failure”. He recounted the pain his family felt when the neighborhood school attended by his own children was taken over by a charter company. Three APPS members gave evidence, both statistical and anecdotal, why this program should be discontinued and the failing schools returned to the District. One District teacher who was forced out of two schools in a row when Mastery took them over told the Board how the teachers there knew the schools would be on the block: months before the District had contracted for extensive building improvements. (Available testimonies can be found at the conclusion of this report.)
The Board will vote on the revision or elimination of these policies at its October Action meeting.
Public Testimony
Dr. Christopher McGinley
Good afternoon, I want to begin by thanking the board for moving forward with the removal of Policy 141, Renaissance Schools Initiative. I urge you to retire this policy and to retire Renaissance Charter Schools as a model. There are so many tragic ironies embedded in this policy that it cannot be continued. One blatant example of this is that the charter movement is supposedly based on the value of school choice but, this model removed choice for certain communities and has locked students into attending under-performing charter schools. This policy was adopted in 2010 as part of the “Imagine 2014” Strategic Plan of the previous [Ackerman] administration. And with the benefit of hindsight, we now know that this policy and other underdeveloped and underfunded initiatives made 2014 much worse for the school district than any serious educators could ever have imagined. This initiative has failed and the initiative should be retired along with the policy.
In looking at the elements of the policy, you will see that the policy itself is replete with internal conflicts and inconsistencies. The provision relating to Charter Schools calls for “high levels of accountability” and “stringent academic requirements”, but the same paragraph identifies the Renaissance Charter Schools as “Independent Local Educational Agencies” who are accountable to the Charter School Board and not to the district. There is no way to make charter schools accountable to the district other than at the time of renewal.
In short, this was a bad idea, guided by incongruent policy, poorly implemented and managed for ten long years.
Today, you are left with a mixed bag of 21 Renaissance Charters. A few have sound academic programming but most do not. Some have good management, fair access and sound financial practices, but many do not. There are several schools that need to return to district operation as soon as possible, and I urge you to stand united to end this model at the time of each Charter renewal. The same Charter Management Companies that operate Renaissance Schools here operate Contract Schools in New Jersey. And some of those contract schools have been easily closed by those districts when the promise of turn-around and better achievement was not fulfilled by the management company.
As an educator, I will never favor a policy that tells some communities, “We are giving up on your hopes and dreams and focusing our efforts elsewhere. “ That is what happened to HR Edmonds, the school my children attended and to some neighboring schools when the district washed its hands of kids in Frankford. That should never happen again.
Thank you.
Diane Payne
I would like to begin today by noting that today’s agenda is confusing. Three policies appear on the agenda with no context. It is impossible to tell from the provided information the intent of today’s meeting. After inquiring, I discovered that policy 141 is being recommended for elimination. And policies 400 and 401 are to be introduced as replacing the existing 400 series. For members of the public to be meaningfully engaged, we need information. At Chris McGinley’s last meeting, he attempted to introduce a resolution eliminating the Renaissance Charter School Initiative which has been a complete and expensive failed experiment. However, there is an entire paragraph defining Renaissance Schools embedded in Policy 401. There is no mention of addressing the failed Renaissance Schools. Is this a bait and switch? The Renaissance charters that exist at this moment do not exhibit stringent academic requirements for school success that may exceed performance targets for non-Renaissance charter schools yet they continue to be renewed and add to the growing budget drain of charter school payouts. There is nothing in the policy language of 400 or 401 that indicates 1) no new renaissance schools will be allowed and 2) that existing schools not meeting stringent requirements will be returned to a District school. Additional concerns: The CSO enters into secret negotiations with Charter operators for renewal and amendment requests. There is no policy language making these negotiations more transparent and open to the public. In these secret negotiations, conditions are often put forth by the CSO. These conditions are never disclosed to the public and there is no language at all in Policy 400 or 401 which even mentions conditions. Frequently Charter Renewals fall into a limbo land because the charter operator will not sign the new agreement. There is nothing in the language that addresses this significant issue. Instead in Policy 401 it is stated The School District and a charter school shall endeavor to agree to terms of a written charter. This hardly seems like the Board or CSO is maintaining efficient and effective monitoring structures. The language in Policy 401 regarding amendments for location change is vague and allows for minimal interpretation of community engagement. We have seen how receiving communities have been blindsided by a Charter school move and the language in this section does nothing to address this concern. There is no language in either policy that indicates the serious nature of the Board’s financial limitations and obligations regarding COVID reopening, toxic school cleanups, and overall resources. Until our schools are made whole, there should be a moratorium on ANY charter expansion.
Deb Grill
The District’s website states “A Renaissance Charter School is a neighborhood school that is operated as a public charter school and can only enroll students from the neighborhood, also known as a catchment zone.”
Yet, according to the enrollment data on the Districts school profile pages, the percentage of catchment students in the Renaissance charters goes from a low of 21% at Gratz Mastery to a high of 88% at Memphis Street Academy. Most hover in the 50 and 60th percentiles. A few fall into the 30 and 40th percentiles. They are not functioning as neighborhood schools. In almost every Renaissance Charter, the percentage of students from the catchment area diminishes as grade level increases. Either these charters counsel out those that they don’t want, or catchment parents are voting with their feet.
Policy #401 states that Renaissance Charter Schools are granted greater autonomy in exchange for increased accountability and that charter agreements will include provisions outlining requirements for student enrollment and achievement including stringent requirements for academic success that may exceed performance targets for non-renaissance charter schools. The most recent academic scores on the SPR for the existing Renaissance Charter schools range from 0% to a high of 36%. All are in the Intervene or Watch category for academic achievement.
The original policy 141 states that nothing in this Policy or charter agreement shall prevent the District from intervening in a Renaissance School when warranted to protect students’ academic interests,/ to insure the health or safety of students or staff/ or to protect the fiscal interests of the School District. That certainly didn’t happen when the water at Mastery Douglas failed several lead tests, and Mastery failed to notify parents.Quite frankly, if that wasn’t a failure to protect the health and safety of students and staff, I don’t know what is.
Because charter agreements are not made public and the District doesn’t hold renewal hearings for charter schools, parents and community members have no idea as to exactly what stringent requirements the Renaissance school operator has agreed to meet. But from the data noted above, it is clear that they haven’t met the academic or enrollment ones.
This program, originally approved by the SRC, is a failure. Taxpayer money has been wasted while city neighborhoods have been left without neighborhood public schools. It is time for the BoE to acknowledge this, and for the District to take back control of the Renaissance schools and make them true neighborhood schools available to, and answerable to all of those that live in the surrounding community.
Lisa Haver
If the people who came up with the Renaissance program over 10 years ago actually thought that giving control of public schools to private companies was going to work, they would have built in regular evaluations that had real consequences. They would have made sure there were enough people in the Charter Schools Office to record whether the managers were fulfilling their promise to effect dramatic academic improvement. They would have created an evaluation system in which they met the standard or didn’t—not one that invented a CYA called “Approaches Standard”—that let them keep control no matter how badly they performed. They would not have made the cost of holding legal hearings to take back a failing charter prohibitive, like last year’s Aspira hearings. They would have given the community a real vote, not dog-and-pony meetings.
The Renaissance program has been a very costly failure. It has cost taxpayers tens of billions over the years, and it will cost us billions for years to come, as the SRC and now the Board renews charter after charter that come nowhere close to meeting standards, even when its own charter office recommends non-renewal: Memphis Street Academy, Universal Vare, Universal Audenried, to name just a few. If it were a success we would see the charter CEOs, many paid enormous salaries by their boards, coming to the Board to boast of their success. When they did come to 440, it was to attend secret negotiations to move the goalposts by overhauling their own performance framework.
The Renaissance program has cost us in other ways, like the sabotaging of school communities. Mastery’s hostile takeover of Wister elementary was the latest example. Before that we saw students, teachers and parents from Creighton Elementary come to meeting after meeting, begging the District not to hand over their school to a record company executive. They presented their own improvement plan. They told of Universal using gift cards and other items as “incentives”. But no matter how hard they fought, the fix was in. They lost their public school, and the community that fought for it was dissolved.
Those who profited off of the Renaissance program sold a message of choice, the same message that the President now campaigns on. But when Mastery takes over the elementary school and the feeder middle and high schools, as they did in Germantown and North Philadelphia, then families have no choice but to travel outside their catchment area.
The Board should acknowledge the financial, emotional and educational costs of the Renaissance program. And take this opportunity to begin to assess whether the Transformation, Redesign, Promise, Priority and other “innovations” have worked any better.
Robin Lowry
Good evening. My name is ROBIN LOWRY and I’ve taught Health and Physical Education for 27 years in the district. I support everything that Dr. McGinley and Ms. Haver stated. I am speaking based on my experience teaching at Simon Gratz and Wister Elementary – both schools in my neighborhood that were both allowed to fail and then were turned over to the Mastery Company.
It is so interesting that the district now purports to hear concerns of students at Masterman and Central about the disparity of enrollment of Black and brown students as a portion of their total enrollment. Where are those students who should be going there? Probably in neighborhood schools that were used as pawns in the Renaissance Scheme. Maybe they were at Wister when resources and supports were pulled out. If they are now in the Mastery system, will they ever have a shot at Central or Masterman? Is it any wonder that whole neighborhoods are missing from Central and Masterman?
The Renaissance Schools Strategy has been a failure and a ploy to give public schools to private charter companies. I was at Simon Gratz high school in the years before it was given to Mastery. We noticed the building was getting suddenly expensive improvements while at the same time losing small learning communities and resources. When our experienced principal retired, a novice team was put in place at the time when programs were starved of support. The word in the district was if a building gets improvements it will probably be given away. Sure enough Gratz was given to Mastery.
So I chose the next closest school, Wister elementary. After 5 years, just as I was getting my elementary teaching chops, on October 1, 2015 the day after Back to School night, staff and families received a letter stating that due to “ongoing challenges at Wister a fundamental shift was needed to improve the academic foundation for all students and as a result was recommended that was to become a charters a Renaissance charter school starting next fall” Wister was said to have a Climate Issue, and our Population was declining. At the first meeting to discuss the plan, the parents were sent to the real meeting and staff was given a fake address – luckly parents texted us – the principal included – so we found the meeting. And at that meeting a chart was shown showing a decline in enrollment to 175 students from a high of 325. At that point the 15 staff members in the audience knew we were set up because we just spent the day with Wister’s 300 students. And the final part of the scheme- that same week an APPS member found a public posting for bids for a $3million heating system improvement – only Mastery students will get the benefit of. That is the foundation of the Renaissance Initiative.
Written Remarks for Policy Committee 9-10-20
Barbara McDowell Dowdall, English Department Head, A. Philip Randolph Career Tech High School (Retired)
There was a fallacy at origin of Policy 141: Renaissance Schools Initiative, justified with description: “…School District has chronically under-performing schools that are not serving the needs of students and families…” when these schools were historically and chronically underfunded, located in racially isolated areas of high poverty, and not provided the kinds of resources that are known to bring both joy in learning and higher achievement: safe and appealing physical plants, small class sizes, fully-resourced libraries with Certified Teacher Librarian and LIMA, reading specialists, music and art opportunities for all in every grade, smaller caseloads for counselors, school-community outreach staff, social work and psychologist support, consistent availability of and variety in extra-curriculars, and support for an active home and school association.
Troublesome exception for requirements: “Superintendent reserving the right to establish Innovation Schools outside of the public solicitation process.” Here the public was shut out, with negative consequences with leadership of Dr. Arlene Ackerman. The continuing practices of Dr. William Hite after rejection of the School Reform Commission in 2015 voter referendum and replacement of the SRC with the current appointed Board of Education.
How can the Board say they are eliminating Policy 141 (as strongly recommended by veteran educator and former board member Dr. Chris McGinley with affirmation by several other board members) when replacement Policy 401 provides for continuation of Renaissance Charter Schools?
What we are looking for and what continues to be missing in School District of Philadelphia leadership is the expression of a strong belief in and commitment to publicly-run public schools and the resulting vigorous action in the establishment of real-world equity throughout the district and across the city.
Robin Lowry
Good evening. My name is ROBIN LOWRY and I’ve taught Health and Physical Education for 27 years in the district. I support everything that Dr. McGinley and Ms. Haver stated. I am speaking based on my experience teaching at Simon Gratz and Wister Elementary – both schools in my neighborhood that were both allowed to fail and then were turned over to the Mastery Company.
It is so interesting that the district now purports to hear concerns of students at Masterman and Central about the disparity of enrollment of Black and brown students as a portion of their total enrollment. Where are those students who should be going there? Probably in neighborhood schools that were used as pawns in the Renaissance Scheme. Maybe they were at Wister when resources and supports were pulled out. If they are now in the Mastery system, will they ever have a shot at Central or Masterman? Is it any wonder that whole neighborhoods are missing from Central and Masterman?
The Renaissance Schools Strategy has been a failure and a ploy to give public schools to private charter companies. I was at Simon Gratz high school in the years before it was given to Mastery. We noticed the building with getting suddenly expensive improvements while at the same time losing small learning community resources and resources. When our experienced principal retired, a novice team was put in place at the time when test scores as programs were starved of support. The word in the district was if a building gets improvements it will probably be given away. Sure enough Gratz was given to Mastery.
So I chose the next closest school, Wister elementary. After 5 years, just as I was getting my elementary teaching chops, October 1 2015 the day after Back to School night, staff and families received a letter stating that due to”ongoing challenges at Wister a fundamental shift was needed to improve the academic foundation for all students and as a result was recommended that was to become a charters a Renaissance charter school starting next fall” Wister was said to have a Climate Issue, and our Population was declining. At the first meeting to discuss the plan, where the parents were sent to the real meeting and staff was given a fake address – luckly parents texted us – the principal included – so we found the meeting. And at that meeting a chart was shown showing a decline in enrollment to 175 students from a high of 325. At that point the 15 staff members in the audience knew we were set up because we just spent the day with Wister’s 300 students. And the final part of the scheme- that same week an APPS member found a public posting for bids for a $3million heating system improvement – only Mastery students will get the benefit of. That is the foundation of the Renaissance Initiative.
Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools 