Finance and Facilities Committee:  February 20, 2020

by Lisa Haver

Board Spending Priority:  More Consultant Contracts or Healthy Schools? 

Committee members present:  Co-chairs Leticia Egea-Hinton and Lee Huang, Joyce Wilkerson and Maria McColgan. Board members Julia Danzy, Angela McIver, Mallory Fix Lopez and Chris McGinley also attended and participated.

Egea-Hinton opened the meeting by announcing that the Board is working to acknowledge emails from the community about the environmental crisis. She said that the Board has made the asbestos crisis a priority and is monitoring it closely. Egea-Hinton invited all concerned to come to Action and Committee meetings and to write to the Board.

Continue reading here.

Student Achievement and Support Committee Report: February 20, 2020

Will Board Keep Funding Edu-Vendor Contracts–or Spend More to Solve the Environmental Crisis? 

By Diane Payne

Present

Co-chairs Angela McGiver and Chris McGinley, Committee members Maria McColgan, Julia Danzy, and Mallory Fix Lopez. Board president Joyce Wilkerson and Board member Leticia Egea-Hinton also attended.

Committee approved the January 16, 2020 Minutes.

[All videos of meetings, agendas, and powerpoints can be viewed on the SDP website by visiting the Board of Education page. ]

Does the District Want Highly Qualified Teachers–or Does It Want TFA?

District Chief Talent Officer Larisa Shambaugh began this presentation by addressing questions, raised by Board members at the last Committee meeting, on what the District is doing both to reduce the number of teachers with emergency certifications and to fill hard-to-staff positions.  Shambeau narrated a power-point presentation on the District’s pathways to hiring teachers and supporting diversity in the workforce, including contracting with Teach for America (TFA) to place recruits in the hard-to-staff schools. As APPS co-founder Lisa Haver pointed out in her testimony, TFA has been the “lifeblood’ of the corporate disruption of public education and that it has pivoted from a teacher-training organization to an education management launching organization.  The privatization of public schools drove many teachers out of the profession–while TFA replaced through its teacher-lite program. Why would the Board want to bring people with minimal training and no experience into District schools, especially struggling schools? McIver said the District has to keep “all doors” open, but shouldn’t we be concerned about who comes in those doors? TFA recruits go through a brief training program before being placed in a classroom–as opposed to certified teachers with advanced degrees. Why should children in certain schools have to settle for this?   In addition, TFA recruits rarely stay in the classroom beyond their 2-year commitment, frequently moving into positions relating to education in think tanks, non-profits, and leadership roles (even though they have limited coursework background in education and few years of actual teaching.)  When questioned, Shambeau did admit that teachers who came to the District through traditional routes stayed longer than five years at a much higher rate than TFA recruits. Not a great track record.

Continue reading here.

Eyes on the Board of Education: February 27, 2020

by Karel Kilimnik

If privatization and outsourcing are truly innovative, why don’t we see more of that in affluent suburbs like Lower Merion? As we review the list of Items the Board will consider at its next Action Meeting, there seems to be no end to the contracts with private vendors to take on work traditionally done by District staff. Companies that have been the lifeblood of the corporate disruption movement like Teach for America are now  joined by newer players Relay Graduate School of Education (which, as Board Member Chris McGinley reminds his colleagues, is not really a graduate school and is not accredited in Pennsylvania) and the District Management Group, hired to perform tasks formerly done by District Staff (Items 15, 16, 17). Dr Hite sent a letter to all District staff last week imploring District staff to aid in recruitment efforts under his “Teach Today. Change Tomorrow” initiative.  Why is he recommending spending $325,000 on TFA Recruitment if this campaign was just launched? Hundreds of thousands have been spent on teacher recruitment in the past three years–where are the results? Is the push for TFA an indication that that recruitment effort failed? The Board does not have to take on the rubber-stamp function of the SRC. The Board can take a stand and restore teacher recruitment and professional development to the District.

Dr Hite, a 2003 graduate of the business-oriented Broad Superintendents Academy, continues to outsource rather than build internal structures and capacity. The primary belief by the Billionaire Boys Club, of which Eli Broad is a member (note more details under #15,Contract with Teach for America to Support Teacher Hiring $325,000)), are described succinctly by Curmudgucation blogger Peter Greene “… Broad does not believe that schools have an education problem; he believes they have a management problem. School leadership does not need an infusion of educational leadership–they need business guys, leadership guys….there is no external governing or certifying board of any sort declaring that the Broad Superintendent’s Academy is a legitimate thing, and yet, it exists and thrives.”

Click here to read the rest of the report.

High School of Health Sciences Leadership Charter School: New Application Report

by Lisa Haver, Deborah Grill, Lynda Rubin 

Clearly Inadequate Application Should Result in Board Rejection

High School of Health Sciences leadership Charter School (HS2L) 

Proposed Location: 5210 North Broad Street (former Holy Child School)
Neighborhood: Logan
Grades:  9—12
Enrollment:  150 students Year one; 600 students at scale, Year 5
Estimated cost to District for first 5-year term:  $29, 111, 817. 
Estimated stranded costs to District:  $11, 524, 500.

Founding Coalition Members

  • Tim Matheney, Charter School Consultant, CEO Spire Leadership Group
  • Sharifa Edwards, Manager of School Investments, Philadelphia School Partnership
  • April Gonzalez, [consultant] Spire Leadership Group
  • Kenric Chua, Creative Arts Director, Spire Leadership Group
  • Geordie Brackin, CEO, Brackin Placement Group

Proposed Board Members

  • Laura Siminoff, Dean, School of Public Health, Temple University
  • Geordie Brackin, CEO, Brackin Placement Group
  • Janine Yass, Vice-chair, Center on Education Reform
  • Sharif El-Mekki, CEO, Center for Black Educator Development, former Mastery Charter administrator
  • Candace Kenyatta, Managing Partner, Grovider
  • Tim Matheney (ex-officio), CEO, HS2L

Does the District Need A Health Sciences Charter School?

Once you get past the flowery rhetoric of the opening narrative, it quickly becomes clear that this application contains very little of the advertised creativity and innovation.  The High School of Health Sciences Leadership Charter School (HS2L) would be yet another data-driven school measuring success by standardized test scores, with a curriculum that includes blended learning and test-prep to boost those scores. It invokes rigor, grit and differentiated learning.  The curriculum relies more on packaged learning products than the expertise of teachers. HS2L proposes a CTE (Career and Technical Education)  program that differs little from the CTE schools and programs offered in District public schools. And how innovative would any school be that offers “Building Grit through Art and Music”?

The application itself provides many reasons for Board denial, but serious issues arose even before the application was submitted.  Principal Nimet Eren and teachers from Kensington Health Science Academy, a neighborhood high school, testified at two separate meetings at the Board of Education in December that representatives from the applicant’s front group, the Philadelphia School Partnership, had come into their school under false pretenses, and through repeated deception, took information about the school’s methods and programs to use as the basis for its application.  Is stealing ideas from another school “innovative”? In addition to denying the application, the Board of Education should be considering legal action for theft of intellectual property against PSP and the members of HS2L’s founding coalition. The institutions named as partners–including Jefferson, Temple, Community College, and PCOM–should disavow these fraudulent tactics.

Read the rest of the report here.