Board of Education Action Meeting: May 25, 2023
by Lisa Haver and Lynda Rubin
The board’s speaker suppression policies are now doing double duty: not just to keep members of the community from speaking but to keep them out of the room altogether. A guard at the door to the auditorium told Lynda Rubin she could go in because she was on the speaker list but barred Lisa Haver because she wasn’t. Haver had tried to sign up but was told by the board that she would not be one of the 30 chosen speakers. She told the guard he could arrest her but that she was going in. Last month some APPS members were detained downstairs because they were not on the list.
We wrote to the board after the April incident, pointing out that they had only set up 82 chairs in an auditorium that seats 240 people. Thus, the same people who were denied the right to speak now no longer have the right to be present. Did the board not want APPS to witness its voting to spend over $500 million in taxpayer money on 78 official items? Or voting on a charter application that would cost the district hundreds of millions over the next five years? A governmental body not accountable to the public can become tyrannical and dictatorial. We need an elected school board.
APPS did win one victory this month: the board, in response to our letter, decided to withdraw the item in which the board would be approving the 5-year Strategic Plan. APPS wrote to the board requesting that Item 8 be tabled until the June action meeting. On May 24, we wrote to the board: “We are writing to ask that you withdraw Item 8 from the May 25 Action Meeting agenda. Item 8 recommends that the board approve Superintendent Tony Watlington’s 5-year Strategic Plan—a plan that no member of the public has seen. We don’t know what type of recommendations the plan makes for the future of the district. Perhaps some members of the board remember that the last time the district carried out a 5-year plan we lost over 20 neighborhood schools.” President Streater responded that our request was granted and that the item would remain on the agenda for review only and would be voted on in a special meeting on June 1. When we fight, we win.
Those who watched from home were kept out when the livestream broke down several times during the meeting. Board Member Thompson still attends virtually; she takes up ¼ of the screen while the other eight members–along with the public speakers–are crowded into another ¼ (with the timer and the deaf/hearing interpreter in the other two). Those viewing remotely can barely see what is going on at the meeting. Those attending in person have a similar problem, as the board moves them farther back and behind large tables set up for staff.
Some issues that the board avoided discussing this month: the Franklin Towne Charter enrollment scandal and how their lottery excluded students of color; how the district intends to deal with the closure of Frankford High School for the next year and perhaps indefinitely; a comprehensive update on the removal of toxic substances in other district buildings.
Ilene Poses contributed to this report.
Strategic Plan Raises Questions About Costs and Resources
The strategic plan presented by Superintendent Watlington seems to be more a set of goals than a plan. The board has already formulated, and spends hours each month analyzing, its Goals and Guardrails. Item 8 says, in part: “The Strategic Plan will focus the organization on a limited set of priorities and strategies and will serve as a roadmap that will guide decision making around deploying our resources, including time, available funding, and professional development, to achieve the Goals and Guardrails.” Watlington’s 52-minute “summary” of his 5-year Strategic Plan was notable for its many omissions, for example, no mention of bringing back certified teacher librarians or working toward lower class size. What we discovered is that the plan was actually a lofty set of non-specific “aspirations” that isn’t a plan at all, containing no concrete strategies or projected costs to carry it out. For example, Watlington highlighted a plan for year-round school, an issue never raised at any recent board meeting, providing no details or projected costs. He didn’t say how the district’s students would benefit from attending school in the summer. It remains to be seen whether the Board will delay the June 1st vote until a fully realized Plan including actual Goals and Strategies to achieve them is actually written.
Board Denies Charter Reapplication
In the end, the board voted 7-2 to deny the re-application submitted by Global Leadership Academy to operate a high school in the Logan section of North Philadelphia. But that was after a lengthy deliberation session in which some board members, bordering on groveling, expressed their regret at having to deny GLA. BM Sarah Ashley Andrews declared her allegiance to GLA CEO Naomi Booker, who makes approximately $450,000 annually to oversee one school, advising her, “Don’t be defeated.” BM Lam, on the other hand, challenged the statements of praise for GLA’s program. She cited the 1% Math achievement rate and poor attendance at the GLA schools. Most board comments centered around the contents of the application, not the increased stranded costs to the district or how another charter school in Logan would affect the neighborhood’s public schools. The entire process, from Charter Schools Office Director Peng Chao’s presentation and subsequent Q & A session, to the board’s final vote on Item 78, took almost an hour.
Not What Democracy Looks Like
President Streater began the voting session, at 10:37 pm, by quickly rattling off the numbers of the items remaining on the agenda after the vote on Item 78 and the withdrawal of six other items. He instructed the board that all 71 items would be included in one roll call vote. As the individual board members began to enumerate their No votes and abstentions before the vote, Lisa Haver stood up to object. After the vote concluded, and General Counsel Lynn Rauch read the tally, Streater allowed her to come to the mic. Haver objected to the board’s voting on 71 items, for contracts totalling almost half a billion dollars, in one roll call vote, calling the process “shameful”. She also reminded the board that members who abstain from a vote because of a potential conflict must clearly identify the conflict. Streater did not respond. BM Cecelia Thompson, a longtime community advocate herself, said later, “I agree with Ms. Haver.” Thompson said that taxpayers do have a right to know how their money is being spent. Hopefully Thompson will refuse to participate at the next meeting and demand that each item be deliberated and voted on separately.
This is not just a procedural question. We tallied 29 items on the agenda that do not include a provision for any bidding process. The board is passing items for no-bid contracts after barring the public from speaking on most of them, attempting to keep people out of the room, conducting little to no public deliberation on them, and voting on all of them in one vote.
In response to APPS’ letter to the board after the April action meeting, Streater defended the practice by citing the board’s need for “efficiency”. Neither the City’s Home Rule Charter nor the board’s own mission statement mandates efficiency. The board promises community engagement and transparency, then conducts its business in a hurried and secretive manner.
Among the contracts passed with little to no deliberation:
Items 73 and 74: $40 million for new Reading and Math curricula, which, according to teachers familiar with the programs, replaces book-centered programs with online programs for every student in every grade from pre-K through 12th. Why does the board and the Watlington administration want to do this? Do children need more on-screen time? Many parents are limiting screen time for health issues and because of the built-in tracking system.
Item 50: $184,000 contract for “Active Shooter Response Training”. Streater raised the issue of gun violence in his opening remarks but did not say how this would help.
Item 76; $298, 000 contract with Accenture to perform an “audit” of the administration’s special-admit schools admission process.
Item 44: $135, 739, 444 for contracts with several vendors for cab and vehicle student transportation.
West Philadelphia Activists Win Sayre Pool Reopening
City Councilmember Jaimie Gauthier testified in support of Item 66, the reopening of the pool at Sayre. Gauthier stayed for the duration of the 7-hour meeting, waiting with her constituents. The board showed their disrespect to her by including Item 66 in their one roll-call vote, denying Gauthier and her constituents a moment of celebration. Lynda Rubin testified against the outsourcing of teaching services to private companies including Teach For America (TFA) that send in temporary employees. The district should be recruiting and retaining locally–as Watlington promised to do during the superintendent search.
APPS member Barbara Dowdall spoke about the necessity to students’ lives and education of access to school libraries, staffed by Certified School Librarians in every school. “We lack heart in plans seeking equity if we continue to see random, lucky schools gaining playgrounds while hundreds do without and not yet a single thought, word, acknowledgment, or plan to begin restoration of school librarians.”
Abigail Jackson, a Speech Language Pathologist at South Philadelphia High School, representing dozens of district speech pathologists who submitted written testimony and petitions, testified about the urgency for filling vacancies of Speech, Occupational, Physical Therapists and Psychologists, including statistical materials re such needs and requesting the District Develop a goal-oriented remediation plan with Talent to fully staff Related Services Support services within 3 years.
Why did the board give one of its limited speaker slots to someone extending an invitation to honor BM Joyce Wilkerson at a community award ceremony? Or to a lawyer from Aspira Charters, who has access to the charter schools office?
The board approved contracts and other spending totalling approximately $570, 439, 190 at its Action and Intermediate Unit meetings. The 7 hour-meeting convened at 4 PM and adjourned at 11:07 PM.
Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools 