Of all the things that public schools in the Commonwealth need, what wouldn’t be on this list?

A. increased state funding to address the 95% of PA districts which are considered underfunded by nationally normed averages, according to a recent state study ;
B. focusing on a statewide school capital plan so districts aren’t left to their own devices to come up with the millions to repair or build new schools;
C. a teacher recruitment initiative to build incentives and retain quality public school teachers;
D. more tests

Well, thanks to the State Board of Education, more tests is indeed at the top of the agenda.

It's hard to imagine that the Parking Authority could get any lower but they sure know how to bottom out. In today’s Inquirer story, the Parking Authority blames a decline in ticketing as a major reason why they can't meet their financial obligations to the City and the School District. Never mind the doubling up of a padded payroll; more than $46 million in largely unaudited cash reserves; unconscionable perks like fat pensions checks, free cars/gas; six figure salaries including an Exec. Dir. who makes more than the governor and a board chair who earns $75,000 a year for showing up once a month. Nah none of that could have anything to do with their failure to meet their goals.

Now, they blame the police. Had enough?

Come on down to the Parking Authority Board meeting this morning where:

Parents United for Public Education, the Philadelphia Home & School Council, Germantown Clergy Initiative, JUNTOS, Philadelphia Right to Ed Task Force and the Association of Philadelphia School Librarians name --

The Philadelphia Parking Authority

the

2007 Inductee into the Grinch Brotherhood

Yesterday, in a sneak move, the PA Senate re-authorized the Philadelphia Parking Authority’s red light cameras . The bill stripped away an earlier effort by the House Appropriations Committee to designate all new revenue to the public schools and provide minimal fiscal oversight to the Parking Authority. This new bill which passed unanimously in the Senate and the House (with the opposition of about 50+ representatives in the House), now turns over all money to PennDOT and has no reference to the need for public oversight on the PPA.

Symbolically, though, it provides yet more light on the struggles and hurdles we face to bring any new revenue to the public schools, make any reforms in the patronage heavy PPA, and bring to light the backdoor deals cut by Dwight Evans (whom it was recently reported has a brother at the Parking Authority) and Republican legislators who are deeply vested in the agency.

It’s also a demonstration of the failure of state takeovers: the state took over the public schools and the Parking Authority in 2001, the results of which have both lost public trust and remain largely out of the realm of public oversight, responsibility and accountability.

If you think that the City of Philadelphia is in desperate need of ethics reform, try the School District.

Last year parents raised concerns about the most basic ethical violations, including no-bid and/or sweetheart contracts for politically established firms, a School Reform Commission (SRC) chair with a penchant for regular dining at the Four Seasons on the School District dime, an SRC budget padded with consultants who duplicated extant district services, a CEO who wrote a letters to public school parents explicitly supporting a state legislator during election season (Perzel), and a budget process that appeared secretive and back door.

Including the capital budget, the School Reform Commission is in charge of $4 billion a year, almost comparable to the City of Philadelphia. As we discuss bringing more money to the public schools, the District needs ethic guidelines to prove that it is a responsible steward of such money.

With a politically appointed commission, some of whom run their own businesses and move in highly political circles, keeping business above board is not always a given. Outgoing Chair James Nevels, for example, ran one of the nation’s largest private equity firms, but had no responsibility to divulge any conflict of interest as he signed off on billions of dollars in questionable contracts some of which didn’t even require open review. One consequence was the revelation that Edison Schools had received a contract which guaranteed enrollment and paid them for almost 20% more students that they didn't even have. Every month the SRC meets for hours in “closed session.” In June, parents pointed to the closed sessions as violations of the Sunshine Law, especially after Commissioner James Gallagher was quoted in the media as admitting to “probably” having violated the law.

So how do we create a basic ethics agenda for the School District? Post your ideas here, and expect to see us raise them with the District in the new year. Our initial suggestions:

1. Eliminate no-bid contracts;
2. Eliminate pay-to-play: if you contribute politically, you can’t bid;
3. SRC Commissioners, district leaders required to file statements of financial disclosure, including conflict of interest statements, financial interests, as well as political contributions;
4. Guidelines re: gifts, meals, credit cards, etc.;
5. Two-year lobbying restrictions on ex-employees;
6. Conduct School District business in public and avoid the appearance of secrecy and back door deals.

For more information and supporting action on the Parking Authority campaign, please contact parentsunitedphila@gmail.com > Parents United for Public Education.

The Parking Authority Grinch: A Fable
(with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Every Who
Down in Who-ville
Liked decent schools a lot . . .

But the PPA,
Which wanted a fleet of SUVs for itself,
Did NOT!

The PPA hated public scrutiny! The whole budget perusin’!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be that its salaries and pensions had taken a good bite.
It could be, perhaps, that its payroll was outta sight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that its sense of shame was two sizes too small.

We can and should make a big deal about the Costing-Out Study for public education. Last night members from the Denver consulting firm were at Ben Franklin High School to summarize the results of the study and field the many excellent questions people had. While it was notable that Mayor-Elect Nutter was there, and Rep. Tony Payton Jr. was there, and School District CEO Tom Brady stopped by, it was more notable to think about who wasn’t:

• Like our City Council.

• Like Rep. James Roebuck, Philadelphia legislator, who chairs the Education Committee in the House.

• Like anyone else from the Philadelphia delegation.

• Like the School Reform Commission, who stands to benefit, and who, as political appointments, need to figure out how to use their connections to sell this study.

• Like business and civic leaders and those who pay lip service to boosting public education.

Who wasn’t there highlights the long way we have to go, and the challenge that faces us around the costing out study. The challenge is not the inequity that exists. The challenge is whether we’re going to do something about it. The challenge is making something that everyone says they care about and is the so called key to fixing some of our deepest problems – poverty, crime, unemployment – into something they’re actually going to DO something about.

For advocates, the challenge is mapping out the plan – to not think that the study is the vehicle for justice and provides its own gas, but that this study is going to be pushed, pulled, dragged and hauled up a mountain like a reluctant donkey loaded down with tons of baggage (no offense to donkeys because I think they’ll be more compliant than some legislators might be).

We’ll have to find the strange bedfellows that politics creates, and we’ll have to figure out where our compromises are, what we’re willing to trade to get someplace.

What we can’t do though is assume this study speaks for itself, or, for that matter, that people are even ready to listen.

With high expectations and more than a mixed amount of trepidation, the long-awaited Costing-Out Study on the state of Commonwealth spending on public education was released last week. As Dan U-A has already posted, it quantifies why our state ranks at the bottom of the nation and maintains one of the country’s most inadequate and inequitable funding systems for its most valuable resource – our, yours and mine, children.

The study, commissioned by a bi-partisan committee of state legislators last spring and conducted for more than a half million dollars by a national firm which has done similar studies across the nation, determined that the average cost of educating a child in the state came to around $12,000. According to the study, the state underfunds public education by $4.8 billion. About 95 percent of the school districts – 474 out of 501 – are underfunded, Philadelphia by as much as 50 percent. What has often been billed as a Philadelphia complaint has now been proven to be a massive system of inequity and poverty that touches all but the wealthiest of districts in the Commonwealth.

The billion dollar question of course is not what the study says but what are we and our legislators going to do about it. This study can and should shake things up but it can also sit on a shelf along with plenty of other proof that injustice exists.

Hoping to emulate the many impressive YPP interviews before, I talked with Justin DiBerardinis, a proud Central H.S. graduate, who has spent the past two years criss-crossing the eastern region as an organizer for Good Schools Pennsylvania about what the study means and where we need to go with it.

If you go to the Parking Authority website, www.philapark.org, there’s no indication about who governs the Parking Authority. The PPA Board of Directors isn’t even listed. But as a government agency taking in almost $200 million in taxpayer dollars, this six-person body is a publicly accountable board. So how much do we know about them?

Since the 2001 takeover, the Governor has the power to appoint PPA board members. From what I can tell, Gov. Ridge and Gov. Schweiker appointed all but one of the PPA board members. Much like the school district, the original takeover law estblished extensive term limits that would likely outlast the majority time of even a second-term succeeding governor – raising the question, who is this board accountable to?

In any case, it’s worth knowing who the board is and making sure people reach out to them to let them know their moral and civil duties are at least equal to their political allegiances.

Today’s Daily News reports that the historic lead of Mayoral candidate Michael Nutter over what’s-his-name may lead to low voter turnout and actually cause problems for a number of Dems seeking statewide office and needing large turnout.

From Dave Davies report:
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20071025_Poll__Nutter.html
Nutter leads Republican mayoral hopeful Al Taubenberger 74 percent to 8 percent among registered voters, and 83 percent to 8 percent among likely voters. . . .
An even-less-competitive mayoral race this year has resulted in little TV advertising, which further depresses voter interest and could spell trouble for statewide Democratic judicial candidates who want a robust turnout in Pennsylvania's strongest base of Democratic voters.

"There's no doubt about it, there's a real likelihood of a low turnout in the city, which could affect judicial races," Madonna said.

Like many governmental entities, the Parking Authority’s well known reputation for patronage and other misdeeds generally results in a roll of the eyes and a shrug of shoulders. But lately, expect to see a little more heat on the Authority as a result of more media investigation and local citizens, led by public school parents, who want their fair share for the public schools.

In 2004, Parking Authority officials, led by Republican legislators, namely Rep. John Perzel, made a big to-do of their educational generosity at Fox Chase Elementary School. They delivered a $4 million check to the School District, promising that it would be the first of tens of millions more.

PPA hasn’t delivered a dime since.

An extensive review of PPA’s audits shows that the agency is hardly poverty stricken. It’s nearly doubled its revenues in the past four years. We all know that increased ticket prices, 10 p.m. meters, and new initiatives, including the assumption of the Taxi licensing and much-criticized GPS system, have resulted in PPA becoming close to a $200 million operation. Last month they sold their 20th and Sansom Street property for a cool $37 million.

PPA has made clear that they are not violating fiscal and legal mandates, saying that ACT 9 restricts them from giving any money to schools unless they first make a $25 million payment to the city from their on-street division. The fact that they haven’t made that $25 million is not just hard to believe, but we think will be shown to be due largely to loading up on expenses and jobs.

So who’s on their case?

We’d hope it would be the city and politicians. But instead, a crew of parents, members of the Taxi Workers Alliance, and citizens are headed to the monthly public PPA board meeting Monday, 11:30 a.m. at 3101 Market Street to ask those questions. If you have time, we’d love for you to join us.

For once, maybe it can be the Parking Authority whose meter has finally expired.

For people who have wondered about the references to the insidious nature of No Child Left Behind and what it all means, this year may be D-Day for more than a quarter of Philadelphia's public schools under NCLB guidelines.

More than 70 schools in Philadelphia are in Corrective Action 2 (CA2) status, which means they failed to meet federal standards of progress 5 years in a row (I listed the schools below, according to the www.paayp.com website). Some of these schools have been in CA2 status for five years, making it a decade of disappointment for those students and families. Under federal No Child Left Behind guidelines, any school in CA2 status for more than one year must be restructured, and this year, the feds are putting pressure on districts to act.

NCLB generally offers three options:

• Complete management restructuring of schools;
• Privatization;
• Turning CA2 schools over to charters

Aaron Couch does a bang-up job reporting on the dramatic increase in Philadelphia’s homeless population (http://phillyimc.org/en/2007/10/42620.shtml). Citing a recent census by the city’s outreach teams, Couch reports that this past summer, the city counted at least 621 people on our streets, the highest number in a decade and more than double four years ago. The study also says the city lacks at least 60,000 units of affordable housing.

As we know, the Affordable Housing Trust was established in 2005, after a significant Council fight, for a mere $15 million. Community advocates had fought for far more dollars, pointing to other cities like Chicago which had put forward tens of millions of dollars toward similar efforts.

While no one looks good in Wednesday’s Philadelphia Inquirer story about Noreen Timoney’s Evergreen Solutions contract with the School District (see
href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/10198016.html"> http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/10198016.html), there’s clearly one big loser – the students and families in the District.

There’s no end to the irony of a $700,000 contract that went nowhere, but the more important lesson is the insight this gives us into a massively contracted out system with no capacity to monitor the contracts that are supposed to monitor it. These contracts define our District more than any “Declaration of Education.”

When the School Reform Commission came to Philadelphia in 2002, it promised to take a broke, run-down, old-fashioned “status quo” system and inject a little of that corporate competitive pep that would get the schools leaner, more competitive, more aggressive, and thereby better.

(It’s not too late to make it out to the “Search for the Next CEO” dialogues which are open to the public. There are two more left: October 4th, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Roxborough H.S.; Oct. 6th, 2-3:30 p.m. Simon Gratz High School.)

Around the city, the District has been trying to restart the dialogue with parents and citizens about the hopes and dreams we hold for our public schools. It’s a dialogue that’s long overdue.

For the past several weeks, the School Reform Commission, along with consultants, has set itself up in various neighborhoods to talk about the search for a new CEO. The stories have been poignant, graceful, tragic, and inspiring. Parents who talked about the impact of violence, the immigrant advocates talking about how they’re working on the same issues as they were 20 years ago when they filed a lawsuit, the Germantown minister who said we needed to get off the reform bandwagon --- we know what works in our schools. There was the senior citizen who said she was upset because the district was only reaching out to parents; and she was there because she cared about our public schools and the future of our youth too.

While the dialogue is passionate, the turnout, by all accounts, has been low. It’s a point used by some to either berate the District for poor communication, or to blame parents for not caring enough to invest in this process.

Both criticisms, however, miss the point that this is the first formal dialogue parents have had with the SRC in almost five years. This process is the first time since the state takeover that the SRC Commissioners have engaged in a formal process to really hear what parents and citizens have been saying all along in our homes and our churches, at our barbecues and Home & School meetings.

Our reports have not been glowing. For all the District’s touting of choice, charters, and test scores, the reality is that far too many parents say they haven’t felt the effect of reform in their classrooms. Class sizes are too large; arts and music programs are lacking; instead of counselors and mentors and tutors, we get metal detectors, suspensions and expulsion to questionable alternative education programs; school librarians are an endangered species; and inequity in resources remains a crushing divide.

Consistently when parents talk about a CEO, they’ve said they want an educator at the top.

This desire doesn’t exactly jive with the current national take on educational leadership, which envisions a CEO who is a fiscal whiz, P.R. hound and political strategist all wrapped up into one. Education? Leave that to the underlings.

I was going to hold off on this post until I saw A-1 of Monday’s New York Times. Reading the story, I got the familiar sense that when it comes to great challenges like reviving our public schools, instead of tackling the issues, the media makes it about the people – and no one embodies the cult of personality bigger than Paul Vallas. There’s a love-hate relationship with the man that overwhelms the more important dialogue about the impact of the past five years of reform and what type of leader the Philadelphia public schools need today in order to move forward.

That willful blindness is perfectly embodied in Philly Mag’s Sept. 2007 Vallas profile: “Reformer R.I.P.” (http://www.phillymag.com/home/articles/power_reformer_rip/page1)

I’m not quite sure how anyone goes from leaving chaos, and a $200 million deficit, in their wake to exiting in a poof of stardust, but this is Philly Mag after all. A few choice quotes from the profile: