The Ackerman migration

By Brian Hickey

After Mayor Nutter was nominated for reelection in May, he harked back to his first mayoral campaign, when voters told him they were tired of "controversy and stagnation in our public-school system." He also looked forward to his likely next term, in which he said education would be a priority to which he would "devote the bulk of my time, effort, and our city resources."

"In order to be a truly great city, . . . the new Philadelphia must be the education city," Nutter said. "The time has come to focus our collective efforts - political, financial, civic, and personal activities - to this mission."

They were the kind of words that could make a new, first-time father like me reconsider his planned move to the 'burbs once kindergarten starts four years from now.

I was reconsidering for all of a week.

Soon, in the face of a $629 million funding gap that didn't just surface overnight, schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman and friends were bumbling and stumbling their way through a hearing on how much money City Council would pony up for the construction of an education-funding dam. District officials came off as vague, coy, incompetent, and ill-prepared to oversee a vast school system.

But after Ackerman met privately with the mayor and Council leadership, she emerged wielding actual numbers that didn't just surface over the previous hour: It would take up to $110 million to keep full-day kindergarten, continue to pay for student transit passes, and stave off some layoffs, she said. A few hours later, Nutter stood outside his office and told a phalanx of reporters, "This is a number I'm prepared to stand behind."

It was a pricey ask in a penny-pinching era, and Nutter supported tax increases to achieve it. Although he was showing that his primary victory speech wasn't just a bunch of talk, he would have been risking his reelection if this were a town with a viable two-party system.

None of that prevented the superintendent from suddenly unveiling a plan to save full-day kindergarten without a city bailout, making Nutter look foolish for supporting extraordinary measures.

For me, the whole affair planted seeds of parental doubt that are likely to blossom into U-Haul reservations for sometime before 2015. Ackerman's handling of the kindergarten question was shady. It was unprofessional. And it spoke to a selfish disregard for the people who backed her up.

Maybe Ackerman didn't mean to hang Nutter out to dry. Maybe she was so consumed by devising a plan to save full-day kindergarten that she forgot to bring it up at her meeting with Nutter just 24 hours before she announced it. But that, too, reeks of the same selfishness as her office's employment of two publicly funded chauffeurs. It shows the kerfuffle wasn't about what was best for the children, but rather what was best for Ackerman.

The episode led Nutter to seek more School District transparency in exchange for more of our tax dollars. Among the records disclosed was more cause for parental doubt: Ackerman's unmet contract demands, including $150,000 bonuses for each year she stays, starting in 2012; another four vacation days, for nearly eight weeks a year; and free health coverage for life.

More than any state or federal funding cuts, such revelations grease the rails for the flight to the suburbs of families that can afford to leave but can't afford private-school tuition. I get that kids in worse-off neighborhoods need more attention than mine. What I can't deal with is the feeling that families like mine don't even seem to register as existing in the minds of school leaders.

Granted, even though no one with clout has called for Ackerman's ouster, she may well be long gone by the time young Hickey is scheduled to bound into a schoolhouse for the first time. And I don't doubt that educational improvement is a priority for Nutter. A lot could happen in four years that could keep us Philadelphia residents.

But so far I have scant reason for confidence in a system that treats modest gains in test scores - gains now under increasing scrutiny - as worthy of a parade down Broad Street. We're better than thinking it's enough for our children to be merely proficient at double-digit addition or three-syllable spelling.

In a recent conversation with City Councilman Bill Green - who had nagged and nagged for more insight into District finances - I asked if I had any reason to entrust the education of my son to the city's public schools as currently constituted.

"You don't," he said.

I wish he weren't right.