Northeast Times

The nayoral hopefuls
tackle schools, ethics

Kids Stuff
By William Feldman

Welcome to Kids Stuff. Today’s column is Part 2 of my coverage of a student-run mayoral forum at Central High School. Five of the six major mayoral candidates attended the forum. They are four Democrats, U.S. Reps. Chaka Fattah and Bob Brady, businessman and former Deputy Mayor Tom Knox, and former City Councilman Michael Nutter, and the only Republican candidate in the race, Greater Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce President Al Taubenberger. Democratic state Rep. Dwight Evans did not attend the forum.
Again, the forum directly addressed local policy issues and strengthening the link between "public servants and their constituents." I personally do not like to read two-sentence excerpts from anything, because it was what someone else decided to include and exclude, which could sway someone’s opinion on a candidate or for that manner, any topic. What follows are some of the highlights from the forum:
SPEAKING OF REFORM
The third question involved what steps the candidates would take in working with the School Reform Commission to make children feel safer in schools and to improve schools, and what steps they would consider to regain local control of the district.
Mr. Nutter: "The mayor’s responsibility is that all citizens feel safe throughout Philadelphia, but especially our school students. Both parents and the student have the right to expect when they leave to go to school in the morning that they have more than a reasonable assurance that they will come home safe at night."
School building safety is also critically important, Mr. Nutter said.
"Just the other day, there was a very serious assault on a school teacher by students," he said. "So working with the school district to make sure that the Philadelphia police and the school district police have fully coordinated their efforts to make sure that the students are safe is very important."
As for school governance, Mr. Nutter said he has long believed that the mayor of Philadelphia should be responsible and accountable for public education. He noted that voters approved a city charter change that allowed the mayor to appoint all members on the Board of Education back in 1999, so that the mayor would be responsible for the top leadership at the school district.
"Local control should return to the city of Philadelphia," Mr. Nutter said. "That has to be a partnership that has to be worked out with the governor and the General Assembly. The one thing that we have to insist on is that the funding formula for public education is changed. It is shortchanging the schools in Philadelphia on both the regular schools under the school district as well as the charter schools. The mayor’s responsibility is to work with our leaders in the General Assembly as well as the governor, regional leaders as well, to make sure that the schools are properly funded here in Philadelphia."
Mr. Taubenberger: "Teachers are not policemen. Safety has to be absolute and secure in a school. Parents not only deserve but have a right to send their kids to schools where it is free of violence and they are secure in the day’s work, and that is education. Quite frankly, that would take whatever resources were needed. Local control, I absolutely, positively believe it. That is something that the mayor has to be on the forefront of. I would absolutely work as hard as I humanly can to have local control back in Philadelphia where it belongs."
Mr. Brady: "We need to take back control of our schools. I think that the school should look like a school, not a prison. You should come here to learn, and not worry about your safety. We need to increase funding for the schools. I think without question we had the problem or issue with the state takeover.
"Unfortunately, it is not doing that well when a month after you present a budget to City Council, you are saying that you are seventy-two million dollars in the red," he added. "That raises a few red flags there. It has to rest with the city of Philadelphia and its chief executive officer. It is picked by members of certain parts of the legislature that do move on, but the mayor through his tenure is going to be here for four years and maybe eight years, and you should hold the mayor accountable for that."
Mr. Fattah: "First of all, I am a big supporter of (school district CEO) Paul Vallas and the work that he has been doing and the SRC. I think the EMOs, the Edison schools, the private for-profits should have never been allowed in, and they should be ushered out as soon as we possibly can, and that is a ninety-million dollar savings. It is not my intention to push for local control of the schools if I am mayor. I think that governance is almost a distraction. You need to focus on academic achievement."
He did, however, suggest that the ratio of membership on the commission be split evenly between Philadelphians, the mayor’s appointees and the governor’s appointees, and he called for a continuation of a working partnership to improve schools.
"There are literally hundreds of Central grads who have received more Philly scholarships last year than the year before, and there are going to be more this year."
Mr. Knox: "Local control is important because we can do so much more for our students. We can do early start, I think that is important. We can have career training in our schools. There is proof that it improves attendance, cuts down on truancy and improves on the attendance in college. So we need to get career training opportunities for one-hundred percent of the students, not eight percent.
"Taking the schools back is a dual-edged sword," he said. "We have to make sure that the state is going to continue its funding and support our bond rating. Our bond rating is important, because right now we are at junk status. The only reason we get to borrow money at good rates is because the state’s credit is behind it."
STRAIGHT TALK
The fourth question was this: Why would a candidate’s pledge of honesty be any more believable than those of "pay to play" predecessors?
Mr. Taubenberger: "Any administration is filled with people that you don’t know their character. It is still the responsibility of the mayor. Just yesterday, I met with Rabbi Goldman of Temple Beth Ami who asked me the same question, but he also gave me the answer to that question. ‘Those that you hire in the mayor’s office should be just like family. It should be like a marriage. Look them over very well. Kick their tires, get to know who they are.’ There is also something that I live by. Know your job, know yourself and know your co-workers. With that kind of formula, it will help end ‘pay for play’ in this town."
Mr. Brady: "It is about your character, about the character of the people that you employ. I have been around politics for a very long time. I have been involved with and still the chairman of the Democratic Party. We get painted with the same brush about politics. But there is a reason why I have never been mentioned with any number on any type of federal indictment. I don’t know about some of these people, I have never met them. But it is about character. You have to have character. You have to know who you are. You have to research and the people that are going to represent you are an extension of you and of your character."
Mr. Fattah: "On my Web site, I have laid out a whole ethics and openness program for the government, and it is very detailed. It shows how we want to eliminate no-bid contracts, how we are going to open up the entire budget process, making it available online, how we are going to create an accountability system for each and every aspect of the government."
Responding to a question from a panelist, he added, "Because someone did something wrong, we color everyone else. The two students at Germantown High that allegedly harmed the teacher does not imply that every high school student in our city is going to attack a teacher. Because someone in government at some point did something wrong, does not imply that everyone in government is dishonest."
There are 23,000 people who work for the city of Philadelphia, Mr. Fattah added, "some of whom are your parents, aunts and uncles and are honest people. They are working hard every day. Some of them are doing dangerous jobs. We should not paint everyone with the same brush. We should be very careful."
Mr. Knox: "The mayor should hire the best people possible and he should take full responsibility for their actions. I am sick and tired of smoke-filled, backroom, big-boss politics that are permeating Philadelphia, where we have lack of good management, lack of productivity, pay-for-play contracts where you need a team of lawyers and a political patron to get you through the system. I am tired of the no-bid contracts for the select few. We have got to get rid of the patronage, the nepotism that is permeating the city of Philadelphia. I believe that we can do these things if we have the right mayor."
Mr. Nutter: "First, unlike my good friend Al here, I will not kick anybody. I will shake hands, look people in the eye and try to hire the best people. On the issue of credibility on this particular issue, I am the person that literally wrote the law in Philadelphia, re-wrote the ethics code, established a new board of ethics that will make sure that people follow the law and are trained properly.
"Put in place new transparent, open, no-bid contract revisions, campaign contribution limits for those that do that kind of business with the city of Philadelphia," he added. "So, the premise of the question is why should you believe anything that any of us might say? I am at least the person who has done things and put them in place. Other people will tell you what they plan to do and what they propose to do. I can tell you what I have already done to make this government function with integrity and openness."
Good luck to all the candidates.