Krish Mohip, 2nd finalist for Philly superintendent job: ‘Your kids are why I want to be here’

Plenty of people say all kids can learn. Krish Mohip goes one step further:

“All children can learn, all children want to learn, and it’s up to the adults to make it happen,” said Mohip, a finalist for Philadelphia’s next superintendent of schools.

Mohip, deputy education officer for the Illinois State Board of Education, came to Philadelphia on Tuesday for a day of public meetings, making him the second of three candidates to field questions and make a case as to why he should lead the 120,000-student district.

» READ MORE: Day 1 of Philly’s superintendent candidate meet-and-greets starts with Baltimore’s John Davis

Baltimore chief of schools John Davis was in town Monday; Tony Watlington, superintendent of the Rowan-Salisbury school system in North Carolina, is up Wednesday. The three were chosen from a field of 400 candidates to replace Superintendent William R. Hite Jr., who leaves in June.

Mohip began his career as a kindergarten teacher in Chicago public schools; he’s also worked as a principal and “chief transformation officer” in Chicago, responsible for accelerating change in that city’s lowest-performing schools. Mohip also spent time in charge of Youngstown, Ohio, public schools after he was recruited to execute a state takeover of the small, struggling district.

That tenure was “very tense,” Mohip said; he was given extraordinary powers to bypass the school board and union contracts. He ultimately left before his contract expired, though graduation rates rose during his tenure.

He faced his controversial role in Youngstown head-on, saying that he “wasn’t crazy about” the parameters of the job, but that’s what he was recruited to do. Students were “stuck in failing schools. They were stuck at times with poor leadership, and I was there to change that,” he said.

But “I’m a strong advocate for public education, I’m a strong advocate for union labor. I’m a strong advocate for putting systems in place to help kids learn,” Mohip said.

In Philadelphia, he would build on strengths, said Mohip. But he stressed that he would use data extensively to make decisions. He said teachers, for instance, don’t really know how their students are faring unless they use summative assessments. Just as students often have dashboards — data that display how individual children are performing across academic measures — adults should have them, too.

“If a student didn’t learn the lesson for the day, it’s not the student’s fault,” Mohip said, adding that it’s incumbent on adults to “shift the way we’re instructing so kids can be successful.”

Mohip, the child of immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago, said he struggled as a high school student, and as superintendent would stress supports, making sure every student in the city has a connection to at least one adult at their school. He acknowledged educators’ weariness after the pandemic and said attention needs to be paid to their needs, too.

“I believe our teachers’ morale has been beaten down and it’s going to take time to build that back with them,” he said.

Mohip referred several times throughout the day to his work building an “instructional framework” as bedrock to a district mission. But, he acknowledged, that’s worthless if you don’t have buy-in.

“Culture trumps strategy,” Mohip said. Even with the best strategy, “if the culture’s wrong, none of that’s going to work.”

Mohip indicated he would embrace the approach to school safety favored by Hite, who has championed Chief of School Safety Kevin Bethel and his programs, including a diversion program that has dramatically reduced the number of students arrested in schools, and a rebranding of school police as the “school safety officers” emphasizing relationships vs. punitive measures.

Suspensions and expulsions were high in Youngstown, and Mohip changed the way school officers interacted with students. There were those who feared the shift would let students get away with offenses, but that wasn’t the point, Mohip said.

“That’s exactly the opposite of what we were doing,” he said. “We were still going to provide discipline to our children, but we were also going to wrap them in supports.”

Mohip sold himself as a consensus-builder but said he wouldn’t shy away from making tough choices.

“I have a track record,” Mohip said. “Your kids are why I want to be here.”

In the final event of the day, a town hall open to the community, one questioner said they graduated from Philadelphia public schools with literacy skills so low they were unable to read the words on their diploma. How would you fix that? they asked Mohip.

“Accountability,” he said. “I don’t know how a child makes it to 12th grade without being able to read. We have failed that child in preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade. That’s systemic failure.”

Mohip said his priority in Philadelphia would be ensuring students read at grade level. The district’s overall on-target math and literacy rates are currently low, with 35% of students reading on grade level and 21% of students meeting state targets in math.

The role of Philadelphia’s sprawling network of 85 charter schools, which educate more than 70,000 students — more than a third of all children in publicly funded city schools — is crucial for any schools chief.

Early in his career, Mohip said he saw charters as the competition, merely as schools that took students away from traditional public schools. His position has evolved, he said.

Looking at things from a child’s perspective, Mohip said: “I don’t think that child cares if their school is a charter. ... What they care about is that they’re in a good quality school.”

Asked by a student what his weaknesses were, Mohip acknowledged he had never run an organization as large as Philadelphia’s district, with its $3.5 billion budget, and said he didn’t know the city, but was up for both challenges.

“I’m going to take my time to understand what makes Philly Philly before I make any changes,” Mohip said. “I’m not coming here to make a ton of changes.”

Discussing the possibility of the Philadelphia job with his wife recently, Mohip said he felt as if taking it would be “going into battle. But it’s a battle worth fighting. We’re talking about making generational change.”

Mohip, who’s in his mid-40s, said he would send his three children to city schools if he gets the job. He said he’s eager to plant roots in Philadelphia.

“I am looking for a place where I can stay,” said Mohip. “My hope is that this will be my last district. ... This is not a stepping-stone to somewhere else.”