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Waiting for a new superintendent is the wrong approach to fixing Philly schools | Opinion

Photo credit: Tyger Williams, Philadelphia Inquirer

The following commentary was written by APPS co-founder Lisa Haver and published by The Inquirer on March 8, 2022.

The Philadelphia Board of Education is winding down its search for a new superintendent as the 10-year tenure of Superintendent William Hite nears its end. The people of Philadelphia, naturally, are pinning their hopes on the promise of new leadership at the School District. But we face a dearth of leadership right now.

In meetings over the past few months, parents, students, educators, and community members have told the Board what the priorities of the next administration must be: safe school buildings free of lead and asbestos; more counselors and behavior specialists to help students traumatized by gun violence and poverty; equitable funding and resources for all District schools; more support for teachers and staff in the aftermath of COVID-19; a fair high school admissions process.

But the next superintendent won’t take over until next August. Those who teach and learn in public schools should not have to wait another six months for safe and healthy schools and for more equitable resources.

Board Members Must Be Fully Present

Ears on the Board of Education: February 24, 2022

by Diane Payne

APPS members and others, both in person and via written testimony, objected to the Board’s plan to hold small in-person meetings for a select few to meet the next superintendent finalists. Before the public speakers had finished, Vice President Leticia Egea-Hinton, who is spearheading the search process, stated on the record that those raising objections were wrong. Her rationale was that this meeting would be live streamed and they were holding a hybrid town hall open to the public. APPS members in the auditorium spoke up to say that holding one public meeting doesn’t erase the fact that the meeting in question was only open to a certain number of people, chosen in a private process, and that the qualifications for admission ruled out any community member. Egea-Hinton’s defensive response was not an honest effort to try to understand the objections, just to rationalize the Board’s actions. None of the other Board members objected to holding a select meeting to meet the candidates.
The Philadelphia community is shut out on almost every front. We are the only District in the Commonwealth that doesn’t have an elected school board. One person–the current mayor–selects Board members in a secret process not open to the public. The Board shuts down its committees and imposes speaker suppression. If the Board is going to claim that the superintendent search process includes public participation, that must be more than window-dressing. APPS calls on the Board to make both town halls open to the public. Do not bar anyone from attending. Take steps to insure cross representation of stakeholders and let the public have both in-person and hybrid options for attending both open townhalls.

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Board Must Reject All New Charter School Applications

by Deborah Grill, Lisa Haver and Diane Payne

Every new charter school application is a budgetary and community assault on our current public school system as every charter school represents an unfunded state mandate. The charter school experiment concocted over twenty years ago–an experiment on mostly poor, urban, black and brown children–has failed. Clearly inadequate applications should be rejected at the outset. But the PA Charter law mandates that every application be reviewed and evaluated by the district’s staff, then reviewed for approval or denial by the elected or appointed board. Thus clearly inadequate and inexperienced applicants like Entrepreneurial Charter and perennial applicants like Aspira force the School District of Philadelphia to spend inordinate amounts of time and money for a months-long process. Despite the failure of these applicants to present a credible proposal to educate Philadelphia’s children, the Charter Schools Office (CSO) must read and analyze lengthy applications with hundreds of pages of attachments, present a thorough and detailed evaluation, and participate in extensive and costly legal hearings–with the city’s taxpayers footing the bill for hearing officers, attorneys, court reporters, and reams of documents.
The District cannot afford any new charter schools. The District does not need any new charter schools. The Board should reject all three new charter applications.

Please let the Board know at the action meeting on February 24 or March 3, in written testimony or in testimony by March 2, that they must vote to deny all of these applications.

Aspira Bilingual Business, Finance, and Technology Charter High School

Aspira Eugenio Maria de Hostos Preparatory Charter School

Philadelphia Entrepreneurial Development Academy Charter High School