Kenney, Gym change the education conversation
Mayor-elect Jim Kenney with City Councilwoman-elect Helen Gym in a photo from last June
With the election of Democrats Jim Kenney as mayor and Helen Gym to City Council on Tuesday, there is a new dynamic at City Hall regarding education policy.
Kenney has promised to work toward universal preschool and has thrown his support behind community schools as the primary reform strategy for the District. That is a departure from Mayor Nutter's approach. Throughout his administration Nutter supported the strategy that relied heavily on closing low-performing schools and expanding charters with the goal of having "a great school" in every neighborhood.
Gym rode to Council on the strength of her education activism, in which she has been severely critical of the dominant District and city policy of closing schools, expanding charter enrollment, and primarily using test scores to decide which schools are candidates for turnaround and privatization.
Kenney captured about 85 percent of the mayoral vote, handily defeating Republican Melissa Murray Bailey. Gym was the leading vote-getter among Council-at-large candidates with nearly all of the vote counted. Apparent winners of the other six at-large Council seats on Tuesday were Democrats Derek Green, Allan Domb, Blondell Reynolds Brown, William Greenlee, and Republicans Al Taubenberger and David Oh.
In claiming victory Tuesday night, Gym thanked her family and supporters. Citing the origins of her campaign in the period when former Gov. Tom Corbett was cutting spending not just on education but on other social services, she said she ran because she wanted her children "to remember when times were the worst, people were never silent."
Uniting with teachers
Both Kenney and Gym received robust and unequivocal support from the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which is currently at war with the District administration. Teachers have not had a new contract, or a raise, in three years, and in the face of stalemated talks the School Reform Commission has sought to nullify the contract entirely. The matter is now in court.
At a rally earlier Tuesday, where she and Kenney appeared with PFT leaders, Gym called schools "places of transformation and possibility." She said that they should be defined not by test scores but by a "narrative of dignity of love."
Gym has reiterated over her campaign that the "great schools" strategy is misguided in that it promotes the creation of "islands of greatness in oceans of inequity." For the hardest-to-serve young people – immigrants, those with disabilities, adjudicated youth, the homeless – she said their needs are marginalized. "It is impossible for them to do well unless we radically change how we look at education for those students," she said.
She said on Council she will demand more accountability and transparency from the District, perhaps even using subpoena power to get more information year-round instead of just at budget time. "It’s the only body the SRC has to show up before and account to," she said. The SRC relies on Council and Harrisburg for all its funds; it has no taxing power of its own.
At the same time, she would like Council to "act more like a partner of the School District Kenney, Gym change the education conversation | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:
