While District Moves to Close More Neighborhood Schools
In 2022, Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School paid its former CEO, Angela Corasonite, $2,777,500 in management fees. The following year, the school paid her $2,903,750.
The K-12 school, which operates out of three separate buildings in three different zip codes, also paid management fees to its operating company, String Theory: $1,373,229 in 2022 and $2,798,542 in 2023.
These outsized and inexplicable disbursements by Performing Arts Charter provide one illustration of the unchecked financial and political patronage system created by the expansion of charter schools in Philadelphia over the past twenty years. A report published by the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools (APPS) and Philly Power Research (PPR), using data from the school district, financial records and federal tax information, illustrates the flow of public money to private companies doing business in the charter sector, including real estate management companies, consultants, legal firms and other contractors.
Dividing one central school district into over 80 separate entities, each with its own administration, is an obvious waste of resources, especially for a chronically underfunded district.
The report shows that much of the business conducted by charter schools does not benefit the communities they claim to serve, as many of those contracted with are located outside of the city, some in other states. Some charter networks have created a more circular apparatus between the schools they operate and the related organizations and businesses from which they rent buildings and buy services. For example, Universal Companies’ seven charter schools paid over $1.8 million in management services to Universal Education Companies and about $950,000 toward sharing of facilities, equipment, mailing lists and other assets with Universal Community Homes. This circular payment arrangement leads to less public transparency and more opportunities for fiscal mismanagement and corruption. In fact, former Universal executives were indicted on charges of wire fraud and filing false tax returns; one was convicted earlier this year.
If the privatization of public schools was really about improving education for the city’s children, years of data prove that the experiment has failed. Public schools regularly outperform charters in academics. The median Philadelphia charter school in 2022-23 had a lower percentage of students who scored at least proficient on math on the PSSA than the median public school. If, on the other hand, the goal was to provide opportunities for businesses while diminishing the political power of parents, educators and the community, the expansion of charter schools has been an undeniable success.
Philadelphia’s Board of Education regularly renews substandard charters. At its September action meeting, the board approved a 5-year renewal for Independence West Charter, despite the school’s 47% rating in academics, its chronic low attendance, and the fact that several personnel files are missing legally required child abuse clearances and criminal background checks. If the board is serious in carrying out its “child-centered” mission, why does it continue to renew charters that fail to provide a superior education to its students?
Closing any school is devastating to the school’s students, parents and educators. But closing a charter school also means a disruption of the benefits to the management companies and contractors that make up the charter sector’s patronage network.
At that same meeting, the board took its first steps toward closing more neighborhood public schools. In addition to spending almost $4.5 million on a consulting company to help formulate the Facilities Planning Process, the board approved another $430,000 contract to “coordinate robust community engagement”. Members of the public who tried to sign up to speak but didn’t make the cut, or those who were not admitted to the auditorium because the board removed about a third of the seats, may have been skeptical about that.
Neither Board President Reginald Streater nor Superintendent Tony Watlington gave any estimate of how many schools would be closed or in which neighborhoods. Neither claimed that the closings were unavoidable because of a financial deficit. The one specific reason cited was under-enrollment. If that applied to charter schools, at least half would be eligible for closure right now.
The board passed another item which directed Watlington to move the facilities process forward, indicating that closing schools would provide more equitable access to pre-K and make art, music and physical education available to more students. Of course, the board has had the power to make all of these services available to district students for years. The board appears to be offering a “we have to destroy the village in order to save it” rationalization.
Did closing over 25 schools in 2013 mean more students got art and music instruction? Of course not.
The board must explain why it is placing neighborhood schools on the chopping block while individuals and businesses profit off of public schools.
Lisa Haver is a retired Philadelphia teacher. She is a co-founder and coordinator of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools.
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