For many years, the public schools of Philadelphia have been drastically underfunded by the state of Pennsylvania. This created a series of fiscal crises, which should have produced equitable funding, but instead gave cause for a state takeover, thus blaming the city for the state’s failures. The state established the appointed School Reform Commission in 2001. The SRC appointed Paul Vallas to run the district, and he launched the nation’s largest experiment (to that date) in privatized schooling, handing over some 40 schools to private, for-profit, and university management. The experiment was an expensive failure, and he left the city with a large deficit, bound for New Orleans to push an even bigger experiment in school privatization.
The SRC has continued the Vallas tradition, closing public schools, opening charter schools, and leaving public schools in desperate straits.
To sum it up, state control has been a disaster for the children of Philadelphia.
Lisa Haver wrote an article in the Philadelphia Daily News outlining the secrecy that surrounds the deliberations of the School Reform Commission. Even the budget is hidden from public view until the SRC has made all its decisions, without considering the voices of parents or teachers.
She asks and answers questions about the role and lack of transparency of the SRC.
She concludes like this:
“Should the SRC schedule a meeting in which it plans to decide on renewals of 23 charter schools with less than a week’s notice?
“The district’s budget shows that it will spend $894 million — about one-third of the budget — on charters next year. Shouldn’t the SRC allow enough time for those paying the tab to read the reports? They may want to ask why schools that have met none of the standards are being recommended for renewal.
“Should the SRC publicly deliberate before voting on significant financial, academic and policy resolutions?
“The SRC approved contracts totaling $149.2 million at its February meeting; it spent $173.1 million in March. Resolutions are voted on in batches of 10 or 15, with little explanation of why.
“How do we reform the School Reform Commission? By abolishing it. Philadelphians have the right, as all other Pennsylvanians do, to decide who will represent them on an elected school board.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
cross posted the article at
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/School-Reform-Commission-s-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Funding_Funding_Public-Education_School-170609-689.html
The Indiana, Arkansas and and Philly posts all reveal the blatant hypocrisy of “reform.” In each case, failure can be ignored when a charter has a contract. Public schools with low low scores are taken over. When citizens want their democratic rights restored, there is a battle. Local communities should think long and hard before giving away the rights of their children’s education and the hub of their community to a corporation that will always put profit before people. They should not be swayed by a glossy sales pitch. They should always do what is best interests of their young people. Privatization is more about raiding local tax dollars and handing them over to corporations. It is rarely about improving outcomes for students.
I used to teach in Philadelphia, before my move to NC. I can vouch for everything Lisa Haver wrote and more. The SRC has systematically starved the public schools while making sure that the charters are favored in all things. It takes serious corruption (and the public revelation thereof) to get a charter school closed down, but any hint that a public school might be a “failure” and it will be a target of conversion before you can say “Jack Robinson”.
The SRC has no accountability to the public, and virtually none even to the politicians who technically appoint its members (the governor and the mayor.) They are free to pursue whatever “reform” they want and even have exemption from the School Code (that is, the laws passed by the legislature that govern all other schools in the state) if they want to execute a policy that the law does not normally allow. This was the body that was going to fix the financial mess the schools were in, yet they have been party to their hand-picked superintendents sending the district into deeper and deeper financial crises as the years go by.
One thing that does need a bit of correction (or, at least, clarification) from Lisa’s article is that it inadvertently leaves the impression that the school district needs to be returned to popular control. Unfortunately, the district has never had a democratically elected school board, not since its founding way back in 1850. Originally, the board was appointed by the judges of the Court of Common Pleas, then by the mayor until the 2001 state takeover. It is long past time that the founding city of American democracy had a democratically elected school board that might just look out for the city’s public schools instead of narrow partisan or private interests.
You are correct, Stewart. I appreciate your responding to my article. Philadelphia has never had an elected school board. Until the state takeover, the district was run by a board whose members were all appointed by the mayor. The SRC is a 5-person board (much smaller than the previous board), 3 appointed by the governor and 2 by the mayor. The feeling in Philadelphia now is overwhelmingly in favor of return to local control, although there is not a consensus on what that would look like. Some want a board whose members are appointed by both the mayor and City Council; some want a hybrid of appointed and elected. I am in favor of an elected school board because I believe in democratic control by the people. There is no reason why people in the city should continue to be disenfranchised while all other districts in the state have elected school boards.
Philadelphia’s “School Reform Commission”(SRC) a misfeasant, unaccountable albatross for y.e.a.r.s…. https://lucidwitness.com/2014/03/05/times-up-2/
Bravo Lisa !
The meaning of “misfeasance” ?: Dr. Joan Duvall-Flynn, President, Pennsylvania State NAACP, has charged that the SRC “has clearly demonstrated an incapacity to facilitate a thorough and efficient public education for the children of Philadelphia, and has in fact, destabilized the entire system.”
https://lucidwitness.com/2016/08/13/the-meaning-of-misfeasance-philadelphias-children-and-schools-have-suffered-too-long/