A grass-roots organization of parents, community members, and school staff, fighting to defend public education. We work together to provide analysis and demand accountability from the School District of Philadelphia to provide students with a high-quality education.
Category: Posts (Newest to Oldest)
A chronological listing of APPS post descending from the newest to the oldest.
As the lame-duck SRC limps towards the finish line, millions of taxpayer dollars continue to flow into the pockets of private vendors. Case in point: Carnegie Learning contract to provide “ professional development services to approximately 1500 K-8 Algebra I teachers in support of the District’s annual summer mathematics initiative” received another $3 million at the March 15 SRC meeting (B-3). Carnegie has pocketed $15 million from District contracts over the past two years. Carnegie has little investment in public schools other than increasing their own corporate footprint. Why can’t those funds be used to hire experienced Math teachers and coaches who work for the district and know the students, the schools and the curriculum?
Vacant school buildings are being sold for pennies on the dollar and converted to marketplace housing. Despite community efforts, Ada Lewis Middle School, once the largest middle school in the city, was closed almost twenty years ago; the District allowed it to become a neighborhood eyesore. Developers eye school buildings as potential profitable housing projects. At the March 15 SRC meeting, it was revealed (Resolution A-10)that the developer added a contingency clause to the sale of this property for rezoning to include “residential and mixed-use development”.
Several APPS members, in response to requests from community members, attended a meeting at Strawberry Mansion High School (SMHS) on Wednesday, March 28. About fifty people—including parents, educators and alumni—attended the meeting, facilitated by Eric Becoats, Assistant Superintendent in charge of the district’s Turnaround Network. Like many of those in attendance, APPS members found out about the meeting from a notice posted on social media two days before. The district posted no banner about the meeting on its website, nor was there was any mention of possible change at SMHS at recent SRC meetings. Rumors had spread, in the absence of definitive information from the school district, that Strawberry Mansion, as a comprehensive high school, would be closing at the end of this school year. Some had heard that other programs, possibly twilight school or alternative education programs for students with academic and/or behavioral issues, would be housed in the building.
Using barely readable power-points, Becoats read through some possible changes and the reasons the district is “phasing out” the existing educational program at SMHS. There will be no 9thgraders admitted in September 2018. The remaining students will complete their years and graduate from Mansion. Starting in September 2018, Becoats said, neighborhood students could attend a newly added accelerated school in the building, but he gave no details about the program or who would oversee it. An evening program for overage students and adults may be added later. In September 2019, 9thgraders could then be admitted to a new “skills-based” high school in the building. Becoats said that was only “under consideration”, to which a community member responded, “So new students will evict existing students.” Becoats claimed that there would be full staffing until the last class graduates, and that the remaining students would complete their years and graduate from Mansion, but did not specify how the school could maintain sufficient staff for a variety of programs with declining enrollment. Nor did he seem to have any idea how the students in the remaining grades would deal with decreases in student body and staff. Becoats continued to deny that Strawberry Mansion High School is being closed, as if the existence of the building constitutes the essence of the actual high school.
Parents, community and neighborhood leaders expressed their frustration at both Becoats’ dismissive attitude and the district’s lack of community outreach prior to making their decision. One community member asked: Are we in the planning stage or the implementation stage? Becoats admitted that the district is now in the implementation stage.
Unlike the other 500, Philadelphia is the only school district in Pennsylvania whose voters cannot elect a school board. We’ve had town halls, online surveys, and pronouncements from city politicians, but it all comes down to this: The government officials who will decide the future of the city’s public schools, and who will control a $3 billion budget, have been chosen by one person, Mayor Kenney. His decision has been based, in part, on the opinions of the thirteen people selected by him to be on the Nominating Panel. It has also been based on the wishes of the influential individuals, organizations and corporations who have lobbied him to represent their interests on the board. Two built-in lobbyists on the Nominating Panel, Stephanie Naidoff and Bonnie Camarda, are members of the board of the Philadelphia School Partnership, which funnels millions every year from private investors into schools of their choice for the programs of their choice, mostly charters.
All of the deliberations of the Panel were held in secret. None of the district’s stakeholders, or the city’s taxpayers, were able to express their opinions about any of the candidates, whether pro or con, or to raise concerns about possible conflicts of interest. APPS did everything we could, short of legal action, to open up this process. We sent letters to the Mayor and to the Panel, refuting the Mayor’s false assertion that the Panel could deliberate in Executive Session because it was discussing “personnel matters”, pointing out that the Panel was neither hiring nor appointing any personnel. We had several community groups sign a letter asking the mayor to obey the Sunshine Act.
APPS members Karel Kilimnik and Rich Migliore wrote an op-ed published in the Philadelphia Inquirerdecrying the lack of democracy and the mayor’s attempt to have the charter change include language that would allow him to remove school board members without any due process, which would have killed the possibility of having a truly independent board.
Lisa Haver also wrote an op-ed questioning whether trading in one unelected, unaccountable school board for another, under the banner of local control, could be considered progress.
APPS also researched all forty-five Panel nominees. Now that the final selection has been made, we are re-posting the profiles of those selected with updated information. One thing that stands out in the Mayor’s selection: there are no known advocates for public education. Since no one could question the nominees, we have no idea whether, or how much, they are committed to defending public education. We don’t know whether they believe that privatization and charterization are solutions to the problem of under-resourced neighborhood schools. We don’t know what their stance is on using anonymous private donations to fund public and charter schools.
Three of the remaining four commissioners were present for this special budget meeting of the SRC: Chair Wilkerson and Commissioners Richman and McGinley. Farah Jimenez departed the position abruptly and without explanation in January leaving four commissioners; Governor Wolf said he will not appoint a replacement. Commissioner Bill Green has assumed a laissez-faire attendance record since April 2017. It is not uncommon for Green to be absent, come in late in time to vote on resolutions (often totaling millions of dollars), miss staff presentations and public speakers, or leave early and call in to vote. This is now the seventh time he has been absent since April 2017. In the waning months of this lame duck SRC, Green continues to exhibit a pattern of behavior that would not be acceptable in the students whose welfare he has been charged to oversee.
Six members of APPS were present for this meeting; three spoke in defense of public education. To see their testimony see the video at top of this page.
Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools 