Phil Goldsmith: Time for SRC members to make a good decision for once & step down

FINALLY, some good news has emerged from the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, a/k/a the School Reform Commission.

The four-member gang canceled its regularly scheduled meeting this week. It couldn't round up the three members needed to form a quorum.

That's good: No meeting means no bad decisions.

If nothing else, not being able to arrange a quorum should be the last piece of evidence needed to show that it's time for members of the Robert Archie-led gang to give it up.

It has misfired so many times that it has lost any semblance of credibility. It is time for new - and, hopefully, better - faces on the SRC, or whatever governance structure may someday replace it.

When the gang finally decided to send Superintendent Arlene Ackerman packing with more than $900,000 in her pocket, it couldn't even do so appropriately. It promised that $400,000 would be raised privately to ease the burden on taxpayers, but a storm of controversy over the anonymous private donations led donors to withdraw.

To be fair, the Archie-led SRC was not the one that brought Ackerman to Philadelphia with a Wall Street-style contract gilded with more perks and bonus incentives than DeSean Jackson could dream of. That was done by the prior SRC, led by Sandra Dungee Glenn and supported by former Gov. Ed Rendell and Mayor Nutter.

But Archie, a municipal-bond lawyer and an inside dealmaker in the political community, was miscast as the chairman of what is a very public oversight board that had to deal with Ackerman's dismissal.

He has been reluctant to answer questions from the press or public. Under his leadership, the SRC decision-making process has been so opaque as to take the "public" out of "public education." And the chairman has been under an ethical cloud since it was revealed he was involved in a private meeting over which contractor should be hired to manage Martin Luther King High School. The results of an ethics investigation initiated with great fanfare many months ago by Nutter, who appointed Archie to the commission, have yet to be released.

One of the gang members, Denise McGregor Armbrister - the only member who served on the SRC that brought us Ackerman - rarely speaks at public meetings. Another member, a well-regarded lawyer named Joseph Dworetzky, is now splitting his time between Philadelphia and the West Coast.

Being an SRC member is a demanding enough job even if you have both feet firmly planted in Philadelphia; it is virtually impossible to do straddling several time zones. The school community, which expects board members to be present to visit schools and to be accessible for meetings with stakeholders, deserves more from an SRC member.

Rather than providing oversight and direction to Ackerman, this SRC took direction from her. The gang was overly generous with her bonuses; overlooked major mistakes, like her failure to take immediate action on racial violence at South Philadelphia High School; and allowed her to run roughshod over staff and silence dissenters, like Audenried High School teacher Hope Moffett.

Most egregious of all, only months before telling her to take a (nearly million-dollar) hike, it extended her contract another year. There was no public input, no meaningful explanation of the extension. The main result of this was to give Ackerman more negotiating leverage in buyout talks.

The craziest part of the decision? The timing. The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight decided to reward Ackerman with that extension at the very time that the depth of the district's financial crisis was becoming clear.

The crisis should have been evident to the SRC much earlier. Indeed, one former member cautioned about a potential "financial tsunami" well before the schools announced a giant deficit. The SRC failed at the very core of one of its basic missions: to provide disciplined and prudent financial oversight.

Since getting rid of an SRC member is more difficult than firing an incompetent teacher, we can rely only on their good sense to resign, and spare us any more collateral damage.

There is already one vacancy on the commission. Gov. Corbett has nominated Pedro Ramos to fill that position. It is essential for the state Senate to hold confirmation hearings promptly. (As a matter of disclosure, Ramos was a colleague of mine and is a personal friend.)

Armbrister and Dworetzky, both Rendell appointees, should submit their resignations now so Corbett, who deserves to have his own appointees on the SRC, can nominate replacements before the Senate gets bogged down in next year's budget hearings.

As for Archie, Corbett should appoint a new chairman as soon as he has his representatives on board, and Nutter should take the wraps off his investigation.

"The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight" is a humorous fiction book and movie. But this gang is a real-life tragedy.

We need new characters and a much better script.