Evans-Funded Schools Among the Worst in Collapsing System

 

It’s difficult to know where to start when discussing the failed and fragmented Philadelphia public school system. Each day new information piles on top of  long-standing and unresolved issues within a system rife with major financial deficits in a budget shortfall that could further cripple any chance that money could be a remedy.  But money has been tried before, and results have not been forthcoming.

 

Taken over by the state a few years ago in a desperate attempt at corrective action, the School Reform Commission has made little progress, and restating statistics and burying some of the worst problems and school incidents does nothing to renew any confidence in current leadership. As if recent racial issues in South Philadelphia High were not enough, last week the Philadelphia Inquirer began a multi-part well-researched series into just how serious in-school violence has become in the system, and even worse, how much effort has been expended to keep mouths shut and records purged within the individual schools and the system itself in order to avoid even lower ratings.  This series is a must read for any parent with students in the system, or about to make a decision that includes that option.

 

Problems at the leadership level have not been confined to the classrooms, as only short while ago School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman was cited for using her authority to do an end run around administrative regulations to direct a multi-million dollar contract to a little-known Mt. Airy entity that did not meet basic criterion to even be in the bidding process. The politics that ensued as that issue went from bureaucrat to official to staffer were far from reassuring to the parent or taxpayer.

 

Most recently a School Board decision to take remedial action for failing schools brought Martin Luther King High into the arena of  power politics; again making schools and students pawns. When an amicable agreement between parents, teachers, and the School Advisory Council to use the School Board’s first choice, Mosaica Education Inc.of Atlanta Georgia to replace present operator Foundations Inc, State Representative Dwight Evans quickly strong-armed the situation and forced Mosaica to walk away and allow Foundations, an organization he supports, to remain as the operator.  Reports in the local media became intense and went in different directions as Evans modified the story of his intervention.  Parents, teachers and others went on the record as to their objections to Foundations and Evan’s tactics.  Foundations Inc, of Moorestown N J. contributed $57,660 to Evan’s election campaign from Jan 1, 2006 though December 31, 2010. This was accomplished through 116 of the company’s Executives, Directors, Consultants and Staffers. During that same period Evans authorized $8.7 million in grants to Foundations Inc, according to state records.

 

Moving along we learn from www.SchoolDigger.com, a Pennsylvania High School rating service basing its findings on 11th grade PSSA math and reading scores that Germantown High is among the worst 10 performing High Schools in the state, and has actually lost ground since last year.  That same rating service also lists Germantown’s Hope Charter School on Haines Street on that same list of 10 worst performing high schools state-wide.  A separate nationwide school rating organization, Neighborhood Scout, lists Hope Charter on the list of 100 worst schools in the nation at number 22 from the bottom.  Hope Charter is another of Dwight Evans and OARC’s affiliated organizations.

 

No stranger to controversy is the nearby New Media Charter School on Ogontz Avenue, and another organization under the Dwight Evans umbrella.  Multiple problems running the gamut from being listed among Philadelphia Charters with what was considered “excessive executive compensation,” to an effort to have its state charter revoked, led to more politicking, a new CEO and a list of 23 remedial conditions it had to implement in order to stay operational through 2014.  According to Inquirer updates as of July 2010, the renewed charter did not halt a federal criminal investigation.  The school had to sever all ties with former Board Chair and its CEO in the process. Widely published negative ratings of this school from parents and students paint a desperate picture of a school still far short of professional standards.

 

No comment on local schools is complete without mention of the now-closed Germantown Settlement Charter School, which until recently was another blatant example of all three broad category problems plaguing this city’s schools.  Its educational aspects were severely lacking and it was chronically understaffed, the facility and security was abysmal, and the financial condition left it without even basic student needs.  Again, public funds went without full accounting, and finally the state did not renew its license, despite massive attempts at political intervention and appeals.  Its operator, Emanuel Freeman, well known in Germantown Political circles, has filed bankruptcy for three of his 30 corporations including the charter school.

 

The residents of this city owe a debt of gratitude to the Philadelphia Inquirer and their education editor Martha Woodall, for their diligence in pushing back against the process of running the system under the radar.

 

While reviewing schools in the nearby area, Roxborough High cannot be overlooked.  This seriously underperforming school has a student body who mostly do not live in the immediate area of the school itself and reportedly 97% live under the poverty level. Two students were recently murdered, including one of their top basketball stars. Clearly local residents send their children to private and parochial schools, but what we have here is a self-fulfilling prophecy, for the school’s low ratings and violence issues are likely to make that approach a permanent condition. Students living in the community with parent and teacher participation make the best schools. Remedial action has to be in that direction.

 

The arrogance of power rumbles through this city at every level; just read the headlines of what has unfolded in department after department in the last few years.  The School Board is no exception; and maybe the worst example for one assumes that educators and the professionals who run academic institutions recognize the high standards they should have to live up to as examples to those who they educate.  The Philadelphia School System once was faced with educating as many as 550,000 students in the 1960s and 1970s but the most extensive Catholic Parochial System in he country relieved them of that expense for as many as 225,000 during those years.  Now the school population is about 160,000 and despite massive spending and expensive contracts with experts from all over this country, the system seems to be in free-fall.

 

Too many folks are in denial, and that runs the gamut from top leadership, through principals, teachers, parents and communities.  Children in this country have a right to a good public education and some giants in business, education and government started in those schools. We have to take the blinders off and that is the fundamental issue that must be dealt with. Political appointments for administrators, union contracts, insider deals with contractors, phony charter schools, and phantom related social services all drain the system first and leave the bones for those who can least afford to pay for an alternate system. It does not matter how good Masterman or Mastery is for the few who get that chance, if there is a large segment who are dialed out by design.

 

If this city is to every rebound from its present pattern of circling the drain, it starts here.

 

Jim Foster

Publisher