During questioning by members of City Council to Mayor Cherelle Parker’s nominees for Philadelphia Board of Education, Councilmember Anthony Phillips suggested that the district add to its curriculum a course on government and civics. Those who attended the 7-hour confirmation hearing last Friday got a firsthand civics lesson: how much dark money can buy. A packed council chamber watched as their representatives, in a virtual fact-free environment, sold out their constituents’ public schools in favor of charter operators and investors.
The purpose of this meeting of the Committee of the Whole was to assess the nominees’ qualifications and their overall vision for public education before a vote next week by the full Council. But after intense lobbying from charter lobbyists, most of the day-long session consisted of council members doing little more than repeating charter operators’ unfounded complaints of “unfairness”. No mention was made of how unfairly charters treat their students, as reported in numerous local news stories, including those about racial discrimination at Franklin Towne Charter, Math Science Civics CEO Veronica Joyner barring a student who had been the victim of gun violence from attending his graduation and prom, or Universal Charters abandoning their Renaissance charters at Bluford and Daroff.
No Council member asked about the exorbitant salaries and compensation collected by many charter CEOs (or asked what a CEO whose school had a full contingent of administrators actually does). Nor did any Council member ask why more than half of the city’s charters are under-enrolled. The role of the board of education, as local charter authorizers, is to protect the interests of the students and their families, not the financial interests of charter operators.
Several Council members echoed charter operators’ charge that the district’s performance framework was biased. The fact is that charter operators themselves helped to formulate their own performance framework in a series of private meetings with the district that the public had no knowledge of.
None of the Council members presented any data or information of any kind to back up their claims. It was apparent that none of them had read the actual charter evaluations. If they had, they would see that the overwhelming majority of charters show academic ratings below the district’s public schools. Board President Reginald Streater had to remind the Council members more than once that the board must abide by the state charter law and its standards in determining whether or not to renew a charter school. The fact is that most charters renewed by the board in the past six years have failed to meet standards in at least one category.
In order to close a charter school, the law requires a lengthy and expensive legal process, with numerous opportunities for appeal. Apparently, not one of the council members recalled the closing of over 20 neighborhood public schools in 2013–which required just one vote by the School Reform Commission. The reasons given for the closure of those schools were low test scores and under-enrollment. If that standard were now applied to charter schools, more than half would have to be closed.
The behavior of some council members was in keeping, unfortunately, with past actions by pro-charter elected officials. Councilmember Isaiah Thomas berated the nominees, repeatedly interrupting the nominees before they could answer his questions. He raised his voice to Streater several times, telling him he did not want to hear from him. Councilmember Curtis Jones lectured the nominees, then told them he was assigning them homework.
Why was this session so different from past confirmation hearings? Stories surfaced the day before that charter lobbyists had mounted a campaign to have Council reject the nominations of Streater and incumbent Board Member Joyce Wilkerson. It seems they wanted to make an example of at least one board member because of their rejection of new charter applications. The only charter application voted on by the board in the past two years was that submitted (3 years in a row) by Global Leadership Academy (GLA CEO Naomi Johnson Booker collects an annual salary and compensation package, for leading one school, of over $400,000). Just after the hearing began, Council President Kenyatta Johnson, without explanation, withdrew Wilkerson’s resolution from consideration at this hearing.
The first public speaker was not called up until 5:20 PM, when they were informed that they would have just a minute and a half–not the three minutes they were promised when they signed up. In my testimony, I pointed out that this hearing was the culmination of a process from which the public had been shut out of almost completely. We couldn’t speak at the Nominating Panel’s first hearing. In a clear violation of the state’s Sunshine Act, the panel conducted all of its business in executive session. The panel did not release the names of the applicants; parents, students, educators, community members had no opportunity to speak for or against any candidate or even to know what their qualifications or vision for public schools may be.
We can only hope that next time City Council members will advocate for things that will make schools better for all children: restoring school librarians, lowering class size, appointing more counselors and support staff, and making all school buildings free of lead and asbestos.
Lisa Haver is a retired Philadelphia teacher. She is a co-founder and coordinator of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, a grass-roots advocacy organization.
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