Contract for substitute teachers allows school district to cancel without penalty

AS PRESSURE MOUNTS on Philadelphia School District officials to dump the firm responsible for hiring substitute teachers, details of the agreement have been revealed.

Source4Teachers, the Cherry Hill, N.J.-based firm contracted in June, was required to staff 75 percent of vacant classrooms by the first day of school, but the firm has fallen well short of that, hovering around 20 percent daily over the first seven weeks.

According to the contract, a copy of which was obtained and published online by the Public School Notebook, the district can terminate the deal with or without cause with 14 days' prior written notice to the company and not incur any penalty. Source4Teachers will begin incurring penalties of up to $6,400 a month in January, with those fines escalating to $9,600 in September if it fails to meet certain staffing levels or receives poor marks on a survey for principals.

Superintendent William Hite has said the firm is on notice that the contract could be canceled if its performance doesn't improve.

"This will not go on indefinitely. There is a plan in place to evaluate their progress at the end of this month," Hite said at the Oct. 15 School Reform Commission meeting.

Although the deal is worth up to $34 million - $17 million per year for two years - the district can only be billed based on the number of positions filled, according to the agreement. The company also can be fined a maximum of 20 percent of revenue, but it is unclear when that would take effect.

District spokesman Fernando Gallard said yesterday that the district has not discussed an alternative in the event it terminates the Source4Teachers contract. The district previously managed the system, but staffed only about 60 percent of classrooms last year.

Meanwhile, the district is also on the hook to pay teachers who are giving up their planning time to cover classes when a substitute doesn't show up. Gallard said that money would come out of the dollars set aside for the Source4Teachers contract.

"They're clearly not going to get the $34 million figure in the two years," he said of the firm.

City Councilman Bobby Henon recently added his voice to the chorus calling for the district to end the agreement.

"Today is the day that we're calling the school district to end the contract," Henon said Monday, "so we can give our children what they deserve."

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