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Phila. schools agree to settle 1970 desegregation suit
When Constance Clayton became superintendent in 1982, she, too, rejected mandatory busing. Instead, she gave students the option of being bused. At the peak of the program, about 14,000 students took the offer. Most were African American students who attended predominantly white schools in the Northeast.
Voluntary desegregation busing continues, and the settlement should not affect it, officials said. During the last school year, 1,640 students participated.
In 1994, Smith-Ribner ruled that the district had failed to provide equal opportunities for poor black and Hispanic students. She rejected busing, but ordered other reforms. Smith-Ribner also ordered Harrisburg to help pay for the expensive improvements, but the state Supreme Court stripped her of much of her authority.
Since 2004, there has been little movement in the case, but that changed when Ackerman took the helm in Philadelphia in June 2008.
Ensuring equal resources for all students is one of her four main goals, she said.
Ackerman said she arrived in a district where inequalities stemmed both from benign neglect and intentional practices by previous administrations. She cited the case of William Penn High School - the North Philadelphia school slated for closure, then spared at the last moment when Ackerman intervened at the community's behest.
William Penn was built in the early 1970s as a desegregation model, a magnet school with a top-notch communications program and an Olympic-size swimming pool. But over the years, "there were decisions made to take programs from this school," Ackerman said. "There were decisions made not to maintain the facility."
She plans to resurrect William Penn as something other than a comprehensive high school.
Yesterday's settlement met with wide approval.
Lori Shorr, Mayor Nutter's secretary of education, praised the terms and said she hoped they would end a "dual system of good and failing schools.
"Philadelphia, like many other Northeastern cities, has been slow to address and remove the policy barriers that have served to keep poor and minority students in under-resourced schools," Shorr said.
Michael Churchill, attorney for the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia and ASPIRA Pennsylvania, a Latino advocacy group that joined the lawsuit in 1993, hailed Ackerman for her commitment to eradicating the "dark stain" of unequal opportunities. However, he acknowledged it was a gamble to lose court supervision over the district's actions.
He said he was "delighted that we are entering a new era where the district is willing to make the necessary commitments" but that "the challenge will be to carry them out."
Ackerman said the settlement meant a great deal to her because she had presided over the conclusion of another desegregation case as superintendent of San Francisco's public schools.
As a child in St. Louis in the 1950s and '60s, she attended schools that were only nominally integrated. She and other black students were bused to white schools with their teachers, given a separate place to play and eat lunch, and rarely interacted with white students.
"I'm emotional about this," she said. "I'm ready to march. I have no patience for excuses anymore."
Terms of the Desegregation Settlement
The agreement between the Philadelphia School District and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, subject to approval on Monday in Commonwealth Court, is contingent on the district's implementing "Imagine 2014," its five-year plan. By the fall, the district must provide a timetable for the plan and then provide annual reports on its progress.
At the lowest-performing schools, the district must:
Begin teacher evaluations based on detailed standards and provide training based on those evaluations. That is to start this coming school year.
