Behind the scenes, Boston Consulting Group has been a driving force on labor negotiations, school closings, and charters | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Behind the scenes, Boston Consulting Group has been a driving force on labor negotiations, school closings, and charters | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

Behind the scenes, Boston Consulting Group has been a driving force on labor negotiations, school closings, and charters

by Benjamin Herold

by Benjamin Herold for the Notebook and WHYY/Newsworks

 

The Boston Consulting Group has identified up to 60 Philadelphia school buildings as potential candidates for closure and helped line up private vendors willing to replace the School District’s unionized blue-collar workforce at a $50 million discount.
These steps are just part of the blue chip consulting firm’s far-ranging behind-the-scenes effort to help the beleaguered city school system rethink how it does business.
The broad scope of BCG’s efforts this spring are detailed in previously unreleased “statements of work” obtained by the Notebook/NewsWorks under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know law.

Read the documents:

• Phase II statement of work
• Phase II memorandum of understanding
• Phase III statement of work
• Phase III memorandum of understanding

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Knudsen: District ‘absolutely’ must close 40 schools by Sept. 2013

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United Way: BCG funding arrangement messy, but no conspiracy

by Benjamin Herold

by Benjamin Herold for the Notebook and WHYY/Newsworks

Private philanthropists have been using a complicated series of pass-throughs to fund the Boston Consulting Group’s far-reaching work to help overhaul the School District of Philadelphia.
But where critics see a coordinated back-channel effort to privatize the city’s public education system, Jill Michal sees evidence of an unusual consensus among Philadelphia’s civic leadership to actively engage in the city’s troubled school system.
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