Extension for school managers

The Philadelphia School District's experiment with private managers will continue largely unchanged - at least for one more year.

The School Reform Commission yesterday nixed a plan that would have removed managers from 12 schools where test scores have been stagnant during five years of private management and returned them to district control.

Instead, the commission voted, 3-1, to allow Edison Schools Inc. and five other managers to continue to operate 38 Philadelphia schools through June 30, 2008.

During that time the district will develop individual plans for the privately run schools and each of the 54 lowest-performing schools in the city.

The plans, in what the district has dubbed School Reform II, will be implemented in the fall of 2008. Options could include continuing or expanding private management, converting schools to charters, or restructuring schools.

Gregory Thornton, the district's chief academic officer, said those changes were among interventions the federal No Child Left Behind law outlines for breaking the cycle of failure for schools that have been in academic trouble for years.

In addition to Edison, a for-profit company in New York, the private managers are Victory Schools, another for-profit based in New York; Universal Companies, a Philadelphia nonprofit; Foundations Inc., a nonprofit in Moorestown, Burlington County; Temple University; and the University of Pennsylvania.

During the 12-month study period, the district will pay all six private managers $500 per student. That amount is less than the $750 the companies had been paid but amounts to a $50 increase for the university managers.

The total expenditure of $9.2 million is within the $12 million the commission has budgeted for outside managers for the fiscal year that begins Sunday.

The six private managers have been operating the schools since 2002. Their five-year contracts expire June 30.

The decision to extend the contracts for a year was approved by a 3-1 vote. Denise McGregor Armbrister, who recently joined the commission, abstained because her husband is employed by Temple.

Commission member Sandra Dungee Glenn voted no. She had favored removing the managers from 12 schools that had not met federal academic standards and returning those schools to district control July 1. Private managers would have continued to operate the remaining 26 schools.

That motion failed.

Glenn noted that several studies have concluded that the privately managed schools had performed no better than district-managed schools. She thought it was time to remove the managers at the 12 failing schools.

"I believe we have had five years to evaluate," she said after the meeting. "I'm disappointed that we did not take a more - in my opinion - a more aggressive action on really making a determination on what is working in the district."

But some commission members said they were concerned there was not enough time before school opens in September for the 12 schools to make the transition to district control.

Commission chairman James Nevels said the one-year delay would give the district an opportunity to include the privately managed schools in the comprehensive plans for the district's worst-performing schools.

"Philadelphia cares about its lowest-performing children and is doing something about it," Nevels said.

Thornton said the failing district schools that would be targeted for academic makeover included 13 comprehensive high schools.

The study process will begin in September.

.