Mayor: Dissolve the School Reform Commission
Photo: Emma Lee/WHYY
Mayor Nutter calls for the dissolution of the School Reform Commission. The governing power would be transferred in 2018.
Updated, 5:40 p.m. with additional quotes and reaction
In a major education policy speech this morning, Mayor Nutter called for the dissolution of the School Reform Commission and the return of a local board of education.
"Of all the policy recommendations I make today, none will have a bigger impact on Philadelphia than a return to local control," he told an audience of invited guests at WHYY.
After 15 years, Nutter said, "it's time for the experiment to end."
In addition to shifting power to a mayorally appointed board, Nutter called for School Advisory Councils at every neighborhood school.
"While I believe that the SRC and its many members have functioned to the best of their abilities and with good intentions, we Philadelphians deserve to govern our own schools," Nutter said. "A return to local control would give us real authority over the education of our children."
He laid out a plan that would complete the transfer of power in September 2018. Conditions for the changeover would include "full funding for public education" by the state and a "student-weighted" education funding formula. This would allow the District, he said, to "adhere to its five-year financial-stability planning process that demonstrates the District's structural balance."
Then there would be a year of "public hearings on governance, debates, and forums on how best to improve education," said Nutter. "Only then will we be in the right place to govern our schools locally."
By 2017, he said, the District would put in place "new accountability practices" and begin the legal process for the transfer of power together with the governor, secretary of education, and the SRC. The changeover would occur the following September.
In Nutter's vision, the new Board of Education, like the one the SRC displaced, would have nine members: five appointed outright by the mayor, four chosen from 12 recommended by City Council.
The SRC can only be dissolved if the members vote the commission out of existence or if the state legislature changes the law that created it.
In his speech, Nutter said that though some school councils exist now and do important work, "many exist only on paper."
The councils he wants would have more authority and promote the important function of helping school staffs get to know community members. They would be made up of parents, community members, teachers, administrators, and older students, would fundraise and volunteer, but also "help inform the decision-making process about afterschool programs, class offerings and school staffing."
"The councils would benefit all schools, especially those schools with staff members who differ greatly from their students in terms of race, ethnicity, and income," he said. "To succeed, the councils need to be real instruments of change."
The new District governing body would create a strategic plan to judge success of the councils, he said.
Education accomplishments
Despite facing a recession as soon as he took office and a political change in Harrisburg that resulted in the slashing of education spending, Nutter said there was real progress in education during his administration.
Most prominent has been an increase in the high school graduation rate, especially for students that had been mostly written off before. For instance, the graduation rate for youth involved in the juvenile justice system more than doubled from 16 percent to 36 percent; for those in the foster care system, the rate rose from 28 percent to 44 percent.
Still, he said, "our current system is failing too many of our young people, leaving a Mayor: Dissolve the School Reform Commission | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:
