Board of Education Action Meeting: May 29, 2025
by Lisa Haver
In this era of authoritarianism, the will of the people is too often subverted to the will of the wealthy and powerful. Despite polls that show a majority of Americans do not support the privatization of public schools, and the overwhelming defeat of voucher proposal referenda in several states, politicians have found a way to overrule the voters and impose anti-public school measures. And despite the growing evidence that an increasing number of the city’s parents are rejecting charter schools, including under–enrollment at over half of the city’s charters, Philadelphia’s Board of Education voted to approve a new application, one they had previously voted to deny. Their convoluted and dishonest justifications served only to underscore how much they had betrayed their constituents for the benefit of the politically connected special interests. That reason, among others, is why APPS members called on Mayor Cherelle Parker to ask for the resignations of the members of the board.
Last-minute Time Change Excludes Parents, Students, Teachers
In October 2014, the School Reform Commission, under Chair Bill Green, posted a small legal notice in the newspaper announcing a special meeting to be held the next day. At that meeting, the SRC voted to cancel its contract with the members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. Since that 2014 SRC meeting, APPS member Deborah Grill has checked the legal notices in her Philadelphia Inquirer every morning. Last Wednesday, she saw a small-print notice on page 2 of section B that the board had rescheduled Thursday’s 4 PM action meeting to noon. No reason was given. APPS members checked the board’s webpage which still posted the 4 PM time in several locations. We called the district; the person who answered told us (after confirming with another staff person) that the meeting would start at 4. The board posted no banner on its website. They issued no press release. They posted nothing on any social media outlet. The board told reporters that it had to address an item just added to the meeting agenda about a “time-sensitive matter” stemming from an “ongoing investigation” by the US Department of Justice. Any skepticism about the reason the board gave was confirmed when the first thing President Reginald Streater did after the meeting convened was to withdraw that item. The fact is that the board could have scheduled an emergency meeting at noon to consider that one item, as provided for in Board Bylaw 006, and still held the regular meeting at 4 PM. The posting of the speaker list indicated another reason: thirteen of the first fifteen speakers had registered to speak in favor of approving the new charter application.
Board Abdicates Role As Independent Charter Authorizer
The board’s 8-1 vote to approve the application for Early College Charter School (ECC) furthered its capitulation to the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the district’s neighborhood public schools. Project 2025, a conservative blueprint guiding President Donald Trump’s administration, calls for the expanded privatization of public schools. ECC’s founding coalition claims to want to educate children who live in the poorest parts of the city; their proposed location: Broad and Pine in Center City, one of the most affluent sections in the city. That property, the former Pierce Junior College, is currently assessed at $26 million. APPS’s analysis noted that the ECC application includes not one document showing community support in any of the 17 zip codes they target for recruitment and that the “letters of commitment” attachment includes no letters of commitment. Some of the board members attempted to justify their votes with blatant misinterpretation of the state’s charter law. Streater, in his convoluted remarks, blamed the charter law itself for ECC’s inadequate application. He repeated the false narrative that the board can only consider the contents of the application and is barred from considering the financial condition of the district. Streater and other board members actually addressed the founding coalition members in the auditorium directly, entreating them to do their best. The public witnessed the board, in effect, abdicating its role of independent authorizers and evaluators and taking on the mantle of supplicants to charter administrators. The members’ beseeching could only be taken as an admission that they will eventually renew the school’s charter no matter how poorly they educate their students, as they have for numerous substandard charters over the past seven years. BM Chou-Wing Lam, only moments after expressing alarm at the district’s impending financial crisis, voted Yes on the application. Only Board Member Joyce Wilkerson, after enumerating her reasons, voted No. She said that it was “inconceivable” to her that yet another school would be approved that would “tax our resources”, specifically citing the stranded costs associated with charter schools. She noted the under-enrollment of the city’s charters and the dearth of certified teachers in those schools. Wilkerson noted that the application does not address the “unique financial problems” in an underfunded district nor the deficit spending that is a problem for both public and charter schools. At a time when the district is facing cuts from the Trump administration to special education and school lunch programs, Wilkerson said, any charter application is too risky to support.
APPS Members Excluded from Speaker List
The board’s speaker suppression policies continue to silence the public. Not one APPS member made it onto this meeting’s speaker list. We did send in written testimony which was read aloud. Deborah Grill gave several reasons why the board should vote no on the new charter application; her remarks elicited applause from the audience. Ilene Poses asked why taxpayers have to fund privately managed schools. Barbara Dowdall continued her advocacy for the restoration of school librarians. Lisa Haver told the board that nothing in the Philadelphia Fire Code prohibits people from standing in the aisle of the auditorium as President Streater has asserted for months; she asked that the record be corrected. Fortunately, several members of CASA (Commonwealth Association of School Administrators) were able to attend and testify. CASA President Robin Cooper expressed her outrage at the board’s last-minute time change and noted that most of the CASA members who registered did not make it onto the speaker list. She urged the board to deny the new charter application, reminding them of the influx of students who move from charter to public schools every year, many with academic and behavior issues that charters can’t or won’t deal with.
Board Spends Hundreds of Millions without Deliberation
In the last two minutes of the meeting, with no questions or comments, the board voted to approve 53 action items, spending hundreds of millions in public funds. They declined to explain why, in Item 2, they were reversing their previous vote on the TIF (Tax Increment Financing) that they approved last Fall for the benefit of the developers of the 76ers arena or why they were not apologizing for their role in what turned out to be a scam. They didn’t explain why they need to hire an outside contractor at a cost of $4 million (with a possible 2-year renewal) for “executive staffing services” despite a fully staffed Talent Support office (Item 9). The board did not feel it was necessary to assure the public that they explored every avenue before deciding to spend $377,893,979 for cab services for students with special needs. Given their public submission to the charter industry, it came as no surprise that they avoided any discussion of the $300,000 contract with the National Charter Schools Institute to fund “Phase 2 of Project RiSE”. They dodged any possible questions about why they needed to hire an outside charter consulting company when the district has a fully staffed Charter Schools Office. The board voted to approve spending $597,954,218 at this meeting. That does not include the cost of the first five years of operation of Early College Charter School.
June Meetings
The board will hold a special “action meeting” on June 12 in which the Charter Schools Office will present evaluations on the 18 charter schools in this year’s renewal cohort. APPS has written to the board to ask for this meeting to be postponed as the board has not posted any information on the renewal evaluations.
Next action meeting: Thursday, June 26 at 4 PM at 440 North Broad Street.
The meeting adjourned at 3:53 PM.
Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools 