Steel parents win decisive vote to keep school public
Parents United for Public Education Statement on Decisive Parent Victory Vote at Steel School Today the parent community of Steel School rejected a message of fear, failure and disinvestment and stood up for their school, their community and for public education. In a decisive parent victory, 70% of parents voted to keep Steel – the last public school in Nicetown – a District-managed public schoo
Steel parents file grievance against SAC charter vote
Yesterday almost 200 families voted in the first ever parent vote about whether to turn the last public school in Nicetown over to charter operator, Mastery Charter, which is seeking to complete the first K-12 “Charter Achievement Network” in Philadelphia. At stake is $6 million for Mastery, despite the fact the District spends just $3.9 million for the school with the same number of students. The District dropped the announcement on the Steel community on April 1. It reconstituted an existing School Advisory Council solely for the charter takeover vote, and then disqualified more than 80% of the applicants for breaking some rules while selectively approving for vote other applicants who broke other rules. This statement comes from members of the Steel School Advisory Council about a grievance filed today against the charter office with regard to the SAC vote.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 2, 2014
Steel parents to file grievance on SAC voting process:
80% of parent applicants disqualified by charter office day of the vote
Statement by Kendra Brooks, Marie Otch,, Nikki Bagby, Diana Koch, Donna Savage – Steel School Advisory Council members:
Since the beginning of this month, parents have raised constant concerns about a botched process around the Renaissance charter takeover of Steel School.
We have stated constantly that the charter office is making up the rules as it goes and breaking them whenever it feels like it. Parents have not had full transparency on this process and we do not trust the Charter Office which has done all it can to make this process as difficult and punishing for parents as possible.
We are an active and engaged community with an existing School Advisory Council. We stand for our children and our school and our community. That is why we filed a grievance this morning with the District charter office.
The charter office has chosen to make up rules and selectively enforce them. They disqualified more than 80% of SAC parents for not following some rules, then approved other parents who also broke the rules. They disqualified these parents on the night of the vote despite our request that parents be informed of their status earlier. They made up a requirement to have long-time involved parents attend four different sessions in a 13-day period in order to vote. A major disqualifier was the failure to attend a Mastery tour, even for parents who were parents of Mastery students. This was a significant hardship for some parents, and it made other parents feel like the process was biased.
The charter office has refused to answer questions, and has not been truthful or held to the commitments of many of the questions it does answer.
We are asking the School District of Philadelphia to review these procedures and come to a quick and timely resolution. We do NOT want this process dragged on any further. However, we cannot have so many active parent voices be disqualified while others are approved at the whim of a charter office that has lost the faith of this community.
The SAC will remain vigilant about our school, this process and our voice.