Some are questioning a $450,000 contract Philly schools gave a consulting firm to support its new superintendent
The new Philadelphia superintendent says he needs help to achieve an ambitious vision. Others question the large expenditure to a Tennessee consultant.
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As he learns his way around Philadelphia and the massive, complicated school district he now leads, Tony B. Watlington Sr. will have the help of “transition services” — a year’s worth of coaching and guidance as he meets constituents, assesses the school system, and formulates a strategic plan.
The price tag for the services: $450,000, a sum a Harvard University education professor said was “extraordinarily high.”
The Philadelphia school board signed off on the expenditure in May, prior to Watlington’s official start as schools chief, saying the contract with Tennessee-based Joseph & Associates will equip Watlington as he engages “in learning as much as he can about the School District, its structures, personnel, goals, partners, and relationships, and about the City of Philadelphia and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as he transitions into the Superintendency,” according to board documents.
The contract has many Philly stakeholders questioning both the expenditure (Watlington himself makes less, $340,000 annually) and the consulting firm that landed the contract. One former school board member in Nashville, where Joseph & Associates’ founder was superintendent for three years, called the founder’s practices corrupt.
Who is the consultant and what are the ‘transition services’ being paid for?
Joseph & Associates, run by former Nashville Superintendent Shawn Joseph, was awarded $450,000 to support Watlington — the former North Carolina educator who came to Philadelphia after 15 months as superintendent of a 20,000-student school system — through June 2023.
The contract, first reported by Chalkbeat Philadelphia, pays for three phases of work: a listening-and-learning tour and 100-day plan; a transition team process and evaluation of district processes, operations and capacity; and the development of a strategic plan.
Joseph, who is codirector of the Howard University Urban Superintendents Academy, worked as a teacher, administrator, and central-office staffer before becoming superintendent of the Metro Nashville public school system, a district of about 85,000. He’s also an author; he wrote one book about a principal’s first 100 days and another, called Finding the Joseph Within: Lessons Learned Through a Life of Struggle, about overcoming obstacles in his own life.
Why did the district award such a contract?
The school board, in documents, said transition supports are “standard practice to efficiently develop an in-depth understanding of the needs of a district as large and diverse as The School District of Philadelphia, and will build on Dr. Watlington’s expertise as he evaluates the District’s organizational structures, financial position, and performance.”
A spokesperson for the school board declined to comment Monday.
Is this standard practice?
Paul Reville, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and the former Massachusetts secretary of education, said the breadth of the contract surprised him.
While boards may appoint an executive coach for new leaders, and formal or informal “kitchen cabinets” are common, the listening-tour process “typically in a large school system like this could be set up by the central administration on its own,” Reville said.
Officials have said Philadelphia’s central office is understaffed.
Watlington will clearly need to assess the district he’s now leading, and determine priorities and action steps, Reville said, but “your staff ought to be able to help you with that,” he said. “It sounds like a cross between an orientation process, a coaching project, a research project on best practices and a strategic plan. It seems like an extraordinary amount of money for something like that; I do wonder about whether the city’s going to be getting a good value for its money.”
Why did Watlington say he needed these services?
“Improving student outcomes and achieving the Board’s Goals & Guardrails, such that the School District of Philadelphia is positioned to be one of the nation’s fastest-improving urban districts, requires intentional and strategic actions,” Watlington said at Thursday’s school board meeting. “A first step to achieve this begins with engaging a transition team of local and national experts who are well-versed in the latest educational research and best practices to help inform our work.”
He hailed Joseph as “a nationally recognized educator and author who has improved outcomes for historically marginalized students,” including raising ACT scores, dual-enrollment participation, and the number of students who earn industry certifications.
What are stakeholders saying about it?
Shakeda Gaines, president of the Philadelphia Home and School Council, said Watlington may well need help getting settled.
But she’s upset that such a big contract is going to someone with no firsthand knowledge of the district.
“Why couldn’t it have been somebody in Philadelphia? This was the perfect opportunity to go back to the community to see how we can help and support ourselves. The outsourcing of money is problematic,” said Gaines.
Zoe Rooney, a district parent and teacher, said she thought it was important to get transition input from outside the existing administration — “I don’t have faith in the majority of existing leadership there,” Rooney said.
“On the other hand, I think the amount is excessive, and there are tons of resources in the communities that aren’t being tapped to their full potential, or at all, outside of listening sessions that seem unlikely to be that useful,” Rooney said.
Has there been public pushback to the contract?
When former Nashville school board member Amy Frogge heard Philadelphia had hired Joseph’s firm to consult, she felt compelled to sound an alarm bell.
Frogge, a lawyer, was initially a supporter and defender of Joseph, who led the Nashville public school system for three years until his contract was bought out early in 2019. But she wrote the Philadelphia school board last week “as a warning,” Frogge said.
She said Joseph brought in “millions of dollars in no-bid contracts and an array of unqualified, highly paid consultants” and said by the time he left Nashville, “the state recommended revocation of his state license.”
“I have never before or after experienced such corruption and dysfunction,” Frogge wrote to the Philadelphia board.
When reached for comment, Joseph said he wouldn’t dignify Frogge’s allegations with a response except to say her statements were “patently false.”
Joseph, a graduate of Lincoln University, said he plans on “spending a great deal of time in Philadelphia” and noted that he has “worked in and have worked with a number of large, complex urban and suburban school districts around the country.”