For passionate principal, new role

It was a hot summer day five years ago, a getting-to-know-you lunch between the new principal at South Philadelphia High and a veteran City Council member from the neighborhood.

In front of Otis Hackney was a seemingly impossible task: healing a school thrust into the national spotlight by violence against its Asian students, a school where the academics were abysmal and morale was worse. By the end of their meeting, Jim Kenney knew that Hackney, a Philly guy who was giving up a good job in the suburbs to come home, was going to succeed.

"Jim saw something in me that I wasn't sure of myself," Hackney said Friday after Mayor-elect Kenney announced that South Philadelphia High's principal would be Philadelphia's next chief education officer.

It's telling that Kenney plucked Hackney to lead on an issue the incoming mayor has said is a top priority.

Hackney, 43, has been a voice for neighborhood schools, a partner, a problem solver, a hard worker. He has spoken out for equity, for fair funding for the Philadelphia School District.

And, despite crippling budget cuts and the absorption of hundreds of students from a closing Bok High School nearby, Hackney turned South Philadelphia High into a "community school" - a neighborhood hub with a broad range of services and supports for families.

Kenney has pledged to establish 25 community schools similar to "Southern," as the school is informally known.

"I can't think of a more terrific person, a more knowledgeable and more dedicated person to the children of our city than Otis Hackney," Kenney said.

Hackney will replace Lori Shorr, who has been Mayor Nutter's chief education officer for eight years.

The full-time job is a broad one with responsibilities as small or as great as the mayor defines. Kenney has signaled he means for Hackney to have a real role in the administration.

Education activist and newly elected City Councilwoman Helen Gym met Hackney in 2010, after he became Southern's fifth principal in six years. Gym, who had been helping the Asian students being targeted at the troubled school, was skeptical.

It's safe to say that she's been won over.

Southern is wholly different now, Gym said. This winter, the school hosted a Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration, something that would have been unthinkable several years ago.

"He came into it with an incredibly open mind and a lot of energy," Gym said of Hackney's approach to his work. "I can't speak highly enough of his character. He's done exactly what you would want a chief education officer to do, which is turn a very difficult situation into a place of possibility."

Chris Lehmann, now an assistant superintendent in the school system, was a peer principal of Hackney's for several years. He's an admirer.

"The challenge that South Philadelphia represented was one that very few people could have succeeded in," Lehmann said. "What Otis did was incredible."

Fran Wilkins agrees. She taught English to nonnative speakers at the school for eight years.

"He was smart about what the school needed," Wilkins said. "He worked to listen to the staff, listen to the students, and his community outreach is amazing. I enjoyed working for him."

Hackney has a great Philadelphia story himself. A smart but restless student, he attended prestigious Central High, but was asked to leave because of lackluster grades. He graduated from West Philadelphia High, then enrolled in and left Hampton University.

Hackney installed heating systems for his father's business before beginning classes at Community College of Philadelphia. Eventually, though, he found his passion: teaching math.

He earned degrees at Temple and Lehigh Universities, then became a respected teacher at Germantown High before moving into administration, landing in 2007 at wealthy Springfield Township (Montgomery County) High School. He took the South Philadelphia job in 2010.

Hackney and wife La-Toya, a lawyer, live in West Mount Airy and have a daughter, Grace, who attends public school.

When Hackney took the podium after Kenney announced his appointment, he introduced a practitioner's eye view of the position. What he wants to fight for, he said, are things that will make a difference in classrooms, such as hiring more counselors.

Both he and Kenney, he said, "understand the generational impact of education."

Hackney said he would push the education issues Kenney articulated during his campaign: universal prekindergarten; community schools; college readiness; and career and technical education, programs he oversaw at Southern.

Superintendent William R. Hite Jr., who said he was excited to work with Hackney in his new role, hailed him for his work at Southern and said Hackney "has a genuine wealth of education experience and will serve all Philadelphians extremely well at this crucial juncture."

Hite also said he was placing an acting principal at the school.

But Hackney, on Friday, wasn't quite ready to leave. After posing for photos with his parents and aunt behind the ornate podium in the Mayor's Reception Room at City Hall, Hackney said he had to slip away.

A lot of people wanted to shake his hand, but there were more important people waiting for him.

"I have to get back," Hackney said, "to my kids."

kgraham@phillynews.com

215-854-5146@newskag

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