School & District Management

Phila. Takeover Deadline Marked by Protests

By Catherine Gewertz — December 05, 2001 4 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

As top deputies for Philadelphia’s mayor and Pennsylvania’s governor parried last week over how the state will take over the city’s schools, hundreds of chanting citizens stopped rush-hour traffic to demonstrate their opposition to hiring private management to run their neediest schools.

With an unusually tight lid of secrecy clamped onto the weeklong negotiations, little was known of the exchange between teams dispatched by Democratic Mayor John F. Street and Republican Gov. Mark S. Schweiker. The state was expected to take control of the schools as early as Dec. 1, but the outcome of the talks was to dictate just how cordial that takeover would be.

“It’s hard to say how it will go,” Steve Aaron, the governor’s spokesman, said as the final day of negotiationsFriday, Nov. 30began. “Differences remain, absolutely. But a real deadline can make it happen.”

The mayor’s education secretary, Debra Kahn, said: “We’re still talking. We’re working toward a partnership.”

One potential roadblock to a state takeover emerged last Thursday, when a coalition of labor groups filed suit in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a bid to block the state’s school takeover law. The plaintiffs objected to the law on many grounds, including the powers of a school reform commission—which would be appointed by the governor and the mayor to run the schools—to tax citizens for the schools and to abrogate employee contracts. As of early Friday morning, the case had not been heard.

‘Not for Sale’

As the mayor’s and governor’s teams met in a Center City office in Philadelphia, demonstrations unfolded on the street. On Wednesday of last week, activists carrying signs reading “Our Children Are Not for Sale” took over an eight-lane street in a march from the State Office Building to City Hall. They arrived as Mayor Street, surrounded by local children, was lighting the city Christmas tree, but no words were exchanged.

The next day, several hundred students staged a demonstration at City Hall and Mayor Street met with a few of them to hear their concerns. That evening, students formed a human chain around the city’s enormous school district headquarters in a symbolic defense against privatization.

While few dispute that the nation’s eighth-largest school system is in dire need of fiscal and academic help, there has been substantial disagreement over how best to provide that help to its 210,000 students.

Mayor Street has invited the state to take over, but objected to its proposal to hire Edison Schools Inc., the nation’s largest private manager of public schools, to run the district’s central administration. (“Pa. Governor Drops Privatization Plan for Phila. Schools,” Nov. 28, 2001.)

Gov. Schweiker withdrew that part of his proposal Nov. 20, revising the role of New York City-based Edison from decisionmaker to key consultant. But the possibility that 60 of the city’s worst-performing schools still could be privatized has attracted national attention and sparked intense local debate.

“A for-profit entity should not be running public schools,” said Veronica Joyner, who founded a high-performing charter high school in a poor, predominantly African-American North Philadelphia neighborhood and runs an advocacy group called Parents United for Better Schools.

“They are going to cut corners for profit,” she charged, “and not have the best interests of our children at heart.”

Wendell A. Harris, who has four children in city schools, believes privatization is a “ploy” rather than an attempt at true reform, which would have to tackle inequities in state funding that leave city schools cash- strapped compared with their suburban counterparts.

“Our problems are based on revenue and resources,” he said. “If they don’t have the resources for us in public education, how can they have it for us in privatization?”

Draining Resources?

Even in northeastern Philadelphia, where some of the city’s best-performing schools are located, many parents don’t like the idea of private management. Lois Yampolsky, whose two sons graduated from Northeast High School, said she worries that if a profit-conscious company manages city schools in needy areas, resources from better-financed schools could be drained to sustain those programs.

She has called for resistance “by any means necessary,” invoking the language of black civil-rights activist Malcolm X.

“When you have thousands of people coming together, it shows a diverse group that says, ‘We don’t want you here,’ and the governor would not be well-advised to ignore that,” Ms. Yampolsky said. “We’re going to be a bad dream. We’re prepared to stay and fight.”

But not everyone shared those sentiments. Vernard Johnson, whose daughter attends a charter high school in southwestern Philadelphia, said many other parents he knows think Edison should be given a chance. At Edison’s invitation, he and other parents visited schools the company operates in Baltimore, Washington, and nearby Chester, Pa.

“I saw clean buildings, students walking single-file in the hallway, kids engaged in learning in quiet classrooms,” Mr. Johnson said. “As leery and skeptical as I am about a corporation managing a school, I was really impressed. If they come [to Philadelphia] with the same model, determination, and authority that we saw, we can turn this system around.”

Some have worried that the five-member school reform commission would be unable to provide an objective assessment of the district’s progress.

State Sen. Allyson Y. Schwartz, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate education committee, has proposed setting up a separate board that would hire experts to appraise the district’s academic and financial progress.

If such an idea is not incorporated into the takeover agreement, she said, she might introduce it as legislation.

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the December 05, 2001 edition of Education Week as Phila. Takeover Deadline Marked by Protests

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Assessment Webinar
Improving Outcomes on State Assessments with Data-Driven Strategies
State testing is around the corner! Join us as we discuss how teachers can use formative data to drive improved outcomes on state assessments.
Content provided by Instructure
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Equity & Diversity Webinar
Classroom Strategies for Building Equity and Student Confidence
Shape equity, confidence, and success for your middle school students. Join the discussion and Q&A for proven strategies.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Professional Development Webinar
Disrupting PD Day in Schools with Continuous Professional Learning Experiences
Hear how this NC School District achieved district-wide change by shifting from traditional PD days to year-long professional learning cycles
Content provided by BetterLesson

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management Q&A How One High School Became a Model for Intergenerational Learning
School and community leaders say “there’s no down side.”
5 min read
Swampscott High School students and Senior Center members hold a quilt they made together for Black History Month at Swampscott High School, which is collocated and shares space with the senior center in Swampscott, Mass., on March 8, 2023.
Students and senior center members display a quilt they made together for Black History Month at Swampscott High School, in Swampscott, Mass, on March 8, 2023. The high school and senior center were designed and built to be part of the same complex, providing opportunities for teenagers and senior community members to collaborate and learn from one another.
Sophie Park for Education Week
School & District Management Did Principal Turnover Increase During the Pandemic? Here's What We Know
The data are still scant, but what’s emerging shows a drop in 2020-21 and an increase the following year.
6 min read
Black and white male and female figures walking in different directions on a light blue textured background. One male figure is walking out of an open door.
Anton Vierietin/Getty
School & District Management MAP: Where School Employees Can and Can't Strike
See which states do and don't allow public school employees to go on strike.
2 min read
Amy Chapman and her daughter, first grader Corinne Anderson, pose for a photo while they support teachers on strike outside Whetstone High School in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022.
Amy Chapman and her daughter, 1st grader Corinne Anderson, show support for teachers on strike outside Whetstone High School in Columbus, Ohio, on Aug. 24, 2022.
Samantha Hendrickson/AP
School & District Management Opinion How to Build a More Effective School Board
Board members are well-intentioned, but they've been mis-trained into focusing on adult inputs rather than student needs.
5 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty