Philly school board takeaways: a $4.5 billion budget, pro-Palestinian parents and teachers rally

The Philadelphia school board adopted a $4.5 billion budget for the 2024-25 school year Thursday night at a lengthy, action-packed meeting marked by passionate testimony by pro-Palestinian parents and teachers.

Like school systems around the country, the Philadelphia School District is taking a major hit from federal COVID-19 relief funds drying up in September. But Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. and chief financial officer Michael Herbstman said they were determined to protect classroom spending.

Officials said the spending plan includes a $48 million outlay to keep assistant principals, teachers, counselors and others whose critical positions were paid for by federal funds this year.

Because Philadelphia is the only district in Pennsylvania unable to raise its own revenue, it relies largely on state and city funding to operate, and its expenses are growing faster than its revenues. Absent extra funding from Harrisburg or City Hall, officials project a deficit in 2024-25.

The board, newly constituted by Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, passed the spending plan unanimously.

As the board meeting began, about 150 pro-Palestinian parents, students and teachers rallied outside district headquarters, Palestinian flags waving around them.

Near the start of the event, rally participants observed a moment of silence for the people of Rafah. Speakers denounced the Israeli government, calling its actions in Gaza a “genocide.”

The group’s demands were varied: They said want the district to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, but they also want school officials to explicitly state that teaching about Palestine isn’t antisemitic.

Ahmed Moor, parent of a child who attends Penn Alexander in West Philadelphia, said he was concerned “chiefly that our children are being prevented from exercising their right to free speech.”

Moor pointed to the Northeast High student video about Palestinian art as an act of resistance, which was first shown at an assembly, then removed by central office administrators after a Jewish staffer and members of a group called School District of Philadelphia Jewish Families said the video was antisemitic.

The video’s removal ignited widespread controversy.

Separately, the district was accused of antisemitism in a federal civil rights claim filed by a Masterman parent.

“We cannot have white women calling the police and politicians on children of color anymore,” Moor told the board Thursday. Adam Sanchez of Rethinking Schools, an advocacy organization that promotes social justice teaching in schools, told the board that people were “weaponizing antisemitism to go after some of the best antiracist educators in Philadelphia.”

Northeast High parent Jethro Heiko, who is Jewish, said he strongly supports Philly Educators for Palestine, a group that helped organize the rally.

“This move towards a don’t-say-Palestine approach is very concerning,” Heiko said, likening the district’s overt and implied discouragement of students and teachers discussing Palestine “ to ‘don’t-say-gay.’ We’re going to turn Philadelphia into Florida.”

Ari Lev Fornari, a West Philadelphia rabbi with children at Penn Alexander, said he was concerned that “the school district thinks that critique of the state of Israel or the genocide in Gaza is being confused with antisemitism.

Some teachers asked the district to host a listening session with Palestinian students. Taslim Sabil, a Northeast High student, immigrant and supporter of Sudan and Palestine, urged the school board and district to “stop being complacent. Stop ignoring the struggles of your students.”

Public comment during the meeting was dominated by pro-Palestinian speakers; applause frequently broke out for their comments.

Some Jewish parents countered the pro-Palestinian parents, students and teachers with written testimony submitted to the board, saying they did not feel safe attending the meeting.

In a letter sent to the board separately by multiple people, about a dozen Jewish parents objected to Philly Educators for Palestine “using the term ‘Zionists’ as a code word for Jews, which allows them to make their antisemitic and anti-Israel statements in a way that they feel is socially acceptable. This leaves Jewish students and teachers with an impossible decision — to distance themselves from the belief that their Jewish nation has a right to self-determination, a concept deeply steeped in Judaism, both biblically and culturally — or become the subject of hate and vitriol by the very educators and administrators tasked with creating safe learning spaces for all.”

Following public comment, Watlington addressed the crowd.

“Educators do not direct or inform U.S. foreign policy,” Watlington said. Instead, he said, the role of schools is to teach accurate history, teach kids to think critically, and allow “diverse points of view to be brought into classrooms.”

The district recognizes its curriculum department needs more support, Watlington said, and is addressing that. He asked people to “give the district a little bit of grace as we try to work through these really tough times,” and to support its teachers.

A number of speakers also highlighted issues at The Workshop School, a citywide admissions school that has been singled out by the White House for its innovation and achievements.

» READ MORE: his Philly school got White House attention for its innovative model. Now, its existence is threatened.

The West Philadelphia school’s existence is threatened, its founders say, because of changes to the way the district admits students to high schools, moving from a process over which principals have say to a centralized lottery. Because of those changes, Workshop has been overenrolled and sent students it does not have the ability to adequately educate, the founders say.

Andre Baldwin, a current Workshop student, said the school’s aging, too-small facility was an immediate problem, too.

“Our pipes are leaking, our bathrooms are bad, and the air-conditioning has a mind of its own,” Baldwin said. “Lack of space is probably the worst problem we have right now.”

Teachers have to double up in classrooms. Administrators have no offices, but sit on chairs in the hallway. There’s no adequate space for special-education students to have the individual and small-group instruction called for in their individualized education plans (IEPs), Workshop staff and students say.

“The hallways are always a mess,” Baldwin said. Students are nearly on top of each other in the building, which was constructed as an annex for West Philadelphia High and not meant to be a full school, meaning “a whole lot of drama happens.”

Workshop has room for 72 ninth graders, at maximum. The district has assigned it 104 for the fall, nearly half of whom require special education services.

Matthew Riggan, a cofounder, said the admissions changes are “disastrous” for Workshop.

“We have students whose IEPs specify more than 50% of their week in pull-out support that we cannot provide, and students who are supposed to receive one-on-one support that has not been staffed,” Riggan wrote in testimony prepared for the board. “Instead, our teachers are left to meet all of these needs on their own. This has made it near impossible to differentiate instruction and has led to a significant increase in serious incidents. Several of our higher performing students are transferring out and our attendance has declined sharply. Our staff, which has worked heroically, is exhausted.”