New law planned to boost Pa. charter oversight
Leaders of the state Senate Education Committee said Friday that they would introduce a bill in Harrisburg to address the latest allegations of fiscal mismanagement that have rocked the Philadelphia charter school community.
Speaking at a long-scheduled hearing on a bill introduced in December to overhaul the 13-year-old charter law, Sen. Jeffrey E. Piccola (R., Dauphin) said he and his cochair, Sen. Andrew E. Dinniman (D., Chester), were putting that measure aside to focus on a new bill that would deal solely with increasing oversight of the state's 127 charter schools.
"As a result of the allegations and the outrages of the last few weeks, our focus will be solely on accountability and oversight," Piccola said during an afternoon hearing at Widener University in Chester. "We must clean up and weed out the bad actors from the charter school community before we adopt measures to promote more charter schools in Pennsylvania."
He said he was shocked by 6ABC reports that the Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School in West Philadelphia was used as a nightclub on weekends. And he said he and his colleagues were angered by an investigation by Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz that found excessive salaries, rubber-stamp boards,
Students compete in a geography bee
Phila. archdiocese to close two more schools
Speaking at a long-scheduled hearing on a bill introduced in December to overhaul the 13-year-old charter law, Sen. Jeffrey E. Piccola (R., Dauphin) said he and his cochair, Sen. Andrew E. Dinniman (D., Chester), were putting that measure aside to focus on a new bill that would deal solely with increasing oversight of the state's 127 charter schools.
"As a result of the allegations and the outrages of the last few weeks, our focus will be solely on accountability and oversight," Piccola said during an afternoon hearing at Widener University in Chester. "We must clean up and weed out the bad actors from the charter school community before we adopt measures to promote more charter schools in Pennsylvania."
He said he was shocked by 6ABC reports that the Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School in West Philadelphia was used as a nightclub on weekends. And he said he and his colleagues were angered by an investigation by Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz that found excessive salaries, rubber-stamp boards,
Students compete in a geography bee
Christopher Niemann, an eighth grader at West Deptford Middle School, recalls being about 4 when he started keeping a notebook of imaginary roads.
Phila. archdiocese to close two more schools
Two more Catholic schools will close in June, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Friday. St. Joseph in Collingdale and Stella Maris in South Philadelphia will shut down because of low enrollment, officials said in a statement.