This edition of the Notebook NEWSFLASH is also available online at: www.thenotebook.org/newsflash/2005/february
Notebook NEWSFLASH: February 2005
Delayed small schools vote reveals differing views on high schools' futures
Fewer schools vote for site selection hiring, but more to participate
Wealth of information available for enriching Black History Month lessons
Events
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Philadelphia School District officials postponed a School Reform Commission vote last month on four contracts totaling $1.65 million to hire “transition managers” for 11 newly independent small high schools in Philadelphia.
CEO Paul Vallas and SRC members said the items were tabled to give the Commission time to hear additional information and allow the District to conduct additional outreach to schools and elected officials.
But the delay brought to light potentially differing views on who should have a say in the small schools transition plan – the District’s first major initiative addressing a growing local movement for dramatically smaller, more intimate high schools.
This is the second year of a District move to create new smaller high schools by dividing some high schools with multiple sites into separate schools and converting some large middle school buildings into small high schools.
District officials now say that 13 schools affected – including two already managed by Victory Schools Inc. – need an outside organization to support the transition to their new status as small high schools.
More small high schools are in the works. Vallas has said that at least two of the city’s large neighborhood high schools – Kensington and Olney – will be divided into small schools as well, with design work and construction planned as part of the School District’s $1.5 billion Capital Improvement Plan.
But, at the January 19 School Reform Commission meeting, high school student groups that have been advocating small schools questioned the plans to hire four transition managers and the choice of managers.
“Nobody asked anybody in our community what we think about these contracts,” Aisha Abdulhadi, a 10th grader at Sayre and member of the Philadelphia Student Union, told the SRC in testimony the day the proposals were tabled.
The proposed contracts, to “provide consultative
services to transitional high schools,” were
with:
-Princeton
Review K-12 Services, $450,000, for Sayre, Lamberton,
and Vaux.
-Kaplan
K12 Learning, $450,000, for Lankenau, Parkway
Northwest High, and Randolph Career Academy.
-ResulTech,
Inc., $450,000, for Bartram Business, Bartram
Communications, and Parkway Center City.
-SchoolWorks,
$300,000, for Bartram Human Services and Bartram Motivation.
Among Abdulhadi’s questions to the SRC was whether organizations with expertise on developing small schools, such as The Big Picture Company, whose small schools have become national models, were considered.
Students involved with both the Student Union and Youth United for Change have been doing research on small schools in other cities and have become vocal advocates to break up large high schools into schools of 400 or fewer students.
Gerardo Zuviri, an Olney High School student and a member of its Youth United for Change chapter, told SRC members, “Due to the relationships made between faculty and students, you’re made to feel like someone and not just a number in the school.”
School District CEO Paul Vallas has not delivered on continued promises to provide media with a comprehensive briefing in January on the District’s small schools initiative. What he has shared is a desire by the District to not only build small schools, but to develop them “right.”
“This isn’t only about small schools,” Vallas said, “It’s about the quality of schools. It’s about having small schools with exemplary college programs.”
But when the proposals re-emerge, possibly this month, Vallas and the SRC may be asked to answer why these four providers were chosen and a number of other mounting questions. What consulting services would the managers provide? Would the managers shape the educational focus of the small schools? And what role would parents, staff and students play in the process?
Parents, school seek answers
Sayre Home and School President Nancy Winder said
she did have an opportunity about a month ago to meet
a number of potential providers who were submitting
proposals to work with the District on its small schools
initiative. Winder said she doesn’t object to
the selection of Princeton Review as Sayre’s
provider. But she is one of those who wants to know
why they were chosen.
“The same way they break it down to the SRC to try to get the proposal, they should break it down to the parents, with information onhow it’s going to be put into effect, and how it will affect my child,” Winder said.
At Parkway Center City, principal Catherine Blunt recently called a meeting on the proposed contract with ResulTech for that school. Longtime Parkway teacher Jack Fein described a meeting where a ResulTech representative spoke for a few minutes, and a regional superintendent enthusiastically shared expectations for computers for all students and gains of well over 100 points in SAT scores.
Fein reported that he and other staff left with numerous questions: Who is ResulTech? What is its track record with small-schools transition? Why is Parkway being assigned a “transition manager,” when save for formerly sharing a principal, Parkway’s three campuses have operated as small schools since their inception?
Others are concerned with the impression that the District will move on setting the schools’ foundations without input from the community on the direction in which they would like to see the schools go.
“I think Mr. Vallas knows what needs to happen,” Dwayne Ming, a former Home & School Association representative at Lamberton, said. “But the issue where they fall short is their relationship with the community. I think he’s reaching out now, and with the community in different ways, but I still don’t think there’s enough.”
Roles for outside participants
One contract for the District’s small schools
initiative has already met SRC approval. The commission
awarded a $60,000 contract for technical services
to Next
Step Associates, headed by Cassandra Jones, a
retired School District veteran with some 30 years
of experience.
District CAO Gregory Thornton described Next Step as a “project manager,” making sure the small schools were addressing such issues as “enrollment, college partnerships, AP (Advanced Placement), IB (International Baccalaureate).” Jones herself said Next Step would help implement the District’s small schools strategy and work with its partners in their roles.
On the topic of seeking outside providers for the project, Jones offered that the District, in its effort to improve academic achievement, appears to be looking at building internal capacity, as well as looking at best practices from throughout the country to fulfill its goals. Jones said securing such capacity requires “casting a wide net, between EMOs and partnerships and charters and service providers.”
She also said that she has sensed a desire by the District “for the community to be very involved.”
Jones said that Deputy Chief Academic Officer Creg Williams “is personally meeting with students across the city to make sure they understand it. That’s not going to be a one-shot deal,” she vowed. “Those meetings are to continue, to make sure the public has an opportunity to be involved.”
Parent advocates like Winder will be watching.
“If Princeton does get it, once they say, ‘Yes they are in,’ then I want to see them have these meetings with the community.”
Contact Notebook staff writer Sheila Simmons at 215-951-0330 x156 or sheilas@thenotebook.org.
Four months after the much-heralded signing of a teacher’s contract that granted principals more power over teacher hiring, the School District of Philadelphia says teachers at 40 of its 276 schools have voted to be “site-selection” schools, opting into a school-based teacher-hiring process for filling all teacher vacancies.
And while the voting results – which concluded Dec. 23 – reflect four fewer schools whose teachers chose to implement site selection, the new labor agreement with the District stipulates a number of site-selection arrangements that will result in all schools having a stronger hand in determining their own teacher hires.
Site-selection hiring allows school-based selection committees and principals to make all of their own new or replacement-teacher hiring decisions, instead of having vacancies filled by teachers based on seniority.
The committees consist of two teachers, a parent member of the Home and School Association, an assistant principal (where applicable), and the principal. The committee in effect “screens” candidates for the school’s principal, who makes the final hiring decision.
During contract negotiations last summer and fall, the District, with the backing of a number of education advocacy organizations, aggressively pursued site selection as a term for all schools.
School officials asserted that site selection helps strengthen leadership by giving principals more say over teacher hiring. Education advocates pushed for site selection as part of a package of reforms intended to improve teacher quality at high-poverty schools and schools serving predominantly students of color.
Site selection in Philadelphia schools began in 2001, with 15 schools. The number of schools voting for 100 percent site selection has increased every year since then, save for this year. The 40 schools that voted to participate, as determined by a two-thirds majority vote of teachers at a particular school, include about three-fourths of last year’s 44 participants.
Meg Wise, Director of Scholars and Civic Engagement for the Philadelphia Education Fund, said she’d wished more schools had voted to implement site selection, and said the results should be viewed as an opportunity to look at whether schools need supports in making the process work.
Meanwhile Jerry Jordan, vice president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, offered, “For the first time, as a result of the negotiations, all schools, not just some but every school in the School District will have site selection. And as a result of that, I think schools made decisions based on their needs and their desires for at which level they wanted to be involved in (hiring decisions)”
“People are just waiting to see how it works,” he added. “It’s a large undertaking for the District this year.”
The District has estimated that the expanded site selection process places teacher-hiring decisions in the hands of schools and principals for 75 to 80 percent of all teacher hires.
Aside from schools that voted to implement full site
selection, those that will fully participate in the
process include three “demonstration”
schools and 10 of 25 “Incentive Schools,”
jointly decided upon by the District and the union,
according to the terms of the District contract
with the Philadelphia
Federation of Teachers The contract, singed Oct.
15, was recently posted on the union's web site.
It stipulates that site-selection be implemented for
all newly hired teachers and for any retired teachers
returning to service. Newly built schools will be
staffed by the principal through site-selection for
the first two years.
“Transition schools” -- a label assigned to schools that are adding new grades for the first time, converting from middle to high schools, or operating as smaller schools that separated from larger high schools that are new or being reconfigured – operate as 100-percent site-selection schools during their year (and grades) of transition.
Finally, even in schools that do not vote for it, site selection must be implemented for 50 percent of vacant positions, according to the contract summary. The remaining positions at schools without 100 percent site selection are to be filled by teachers based on seniority status.
PFT Vice President Jerry Jordan said a list of “transition schools” had not been made available to the union.
“Once the District begins with the budget cycle,
then they’re likely to determine what the organization
is to be for each of these schools,” Jordan
offered. “Because it has to be determined prior
to the school getting its budget, that will probably
hit around March.”
Below are the schools implementing 100-percent site
selection by vote, by “demonstration”
or “Incentive School” status:
By vote: AMY James Martin, Audenried, Barton, Bartram Business, Blankenburg, Bluford, Bodine, H.A. Brown, Central East, Clemente, Cooke, Daroff, A.B. Day, Dobson, Franklin Elementary, Franklin Learning Center, Henry, Key, King, Lea, Lingelbach, Logan, Lowell, Meade, Meredith, McClure, Nebinger, Olney Elementary, Overbrook Elementary, Peirce Middle, Penn Alexander, Pennypacker, Philadelphia Regional, Pollock, Pratt, Rhoads, M.H. Stanton, Welsh.
“Demonstration schools”: Dunbar, Hancock, Masterman
“Incentive Schools”: Barratt, FitzSimons, Gillespie, Penn Treaty, Shaw, Shoemaker, Stetson, Sulzberger, Tilden, Turner.
While the School District of Philadelphia puts finishing touches on long-awaited African and African American history courses, teachers hardly need to feel impoverished for guides to making the most of the focus on African-American history this month.
In fact, PBS is unveiling a special series on slavery that it’s pitching to educators and the public for viewing this month, and crows about a “wealth of recent scholarship.”
Critics have also praised the valuable lessons that can be drawn from a quiz that is an offshoot of the recent award-winning publication, Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching: A Resource Guide for Classrooms and Communities.
“This short month is often reduced to Dr. King, Rosa Parks, and the summer of 1964, but everyday citizens struggled to make the dream a reality,” state its makers, Teaching for Change and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. “Where is their chapter in America’s history books? And how can we continue their legacy?”
The quiz is designed to provide not just “easy answers, but to inspire discussion and further inquiry,” the organizations state.
Meanwhile, in a column that appeared on blackcommentator.com, Jenice L. View, co-editor of Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, acknowledged the struggles inherent in trying to provide today’s students with an adequate grounding in such history.
“Elementary school teachers struggle to explain the Movement to young children without being simplistic about the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys,” View writes. “Humanities teachers wonder how best to use fiction, film, and art. And all teachers struggle with the demands and restrictions of state educational standards and testing.”
PBS’s four-part series, titled “Slavery and the Making of America,” premieres Feb. 9. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, it largely uses the lives of the men, women, and children slaves to tell the story of American slavery.
Its companion website, www.slaveryinamerica.org, offers visitors new materials that deal with such African American history topics as The Black Press in Antebellum America and Roads to Freedom, an “interactive exhibition that will allow students to explore the six routes most frequently taken by enslaved men and women who were seeking their liberty.”
“Combining primary-source documents, images, slave narratives, spoken narration, and original music, the exhibition conveys the enormity of the challenges slaves faced and the intelligence, courage, and persistence with which they attempted to surmount them,” the website states.
District officials had announced in January that the District would pilot a full course in African history and African-American history in four schools starting this month. While the District has since said that the programs will not begin in early February, a spokesman said the courses were likely to be put in place this school year. The schools will be Strawberry Mansion, William Penn, Carver, and Bartram (main campus).
“We have a multicultural population here, and I think it’s long overdue to have a course that is aligned with our standards to deal with African and African American history,” said Charles Bradford, who teaches at Bartram.
While Bradford already teaches African-American studies, he noted this course, “will be a more intense coverage of African history.”
Molefi K. Asante, professor of African-American Studies at Temple University, designed the courses, according to District officials. Renowned for pioneering the theory of Afrocentricity, Asante founded the first doctoral program in African American studies and is the author of more than 50 books.
February 4 – 20: 21st Celebration of Black Writing Festival: Telling Our Stories. Acclaimed writers, authors and scholars will engage an audience of thousands through lectures, readings, workshops, panel discussions and performances, at various locations throughout the area. For details, go to www.artsanctuary.org.
February 4: “Give Kids a Smile” Day. Dental providers from the Southeast Pennsylvania Oral Health Task Force will offer free dental screenings and other services to Philadelphia children. For a full schedule, and a list of providers seeing children year round, go to http://www.pccy.org/GiveKidsASmile.htm.
February 8: African American Dialogue. 10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Church of the Advocate, 18h & Diamond streets. Matinee of poetry and music featuring Philadelphia orchestra cellist Udi Bar-David, Diane Monroe, and Twin Poets. For information: 215-232-4485 or www.artsanctuary.org.
February 9: School Reform Commission Planning Meeting. 1 p.m., School District of Philadelphia, 2120 Winter Street, 2nd floor Auditorium. To register to speak, call 215-299-7850 by 4:30 p.m. the day before the meeting.
February 10: School District Parent and Community Roundtable. 12 noon. School District of Philadelphia, 2120 Winter Street, 1st floor boardroom. Parents and leaders of community-based organizations gather to discuss District programs and provide parent insight into initiatives. RSVP to at 215-299-2995.
February 16: School Reform Commission Action Meeting. 1 p.m., School District of Philadelphia, 2120 Winter Street, 2nd floor Auditorium. To register to speak, call 215-299-7850 by 4:30 p.m. the day before the meeting.
February 21: 16th Annual Celebration of African Cultures. 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 3260 South Street. Features dance performances and workshops, storytelling, children’s activities, African gallery tours, music, and more. Free with Museum admission donation ($8 adults, $5 students and seniors, free to children under 6). For information, see the museum’s website.
February 26: February 26: What’s Wrong with Public Education? A forum by Parents United Against Violence in the Public Schools. 12 noon. African American United Fund Inc. Conference Center, 2231 N. Broad Street. Speakers: Jerome Avery, African and African Descent Curriculum & Instruction Reform Committee; Henry DeBarnardo, Black Star; Wesley Wilson-Bey, Men United Against Violence Network; Odinga Mukhtar, Africans Against the Draft and ROTC; Basiymah Muhammad-Bey, Independent African School; Rev. James Royal, C.R.O.P; Garvey Lundy, University of Pennsylvania; Umar Abdullah-Johnson, school psychologist. For information, contact Ernest Ford, 215-634-1448.
Every Thursday: Talk radio program with Sandra Dungee Glenn, School Reform Commission member. 10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. WURD 900 AM. Call-in number: 215-426-1310.
School Calendar
February 2, 7: “Eagles Days in the District.” The District will relax its student dress code and encourages students and employees to wear shirts, hats, and other items of clothing bearing the Eagles logo or colors (green and/or white). Acceptable dress on both days will include green and/or white colored shirts, hats, pants, dresses and skirts or Philadelphia Eagles uniforms, hats, shirts or other team paraphernalia. Students can also opt to not dress up on those two days and wear the regular student dress code.
February 2: State Department of Education’s Keystone Award rally. 10 a.m., School District Administration Building, 2120 Winter Street, Auditorium. Recognizing principals, teachers, students and parents from 42 Philadelphia public schools that sustained Adequate Yearly Progress status, or school improvement, over two straight years.
February 3, 4: Professional Development Days. Schools closed.
February 7: Second high school report cards issued.
February 7: Baseline Test: Ninth-grade transition.
February 14: Student Placement mails post cards regarding receipt of transfer applications.
February 21: President’s Day. School Closed.
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of events addressing issues of quality and equity
in Philadelphia public schools. Email your submission
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