What will 2024 bring for Philly schools? We talk with the school board president and VP.

The Reginald Streater and Mallory Fix-Lopez era of the Philadelphia school board started with a bang last year, with the district taking the unprecedented step of suing the city administration that created the board.

It was a controversial first move. They have just been reelected president and vice-president, and are fighting off a leadership challenge from board members Cecelia Thompson and Lisa Salley. Divisions have been exposed. But Streater and Fix-Lopez believe that 2024 will bring smoother sailing — and continued progress for the school system.

Still, the district faces deep academic challenges and an uncertain financial future, as well as the possible reconstitution of the school board itself with a new mayor.

The Inquirer sat down with Streater and Fix-Lopez this month. Here are some highlights.

“I think the year started with challenges,” Streater said. “You had a school district that was suing the city in which it sits. We had concerns around asbestos in our schools, where to put students and what’s the process going forward when students are displaced.” There were also the usual academic challenges (just 34% of district students meet state standards in reading, and 21% in math).

But, he said, the district is moving in the right direction in most key indicators, from graduation rate to student and teacher attendance. And though the progress is incremental, incremental in a historically underfunded school system of 113,000 remains meaningful, he said.

“There’s 10,000 more students who if they stay on this path will have the skills and the tools necessary to navigate not just Philadelphia, but the world,” Streater said, referring to the jump in students this year reaching proficiency in ELA and math.

The board president also listed the release of Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr.’s strategic plan as a high point; having a roadmap for the next several years is crucial, he said.

Fix-Lopez added completing a “historic” deal with Unite Here Local 634, the district union which represents cafeteria and climate workers, as another high point.

“Successful” isn’t quite the right word to describe the year, Streater said, “because we haven’t arrived yet. But I think we’ve become very laser-focused on everything that supports our mission. I think the train is back on the track.”

“In 2024, there’s going to be some tough things to grapple with,” Fix-Lopez said.

Among them: a looming fiscal crisis, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers contract expiring in August, and a facilities crisis — not just environmental issues, but the fact that some schools are falling apart and not worth repairing, and others have hundreds of empty seats.

The board also is entering new territory; this will be the first mayoral transition since the district returned to local control in 2018.

Streater, Fix-Lopez and the rest of the board were chosen by Mayor Jim Kenney; Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker gets to name her own board. Parker can re-appoint any or all board members, but does not have to. She has not signaled whom she might choose.

But both Streater and Fix-Lopez say they’re in it for the long haul, and Streater said that he has “a laser focus on ensuring that this transition, that [Parker], is successful, period.”

Parker “has said things that completely align with Dr. Watlington and the Board of Education’s vision around facilities,” Streater said. The incoming mayor has said that some school buildings need to be demolished, and new, modern ones built. She’s talked about “right-sizing” the school system.

Streater agrees.

“We have a footprint that’s too big,” he said, with a caveat. In the past, decision-makers “ripped schools out of communities, didn’t talk about what we were going to build in its place.” (Streater himself is a graduate of Germantown High, which languished for more than a decade after being closed by the School Reform Commission in 2012. Construction is finally underway at the site, which will become housing and retail space.)

Any possible school closings or co-locations have to be part of a larger conversation, Streater said. What about co-location with city parks and recreation sites or libraries? What about public-private partnerships?

“There are things that we can do that the board is open to,” he said. “We need to have the tough conversations about things that will cost capital.”

In May, the city and school board finalized a deal to reopen the long-shuttered Sayre Pool in West Philadelphia. It’s owned by the district but will be run and maintained by the city. That was a harbinger of things to come, said Streater.

“What happens when the city and the school district partner? We can do anything,” he said.

There’s a perception among some education observers that Parker will be more friendly to charter schools than her predecessor. In her election-night speech, Parker said she would have no time for pitting charters against traditional public schools, and she’s talked about “quality seats” in any type of school.

The school board never authorized a new charter school during the Kenney years, but Streater said the board’s stance on charters is similar to Parker’s.

“I’m tired of this us versus them,” said Streater. “People are fighting a battle from a generation ago. We’re about a student-centered approach for quality seats.”

Streater and Fix-Lopez share a similar energy — ambitious, young (Streater is 40, Fix-Lopez 39), hard-charging, chatty. They came into board leadership together, deliberately.

“We were just going to be different in how we communicate. We were going to be more responsive to the village to inquiries about what was happening. We were also doing our best to humanize the board,” said Streater.

The two are often, but not always, in sync, and said they function as checks for each other — Fix-Lopez might prompt him to be more responsive, Streater said; they both have to remind each other to not get lost in the enormous demands of their nonpaid jobs. (Both have day jobs, too — Streater is a lawyer, and Fix-Lopez, a former district teacher, is a faculty member at Community College of Philadelphia, teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a small business owner.)

Fix-Lopez is the point person on academics, running the board’s “goals and guardrails” accountability sessions, and Streater feels like a lot of his job is “to say the same thing over and over again in different rooms.”

Streater says Fix-Lopez “takes a lot of unfair hits being the only white woman on the board. I think she has carried the standard of being the only educator on the board with grace.”

Both have children in public school: Streater’s two attend C.W. Henry in Mount Airy; Fix-Lopez’s son is a second grader at G.W. Childs Elementary in Point Breeze.

“We don’t say just trust us, we say come along with us,” said Fix-Lopez. “We have our kids in these schools.”