Chalkbeat

Child-care sector facing potential collapse without new policies, advocate says

2020-03-19T00:22:36+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The head of one of the region’s leading child advocacy groups says the Greater Philadelphia child-care sector, already vulnerable, is being dangerously disrupted by the ongoing coronavirus crisis and faces potential collapse without a substantial influx of cash and an updated set of policies.

“If they can’t continue to get payments, like the schools, their businesses will close,” said Donna Cooper, head of Public Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY).

Cooper spoke after hosting a large conference call with regional child-care providers and public officials. The call raised a growing list of concerns, she said, including short-term questions about payments and policies, and broader concerns about the financial and ethical challenges posed by a long-term shutdown.

With schools nationwide extending their closures from weeks to months, the sector is starting to ask how it can survive without major new subsidies, said Cooper.

“People were very concerned with, ‘How will we know if this will get extended, and can’t we start planning now in case it does?” she said.

Pennsylvania officials know what’s at stake, she said. “The state is extremely interested in maximum liquidity for child-care providers,” Cooper said. “They know we need the sector up and operating for when people get back to work.”

But the child-care sector is very vulnerable to disruption, Cooper said. Centers typically rely on multiple funding streams, including government payments to families and providers in low-income areas and unsubsidized “private pay” customers, most of whom have been told to stay home from work.

With those private-pay dollars draining away, providers could easily be forced to close their doors if the shutdown grows lengthy, Cooper said.

Because the government is paying so little toward child care compared to its real cost, “nobody’s got any margin here,” she said. “Providers have no idea how they’re going to pay their staff or pay their rent if any [customer] in the center was private pay. That’s the income that covers the last dollar needed. Remember, nobody’s getting rich running a child-care program.”

System in flux

The goal of PCCY’s conference call was to enable child-care providers and officials to discuss the fast-developing coronavirus situation and the impact of the state-ordered shutdown of all but “essential” services.

Providers were grateful to be brought together to share questions and concerns, Cooper said.

Like business owners everywhere, child-care providers are trying to grapple with the profound implications of an unprecedented event, navigating a rapidly changing and often unclear situation.

The questions for providers involve more than finances.

“What if you’re open and a child or adult contracts the virus? There’s a business liability,” said Diane Barber, executive director of the Pennsylvania Child Care Association, in a recent interview.

Most Pennsylvania child-care centers have been ordered to close, but exceptions have been made for home-based centers and those serving the children of “essential” workers, such as police, firefighters, and health-care workers. State officials have promised to reimburse centers for some revenue lost to the shutdown.

About 125 child-care providers from the five-county area took part in the PCCY call, Cooper said, including home-based providers. A handful of state and local officials also took part. For many, it was the first chance to hear in detail from colleagues and put questions to officials.

Much of the conversation concerned what Cooper called technical issues that have sprung up as the various coronavirus closures have shut down much of the nation’s economy and public life.

A typical question, Cooper said, is whether centers will be reimbursed for the number of children who were signed up before the shutdown or the number who actually showed up after it began to take effect. Providers want to know whether the government will pay subsidies based on “the number of people who were enrolled last Friday, or the number who attended. … That’s a big difference, because nobody came last Friday,” Cooper said.

Providers also have questions about reimbursements for children of essential-service providers, alternative jobs for laid-off staff, and the impact of rising unemployment costs. Day-care centers forced to cut staff due to the virus could find themselves socked with rising unemployment insurance payments – a problem that could affect businesses of all kinds, she said.

“Every employer in America will have to figure unemployment costs going through the roof because of the virus,” said Cooper.

Providers’ ethical dilemma

But the situation also presents ethical questions unique to the child-care sector.

Child-care providers are both independent businesses and providers of an essential public service. The twin responsibilities can put them in a bind, Cooper said, because staying open may be good for business, but it carries risks to the provider and the community.

The home-based providers in low-income communities who still have the option to stay open now face a profoundly difficult choice, Cooper said. “Independent of their business operations,” she said, providers must ask themselves, “what’s right and what’s wrong right now?”

Providers who care for the children of police officers, EMTs or other essential workers are adding to their own exposure risk – and that of their staff and children, Cooper said. Wednesday’s conference call revealed that some find themselves caught between wanting to offer as much child care as possible to keep neighbors working and wanting to close up shop in order to protect those same neighbors and their children from the potentially deadly coronavirus.

“They want to help the kids of these essential workers, but they could affect their families,” Cooper said. “It’s a complicated thing.”

One provider on the PCCY call described wanting to keep her facility open so that her clients could work, but struggling with the fact that one of those clients works in a nursing home.

“The chance of that [client’s] kid being a carrier is pretty high,” said Cooper, which leaves the provider to wonder: “What do I do for my family and my kids?”

It’s wrong to ask child-care providers to untangle that kind of question, Cooper said.

“We have shifted ethical decision-making down to the most vulnerable part of the child-care system, home-based providers. We’ve said to those women and men, ‘We couldn’t make that decision for you, but best of luck.’ This is a horrible position to be in,” she said. “That’s kind of a core function of government, to make that call for you.”

For the time being, Cooper said, providers are on their own to sort out these questions, with state officials “deeply mired” in the immediate demands of the sudden shutdown. On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services released a list of “Operational Recommendations for Child Care Providers,” which include only such basic guidelines as, “exercise and promote hygienic practices,” “report all suspected cases of COVID-19,” and “follow state and federally issued guidance.” The new guidelines also note that some of the state’s child-care subsidy policies will be modified, including continuing payments for children enrolled in Child Care Works.

Cooper expects the state to begin developing longer-term plans that could give providers more substantive guidance soon.

“I would hope by maybe next week, or eight or nine days, they’ll be convening the right players,” she said.

The length of the shutdown

Long-term planning is essential because providers are increasingly concerned about the possibility that the shutdown could last months, Cooper said.

They see school closures being extended elsewhere – Kansas has cancelled classes for the rest of the school year, and Ohio and California could soon do the same – and they worry that Pennsylvania will be next, she said.

And although there are many steps that could be taken to protect the child-care sector from disruption, perhaps the single biggest question is whether and how the government will cover the sector’s lost private-pay dollars.

Almost every child-care center depends on those customers for critical income, Cooper said, and if they’re laid off, those payments disappear.

For a provider, private pay “could be 10 percent of your income, or it could be 50 percent,” said Cooper. “Even if it’s 10 percent, these centers operate on a shoestring. If you lose that 10 percent, the state isn’t making that up, because they never did.”

Getting the Pennsylvania legislature to approve such spending would be a heavy lift, she said.

Reimbursing child-care providers for lost private customers would require “an extraordinary amount of money – think of all the suburban private-pay child-care centers,” Cooper said. “But if you want to have an operating child-care structure, some money’s got to flow to those places, too, so they can pay their rent.”

In the final analysis, the cost of supporting the child-care sector has to be balanced against the cost of losing critical capacity during the shutdown, said Cooper.

“If it collapses, people can’t go back to work,” she said. “That’s the most important message here.”

The Notebook’s coverage of early childhood education is funded by the William Penn Foundation.

North Philly neighbors wrestle with stress

2017-04-13T12:11:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Darryl Murphy
After just five minutes of her first stress-management workshop, Debra Myrick said, “I should have been here 35 years ago.”

In her North Philadelphia community, Myrick said, raising a family meant non-stop worry.

“I was stressed about my children. I was scared about every little thing,” she said.

The shadow of serious trouble is never far from anyone, even a law-abiding construction worker like her son.

“When he goes out the door, I pray. I pray,” Myrick said. “Sometimes I pray all day long.”

Myrick was one of a half-dozen North Philadelphia residents who turned out at Strawberry Mansion High for the last of a series of workshops called the New Eyes program. Sponsored by the United Way and the Institute of Family Professionals, it teaches community members to “see stress with new eyes” and handle it in healthy ways.

She was delighted to sit with a group of neighbors to share stories and learn about the basics of stress: where it comes from, how it morphs from manageable to toxic, and how to defang it before it leads to traumas that can affect an entire family.

“One thing I like about this program … it makes people aware: ‘I’m not alone,’” said New Eyes instructor Colbert Partridge.

Altogether, almost 600 North Philadelphia residents attended one of the 27 New Eyes workshops, where they learned basic stress-management techniques such as relaxing with “belly breathing” or making a “safety list” of calming mental steps.

The techniques may be simple, Partridge said, but as a former probation officer, he knows the stakes are high. The stressed-out child who acts out in school can soon become the young adult with academic or legal problems. But when parents can handle their own stress, Partridge said, they can help break the cycle.

“If the parents model behavior, the children pick it up,” he said.

Myrick knows the cycle well – it can start as soon as the sun comes up. An overworked parent who lashes out at a child who can’t find his shoes or her homework can unwittingly disrupt an entire classroom, she said.

“Sending your child to school upset – they’ll have an attitude all day long,” said Myrick. “They’ll pick on other kids.”

Myrick’s friend Lenora Jackson, a mother and grandmother who works at the nearby Strawberry Mansion Neighborhood Action Center, has seen that far too many times.

“Early in the morning, when they just get to school, they’re just acting out with the teachers,” Jackson said. “I’m saying, ‘What could have happened?’”

From stress to trauma

Programs like New Eyes are the exception when it comes to dealing with stress, said Michael O’Bryan, an artist and youth advocate with North Philadelphia’s Village for the Arts and Humanities.

“Pockets of us get it. But overall we don’t really talk about it,” O’Bryan said. “Rich people, poor people, distressed communities – anybody talking about stress right now is kind of unheard of.”

O’Bryan has been involved with what he calls “trauma-informed community engagement” for about 10 years. He recently joined a project called the Trauma Informed Care Initiative, supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, whose goal is to bring the “Sanctuary Model” of trauma-informed advocacy to the Strawberry Mansion community.

The basic stress factors that North Philadelphians live with, he said, aren’t that different from those that affect any community – money, work, obligations to children and elders.

But add to that the combined effects of crime, violence, and underfunded schools and public institutions, and “chronic stressors” can soon become “complex and chronic trauma,” O’Bryan said, causing “an overload on the body, on the brain, on the immune system.”

“Think about the mornings people are having in the neighborhood. If a parent’s stressed, it’s probably not really because the kid can’t find their socks,” O’Bryan said. “It’s because they’re tired. They have to go work a 10-, 12-hour day” for little money.

Jackson, who works at the Neighborhood Action Center, said stress is so deeply woven into life in Strawberry Mansion that people take it for granted.

“A lot of our kids and families don’t know they’re in trauma,” she said. “They live it, but they don’t know how to address it. … It’s so normal. It’s just a way of life.”

Jackson’s neighbor Jacqueline White, who has three children and three grandchildren, agreed. She enjoyed the New Eyes workshop – “the breathing thing. I loved it!” she said – but she wished more of her friends had come, like one who’s raising nine children.

“She posted in Facebook, ‘Oh my, I’m so stressed out. I’m gonna have these kids, by myself, for the rest of my life,” said White.

She fears that her friend’s children will end up “just as mad as she is.”

“Whatever she puts on them, they’re going to do it to their little friends. The same thing.”

A healing center – and hugs

Parents are never too old to learn about stress management, said New Eyes trainer Janet Oesterling, and children are never too young.

“I have children I work with that are 3 years old,” she said. “I’ll sit down and talk to them. What can they do to make themselves feel a little bit calmer? That helps them. Because when we say ‘calm down’ to a child, what does that look like? How do I do that? We give them some concrete steps.”

But there’s only so much a family can do, Myrick said. Once children leave the house, they’re at the mercy of the community. For one of her grandchildren, a rowdy lunchroom alone can be traumatizing.

“She’s handicapped,” said Myrick. “I picked her up the other day, and she was upset, because another child got in her face. Somebody should be able to protect her. Who’s there for her? Just because another child’s stressed!”

That kind of institutional failing is the tip of the iceberg, said O’Bryan. When schools that can’t fully nurture their students graduate them into communities that don’t offer them jobs and opportunities, a certain level of crime, violence and trauma is bound to result.

“We want to heal trauma, but we don’t want to deal with the economic stressors that [become] biological stressors,” he said.

No one understands these dynamics better than North Philadelphia residents, he said. The solution that his Strawberry Mansion project has settled on is to create a kind of all-purpose trauma healing center, offering mental health services, arts programming, and access to job training and other economic opportunities.

The group hopes to house the center in the former L.P. Hill Elementary building, next door to Strawberry Mansion High. Its proposal is about 75 percent ready, he said.

“We’ve got to invest in those spaces more and more,” O’Bryan said. “I just want to expose people to as much knowledge as possible.”

In the meantime, the participants at New Eyes know it’s up to them to do what they can.

Lenora Jackson makes sure she’s always ready to hold a needy child.

“It’s just love. That’s why hugging is so important,” she said. “Especially the little ones. You ain’t gotta be cussin’ them out. A lot of times that’s all they hear.”

But Debra Myrick said it’s bound to be an uphill battle.

“When you live in the inner city, the streets’ll rip the kids up before you can even control it,” she said.

“If you don’t teach them in the house … the street’s going to teach them everything. That’s reality. I have nephews – my sister’s a good mother. But they think the streets showed them more love.”

Bill Hangley Jr. is a freelance contributor to the Notebook; on Twitter@BillHangley.

As vote approaches, senators still in the dark on DeVos finances, possible conflicts

2017-01-19T16:20:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Although her notion that some schools may need guns to ward off grizzlies made the headlines, Tuesday’s Senate hearing for Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos revealed almost nothing about her finances – both the money she might make while in office and the money she might spend.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat on the committee that will vote on DeVos’ proposed appointment Tuesday, has confirmed that members will not receive a full financial disclosure from DeVos in time to ask her detailed questions about specific potential conflicts, despite reports of her investments in several for-profit education entities.

“I am deeply concerned that Senate Republicans are pushing these nominees through their Senate hearings without their completed ethics paperwork, including Mrs. DeVos,” Casey said in a statement.

Likewise, senators heard little about DeVos’ plans for her future philanthropic work, beyond her pledge to refrain from making personal donations to candidates, which represents just a fraction of the millions spent each year by the DeVos family supporting charters, vouchers, and other political and policy causes.

“I don’t know of any prior Cabinet members with this kind of track record for philanthropic and political activity,” said Paul S. Ryan, legislative director for the watchdog group Common Cause. “Her money, her family’s money, can certainly drive the policy debates in the direction she wants to see them go.”

Under the schedule established by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who chairs the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Casey and other senators have until Thursday evening to submit final questions for DeVos.

But Alexander gave DeVos until Friday to submit her completed ethics paperwork, meaning that senators will be unable to consider her detailed record before asking their last questions.

“Even if she submits her paperwork by Friday, we will have our vote on Tuesday without the opportunity to question her on the facts found in these documents,” Casey said. “Ms. DeVos, a billionaire, has a myriad of potential conflicts of interest, including the fact that she has invested in companies whose bottom line she could impact as secretary.”

Casey announced Wednesday that he would not support DeVos or two other Cabinet nominees. His fellow Pennsylvania senator, Republican Pat Toomey, will vote on DeVos in the full Senate. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Robert Fayfich, head of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, praised DeVos as “knowledgeable” and “focused on … trying to get good schools for kids,” but said it was “inappropriate” to ask senators for their final questions before giving them DeVos’ completed ethics paperwork.

“I think all of the senators should have all of the information before they proceed so they can ask appropriate questions,” Fayfich said. “It’s going to come out anyway. It’s in the best interest of both parties that any interests come out early, as opposed to later.”

Donna Cooper, executive director of the advocate group Public Citizens for Children & Youth, echoed that point of view.

“In general, the [Trump] administration is taking a very bold approach to force through nominees before any reviews can happen. But that can come back and bite them,” Cooper said.

“Some of these nominees have significant conflicts of interest, and they will come out, and the senators will be left holding the bag. … If I was a U.S. senator – particularly if I were Pat Toomey, who is somebody very interested in integrity in government – the idea that we’re going to approve any nominees before seeing their ethics documents is very, very dangerous,” Cooper said.

Money going in and out

Financial concerns about DeVos’ Cabinet appointment fall into two main categories: money that she or her family could potentially make through for-profit education investments that could be affected by her decisions as a public official and money that they could potentially spend to shape policy through donations to politically minded groups and causes.

Reports indicate that DeVos has several potential investment conflicts, including ties to a firm called Performant that specializes in student loan collections and does millions in business with the Department of Education.

DeVos has pledged to divest herself of all such holdings, which Fayfich takes as a good sign.

“She made the commitment to divest herself – hopefully she’ll act in accordance,” he said.

But without complete documentation of her interests, it’s impossible to know where conflicts might be, Cooper said.

“The Education Department has a lot of lines of business,” she said, including publishing, research, loans, and professional development. “There’s a lot of vendors. And it’s useful to know if the appointee has any financial relationships that present policy challenges.”

Avoiding such conflicts isn’t a choice, but a matter of law, said Ryan of Common Cause.

He said that federal law “prohibits an executive branch employee from participating personally and substantially in any particular government matter that would affect that person’s financial interest, as well as the financial interest of any organization in which the person serves as an officer, director or trustee.”

However, Ryan added, although conflict-of-interest laws prevent public officials from using their office to make money, no law prevents them from spending money personally in order to amplify the power of the office and move its agenda.

“They can’t use their official authority or office to do any fundraising for others, but in their personal capacity, they can be quite involved in politics,” Ryan said.

The federal Hatch Act prohibits Cabinet members from using the power of their office to endorse candidates, he said. But officials can still make donations to candidates or advocacy groups or play an active role in charitable foundations or nonprofits that seek to shape politics and policy.

For politicians to advocate for causes and policy priorities is not unusual, and Senate Republicans showed no concern about DeVos’ spending at Tuesday’s hearings.

“She’s used her considerable wealth and effectiveness to advance [her] ideas,” said Alexander, the committee chairman. “I believe she’s in the mainstream of public opinion, and her critics are not.”

The scale of involvement

What distinguishes DeVos is the scale of her and her family’s work. Together the family has donated an estimated total of $1.2 billion through its various foundations, including $94 million in 2014 alone, much of it to conservative education causes, including charter schools and vouchers.

Devos herself has donated an estimated $2.7 million over the last 20 years, mostly to Republicans, including Toomey and some other senators who will vote on her nomination. In fact, some reports say DeVos has given money to 10 of the 12 Republicans who sit on her confirmation committee. Under questioning by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at her hearing, she acknowledged that the family has given as much as $200 million to the GOP. That includes $2.7 million during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Many a politician has arrived in office backed by a substantial personal war chest, and that in and of itself shouldn’t be disqualifying, Fayfich said.

“If you eliminate anybody who has that … you eliminate a lot of capable people,” he said.

Philadelphia City Councilwoman Helen Gym, a veteran education advocate who is actively lobbying against DeVos, said that the concern isn’t just DeVos’ wealth, but her long track record of using it to shape policy and, as DeVos herself once put it, “buying influence.”

Gym compared DeVos to billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who as mayor of New York was not without his critics, but largely avoided scandals and the appearance of impropriety by following the city’s ethics guidelines.

“The difference between him and DeVos is that she falls under a presidency in which there’s open disdain about conflicts of interest – dismissing them, poo-pooing them, diverting attention away from them,” said Gym.

DeVos told the Senate committee that she would avoid any personal political donations while serving the Trump administration. “I will not be involved and engaged in political contributions, and my husband will not be either,” she said.

But Cooper cautioned there are many ways for the DeVos family to use their money to “gin up state-level acceptance of their federal initiatives” – most notably through donations to “social welfare” 501(c)4 groups such as Students First or issue-oriented 529 groups that “can’t coordinate with a candidate but … can echo a point of view of a candidate.”

Such groups will likely be active in Pennsylvania’s upcoming gubernatorial elections, and nothing would prevent DeVos or her family from contributing to those that seek to unseat Gov. Wolf, a Democrat, Cooper said.

“Republican social welfare organizations and 529s have been very active at the state level,” Cooper said. “They have 33 governors – they want more.”

DeVos said at her hearings that she won’t seek to force states to expand charters, but did not address how her philanthropy might influence policy.

“I would hope I could encourage that maybe in some future legislation, but I would not mandate that from within the department,” DeVos said.

But critics such as Gym remain deeply concerned about the potential influence of her dollars.

“The fact that Betsy DeVos still runs the family foundation is still a major issue,” Gym said. “It’s not possible to operate behind the scenes with your money and foundations [and] openly claim to want to buy influence, and then function as a public servant in the democratic sphere.”

Fayfich said that he, too, hopes that as secretary, DeVos sticks to developing good policy and avoids mixing her work as a public servant with her spending as an advocate.

“I do not think she should use her money to influence decisions over which they have some authority or to support organizations that advocate for them one way or another,” he said. “And this would apply to any secretary, Democrat or Republican. That would apply to anybody.”

Simms, Divine, and the Wister vote: A question of interest

2016-02-29T14:48:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

When Quibila Divine testified Feb. 18 before the School Reform Commission, she delivered a passionate defense of herself and her sister, Commissioner Sylvia Simms. The two have been the subjects of scrutiny ever since Simms’ surprise move at the Jan. 21 SRC meeting, in defiance of Superintendent William Hite, to revive Mastery Charter’s bid for Wister Elementary.

In her testimony, Divine proudly challenged her critics. “In our community, we are the solution, and not the problem,” she concluded.

But Divine did not answer a question that ethics watchdogs and legal observers say could have significant implications for her sister’s’ future SRC votes: whether Divine has a professional or financial involvement that could pose a conflict of interest for Simms.

The law is unequivocal, experts say. “If there is a conflict, you need to abstain,” said Rob Caruso, executive director of the State Ethics Commission.

Divine has been mum about her professional duties, beyond the fact that she works for a Chicago-based public relations firm, specializing in charter school outreach. Her SRC testimony was her first public statement since the night of the Wister vote, when activist Pamela Williams rose with a shout to protest the SRC’s 3-1 approval of Simms’ resolution.

“You should have recused yourself!” Williams yelled repeatedly at Simms from the back rows of the auditorium. “Your sister has a contract … with Mark Gleason right there!” she said, pointing to the executive director of the Philadelphia School Partnership, who was in the audience.

Activist Pam Williams accuses Sylvia Simms of failing to acknowledge a conflict of interest after a critical vote at the Jan. 21 SRC meeting. (Video by Media Mobilizing Project)

It was a surprise allegation with serious implications, raising the question of whether Divine was getting paid to promote a charter while her sister was setting in motion that charter’s approval. If Divine stands to gain from any Wister decision, ethics experts say, that could require Simms to recuse herself – a move that would likely take away the critical third vote Mastery would need to win the Wister bid.

Since that day, Divine has confirmed that she currently works for the Chicago-based Citizen Consulting Group, a small enterprise with close ties to PSP.

But Divine and her employers have both declined repeated requests to discuss her work, who funds it, or how it might connect with her documented activity at Wister.

Simms and District legal counsel Michael Davis say Divine’s professional activities pose no conflict for the commissioner.

Yet the public record reveals little about the nature of Divine’s work for Citizen Consulting.

The Notebook spent three weeks asking questions to find out more, and neither Simms, nor Divine, nor Divine’s employer, nor District officials, nor PSP offered any new answers.

Mastery officials have stated unequivocally that Divine was not working for them at Wister or anywhere else.

“Mastery has no relationship with Quibila Divine or her employer,” said Mastery spokesperson Kirk Dorn. “We are not guiding or even coordinating with their activities.”

PSP, a private nonprofit that is not required to disclose information about its contracts, will neither confirm nor deny hiring Citizen or Divine, instead calling such questions an “insult” to Simms and Wister parents supporting Mastery.

The organization’s most recent annual report, for 2014, shows expenditures of $17 million, including $3 million for professional services, marketing, and communications.

Divine herself referred all questions to her employer, Citizen CEO Chris Butler, who has been silent. Butler did not respond to multiple requests for comment over several weeks. Citizen’s website, which listed Divine as a staffer and PSP as a client, has recently gone “under construction.”

Only Divine’s and Simms’ friend Anna Figueroa, a Wister grandparent who is now an enthusiastic Mastery supporter, offered any explanation of Divine’s involvement at Wister.

“I invited [her] to educate us, and that’s it,” said Figueroa, who is also the vice president of Simms’ group Parent Power. “She didn’t force anything on us.”

So there is still no definitive word on Divine’s employment, who funds it, what it includes, and where her activity at Wister fits in.

Experts say the answer could have implications for Simms’ ability to vote in this case and perhaps in other charter-related situations as well.

Caruso, of the Ethics Commission, said that if there is an undisclosed conflict, “the commissioner should make an announcement of such, and then abstain” from any future vote affected.

Likewise, Caruso said, if Simms can clear up lingering questions about Divine and show that no conflict exists, that would boost the public’s confidence in the integrity of the next Mastery vote – the latest battle in the increasingly bitter war over what to do about Philadelphia schools with chronically low achievement.

A central question

By law, experts say, public officials must disclose any conflicts involving family members whose material interests could be at play in public decisions, such as SRC votes.

Relationships such as Simms’ and Divine’s are only an ethics concern if they result in an “undue influence” on a public official’s decisions, said David Thornburgh of the Committee of Seventy.

Given what’s on the record so far, “it’s hard for me to see that here,” Thornburgh said.

However, attorney Michael Churchill of the Public Interest Law Center said that with so little known about Divine’s work and Citizen’s pro-charter history so clear, the public has reason to seek details. Depending on the exact terms of Divine’s employment, he said, the implications for Simms could be dramatic.

For instance, “If [Divine] had a financial interest in increasing charter attendance in Philadelphia, it would be an ethical violation for Simms to vote on a matter which would increase charter attendance,” said Churchill, who recently won the Philadelphia Bar Foundation Award for public service.

Caruso said that Pennsylvania’s ethics law does not require District officials to investigate the accuracy of officials’ disclosures.

Nor does the law compel Divine, a private citizen, to speak. And without reliable information about Divine’s professional activities and financial stake, Caruso said, members of the public will be hard-pressed to judge whether Simms and Davis were correct to rule out any ethical issues.

“As far as determining a financial conflict of interest as it’s defined in the Ethics Act, I don’t think they can,” based on what is known now, said Caruso.

The record shows clearly that Divine was engaged in an organized manner at Wister and that one of her colleagues – former PSP employee Joseph Butler – attended at least one key Wister-related event.

Meeting logs, event flyers, and source reports show that Divine attended community meetings at Wister and organized one of her own.

And attached to Divine’s activity are expenses that seem to indicate outside support for the pro-Mastery campaign, including some for the dinner served at the Germantown community meeting that Divine and Figueroa, the Wister grandparent, organized. Figueroa also declined to say who paid to transport a vanload of Mastery supporters to a meeting with Simms and SRC member Bill Green in January on the day before the pivotal SRC vote.

A long career in advocacy

Bastiaan Slabbers

Divine’s Feb. 18 testimony added nothing new to the limited public record about her current professional involvements, or Citizen’s.

Simms has denied any knowledge of Divine’s work. “I don’t know what my sister’s got,” she said immediately after the Wister vote, when asked about Williams’ outburst.

For public officials, however, knowing is part of the job, experts say.

“Any business or personal relationship that affects a significant decision or transaction ought to be disclosed,” Thornburgh said. “That’s what annual disclosure statements are for.”

Simms’ most recent available annual public disclosure was filed in April 2015, but it covers 2014, before Divine joined Citizen.

And after Simms’ controversial vote, District officials quickly dismissed any possibility of a conflict.

In an unusual after-the-fact ethics ruling the next day, District counsel Davis concluded that no conflict existed because Divine hasn’t worked for Mastery and Simms hadn’t helped her get the job with Citizen.

Davis and Simms, asked later whether they were aware of Divine’s employment and her documented activity at Wister, both declined to comment.

Davis likewise declined comment on whether Divine’s involvement in pro-Mastery advocacy funded by an outside source would constitute a conflict for Simms. He referred to his earlier ruling.

And in a statement, Simms addressed no details, saying: “It was clear to me that the Wister families I met with wanted the opportunity to have a better education. … Somebody’s got to stand up for these parents, and that’s what I did."

Divine, in a long and respected career, has served as a professional outreach specialist and volunteer advocate concerning many educational issues. She has worked for the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Philadelphia School District. She has joined campaigns to advance early literacy and fair funding, teaming up with organizations of all kinds. Last year she was named a member of Mayor Kenney’s transition team.

School choice became a visible priority for Divine after she signed with Citizen last spring. Her recent publicized activities include a lecture on “advocating to improve schools [and] increase quality seats” and a workshop featuring a former PSP employee.

Beyond such occasional appearances, the public record shows little to indicate what Divine’s professional duties for Citizen might be.

What the record does show is a Citizen-PSP connection that dates back to at least 2013, when PSP staffer Joseph Butler left his position to join his brother Chris at Citizen – though Joseph Butler still maintains a PSP email address. The young firm would soon have Mastery and PSP as clients, providing outreach and community networking. One of Citizen’s latest projects is a pro-charter advocacy group called Educational Opportunities for Families, which prominently features PSP videos (and little else) on its website.

Mastery officials say their contract with Citizen, for outreach in Camden, ended last March.

Divine signed on with Citizen the next month; her job description on the website LinkedIn reads, “Work to achieve organizational goals and objectives through public awareness and engagement.”

Figueroa was adamant that Divine came to Wister “as a volunteer.” But she said she knows little of Divine’s work or her Chicago connections – only that Divine is a “consultant” whose focus is “high-quality education.”

But parents opposing the charter takeover who saw Divine’s activity up close said she seemed more like a professional with an interest in the outcome – but not one she would openly acknowledge.

A visit to Wister triggers suspicion

Divine appeared at Wister in early December, joining Figueroa at the meetings of a parent group that wanted to see Wister stay under District control.

“She said, ‘I’m Quibila Divine, and I’m a member of Jim Kenney’s transition team,’” Wister parent Kenya Nation recalled. “I said, ‘Great! Jim Kenney’s for community schools! We’ve got someone on our side!’”

Supported by volunteers from Parents United for Public Education (and eventually the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which helped with some PR), the parent group met weekly. Figueroa began attending early on; Divine joined her twice, listening quietly and displaying no noticeable pro-charter sentiment.

To the contrary. Divine once promised Nation that she’d deliver a message from the parents to the mayor.

“We were so happy,” Nation recalled.

A spokesman for the mayor said Kenney doesn’t recall getting a message from Divine, one of more than 100 transition team members.

But Nation and the others vividly recall the invitation they got from Divine and Figueroa to attend a workshop on “parents’ rights,” which proved to be a lecture from Divine on sliding test scores, ending with a visit from a Mastery recruiter.

Ted Stones, a 30-year Germantown resident and activist, helped plan the event, after running into Divine and Figueroa at another function. His name ended up on the promotional flyer next to Divine’s. But Stones said that Divine’s meeting, held Dec. 9 at New Redeemer Church on Germantown Avenue, didn’t go as planned or advertised. He ended up deeply disappointed.

“Everything is being done so the real intention is disguised,” said Stones, an Action United board member and committed charter critic. “If it came up in the planning meeting that this was for charters, I would have noticed. I would have vehemently rejected.”

Rather than focusing on “rights” such as parents’ ability to visit schools and engage with teachers, Divine’s lecture, according to several attendees, was about the District’s inability to boost chronically low test scores – including those in District-run turnarounds like Steel Elementary.

“She was talking about scores, doing examples, teaching the parents how to read the scores,” said Figueroa. “It was educating us how to read data.”

Divine’s case for charters was implied but clear, Stones said. “She didn’t say it explicitly, because I think she was aware of what she was doing.”

“As I recall, she didn’t do any selling of Mastery,” said Robin Lowry, a Wister teacher. “She was just painting a picture of how awful things are at Wister.”

“If we’re supposed to be learning our rights, I’m confused,” parent Novilette Jones recalled thinking.

When Mastery employee Winslow Mason arrived at the event to recruit parents for school visits, Jones concluded that she’d been “set up.” Stones and Lowry, too, felt like victims of a bait-and-switch.

“I feel you got us here so you could get the Mastery people to convert us,” said Stones.

Mastery says their staffer’s visit to Divine’s meeting wasn’t at their direction; Figueroa said it was just by chance.

But Jones said her suspicions only deepened the next day, when Mason and Figueroa visited her hair salon, bearing Mastery’s distinctive royal blue shirts. Figueroa told Jones that she’d converted just that morning, after visiting a Mastery school.

“We did not pressure her,” said Figueroa later. “I just wanted to tell her what I had seen, that I was impressed.”

A meeting with Green

After the church meeting, Divine didn’t revisit Wister’s pro-District parent group. Figueroa soon became active in the pro-Mastery parent group, joining other members at public events and appearing in videos on Mastery’s Facebook page.

Figueroa also joined Mastery supporters on the visit with Simms and Bill Green, the day before Simms’ game-changing Mastery resolution.

Mastery officials say they endorsed that trip, but didn’t organize or fund it.

“The SRC and Dr. Hite are public officials, and the parents felt they had a right to get their voices heard,” said Dorn of Mastery. “They told us what they were doing, and we supported and appreciated it.”

Figueroa said the private session was organized by “the parents” and not Divine or anyone else. She said she was acting as an individual and Wister grandparent, and not as a representative of Parent Power.

But Figueroa declined to say who covered the trip’s expenses, such as the van ride that took a dozen Mastery supporters from Germantown to District headquarters in Center City.

“We needed a ride and we got it – that’s all you need to know,” Figueroa said.

As for the meeting itself, Green said he sympathized with the Mastery supporters’ concerns – Mastery is “the best in the country,” he said, and is “a partner the District needs to work in good faith with and not surprise.” He said he made no promises to the group.

Instead, Green said he told them he would check one last time with Hite to learn more about why he changed his mind about making Wister a charter and did this in executive session before the SRC meeting.

Still, Green said he was caught by surprise that evening when Simms brought her motion to the floor. But he was happy to back her.

As someone who has described his own role on the SRC as “blocking and tackling” for Hite, Green said, he could not have realistically moved on his own to restore Mastery’s bid.

But “Sylvia felt very strongly about this. I wanted to support her,” said Green. “I also believed that it would be in the best interest of the children at Wister. The reality is, it’s a very different dynamic for Sylvia to stand up and fight for children than it is for me.

“If I did it, it would be, ‘Green and Hite fight.’”

A surprise vote draws a crowd

Jan. 21 wasn’t a red-letter SRC event for pro-District Wister parents.

Some, like Nation, stayed home, having been assured by District staff that “Wister being a charter was no longer an option,” she recalled.

But three other groups were well-represented: Mastery Wister supporters, Citizen employees, and PSP executives.

Divine and Joseph Butler from Citizen Consulting were present at the meeting, with Butler seated close to PSP’s two top officials, Mark Gleason and Mike Wang.

Near them was an energetic group of blue-shirted Mastery supporters, whose visit that day, like the visit to see Simms and Green, was endorsed but not organized by Mastery officials. Those supporters cheered with delight when Simms brought up her motion and cheered louder when it passed.

Among the happiest that night was Mastery supporter William Jackson, a former Wister parent and frequent public presence during the campaign. Photographs show a gleeful Jackson giving PSP’s Gleason a warm embrace after the vote.

Back in Germantown, Nation was stunned.

“Sylvia Simms said she heard an ‘outcry’ from Wister parents,” she said. “She never spoke to me! What about my outcries?”

Now, with Mastery still awaiting a final vote on Wister’s status, community members on both sides say the campaign has been bruising, divisive, and increasingly personal.

But neither side plans to give up now.

A detailed proposal is due from Mastery on March 11, and the SRC will vote in the spring on whether to turn over Wister to Mastery and turn two other schools over to other charter organizations.

Simms’ vote would likely be essential. SRC member Farah Jimenez recuses herself from Mastery decisions (her husband does legal work for the charter), and SRC Chair Marjorie Neff has consistently voted against charter turnarounds.

Bill Green and Feather Houstoun have supported Mastery, and would probably need Simms as the critical third vote.

Pro-District parents such as Jones say the new details and unanswered questions about Divine’s employment have hardened their resolve to press their case.

Pamela Williams, whose angry outburst at the SRC’s Jan. 21 meeting first highlighted Divine’s connection to Citizen, said she wants to know whether the Renaissance process was “polluted” by any “collusion” among PR professionals, Mastery officials, PSP, and volunteers, including Figueroa.

On the other side, Figueroa said, Mastery supporters are frustrated by the scrutiny about finances and conflicts of interest.

“We are not getting paid,” she said. “We just want to make a difference.”

And Mastery officials, who responded in detail to numerous inquiries over the course of weeks, also expressed frustration.

“It’s disgraceful that people not affiliated with the school and who don’t live in the community are trying so relentlessly to discredit these parents,” Dorn said.

Simms herself has not committed to a final Wister decision and has said she only wanted one more chance for public review.

“I am not prejudging the application or saying I would vote to support it,” Simms said in January.

Meanwhile, with Divine and her employers silent, the central ethical question remains unresolved.

What’s currently on the record about Divine and Simms, the Committee of Seventy’s Thornburgh said, does not clearly indicate undue pressure or quid pro quo corruption.

“I honestly can’t see that here,” Thornburgh said.

But Churchill sees enough unanswered questions to warrant further investigation into the specific terms of Divine’s compensation, “either by the District or by an independent ethics board,” in order to rule out possible conflicts.

Caruso said that, given the stakes and the bitter controversy, full disclosure is wise before the final vote on the charter conversions. He cautioned that votes, once cast, can’t be undone; if a conflict should be revealed after the fact, the Ethics Commission could assess penalties, but couldn’t change the outcome of a vote that’s already been finalized.

“We don’t have that authority,” he said.

And Thornburgh noted that public officials who want to be effective need to consider more than formal disclosure rules. The appearance of impropriety alone can lead to controversies that can derail any agenda, he said.

“The ‘True North’ question is always this: Is this something that would embarrass me or my office if it ended up on the front page of the paper?” Thornburgh said. “Any distraction … burns up time and energy and could ultimately destroy his or her chance of achieving what he or she wanted to achieve.”

From reading to community

2015-01-29T11:37:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

It’s family storytime at the Lucien E. Blackwell public library on 52nd Street, and the bushy-haired toddler named Rio isn’t just here to learn to read.

He’s here to join the world.

“Look at this – red!” says Jennifer Walker, the librarian, as she holds open a picture book about colors. “Just like this scarf!”

She plucks a bright red scarf from a box full of them. Rio grabs it, gazes from the scarf to the page, and then looks back to Walker. “That’s right – red!” she says. Rio ponders this for a moment, drops the scarf and toddles over to his mother, who rewards him with a smile, a cheer, and a hug.

Jamilla Manigault wants the best for Rio. “I want him ahead of the game – to have that intelligence, that love of knowledge,” she said.

She’s been reading to him since he was in the womb. At 17 months, he can write his name (“It’s not hard – just R-I-O,” she laughs). Today’s library visit is one more little step toward what she hopes is a bright future.

“On my block, a lot of the children – and a lot of the adults, for that matter – never go off the block or out of West Philadelphia,” she said. “I want him to get off the island.”

Research shows that early literacy is a key predictor of adult success, and the cost of falling behind is clearer than ever, particularly for low-income students and students of color. It’s an urban myth that state governments use 3rd-grade literacy levels to predict prison populations, but the correlation between poor reading, dropping out, poverty, and incarceration remains troublingly strong.

A student at Ziegler Elementary works on an assignment in an interactive history kindergarten class. Literacy experts say that in grades K-3, children must learn to read so that they can transition toward “reading to learn.” (Photo: Charles Mostoller)

Among the daunting statistics:

• Over half of Philadelphia’s 3rd graders could not read on grade level – in District schools, the figure was 60 percent in 2014.

• Low-income, struggling readers are six times more likely to drop out than their proficient peers.

• Struggling Black and Latino readers are twice as likely to drop out as White students with the same reading levels.

• One in 10 high school dropouts can expect to land in jail, compared to one out of 35 high school graduates.

Ralph Smith, head of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, calls 3rd grade a “make-or-break year” that “essentially predicted what would happen to far too many students.”

And as troubling as those links may be, experts and front-line practitioners agree: More is at stake than student success.

Also at stake is the success of classrooms, schools, and entire school districts. None can function effectively when students don’t act as responsible citizens – an incentive that fades quickly for struggling readers, Smith said.

“The kids who don’t read begin to band together,” he said. “When you get a critical mass of those kids, that makes it enormously difficult to teach. Before you know it, you’ve got a highly dysfunctional environment for everybody.”

A doorway to citizenship

Teachers say the struggling young reader is easy to spot.

“They don’t raise their hands,” said Tricia Onesti.

“Eyes down, looking away,” said Kimberly Tong.

“They try to copy off their neighbor,” said Heather Warchold.

The successful reader is another story entirely: “Eyes up.” “Hands up.” “Glowing face.” “Ready to help others.”

And teachers know it helps the whole class when the glowing faces outnumber the downcast eyes.

“They all need to feel special, and they all need to feel smart,” said Warchold, of Finletter Elementary in Olney. “That helps every bit of our jobs.”

Tong, Onesti and Warchold are all part of the Children’s Literacy Initiative (CLI), which provides literacy services in 47 Philadelphia elementary schools (in collaboration with the Annie E. Casey campaign). They gathered with colleagues recently at CLI headquarters to brush up on classroom technique.

They say the CLI approach – focused on guided instruction that moves students through skill-appropriate reading levels, giving them plenty of room to choose materials they like – helps students of every demographic profile, including low-income students and struggling readers.

Trainings like this one by the Children’s Literacy Initiative advise teachers on how to build a “community of learners” in their classrooms. (Photo: Harvey Finkle)

“I changed my whole room,” said Kelly Strusiak, of Greenfield Elementary in Center City. “I got rid of my clutter. They provided us with a whole new library, leveled readers, book bins. It really made the kids light up: ‘Ooo, brand new books!’”

These teachers know that their students, mostly 2nd graders, stand at a critical cognitive threshold, moving beyond “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”

They can understand character, plot and content, discuss what they read with teachers and classmates, and chart their own progress through reading levels. And perhaps most important, the teachers say, they’re old enough to get a thrill from reading and learning.

“The exposure excites them,” said Allen Garner, from the Russell Byers Charter School. “They think, ‘I can go rock climbing! I can go parachuting!’ It encourages them to want to be part of that book – to immerse themselves.”

But they’re also old enough to feel isolation and embarrassment when they struggle.

“All children love reading when they’re very young,” said Walker, the librarian. “[But when] you see them start to slip behind … you see a loss in confidence, a loss in the pleasure of learning. They want to read to learn, but they’re struggling with the mechanics. … They’re already embarrassed.”

“As adults we forget how serious childhood is,” Walker said. “They have all the same feelings we do.”

The CLI approach includes a lot of group work. Students read together, agree on class rules, and help each other make progress.

“I don’t have them at their desks. They’re around the room, they’re talking about books, getting excited,” Strusiak said.

And as a result, the teachers say, the entire classroom runs more smoothly as students learn to communicate, collaborate, solve problems and enjoy success – skills that will serve them well in school and life.

“It carries over from literacy into math,” said Onesti, of the St. Thomas Aquinas Mission School. “It’s the way your classroom is run. It’s a community.”

Smith calls CLI a “shining star” in the push for grade-level reading. In Philadelphia, that effort is now backed by an ambitious, new “READ! by 4th” campaign, a local collaboration of over 50 organizations, including the School District and the Free Library of Philadelphia, that launched last summer with the goal of helping all 4th graders reach proficiency by 2020. (READ stands for “Ready, Engaged, Able and Determined.)

Told about the CLI teachers’ experience watching their students learn to work together, Smith said that shows what’s truly at stake: not just literacy, but community. The student who can read can engage with teachers and peers, experience success, and take command of their own education, he said.

“They become an advocate for themselves, a co-author of their academic destiny,” Smith said. “Literacy is a doorway to membership and citizenship.”

The cavalry isn’t coming

But for the students left on the far side of the literacy gap, Smith said, the experience can be profoundly isolating – especially for those in typical Philadelphia schools, where classroom resources and adult attention are infamously scarce.

“The kid who looks around and realizes that other kids are reading to learn, and that he or she cannot read, [realizes] two things,” Smith said. “One, they can figure out that they’re in trouble. And two, they figure out that there’s no cavalry coming. The adults aren’t mobilizing to help them.”

Such students don’t have a lot of incentive to become good citizens, he said.

“It’s not surprising that you can pick up all these behavior problems beginning in 4th grade,” Smith said. “Playing by the rules, buying in to the system and respecting adults – that calculus changes.

“It’s sometimes said that while kids leave school in 9th grade, they actually ‘drop out’ in 4th. Because by 4th grade, this kid knows something no adult will admit: It’s game over.”

Smith has been working on this issue since he was a Philadelphia School District official in the 1980s, and since then he’s concluded that this is “a nationwide problem, not merely a Philadelphia problem.”

It’s also solvable, he thinks. Districts can better assess young students’ literacy challenges. The necessary interventions aren’t always impossibly expensive or complex. For many, skill-appropriate books, well-trained staff, and focused instruction go a long way.

But much of the literacy gap springs from factors outside the classroom. Many students – particularly low-income students – don’t get much preschool reading experience. Chronic absenteeism and “summer learning loss” also hold students back.

Reversing those trends requires effective partnerships between families, schools, and community groups, Smith said – the kind of collaboration that Philadelphia’s broad READ! by 4th campaign hopes to model for the nation. “This is really about parents and caregivers,” Smith said.

Back in West Philadelphia, librarian Walker says it’s easy to tell which kids come from reading-rich environments – even when they’re toddlers like Rio.

“Even children this young, I can tell if their parents read to them,” she said. “They know what to expect. They know I’m going to turn the page. They’re looking at the book.

“When I meet kids who don’t have as much reading time, the concentration level is different. It’s much more difficult to read an entire book.”

Jamilla Manigault knows which side of the literacy gap she wants Rio on.

“It’s really disheartening to see the kids on the other side,” she said. “You can see there’s a ‘want’ to learn, but they don’t know how.”

And when Rio’s ready for school, she knows she wants him around other kids who love reading too, so that he can learn even more.

“I have older boys, and they’re ahead of their level,” she said. “A lot of times the teacher ends up having them help out the other kids. A little of that is OK, but they need to be challenged.

“Just because you can read, because you’re above level, doesn’t mean they should say, ‘Oh, he’s OK.’ He needs that engagement to get higher.”

Disclosure: The Notebook is a partner in the READ! By 4th campaign; it has committed to provide independent news coverage of the effort.

The path forward: A Q&A with Larry Jones of Richard Allen Prep Charter

2014-07-22T09:41:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

For more than a decade, Larry Jones has been a prominent supporter of Philadelphia’s charter schools, particularly the smaller, community-based variety that proliferated in the wake of the 2001 state takeover.

He has run the 350-student Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School since it opened in 2001; since 2006, he has also served as president of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools.

Jones’ advocacy frequently highlights the distinctions between the interests of small schools like his and those of the larger providers now running networks of schools. We asked him to reflect on the potential impact of the current budget proposals on the kinds of schools he represents and the ways that charter supporters could collaborate with traditional public school advocates to advance their mutual interest in adequate, sustained funding for schools of all kinds.

What did this year’s budget debate look like from where you sat?

It was frenetic. Look at the cigarette tax – one day they’re saying, "No way in hell." A day later it’s a done deal. Then there’s a celebration. Then it might not happen. That was multiplied over various issues.

How would the proposed budget affect the charters you represent?

The biggest thing that’s going to specifically impact charter schools is the fact that the PSERS [Public School Employees’ Retirement System] reimbursement was eliminated. For my school, that’s a $300,000 loss out of a $5 million budget, and it could be higher next year.

It’s a game-changer, and of course it’ll affect different-sized schools differently. I’m a relatively small school, so it’s going to be a hit on services and personnel. A school with a larger budget is going to be able to absorb a cut.

Is the charter voice being heard in Harrisburg? I heard a lot of public advocacy from supporters of traditional public education, but not so much from charters. Was I missing something?

There was a strong presence – but the other issue was the special education funding. That, in various forms, had the potential to be crippling – especially coupled with PSERS.

I understand some will say, "You guys are losing a double dip." But I think everybody agrees that the charter school funding methodology that’s in place is flawed. For example, the lack of true facilities funding is a flaw for charter schools.

Sounds like you agree that there are some charter school expenditures that could be bumped down – but you also think that others should be bumped up.

Yes. We’re hoping that the debate over basic education funding [this fall] will be a place to have an open and honest dialogue about that.

Looking down the road, do you see a path away from these kinds of contentious, politicized budget debates? Is there a route to something more stable?

The first thing we need is a weighted formula that considers things like at-risk students, English-language learners, high-poverty students.

And it needs to be fair. There may be some districts that are going to take a haircut. Not to disrespect anybody, because sports are very important, but some districts have weight rooms that rival Division I colleges and pro teams. If you can afford that, are you really in the same conversation as schools that can’t afford adequate buildings and textbooks or teachers’ supplies?

Taking funding away from prosperous districts may be the highest political mountain there is to climb.

I’d agree. I don’t want to rob Peter to pay Paul, even if Peter has more money than Kanye West. That’s not necessarily what we’re saying.

But if we are going to significantly increase funding for certain groups of students and certain populations, we can leave funding flat in [more prosperous districts] and they can find other ways to maintain programming that they have.

With a gubernatorial election scheduled for November, September will bring plenty of politics. What are your plans for influencing that conversation?

I think this past budget session has shown both candidates that they have to show how they’re going to climb this mountain.

I’m not hearing an awful lot [from the candidates] about addressing charters specifically. To some extent, that’s good. Let’s first talk about how we’re going to divide the pie for every child. I believe that if at all possible we should look towards a student-based funding system.

In the charter community, if you can get to that level of funding, you have a secondary benefit. One of the longstanding criticisms of some charter schools is that certain students are excluded, maybe because they cost too much to serve.

If students are showing up and saying, "I’m coming to you with some challenges, but those challenges are being funded, so you’ll have the resources to help me," I think that would have a small but measurable impact.

You’ve told me that you’ll be part of the local coalition that’s talking about a funding formula. There’s also a legislative commission on funding. How can advocates for charter and traditional schools work together to move the needle on this bigger funding question?

What we’ve got to be able to do is prioritize. We can say, "We’re not going to talk about what charter schools should get for facilities or special education while we’re having the conversation on how much should be spent overall."

If you give charters extra facilities funding, but at the end of the day there’s still not enough going to districts and charters period, it doesn’t matter.

There may need to be an agreement among the advocates, among the camps, that if we see a smaller piece of legislation dealing with rural schools only, or charter schools only, as a coalition we’d say, "put the brakes on that – nobody’s getting anything done until we fix the elephant.”

What’s the impact of that kind of united front in Harrisburg?

It makes it that much harder for them to say no. You take away their "out" – you take away the ability to say, "I’d love to support this, but a number of my constituents are charter schools, and this will hurt them." Or vice versa.

Talk to me a little about the long-range vision – what could help us get to a more stable place five, 10 years down the road?

For charters, I think a continued focus on the role of the authorizer. We often think that the authorizer is just the gotcha person [i.e. the accountability enforcer]. The authorizer should also be an advocate for funding and other issues and make sure that school has the resources available to achieve.

What about enrollment caps? Should charters be allowed to grow at will, or should districts be able to set limits?

How we expand equitably is a question. When you double, triple, quadruple a school’s enrollment, is that always going to be prudent? Large expansions can be detrimental to everyone.

When I first started in this in 2001, the question would always be "what’s your charter school about? Who do you serve?" Now, it’s become "how many kids do you have?" This is an education model, not necessarily a business model.

Any other big-picture thoughts for how to stabilize the overall situation?

I think we need to look at how we fund public education, not just how we fund districts and charters. A different system may need to be in place five or 10 years down the road. There are 500 districts in Pennsylvania. Do we need 500 districts? Can we organize in a different way?

These kinds of changes all require broad, bipartisan support, and that can be hard to come by. What makes you think it can happen now?

As Marcus Garvey said, if leaders can’t organize the people, eventually conditions will. And I think we’re at that point where rural schools and certain districts are looking around and saying, "We’re not insulated from any of this."

So I’m optimistic. Whether it’s pensions or funding, so many things have been pushed off or Band-Aided for so long, we’re at a tipping point. We can either change now in a thoughtful way, or be forced to change at the drop of a dime.

This conversation was edited for length and clarity.

The path forward: Q&A with civil rights lawyer Michael Churchill of PILCOP

Bartram’s troubles: Not about funds?

2014-04-16T17:36:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

As news of violence and disarray at Bartram High School dominated Philadelphia headlines, national education researchers were downtown at the Convention Center, discussing the theory and practice of a “portfolio” school reform strategy that relies on management changes – converting low-performing schools to charters or closing them.

And although many have tied Bartram’s troubles to the budget cuts that sharply reduced staff levels at the school, Philadelphia School Partnership head Mark Gleason does not agree.

“It’s not about funds,” said Gleason, whose organization controls millions in private dollars that it distributes to replicate, improve, or expand well-performing schools. He made his remarks as he talked informally with a group of educators at the American Educational Research Association convention earlier this month.

“Bartram was a dangerous school three years ago, and it’s still a dangerous school, with less funding. It’s not a more dangerous school,” Gleason told the group.

Told later of Gleason’s take on funding, Superintendent William Hite shook his head in wonder.

“There’s more to it than resources,” said Hite, as he stood in Bartram’s auditorium after a boisterous community meeting called to discuss the crisis. “But resources are required.”

Since reports of the violence and “chaos” at Bartram first emerged, Hite has poured new resources into the cavernous Southwest Philadelphia school: new staff and administrators, new training for disciplinary procedures, and new building upgrades, including fresh paint, security cameras, and smoke alarms.

District officials have long argued that District schools like Bartram lack the funding needed to offer a top-quality education. Hite’s most recent “Action Plan” calls on the city and state to come up with new funding – hundreds of millions of dollars – to support a wide range of “evidence-based” improvements across the District.

“We don’t have enough resources in the schools,” Hite said.

But for now, Hite faces a precarious budget that sharply limits the District’s ability to intervene.

In recent years, the District’s main strategy for improving struggling schools like Bartram has been to shut them down or turn them over to charters. It has closed several neighborhood high schools, including Germantown and University City, and converted three – Gratz, Audenried, and Olney – to charters. Altogether, 20 District schools have become charters, and 30 schools have closed.

“We’re going to continue working to turn around our lowest-performing schools, and whoever can do that the fastest is who we’re going to work with,” Hite said.

Bartram: more violent – or safer?

One thing that is not an option for Bartram is to “dump” it, Hite said.

“There are 1,200 students that call Bartram their school,” he said, “As superintendent – and last I checked, I’m still superintendent – it’s my decision to make sure that we provide the resources [they] need.”

Hite was referring to the most controversial aspect of the “portfolio” strategy – the belief that schools that struggle excessively should be closed and replaced, rather than showered with new investments.

Gleason made headlines at the conference when he acknowledged that “dumping the losers” is an accurate description of the portfolio management strategy.

After his presentation, he told a group of educators and reporters who gathered around him in a hallway that school districts shouldn’t be afraid to shut down low performers.

In choice-based systems that “push responsibility and accountability down to the school level,” a natural selection takes place, Gleason said: “Great schools rise and thrive,” while struggling ones “are not allowed to exist on the taxpayer dime.”

He cited New Orleans, now almost entirely served by charters, as a success story. Philadelphia needs a similar approach, he told the group. “I don’t know a lot of people who would voluntarily send their children to some of these schools that we have in Philadelphia,” he said. “The only people who go to those schools are people who have no other options.”

“So why don’t they get fixed?” asked one educator. “Why don’t they get funds? Why don’t they get resources?”

“Because it’s not about funds!” Gleason replied, to a chorus of protest.

Asked later to clarify his thoughts on Bartram, Gleason wrote in an email that he knew little about what led to the recent violence. “I’m not close enough to what’s gone on in the school to comment on specific, recent incidents,” he wrote.

Nonetheless, Gleason said that while Bartram’s budget and staff have gone down, key indicators have gotten better.

“It’s still far from an acceptable learning environment, but even so, academic performance and safety have improved,” he wrote, citing District data to argue that there is no simple correlation between a school’s available resources and the state of its climate and academics.

He said that Bartram’s test scores had actually increased slightly while its per-pupil expenditures were declining. And he offered District data showing that there were fewer violent incidents this year despite the reduction in personnel at the school — notwithstanding the headline-grabbing chaos – 12 incidents per 100 students in 2011 and just 8 per 100 students so far this year.

“The number of serious violent incidents in that school was higher three years ago when it was at its peak staffing levels,” Gleason told the educators. Reporters were also present, and the conversation was recorded.

A ‘human rights violation’

In his panel discussion at AERA, Gleason said that Philadelphia’s fiscal crisis has been caused by “overspending” its resources, primarily because it failed to shrink staff to match enrollment declines over a 10-year period.

He said this right after Lori Shorr, Mayor Nutter’s education adviser, described the problem as a failure by the state to distribute education aid through a predictable funding formula that takes into account a district’s enrollment and student needs. (Gleason said he would endorse such a formula, but that Philadelphia shouldn’t expect a “windfall” from it.)

After Gleason spoke, Hiram Rivera, executive director of the Philadelphia Student Union, called the lack of basic needs and services in schools a “human rights violation.” Hite reiterated that students tell him “they don’t all feel they have access to resources and quality individuals who believe in them. It is a revenue issue.”

It is hard to dispute that Bartram has undergone hard times. A longtime principal who had brought stability left in September. Her replacement, a newcomer to the city, lasted all of two weeks. The school had some funds for a “restorative justice” program – an approach to discipline based on student responsibility and peer adjudication led by a national organization – but was unable to implement it.

“We don’t know what happened,” Hite said.

At the school’s community meeting, parents, students, and staff members weren’t buying the notion that resources are not the main issue. Staff and program cuts, they said, led directly to trouble.

“Of course money is a problem,” said Penda Diawara, a bilingual counselor who works in several West Philadelphia schools. “We need more staff in the hallways, more staff in the lunchrooms. Our kids get bullied all the time.”

“You start losing programs, the kids have nowhere to turn,” said Robert Hooks, whose granddaughter is a “straight-A” senior. “You end up with a bunch of kids selling drugs.”

District officials do not yet have an estimate of how much they’ll spend this year on extra services for the troubled school – or how that will affect a looming end-of-year deficit of nearly $30 million.

Hite said it was essential that the school improve – somehow. “I see this as delivering on a child’s civil right to an education. That doesn’t change with influxes of revenue, or money, or anything. They still have that right,” Hite said.

“We’re going to educate them with what we have, but do we need more? Yes,” he said.

But Gleason said that despite Bartram’s lean budget, the school has no excuse for backsliding this year, even if it can’t expect to be a top performer in the portfolio.

“It would be a stretch to expect all District schools to be ‘competitive’ this year, when so many have not been competitive in the past,” Gleason wrote. “But it would be fair to say I expect all District schools to find ways to improve even in a budget-constrained environment.”

Additional reporting by Notebook contributing editor Dale Mezzacappa.