District to offer positions to 325 laid-off teachers

ABOUT 325 of the more than 1,500 teachers laid off in June because of budget cuts will be called this week and offered jobs for the upcoming school year, school district officials said yesterday.

"It's very good news," Jamilah Fraser, a district spokeswoman, said last night. Fraser said that officials are working with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers to see which teachers will be called. Also, even more laid-off teachers, perhaps 100 more, will be called back in the coming weeks, sources said.

Jerry Jordan, PFT president, said that he voiced concerns in June that the magnitude of the layoffs would make it difficult to operate schools in September.

"It is good that people are being restored," Jordan said last night. "But the question is: Will enough people be restored to restore the necessary programs for children to have a well-rounded education in our schools?"

Many nonteaching support staff, including school nurses, counselors and teaching assistants, need to be returned to their jobs as well, Jordan said.

More than 3,000 district employees, including nearly 500 staffers from the central office, lost their jobs in June because of a $629 million budget shortfall.

Late yesterday, the district announced that it was working to fill about 1,335 teaching positions for the term that begins Sept. 6.

Most of those positions likely will be filled after the district resolves the placement of teachers who had been "force-transferred" to other schools.

Meanwhile yesterday, the district's accountability office said that it needs more information from the state Education Department to address questions about whether teachers and/or administrators cheated on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment 2009 testing.

It also requested assistance in conducting its own investigation of alleged cheating.

Last month, the district received a copy of a forensics audit report of the 2009 test scores that said that about 28 district schools and eight city charter schools had test scores that raised red flags of possible cheating.

In all, 89 schools across the state were flagged for statistical problems. The Philadelphia schools accounted for about one-third of those schools with questionable test data.

Yesterday, Francesca Newberg, deputy chief of the district's Office of Accountability and Educational Technology, said that the forensics report on the 2009 PSSA test didn't provide the district with enough information to ferret out any cheaters in the system.

She also said that of the 28 schools that the forensic report flagged, only 13 city schools really merited a closer investigation.

Other officials said that some of the suspicions raised at the 28 schools pointed to situations in which more test answers were erased and changed to wrong answers than were erased and changed to correct answers.

Newberg said that the district also is waiting until September for results of a forensics report on the 2010 and 2011 PSSA testing.

Only after receiving three years of data will officials be able to verify wrongdoing, she said.

"We take this very seriously," Newberg said. "People can lose their jobs and should lose their jobs if found cheating. That's why we want to make certain we have all the information."