Today: Hearing to fight Jim Crow education in Philly schools

THE FOUR-DECADE Philadelphia school-desegregation battle, one of the oldest in the nation, could be resolved today after a hearing before Commonwealth Court Judge Doris Smith-Ribner.

In a consent agreement, the school district pledged to make sweeping changes to give students in low-performing, "racially isolated schools" the same educational opportunities through programs, equipment and better teaching found in the district's best schools.

Officials said that "racially isolated" schools are at least 90 percent African-American or Latino.

But, could the district settle one legal case, only to face a legal fight from another front - the city teachers' union?

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said that he was still in talks with union lawyers Friday about the consent agreement.

Some of the agreement's promises on how to hire teachers and extra pay for teachers at low-performing schools are contract issues, Jordan said.

Ron Whitehorne, a retired teacher active in a new organization called Teacher Action Group, or TAG, said that he wonders if the PFT might challenge the state takeover of the city's schools.

Technically, Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman has authority under state law to impose some working conditions rather than negotiate them, Whitehorne said.

Lisa Haver, a teacher at Harding Middle School, was more outraged in her assessment of the agreement - and of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, which initiated the segregation complaint against the school district in 1970.

"I don't understand how they [the PHRC] can let themselves be used by Ackerman in this end-run around my contract," Haver said. "They have no part in my union negotiations to talk about working conditions."

Haver said that it was "naive to think that shuffling a few teachers around" would improve education.

"This city and this school district need to start acknowledging the conditions in which these children are living," she said. "They need to know that teachers are trying to teach kids who are coming to school literally hungry. They are burdened by the emotional problems they have from living in violent neighborhoods and their families facing terrible economic conditions."

But other teachers who support "full site selection" concede that it won't work without giving low-performing schools extra help. They say that teachers have for years called for smaller class sizes, more guidance counselors to help with personal problems and more classroom aides, especially in schools with a high poverty population.

It is a particularly crucial time because the district and PFT are getting ready for a vigorous round of contract talks. The current contract expires Aug. 31.

One pledge in the consent agreement to begin "full site selection" to fill teacher vacancies at certain schools is particularly controversial for many teachers.

Essentially, it would do away with hiring by seniority at those low-performing schools.

But public-education advocacy groups say that the current system simply isn't working.

"Philadelphia is one of the last cities in the country that uses seniority in the assignment of teachers," said Brian Armstead, director of civic engagement for the Philadelphia Education Fund.

"If you're trying to create a team [at a school], then you want to have some input in how that team is constructed," Armstead said.

"Site selection" ideally means that a school counsel, or selection committee made up of a principal, peer-selected teachers and perhaps community members, may interview and hire teachers at that school rather than have teachers assigned by district headquarters.

Under the current PFT contract, a 50/50 site-selection system is in place, with half of a school's vacancies filled by seniority and the other half by site selection.

Some teachers say that they accept the idea of full site selection at the targeted schools - with some conditions.

"A site-selection panel needs to consist of the principal and teachers chosen by their peers to ensure integrity and not favoritism in the selection process," said Sharon Newman Ehrlich, a member of TAG and a teacher at Edison/Fareira High School.

"The bottom line is, the poorest students and the students of color have the highest number of inexperienced and ineffective teachers, the highest rates of teacher-turnover at their schools, the largest number of vacancies, long-term substitutes, teachers teaching outside their subject area and a host of other issues," Nijmie Dzurinko, of the Philadelphia Student Union, said Friday.

The consent agreement, approved by the School Reform Commission last Wednesday, had earlier been approved by the parties in the desegegation case against the district - the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and ASPIRA, a Latino advocacy group. The agreement must be approved by Judge Smith-Ribner to end the case. *

 Background of School Desegregation Case

When the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission filed its first complaint against the school district in October 1970, it found that the district's schools were "unlawfully segregated by race" in violation of the state's human-relations law of 1955, said Michael Hardiman, chief counsel of the commission.

He said that the legal action against Philadelphia's school system is one of few in the nation based on state law and not on violations of federal protections under the U.S. Constitution.

At first, the commission sought to order the school system to bus students to achieve integration. That was when the district was 35 percent white. Over the last 15 years, as the district's white population dropped to 13 percent, the case began to focus on equal education to students in "racially isolated" schools.

— Valerie Russ