Open Letter Regarding Continued Hybrid Reopening Plan Failures – Parents United for Public Education

Open Letter Regarding Continued Hybrid Reopening Plan Failures – Parents United for Public Education

Open Letter Regarding Continued Hybrid Reopening Plan Failures

Dr. William Hite, Superintendent, School District of Philadelphia
Philadelphia Board of Education
Philadelphia City Council

2/18/2021

Dr. Hite, Board of Education members, and Council members:

We are glad to hear that the School District of Philadelphia has pushed back the date for return to school buildings. Like the majority of parents across the district, we were never excited about sending our children back into toxic, poorly ventilated buildings without a solid plan in place. We are very concerned about putting staff members who have not had the opportunity to get fully vaccinated at risk of illness and death, as well as the potential for children to get sick themselves and/or to spread the virus to their own family members at home.

We believe that delaying the reopening of buildings to ensure safety is the right choice, however we are disturbed with the district’s leadership’s insistence in saying that the delay is due to the ongoing mediation with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. 

In seeking to unfairly shift the blame to teachers via the union, the district continues to minimize the role and the voice of parents and caregivers across the district who have said “no” to this reopening plan. District leadership has also refused to take any responsibility for their failures in planning, collaboration, and CONTINUE READING: Open Letter Regarding Continued Hybrid Reopening Plan Failures – Parents United for Public Education

Open Letter to Dr. Hite Regarding School District Facility Issues + Parents United Response to the SDP Reopening Plan – Parents United for Public Education

Open Letter to Dr. Hite Regarding School District Facility Issues – Parents United for Public Education

Open Letter to Dr. Hite Regarding School District Facility Issues

Dr. William Hite
Superintendent, School District of Philadelphia

2/20/2020

Dr. Hite:

We, Parents United for Public Education, are deeply concerned with multiple aspects of the facility issues notification process, clean up procedures, and lack of parental involvement in the district’s latest school closures. There is a continued lack of transparency around how hazards are identified, and the procedures for and outcomes of the testing that deems that threats have been cleared. We have spoken with parents in the affected schools about the information given to them by the facility managers and they have expressed similar concerns.

As members in the Philly Healthy Schools Initiative coalition, we are attempting to work with your staff to develop effective information sharing, communication, transparency, and stakeholder involvement. We are aware that there is a great deal of poor communication and miscommunication between the district staff and the school communities. There are also noted inconsistencies between the individual environmental inspectors who are tasked with identifying “imminent hazards.”

In addition, there is a general lack of forethought and planning for how to answer logical questions and provide information regarding the health and welfare of individuals in the school communities impacted by these closures or remediation work. As we have seen over and over again in person and in reporting on these issues, the front line district officials are not adequately able to inform parents and teachers about the level of exposure or any potential medical follow up CONTINUE READING: Open Letter to Dr. Hite Regarding School District Facility Issues – Parents United for Public Education

Parents United Response to the SDP Reopening Plan

We, like so many, are spending a lot of our time thinking about reopening schools safely. We are still trying to process last week’s Board of Education meeting in which over a hundred parents, students, and staff spoke about the need for a consciously safe return to education, only to be met with what appeared to be a coordinated plan to dismiss their concerns and delay Board action. There are clearly significant questions about the district’s ability to provide an adequate education and minimize COVID-19 exposure risk.

Parents and students have reason to be leery of the district’s reopening plan; the district’s trust problem with its stakeholders is not new. The School District of Philadelphia has a history of decision-making that ignores the input of families and educators while putting students and educators at risk. It is not hyperbole to say that people have died and will die due to the conditions in our schools.

In 2011, due to draconian cuts in state funding, our district shuttered libraries and after school programs and eliminated thousands of essential positions including school nurses. We were told then to make do with less. We were told that high CONTINUE READING: Parents United Response to the SDP Reopening Plan