Philly Board of Education meeting: Parents and students testify about deteriorating buildings, teacher shortage

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Parents and students took to the mic with urgent concerns throughout the three-hour Philadelphia School Board meeting Thursday night, speaking out about school conditions, declining enrollment and staffing shortages. Some described a lack of adequate instruction in core classes for months at a time. Many urged the board to prioritize libraries in their financial plans.

Last night’s meeting was a combination of a budget hearing and monthly action session.

Budget season and School Library Month

Keisha Nicholson, a founding member of the grassroots school advocacy group Lift Every Voice Philly, gave a nod to Superintendent Tony Watlington for not slashing the district’s budget.

“This is the kind of leadership we will stand behind,” Nicholson said.

Watlington’s decision to keep the total budget amount steady was announced last month. The particulars of funding allocation are still in the works. His plan relies on using about 40% of the district’s “rainy day fund” to cover a projected deficit of more than $300 million and avoid interrupting new programs that have boosted academic outcomes.

If nothing changes, the district will be looking at potential cuts and taking on new debt in 2027. Advocates have urged the state to fill in more of the gap.

Philadelphia’s schools have been historically underfunded by Pennsylvania’s funding formula, which was deemed unconstitutional in 2023. Later in the night, board member Joyce Wilkerson called for the public to rally their legislators about state funding in light of potential cuts to critical federal funding streams. She pointed attendees to fliers outside the hall for Harrisburg trips organized by the advocacy group Children First.

“We urge you to take action,” Wilkerson said. “Your advocacy can make a real difference in the fight to protect public education in Philadelphia, regardless of whether it’s at the local state or federal level.”

Most speakers on the list for budget-focused public comment urged the board to allocate funding for more librarians in schools. Philadelphia maintains full- or part-time librarians in only five of its 216 schools, a strikingly low ratio.

Deborah Grill, a former city teacher and librarian, said she was speaking out in honor of April being School Library Month.

Grill said that libraries “provide a safe and welcoming place after school” for students to read, use computers or work on homework.

“Countless studies have shown that a school library staffed by a certified school librarian correlates with higher reading and writing scores,” Grill said. “This is especially true for students who live in poverty, as many of our students do.”

Just this week, the Inquirer reported that a federal grant designed to help the school district build back its libraries was recently canceled.

Lauren Popp, a South Philly resident, said she took her 9-year-old daughter to their local library once or twice per week.

“Not all parents have this privilege to be able to do that during the workweek or on the weekends,” she said. “If you want to see kids fall in love with books, school libraries need to be restored and books need to be accessible.”

Staffing shortages cause ‘confusion and chaos’ at CAPA

Multiple parents of students enrolled at The Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, commonly referred to as CAPA, sounded the alarm about staffing confusion at the high school, slamming administrators for poor leadership and communication.

Several CAPA teachers, according to the parents’ testimonies, received notices of forced transfer in the wake of enrollment decline and budget issues. Parents said that they weren’t properly informed, with several stating that they found out through their children.

Dominique Medley, president of CAPA’s Home and School Association, alleged that the decline in enrollment stemmed from “mismanagement of the audition process and incompetent leadership.” She said that the teachers who initially received notices of forced transfers later had their positions reinstated, but added that the school could now face vacancies since those teachers began finding other work before the decision’s reversal.

Some parents, including Cindy Burstein, said that they hadn’t received proper communication from the school about any of these developments.

“Families are left to rely on rumors or their children for important updates,” she said. “This leads to confusion and chaos.”

CAPA parent Aaron Gemmill said that recent presentations from school leadership at Home and School Association meetings had not inspired confidence.

“They’ve really been able to provide no indications that they have a plan,” he said.

Through written testimony, three parents raised particular concerns about math instruction. Kressent Pottenger, the parent of a CAPA freshman, alleged that “half the freshman class had no math instruction for the academic year” and “were assigned a random grade of 80%.” Meagan Macklin wrote that her daughter, a sophomore, “has not had an actual Math class for pretty much the entirety of the year,” describing two academic quarters in a row without homework assignments and, similarly, a grade of 80% given to every student in the class.

In her testimony, Medley slammed the school’s principal and assistant principal as “incompetent.”

“Dr. Watlington, you have approved and finalized ineffective leadership two years running,” Medley said. “Enrollment over the past two years has dropped 22% since 2023 due to the mysterious removal of CAPA’s principal, under whose leadership CAPA was thriving.”

Watlington directed CAPA community members to step outside to speak with an assistant and associate superintendent, and said the board would carefully read the materials that speakers provided.

Martin Luther King High School student Kalorena Gonzalez, speaking alone, said her class’s English teacher has been gone since October.

“We are expected to take the English Keystone [Exam] in less than three weeks, yet we haven’t received proper instruction on the concepts needed to succeed,” Gonzalez said. She pleaded for the board to excuse her class from the exam.

In response, board President Reginald Streater said that he and Vice President Sarah-Ashley Andrews had recently visited Gonzalez’s classroom at MLK High School and asked her classmates to come speak at meetings.

“We ask these students that we need to hear from y’all, the board needs to hear from y’all,” Streater said.

Palumbo students speak out

Through two spoken testimonies and over a dozen written submissions, students from the Academy at Palumbo decried the conditions of their school and others across the district.

“There have been [bathroom] stalls closed for all four years of my time at Palumbo … sinks covered in plastic bags and labeled ‘out of order,’ and, most notably, a consistent mysterious liquid covering the floor of my third floor girls’ bathroom,” Palumbo senior Gretta Rogan told the board. “After my class sent out district-wide surveys on bathroom conditions, we found, unsurprisingly, that this is a common problem among our community.”

Rogan and other Palumbo students came to this advocacy through a social science class. Charged with conducting research as a group on one systemic issue, the seniors chose to focus on school district funding and management, zeroing in on the physical deterioration of school buildings.

“We ask that you all consider to put more money towards the maintenance of school buildings and resources so students can be safe and comfortable in their learning environment,” senior Eliza Vazquez said in a written testimony. “This can be through hiring more staff members (custodians), fixing the bathrooms due to their poor condition, but overall something should be done.”