While it makes total sense for Philadelphia City Council to keep demanding that the School District of Philadelphia reconsider its facilities plan, getting them to do so is probably going to involve lawyers.
By Denise Clay-Murray
As we get closer to August, and the time when reporters that call Philadelphia City Hall their beat are searching for things to write about that don’t insult our intelligence or the intelligence of our readers, you appreciate getting the occasional press release.
On Tuesday, the folks in City Hall gave us reporter types something to do with a couple of press conferences. Mayor Cherelle Parker announced some pretty big changes in her cabinet now that Managing Director Adam Thiel and Solicitor Renee Garcia are headed back to the private sector.
But the Tuesday press conference that stood out to me was the verbal tilting at windmills that City Council’s Don Quixote, Councilmember Isaiah Thomas and many of his Council colleagues held to denounce the School District of Philadelphia’s facilities plan. I call it a “tilting at windmills” because unless folks have another plan, this saga will end similarly to Miguel de Cervantes’s historic novel, “The Man of La Mancha,” where the titular character winds up admitting on his death bed that he’s not actually the knight Don Quixote, just someone who wanted to make a difference.
Thomas, surrounded by several of his colleagues — Councilmembers Mark Squilla, Nina Ahmad, Quetcy Lozada, Jamie Gauthier and Curtis Jones Jr. — community leaders, and even some teachers called on the school board to rethink its support of School District Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Jr.’s 10-year, $3 billion, Accelerating Opportunity facilities master plan.
The board voted in April to approve the plan, much to the consternation of Councilmembers in general, and Thomas in particular. Both sides had started negotiating modifications to the plan, but they’d come to a halt back in June, Thomas said.
“We haven’t heard from the school board since then,” he said. “We recently found out that the school board has put the staff in a position that they feel like they need [to show support] in order to go forward with a plan that we feel does not work. So, we are here today to publicly ask the school board to come back to the negotiating table.”
To refresh your memory, the plan is designed to solve the district’s facilities issues by putting more money into building maintenance, co-locating some of the district’s schools, and closing 17 of them.
It’s that last part that Council is still more than a little mad about.
Ahmad continues to ask why Lankenau Environmental High School — a school with a close to 100% graduation rate, by the way — is on the block. Gauthier, whose district includes Paul Robeson High School, is still wondering why a school that has launched the Harvard University careers of several students will cease to exist in 2027.
And yet, the school board doesn’t appear interested in discussing these concerns. Or at least that’s what the statement Board President Reginald Streater issued following the press conference would indicate.
“For transparency and fairness to impacted school communities, any conversations regarding the Board of Education’s April 30 resolution on the Facilities Master Plan’s implementation must occur through the formal transition planning process,” according to the statement.
“The Board values City Council’s partnership and remains committed to engaging stakeholders throughout the plan’s implementation. As the process moves forward, the Board will continue reviewing community feedback and the District’s recommendations when making any decisions.”
I’ll say this — the School District’s lawyers earned their pay on that one. It’s the most lawyerly way I’ve ever seen anyone told to kick rocks in flip flops before in my life.
And they can do that because, well, while they have to LISTEN to your recommendations, the only recommendations they have to TAKE come from the decision maker in City Hall’s Room 215.
Now, this plan’s flaws are legion. It closes some of the best schools in the district. The lack of transparency about how these schools were chosen is nonexistent, as is the lack of transparency regarding what this means for student outcomes.
And where the district plans to get the $3 billion to make this work doesn’t take into consideration the fact that the days of philanthropic organizations with deep pockets coming to save the day for public schools ended in the first Trump administration.
But Streater and company have let the people who control half of the district’s budget know more than once that they’re not budging from that position, so all Council’s press conference represented was another slam against the windmill.
Unless…
Councilmember Jones suggested that Council had other options it could exercise. I submit that it might be time to pull one of those out, especially the ones involving attorneys.
It might be Council’s last time to bring down this particular windmill.
Next week, I’ll talk about the changes in the mayor’s office…and why our new city solicitor is going to have to hit the ground running.
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, The Philadelphia Sunday SUN, the author’s organization, committee or other group or individual.
Leave a Comment