Photo: Lisa Haver
Local and national news outlets are now challenging their readers with quizzes on recent news stories. Here’s a quick one from Hall Monitor. How much do you know about what’s happening with Philadelphia public schools?
- The Philadelphia Board of Education intends to close an unknown number of schools this year. When is the next public meeting on school closings?
- The board will be voting on applications for two new charter schools that would cost the district, if approved, tens of millions every year for the foreseeable future. When is the next public meeting on those applications?
- The board has placed staff outside the auditorium who tell the students, parents, educators and community members who come to public meetings that it is “mandatory” that they sign in and wear an ID badge in order to be admitted to the meeting and to testify. When did the board cite the law or policy that mandates the wearing of ID badges?
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If you answered “Never” to all of the questions, congratulations! Your score is 100%.
Although they started the process months ago, the board has yet to give a definitive reason why they intend to close public schools. The district conducted a number of neighborhood meetings (APPS members, who went to most of the in-person events, saw none of the board members in attendance), but their presentations on school facilities were both rife with misinformation and lacking in crucial information, including at least a ball-park number of schools likely to be closed. The board has ended the public meeting process and replaced it with a special facilities “Project Team” committee made up of businesspeople and others who were chosen without any public application process. The purpose of that committee is to advise the district on which public schools should be closed. So why are those meetings not open to the public?
At the same time the board moves to public schools, it is considering applications for two new charter schools. The law required two public hearings before the board votes, but the board has scheduled them virtual only, with no opportunity for the public to be present. One applicant proposes to open a charter school in Kensington. Parents, students, and educators from any public school in that area who want to show their opposition, as those from Kensington Health Sciences High School did in 2020– successfully–have no way to be seen or heard. The board is violating not just the state’s Sunshine Act, but the First and Fourth Amendment rights of district stakeholders. The privatization of public schools–with its free-market, billionaire-funded approach to schooling–has been an abject failure over the past 30 years. Charter schools in Philadelphia and other cities consistently perform at levels lower than public schools while draining resources for bloated administrative salaries and management fees.
Charter expansion in Philadelphia has created an entrenched political and financial patronage system.
The agenda for the second Donald Trump administration, as laid out in the GOP platform and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, makes clear its intentions to undermine public schools and advance corporate-friendly push for more charter schools and vouchers. The board’s protection of charter investors, including voting on official charter items that omit all content, in effect taking a secret vote, serves only to make Philadelphia safe for Trump’s plan. Lack of public oversight leads, naturally, to fraud and corruption.
As Philadelphians face the onset of an autocratic regime in Washington, we turn to local leaders to protect our rights. But people who go to board meetings now encounter the board’s “papers, please” enforcement. Security stops them to ask whether they are on the speaker list as if that is required for admission. Staff stationed outside the auditorium tell members of the public that board policy requires that they wear an ID sticker in order to enter the meeting. In two consecutive meetings, the board has called the police on those who stood in silent protest. (Full disclosure: One of the protestors was me.)
Philadelphians are reeling from the shock of Arenagate–not just the bait and switch of the billionaire developers, but the swiftness with which Mayor Cherelle Parker and City Council leadership covered for them. At a recent meeting, APPS members asked the board members, all appointed by Mayor Parker, to explain what happens to the funds involved in the Tax Increment (TIF) item that they passed in November as part of the deal that gave tax breaks to the developers to build at Market East, now that the developers have bailed on that location. Board members gave no explanation. Their silence indicated that they had no intention of ever explaining.
Lisa Haver is a retired Philadelphia teacher and is co-founder and coordinator of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools. @appsphilly.bsky.social
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