S. Phila. principal's lack of credential was known

When they hired LaGreta Brown as the new principal of South Philadelphia High School last summer, officials knew she did not have an active Pennsylvania principal's certification, they said.

Brown was supposed to get emergency certification but never did. She served as principal for eight months anyway and resigned Thursday after The Inquirer raised questions about her credentials.

Schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman acknowledged Friday that there could be others in the district with similar problems. "This may be an issue for more than just LaGreta," she said.

Brown was not certified to work as a high school principal in Pennsylvania, state records show. In 2000, she was issued a certificate to work as an elementary school principal. But that certificate became inactive in 2005 after she failed to complete continuing-education requirements, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education said.

The Philadelphia School District Office of Certification should have checked to make sure Brown's paperwork was in order, but her case slipped through the cracks, human resources chief Estelle Matthews said Friday.

"There was no follow-through," Matthews said.

A new policy will require teachers and principals to provide paperwork proving emergency certification within 30 days, Matthews said.

"We're not going to take their word for it," she said. "We didn't have a clear process in place, but we will."

Brown came to Philadelphia from Atlantic City, where teachers said she had created "a hostile work environment."  Brown resigned from that district in advance of a school board vote on her termination.

Her tenure at South Philadelphia High also was tumultuous. On Dec. 3, the school was rocked by racial violence when 30 Asian students were attacked by groups of mostly African American students. Seven Asian students required hospital treatment, and a federal civil rights inquiry and state Human Rights Commission investigation are pending.

Ackerman said she had known about Brown's time in Atlantic City when she was hired and insisted that Brown received no preferential treatment.

On Friday, Ackerman was asked whether she bore ultimate responsibility for hiring Brown. She said she did not.

"I hired LaGreta in that I hire all the principals, but she went through the process," Ackerman said. "The community hired her, students included. . . . She was their choice."

She added, "Do I bear the ultimate responsibility? I guess you would say, I would have to say, I take the good with the bad. But it worked out in all the other choices."

Brown, Matthews said, "was confused" about her certification.

Matthews said Brown had completed 70 of 110 required hours of course work toward a continuing-education requirement that would have reactivated her Pennsylvania certificate.

"She thought that was all she needed to do," Matthews said.  "She thought she could take courses and that would be enough."

The Rev. LeRoi Simmons, a member of the Germantown High School principal search committee, remembers being presented last summer with two highly touted candidates.

One was Brown.

"She was presented to us as somebody who had been vetted by the district. We specifically asked those kind of questions: 'Did you check out the credentials?' " said Simmons, a member of the Germantown Clergy Initiative.

"They said all the preliminaries had been done. They said Brown had all the necessary credentials and certificates," Simmons said.

He said Matthews was one of the officials who had assured him.

The Germantown High committee declined to hire Brown, in part because members were concerned about her tenure in Atlantic City, Simmons said.

Matthews said Friday she did not recall that conversation.

Ackerman said she had told Brown in March that she would be replaced and began looking for candidates. In April, she chose Otis D. Hackney III, a Philadelphian who has worked as a teacher and principal in various district schools. He is now principal of Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County.

As questions swirled over how Brown was hired, South Philadelphia High tried to move forward Friday.

In the morning, students were called to an assembly where new interim principal Ozzie Wright explained that he would finish out the school year and that Hackney would take over in September.

Meanwhile, the school was visited by "more brass than in a military band," as one teacher put it. Administrators sat in to observe classes as teachers worked and taught.