Board of Education June 18 action meeting. (Photo: Lisa Haver)
At its April action meeting, the Board of Education voted to close 17 public schools. None of the six board members who voted for the closures offered any specific reason. None refuted any of the testimony of the students, parents or educators whose testimony explained their schools’ history, academic success, and the benefits to the community of keeping their schools open. Members of those closing schools have little recourse to the board’s decision.
At its June action meeting last week, the board voted to initiate non-renewal proceedings on one of its Renaissance charter schools, Global Leadership Academy at Huey. GLA had lobbied the School Reform Commission in 2016 to take over Huey, a West Philadelphia elementary school, with a promise to turn it around and raise the school’s test scores. That never happened. In its first 5-year renewal evaluation in 2021, GLA failed to meet standards in all three domains–Academic, Organization, and Financial; the school scored significantly below district schools in both Reading and Math. But the board, rather than revoke GLA’s charter, actually renewed it for another five years. GLA’s performance at Huey for the years 2021 through 2026 shows the school again failing to meet basic standards, with only 40% in Academics. The district evaluation cites numerous “egregious incidents” including: barriers to enrollment, failure to provide due process in disciplinary matters, personnel files lacking child abuse clearances, teachers without proper certification, and several questionable financial practices. Most recent IRS information shows that the CEO of GLA was paid an annual salary and compensation of over $500,000. Huey’s CEO received over $275,000.
The board did not vote to close GLA Huey. They voted, as mandated in the state’s charter law, only to begin non-renewal proceedings. The taxpayers will foot the entire legal bill, for both the district and GLA, for a case that will take years and can be appealed, theoretically, to the US Supreme Court. Should the district prevail, Huey would not close. The district would take back control of the school. No students would be displaced, no building abandoned, no community uprooted.
The board also took its final step in returning Memphis Street Academy (MSA) at John Paul Jones. The SRC voted in 2012 to give control of Jones, a middle school in Kensington, to the charter management company American Paradigm. The school performed so poorly in its first renewal evaluation in 2017, with PSSA scores plummeting to single digits, that the board’s Charter Schools Office recommended non-renewal. The newly reconvened board, however, granted American Paradigm a 5-year renewal with conditions. MSA administrators signed a surrender clause, agreeing to relinquish their charter if they failed to meet those conditions. When they did fail, however, they sued the district. American Paradigm, which had promised to raise the school’s standardized test scores, now claimed that using those same tests was unfair because research shows Black and Brown students historically underperforming on them. American Paradigm’s 2025 IRS 990 shows its CEO receiving $267,519 in annual salary/compensation; the Chief Academic Officer received $213,796. MSA’s principal was paid $180,741.
Several charter operators facing the possibility of non-renewal are now calling the district’s performance framework unfair even though they were instrumental in revising it. In 2017 and 2018, the district held secret meetings with charter operators that resulted in a newly implemented evaluation system.
The board, like the SRC before it, routinely renews substandard charters. Last year, for example, they renewed Mastery Douglass in North Philadelphia despite its 36% academic score. That school, in fact, was renewed every five years even though it has not met academic standards since its takeover as a Renaissance charter in 2010.
APPS’s 2024 analysis of the Renaissance program shows that 19 of the remaining 21 Renaissance charters have had PSSA Achievement scores in the lowest category–Intervene–in most of their 5-year terms. A majority of Renaissance charters have been cited by the district for both barriers to enrollment and failure to provide full due process rites to students in disciplinary and expulsion matters. Evaluations show a pervasive pattern of failure to provide adequate services to Special Needs students and English Language Learners. Most of the Renaissance charters enroll under 75% of their students from the mandated catchment. Renaissance charters pay high fees to management companies including Universal, Mastery, and American Paradigm.
Most of the school communities targeted for takeover by charter companies since 20012 fought, unsuccessfully, to maintain themselves as neighborhood public schools. When given a real vote in 2014, parents in two schools fought the hostile takeovers and won. That was the first and last year parents got a vote.
Why does the board continue to renew substandard charters? Why do they remain silent on the exorbitant salaries paid to charter administrators? Since the first conversion of public school to charter almost 30 years ago, the charter sector has built itself into an entrenched and powerful patronage system. Charter companies, through their paid lobbyists, have made powerful allies in both City Hall and Harrisburg. Last year, for the first time since the board’s reinstatement in 2018, the board approved an application for a new charter school.
Board of Education member Chris McGinley, in his last year of service on the board in 2020, urged the board to reform the Renaissance charter system, calling it “the most expensive failure in district history.” The board has yet to take any steps in that direction.
Lisa Haver is a former Philadelphia middle school teacher. She is a co-founder and coordinator of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools. appsphilly.net
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