Category: School Board Nominating Panel

Philadelphia Needs An Elected School Board

Reprinted for the July 22, s026 edition of the Hall Monitor By Lisa Haver

Community members urge Board of Education to vote No on facilities plan at April 30 meeting. (Photo: 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.

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Parents and Educators Return in Hopes of Getting Answers

Board of Education Action Meeting:  April 25, 2024

by Lisa Haver

Attorney Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg of the Public Interest Law Center testifies at City Council hearing on the Board of Education nominees. (Photo: Lisa Haver)

Without explanation or notice, the board suspended its speaker policy so that over fifteen unregistered and unidentified people could testify, untimed, in favor of passing one item on the agenda. Item One proposed naming school district headquarters at 440 North Broad Street after the late Constance Clayton, district superintendent in the 80s and 90s. The board then violated the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act by voting on Item One before public testimony was taken from the registered speakers. The ceremony, which was not listed on the agenda, took over an hour. People who came to testify on other matters had no idea when it would end. 

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Mayor’s Nominating Panel Shuts Out Public Again

by Lynda Rubin

Only people “in the know” knew about this meeting of Mayor Kenney’s Education Nominating Panel. The City’s Education Office put out no notice via email or social media. The Mayor didn’t mention the upcoming Panel convening when he appeared with the Board’s superintendent nominee last week, nor did Board President Joyce Wilkerson. APPS members are in the know because we attend all Board action and committee meetings. Because our members read the small-print legal notices in the newspaper every day, we knew that the Panel was to hold its opening meeting to select “one or more” persons, in the words of City Education Director Otis Hackney, to serve on the Board of Education. The Panel will meet in private for all meetings except the first and last. The people of Philadelphia will have nothing to say about who will represent them on the Board. In fact, neither the mayor or Wilkerson has disclosed how many vacancies the Panel will be filling. 

The Panel solicits candidates for the Board of Education, considers applicants, and provides recommendations to the mayor. The mayor selects from the recommendations.  City Council must then confirm the nominees. 

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Mayor’s Nominating Panel Turns Its Back on the Public

by Ilene Poses

On November 17, Mayor Kenney’s 13-member Nominating Panel convened to open proceedings on filling  three vacancies on the Philadelphia School Board. They billed the event as a “public hearing”,  but it was actually a live television show. No public testimony or interaction of any kind was permitted.  The Panel, reading quickly from their scripts, wrapped up the TV show  in just over 30 minutes. Chair Wendell Pritichett, former School Reform Commissioner, gave little information on the selection process and did not give the date of the next Panel meeting.  He and the Panelists did take time to congratulate each other for their service.  

Pritchett mentioned in passing that the Nominating Panel would again be conducting all deliberations in executive session. Pritchett, a Penn law professor, failed to cite the specific reason for moving the Panel out of the public eye–probably because there is none. APPS members protested this same violation of the PA Sunshine Act when the Panel convened in 2018. Did the people of Philadelphia fight so hard for local control just to be shut out of all discussions about our representatives on the School Board?  The Panel — itself chosen without any public input — has sent nine semi-finalists, from whom the Mayor will choose his three nominees. The Mayor can ask for more candidates if he is not satisfied with the Panel’s choices; he has until December 26 to ask for more names.  City Council must confirm those nominees. In the past, however, Council has done little more than rubber-stamp the Mayor’s choices.

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