With time ticking, parents fight for two schools

Days before the School Reform Commission makes a decision on whether to turn two Philadelphia public schools over to charter providers, parents gathered in the bitter cold Tuesday to say: Don't let our voices go unheard.

Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. has recommended the district hand over Jay Cooke Elementary in Logan and Samuel B. Huey Elementary in West Philadelphia to outside organizations to run as charters. John Wister Elementary had been slated to be given to a charter, but Hite reversed course, citing academic progress at the Germantown school.

The SRC is scheduled to vote Thursday.

Huey and Cooke parents took heart at the Wister decision, a group of them said at a news conference outside Cooke. While Hite has made up his mind about what to do with the struggling schools, they said, they might have a shot at swaying the commission and keeping their schools part of those operated by the Philadelphia School District.

Danyelle Campbell said it was unfair to expect impressive academic results from a school that has added students and lost key resources in the last several years. Don't give it to outsiders, she said.

"Yes, Jay Cooke needs help," Campbell said. "So, give us the help."

The school system estimates that it spends $4,000 per child on each student in its so-called Renaissance charters, the schools given to outside providers to run.

Pamela Banks' two boys attend Huey. Her younger son went two months without a second-grade teacher, and the school has struggled to follow the special-education plan for her older son, she said.

But Banks doesn't want a charter school for them.

"I went to a public school," she said. "Just bring the resources back."

The handful of parents who gathered Tuesday said they were fed up with a process that stripped them of a meaningful say in what happened to their schools. Last year, parents at two schools up for possible charter conversion were able to vote on the fates of their schools.

Both the Steel and Muñoz-Marín communities opted for their schools to remain part of the traditional public school system.

This year, Hite changed the process, giving some parents a voice on a committee that selected the provider they might be paired with. But the larger parent body was not permitted to vote on becoming a charter.

Cooke held a vote anyway, the parents gathered Tuesday said; 80 percent said they preferred that the school remain part of the public system.

Cordelia Kao, a Cooke ESL teacher, stepped outside the school during her prep period to bolster parents' assertions. Charters often under-enroll students whose first language is not English, Kao said, and her students' parents are afraid what such a setup might mean for them.

"I'm their go-to," said Kao, who has been at Cooke for four years. "If we leave here, they're totally lost."

City Councilwoman Helen Gym, a longtime public schools activist, added her voice to the mix Tuesday, sending Hite and the SRC a letter raising particular concerns about the Cooke conversion.

If the SRC approves, Cooke would be taken over by the Great Oaks Foundation Inc. Gym said she takes issue with the fact that Great Oaks' full proposal for Cooke is not publicly available.

"It is fairly outrageous to claim that this is a public vetting process," said Gym, a founder of Parents United for Public Education, a nonprofit that has organized parents against the charter conversions.

In her letter, Gym said that the district "should have concerns about spending money it does not have on a shaky charter organization."

Rashaun Reid, Great Oaks' chief academic officer, said he was "very confident in the work we do," and stressed that the company was eager to work with Cooke parents to hear their concerns and desire for a school overhaul.

"We are the right provider for Cooke," Reid said.

kgraham@phillynews.com

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