Eight people we'd like to see replace Superintendent Bill Hite
Sep. 30, 2021
A few weeks ago, every bit the new school year got underway, I wrote a piece raging against the shoddy direction that greeted students and parents as they headed back after xviii months of virtual learning. It was, I suggested, well past time to change the way schoolhouse leaders operate the district, to serve their students, families and staff.
Little did I know that change was already afoot. Hite appear this week he plans to leave the district after nine years, prompting a nationwide search for his replacement this autumn and wintertime.
This is a pivotal moment in our urban center. School superintendent is arguably the most important job in Philadelphia, and finding Hite's replacement is definitely the about important job so far of the new(ish) school board. Anyone who takes this task, especially at this time, has an insane claiming ahead of them. On summit of the crisis of unhealthy buildings, uneven quality, and pre-pandemic lagging academic achievement in a district where some 80 percent of students are living in poverty, in that location is the boosted challenges that stem from Covid-19—staffing shortages, pandemic-related learning loss, mental wellness challenges, and more.
"We accept come up a long way since I joined the School District of Philadelphia in 2012," said Hite. "Only, I'g the first to say, there is yet a tremendous amount of work to be washed."
Equally Hite himself put it during a press briefing on Tuesday: "Nosotros take come a long way since I joined the School District of Philadelphia in 2012. But, I'm the first to say, in that location is nonetheless a tremendous amount of work to be done."
Hite is leaving what may be the hardest job in Philadelphia. In role, this is why Marking Gleason, former Philadelphia Schools Partnership head and now a partner with pedagogy reform organization The Drexel Fund, suggests the question we ask shouldn't be "who" should supersede Hite—simply "what" the commune should even look like.
"The structure of the Schoolhouse District has looked unmanageable for a long time," Gleason says. "Let's offset with what a more manageable construction could look like. I would like to see the Board consider establishing an ecosystem of more manageable chunks, and then identify several great leaders, rather than indulge in a search for a knight in shining armor."
For now anyhow, that doesn't seem to be in the cards. At a printing conference on Tuesday, School Board President Joyce Wilkerson said they will immediately brainstorm their search for a replacement with a citywide listening tour, 17 sessions in 18 days, in every Councilmanic district and via Zoom, to hear from families what they see every bit the biggest needs for the commune. They will hire a search firm to help identify and vet candidates. Then, in mid-winter, they'll transport 5 finalists to an 11-member advisory panel consisting of a teacher; master; two guardians; two students; and leaders from lease schools, colleges, business organisation, labor and education advancement.
The plan is to announce a new superintendent before the end of the school year.
Hite was asked Tuesday what his successor would need to succeed in the chore. He had three suggestions:
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- You lot have to beloved children, be driven by what they're capable of accomplishing and concord on to that despite whatever developed criticism comes your mode.
- You take to love Philadelphia, with everything that'southward expert and not so good—communication he says then-Councilmember Jim Kenney gave him when he was first hired.
- You have to exist able to institute relationships at the local, country and federal level.
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Information technology'south telling that what he didn't include was what'southward been missing, and what the schoolhouse board faulted him on in his review final yr: The power to manage an organizational behemoth well.
Wilkerson, for her part, added some other qualification: "Someone who tin can move the needle for students on achievement."
It'south this, more than than annihilation else, that makes this an opportunity for Philadelphia. Nosotros at present accept an opportunity to put at the helm of the commune not merely a leader who can rally all of united states to the crusade of meliorate educating our children, and who can manage the operation similar children and families are precious customers—but also someone who can atomic number 82 the charge towards the kind of bookish outcomes that our children and our city desperately need.
Here, some ideas of people who might be the new school leaders Philly needs—including some long shots—from experienced superintendents, to academic turnaround experts, to business leaders with the direction chops the district needs now.
Heidi Ramirez
Hither's an thought: How about we get a leader whose focus throughout her career has been on academics? That's what we would get with Ramirez, an education consultant, who had successful runs every bit Principal Academic Officer in Milwaukee and Memphis, where in both cities she oversaw dramatic improvements in omnipresence, graduation charge per unit and student learning.
Those positions followed a short-lived tenure on Philly'due south School Reform Committee where she proved the virtually vocal (and prescient) doubter of then-Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's vision for Philly schools. As she made articulate and so, Ramirez has the sharpness, the passion and the precision that leading a district of 120,000 students requires.
Academic achievement is her guiding light—she says the key to turning around a schoolhouse system is a laser-like focus on "teaching, learning and educatee outcome," which fits with the School Board's new focus on Goals and Guardrails—and she has a compelling buoyancy that would be a nice contrast to Hite's cool at-home over the last decade. Every bit she said in a Citizen Speaks consequence over the summertime, Ramirez is wary of innovation for innovation's sake; rather, she has found success with an approach to academic outcomes that relies on best practices systematically applied.
"Curriculum matters," Ramirez said. "We don't talk about teaching and learning every bit a cultural shift." But, she notes, it is.
Paymon Rouhanifard
Rouhanifard was but 32 years old when he was appointed head of Camden Public Schools just every bit the district was controversially taken over by the country in 2013. An Iranian refugee, Rouhanifard was an outsider who (mostly) won over skeptics by successfully achieving his goal, in five years, of creating "fewer, better schools," every bit he told The New York Times when he announced his difference in 2018. Notably, many of those schools were charters, which educated 55 percent of Camden children when he left. But those charters? Thanks to a state police force, they were mostly Renaissance schools, admitting students from the surrounding neighborhood; responsible for renovating the most dilapidated buildings in the city; keeping the local janitorial staff; and even serving a college percentage of special teaching students than traditional schools. By the time Rouhanifard left to launch educational nonprofit Propel America Camden had started to see college graduation rates, stronger academic proficiency, fewer suspensions and more operation facilities. (Though there is still work to be washed.)
Alberto M. Carvalho
The Miami-Dade County Public Schools superintendent is a superstar, so beloved past the families in Miami (where he has spent his whole career) that he reneged on his dream job—chancellor of New York City schools, the nation's largest district—later on listening to Miamians heap praise on him and bemoan his departure for weeks. And with good reason: Under his leadership, every bit this Fiscal Times article notes, he oversaw Miami's graduation charge per unit jumping from 59 percent to 90 pct; created financial stability that did not impact learning or taxpayers; and embraced competition with a various selection of more 1,000 pick schools, including magnets, charters, career academies and single-gender schools.
All that has paid off, to brand Miami-Dade one of, if non the, best large urban school districts in the country—despite demographics comparable to Philly. Miami-Dade, Carvalho has said, is "that impossible district with high poverty and diversity where these things should not happen. But they take happened, and I fence to you, if we were able to exercise information technology in Miami-Dade, there is no reason as to why this miracle story cannot exist replicated across America."
Cynthia Figueroa
Every bit head of Mayor Kenney'south two-year-old Department of Children and Families, Figueroa already spends her days working to better the lives of Philadelphia children. From her perch in the Mayor'south office, Figueroa oversees over 1,500 employees, coordinating amongst several departments and programs: Section of Homo Services; pre-K; community schools; and what's chosen "prevention back up services"—after school programs, workforce development, summer meals and anti-truancy efforts. That piece of work has put her in a unique position to understand wholistically the needs of Philadelphia children, something schools increasingly take to address in order to be successful.
Figueroa'southward career has ping-ponged between government and nonprofits—she worked for Congreso de Latinos Unidas and led Women Against Abuse, before Kenney appointed her to run DHS in his first term. She approaches her piece of work with a sense of optimism about Philadelphia and even its poorest neighborhoods—just also with an urgency about the pressing issues for our city's children.
"We need to move the needle on the quality of life for children and families in Philadelphia," Figueroa said in The Denizen in 2020. "What are the ways we can practice that? How practise we create more equity in the experience families accept? What can we practice to alter the trajectory of children living in poverty?"
Richard Gordon
"Build Your Own Brand." That's the motto Gordon has instilled as primary of Paul Robeson High School for Human Services since 2013, when he took the captain as it was on the verge of beingness shuttered by the Commune. Gordon, who spent two years in the SDP's office of culling education, last year was named Principal of the Yr past the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and The Denizen'due south inaugural Integrity Icon.
His tenure has been cypher brusk of remarkable, a reflection of his own tremendous vision and leadership: He rebuilt the school culture from the pinnacle down; created partnerships with nearby universities and hospitals in West Philly; meets with every educatee to create a pathway around their interests, then connects them with internships, mentoring and out-of-schoolhouse preparation programs; put mental health front and middle, even before the Covid-related psychological crisis; instituted 1:1 applied science years earlier Covid, which put Robeson ahead of the bend concluding yr.
The result: Truancy fell past about 23 percent, schoolhouse suspensions below 5 percent—and, importantly, graduation rates are now averaging 95 percent, with l percent of students going to college and some other 50 percent going to the military or into the workforce. Can you lot imagine that citywide?
John Fry
Drexel Academy's president has indicated he plans to leave the institution he has led since 2010, which would free him upwards for the job of leading some other mammoth educational institution with even more than importance for the city of Philadelphia. Running Drexel—and earlier that, Franklin & Marshall College—may exist the best training Fry needs for the school district job: A school in and of the urban center, Drexel requires Fry balance competing interests on and off campus; work towards disinterestedness and inclusion for students and citizens; manage academic departments, a healthcare organisation, pupil and faculty demands—and ensure his graduates are prepared for lives and careers when they leave.
Fry is likewise, equally Citizen co-founder Larry Platt has said, a "true communitarian—the political philosophy fabricated popular in the 1990s that is all most finally bringing to life the Latin phrase on our currency, eastward pluribus unum: Out of the many, one. He's baked into Drexel a philosophy of civic date, turning it into one of the nation'south about preeminent universities when it comes to playing a office in its city beyond the comfortable confines of its own campus."
Michael Hinojosa
The superintendent of Dallas Independent School District—where he and his children all went to schoolhouse—has overseen academic gains in reading and math over the final 15 years in which he has been superintendent off and on, with a potent academic-focused leadership team. But it's his honorable leadership this school year in remarkably trying circumstances that makes him stand out. In defiance of Texas leadership, Hinojosa has mandated masks for all staff and students in his city'southward schools—a move that, as he noted in this Kera News commodity, puts him at personal risk:
"If the lawsuits [fighting Texas Gov. Abbott's ban on mask mandates] get overturned, I've got another tough decision to brand. Practice I continue to conduct civil disobedience and face a fine, or any other steps they could take confronting me? And at the same time, how can I follow a law that I believe volition endanger my students, my staff, and my community? To me, that would be intellectually dishonest.
I think [beingness a big-city leader with a strong reputation] has something to practice with the decision, the fact that I've been around. I'm non necessarily a militant, and I'chiliad non a reactionary; I'm pretty repose, I'm a solemn guy. But my reputation helps me to do this, and a lot of peers followed suit. If y'all didn't have the street cred with the legislature, the community, the board and your staff, it would be a dissimilar situation."
Ken Frazier
The North Philly native and graduate of Philly public schools recently retired (so he's complimentary?) as the first African American to serve as chairman and CEO of Merck Pharmaceuticals, an international company with 74,000 employees and a $thirteen.vi billion research budget. And so, well, he can run things.
He is also the kind of moral and inspiring leader we demand. In 2017, subsequently then Pres. Trump refused to speak out against the murderous Nazis in Charlottesville, Frazier was amidst the first to quit the president'due south CEO Advisory Council in protestation—just the latest in a lifetime of moral stands. He is co-chair of OneTen, a coalition of organizations working to upskill, rent and promote ane 1000000 Blackness Americans into family-supporting jobs; and an outspoken critic of voter suppression laws being proposed and passed in Georgia and other states.
Plus, he knows the children he'd be serving because he was once one of them. As he said when being honored past the Urban Affairs Coalition a few years ago:
"Mine is the story of whatever kid growing up in Due north Philly. One of the most invidious lies told in our society is that children are fundamentally constrained past the circumstances in which they're born and raised. It is a falsehood. I am show of 1 thing and one thing merely: Kids will live up to or downwards to the standards of the grown ups around them."
MORE ON SUPERINTENDENT BILL HITE
How Not to Start a School Yr
Will The School District Squander Its $1.1 Billion Stimulus Windfall?
Bill Hite, Reconsidered
Header photograph: Dr. William Hite | By Jared Piper for Philadelphia City Council18+ Ways To Aid Students (and Teachers) Succeed This Year
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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/who-should-replace-bill-hite/
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