Philly officials denied Global Leadership Academy a new charter for the 3rd time, and other takeaways from the school board meeting

Philadelphia’s school board has denied for the third time an attempt by Global Academies to open a new charter high school.

The 6-3 Thursday night decision — which could cause ripples in a city with a new mayor who has signaled her desire to be friendlier to charter schools and at a time when board members are applying to keep their jobs — came despite pleas from politicians, parents, and students.

But the majority of the board raised academic and operational concerns about the proposed Global Leadership Academy International Charter High School, which applicants had wanted to open in the former Cristo Rey High School building on North Broad Street in Logan. The school would have served 600 students in grades 9 through 12.

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Board member Joyce Wilkerson said approving the GLA application would “set a dangerously low precedent for other applications that we’ll be considering in the future.”

Even those board members who voted against the charter said they were moved by the community’s love of the charter.

But, board member Leticia Egea-Hinton said, “every decision that I’ve ever made is always about children first … but in reviewing the application, there are deficiencies in the application that do not align with the charter law.”

Though the application said the high school was not affiliated with Global Leadership Academy and Global Leadership Academy Southwest, schools run by veteran former district administrator Naomi Johnson-Booker, most board members said it’s clear the schools would be related, including sharing the same lawyer.

At Global Leadership Academy Charter School, 4% of students met state standards in math and 19% in reading in 2022-23; at Global Leadership Academy Southwest, it was 1% and 15%, respectively.

Johnson-Booker expressed frustration that she did what the district had requested of her in the past — took over two schools, the former Raising Horizons Quest Charter and the former Huey Elementary, a district school — and now it was blocking her.

“I made them successful schools,” Johnson-Booker told the board. “I did what you asked. I’m only asking now for the children in this city that you approve this high school.”

Several lawmakers voiced support for the school. City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, a former educator, said he believed the school was beginning to see growth despite the challenges of the pandemic, but that schools are more than academics.

“We’re basically begging you to give these families, give these educators, and give these children, [the ability] to stay together, grow in African-centered tradition,” said Thomas.

Earl Marant, a Global Leadership Southwest parent and crossing guard in the neighborhood, said he’s been moved by how successful Global Leadership students are.

“GLA deserves a high school so that these kids can continue the culture that they are learning now,” Marant said.

Zakiyyah Salahudin urged the board to allow GLA to open a high school. She’s the parent of a current junior at Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School, a Center City school closing at the end of the school year because its founder has decided to retire. Thomas, board president Reginald Streater, charter chief Peng Chao and others had tried to broker a deal to get the MCSCS board to agree to essentially transfer their charter to the GLA board, but MCSCS founder Veronica Joyner blocked the attempts. Joyner said only she was capable of educating the children at the level that MCSCS established.

Still, Salahudin and other members of the MCSCS community badly wanted GLA to open a high school to take “all the abandoned high school students that are being thrown out by Mathematics Civics and Sciences.”

Board members Julia Danzy, Cecelia Thompson, and Lisa Salley had wanted to sign off on a new charter.

Salley said she was “greatly concerned that there is too much variation and too much bias” in the charter evaluation process and said the district needs outside help in this area going forward.

Thompson suggested math performance is off everywhere, but said she believed GLA “is about holistic education, it’s about culture.”

Ken Kilpatrick, a spokesperson for the GLA board, blasted the school board and charter office for what he said were their roles in “denying Philadelphia’s most vulnerable Black teens and their families the high school that they so desperately need and worked for.” He said the board’s vote was “myopic and selfish.”

GLA is reviewing its legal options, Kilpatrick said.

Dozens of teachers demonstrated outside the school board meeting, drawing attention to teachers’ sick time policy, which penalizes them for using their earned days off.

The so-called 3-5-7-9 rule means that the 13,000 teachers, counselors, secretaries and other school workers who are members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers could get suspended if they have enough “occurrences” — nonconsecutive sick days, even if they have the time in their sick day bank.

Teachers told the board that the policy was hurting teacher retention, morale and health.

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One teacher, Pete Pijanowski, said when he explained the district’s sick days policy to new teachers “they looked at me like I was crazy.”

The board needs to be part of the solution, Pijanowski said.

“What the COVID lockdown taught us is that if you are sick, you should not go to work sick,” he said.

Teachers described the policy as forcing them to skip doctor’s appointments, go to school on the day of cancer surgery, work despite family emergencies, and more.

“We demand a workplace that trusts us and treats us like human beings … we demand an end to the occurrence policy now,” teacher Charlie Hudgins said.

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said no one should come to work sick, and said that anyone who believes they’ve been mistreated because of using their sick days should report it to their supervisor and supervisor’s boss.

“We don’t need to be afraid of reprisals in the School District of Philadelphia,” Watlington said to teachers in the audience.

Tension was high at the meeting around a Northeast High student video that district officials ordered removed from a Black History Month celebration at the school because a teacher said the video was antisemitic.

Two students in an African American history class created a video of a podcast that examined Palestinian art as an act of resistance, comparing it to enslaved African Americans’ use of spirituals. The students got an A on the assignment, and their teacher, Keziah Ridgeway, allowed it to be used in a student-run Black History Month assembly.

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Then another teacher, and the School District of Philadelphia Jewish Family Association, raised objections, and the video was removed from future assemblies.

One Northeast student told the board she saw the video, believed it was not antisemitic, and found the district’s decision “hypocritical.”

And Ridgeway, flanked by several people holding pro-Palestinian signs, said she couldn’t believe the district censored the video because a white teacher was uncomfortable.

“Guess what? I am a Black woman and I was born feeling uncomfortable,” Ridgeway said. “They are just upset that the word Palestine is being said.”

Ridgeway and others asked the superintendent to address the issue.

“We will gladly look into that matter,” Watlington said, adding that he was not prepared to address it Thursday night.