Well, maybe you should have put a time limit on it. If I'm talking too much shut me up.
I mean, I don't mind. After seeing what everybody else did, you know, I don't care. Any way, hello to everybody. Thank you for coming out because it very important that we do to express our voices and opinions. You know who I am, Wendell Harris. I'm a parent, seven children, four of which are in public education. I'm a product of that education. My three other children 280 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 are on their way. I served as president of home and school association at four different schools over the pass years that my children have attended. 5 So I'm saying that the parents are involved. We 6 care about our children and there's parents that are 7 really concerned about this. A lot of parents don't 8 have all the information. As parents and 9 stakeholders, we must speak out. Too many are 10 speaking for us and saying the wrong things. 11 Our children are being attacked. Our 12 opinions and voices are being ignored. We cannot 13 and will not accept that. Who knows more than us 14 what's needed in Philadelphia but the true 15 stakeholders that is we are. 16 (Applause.) 17
I say to the Governor, without the support of the true stakeholders, community, our elected officials and people who have been trying to do just that with insufficient funds and resources, you will have the biggest urban revolt in America. (Applause.)
Edison Schools, Incorporated, has had a horrendous track record. 281 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 How can anyone advocate them as our saviors. A high percentage of their schools are elementary. The most problematic across the nation is middle schools and high schools. So I say they don't have enough experience. Tell us, Governor, why don't we see or hear suburban schools knocking down Edison's doors asking for advise and best practices? I haven't heard much about that. Why? Because there's not many. Also tell us if the funds aren't here for public education, how can they be here for Edison or private? People, when you're down, there's only one way to go and that's up. Governor, Edison Incorporated knows this but wants to control us and make a profit while doing it. A few of our politicians have sold themselves and us out for the same reason, profit. Profit as I defined it, is giving less and making more. And who can define that any better than Edison, Incorporated. What have they given Philadelphia thus far, its children and citizens? I say little of nothing, a big bias report. They already started making a profit, though, true to that definition. They received 2.7 million for a 282 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 three-month redundant study, tens of thousands in stock options, and a proposed fee over $230 million over a five-year period. Money that should and could go directly to our children. They have even proposed to sell the symbol of public education, the Board of Education building, one more obstacle in our way when they fail, and they will if given the opportunity. Governor, let's get real. As I said before at the board meeting, don't throw the baby out with the wash water. You change the diaper. And Governor, most of the crap in it didn't come from this baby but from you and your ill-guided advisors, which makes it imperative to us now that for the sake of our children and other stakeholders in Philadelphia that some done deals must become undone deals. We say no to privatization, no to Edison, no to Governor Schweiker and those who hold your views. But yes to a fair and equitable funded public education accountable to all its people. Thank you. (Applause.)
I think Mr. Harris put that quite eloquently. My name is Sarah 283 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 Gilliam. I'm the executive director for Parents Union for Public Schools in Philadelphia, a city-wide educational advocacy organization protecting the rights of parents and students enrolled in the Philadelphia Public Schools for nearly 30 years. (See attached testimony.)
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Helen Gym, Shelly Yanoff, Ed Schwartz. It's my understanding that Barbara is going to take Ed's place right now.
Hi, my name is Helen Gym. I'm with Asian Americans United. I'm a parent of a child entering public schools next year and I'm with Asian Americans United and a coalition called Philadelphia United to Support Public Schools. Yesterday, 800 people rallied outside City Hall with one clear message, no Edison and reopen the debate on public education. Let's be clear about one thing. In San Francisco, Edison Schools got kicked out by the School Board for racist disciplinary practices and for violating their charter to educate all their children. The 284 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 State had to intervene, take over the school and then convert it into a charter in order for Edison to be maintained as a school there. In Philadelphia we have had totalitarian measures like Act 46, stealth legislation in the form of secretive midnight amendments, close door dealings, empty promises, and fraudulent claims. Even now, the constant threat of a State takeover hangs over these supposedly open hearings. There is something fundamentally and deeply flawed about this company if this is what it takes to get them here. There are many problems of Edison schools that have already been stated. But the real problem of Edison is that the problem is bigger than Edison. Their mere presence has us locked into a ridiculous debate of, if not them, than what, the status quo? We do not disbelieve that Edison has the capability of turning around a few public schools, though not at a profit, obviously. But Never have they turned around nor has anyone ever turned around on a large scale urban school districts with high populations of poor and largely children of color. So I think we have to look deeper at the broader picture, for school are merely 285 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 tiny microcosm of the larger society around them. If our society is segregated, Our schools are segregated. If there are wide economic disparities in our country, there are wide economic disparities in our schools. The larger question begs how have we shown that we fundamentally believe that all people in our society are deserving of an equal opportunity? If we can't answer that question on the larger scale, how can we transfer down to our schools? In 1993 there were lots of debates about standards, but loss among that debate was a reference to something called Opportunity to Learn. Opportunity to Learn standards holds a guiding post for a new debate about public education. They were created out of recognition that academic standards could not be created in a societal vacuum. That is, how fair is it to hold children in urban districts which have so much fewer resources and much greater needs to the same standards as wealthy suburban districts who spend almost twice as much per student. While standards focused on teachers and students, Opportunity to Learn standards recognize that governments and administrations have to be held 286 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 equally and firstly accountable if academic standards were ever to be achieved. These Opportunity to Learn standards include such things as resource standards to assure that all schools have sufficient resources to deliver high levels of curriculum content. Outcome in capacity building standards to ensure that all schools have the continuing capacity to deliver a quality public education and are evaluated by the quality of the goods that they deliver to all students. They included research standards for implementing and monitoring equitable finance formulas for within and between schools and within and between districts. There a blueprint for the future that exists. Unequivocally, we are opposed to Edison and the wholesale sale of public schools in Philadelphia. We're opposed on principal, on the blatant profiteering, on the loss of quality jobs for our workers. We are Opposed to the process by which Philadelphians are silenced and shut out.
But most importantly, we're opposed to this Edison deal because we believe that it will never bring us to the fundamental problem of school system which is money and willpower. Do we have the money and the 287 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 willpower to commit the same resources and passion to our children as we do to all children in the wealthiest districts. By relinquishing our schools and by adopting Edison's budget-minded model, we will never come to that debate. As a parent, I never believed that a debate about education, about making it better is going to focus on cost-cutting and budgeting measures instead of equity and quality. We need to break this deal. We need to change the structure of this debate. We need to change who's making the decision. And we need to bring this debate home to the people and to the children who care about it the most. This is an unprecedented opportunity for the schools debate to change drastically. Edison has made its case. Last night, 800 people made their case. The question is, will you stand with us, the people, for a new future for our children? Thank you. )
Wow. It's always hard to follow Helen and it's always hard to speak this late in the night, but I want to thank you all for staying. It's not easy to sit and listen to all 288 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 this, so I appreciate it. As you know, I'm Shelly Yanoff from Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth and a member of the Coalition that Helen Barbara and Ed also are members of. (See attached testimony.)
I'm here on behalf of the Alumnae Association of the Philadelphia High School for Girls which passed a resolution last week -- my name is Barbara Dowdall, it's spelled D-o-w-d-a-l-l. I'm also English department head at Dobbins Randolph AVT School. The Executive Board of the Alumnae Association of the Philadelphia High School or girls hereby resolve that we support the full and fair funding of all public schools in the City of Philadelphia. We support the continuing and meaningful involvement of parents and citizens of Philadelphia in the governance of their schools, and oppose privatization of public schools. We take pride in the history of our school, in the accomplishments of our graduates, and in the quality of the current student body, staff, and administration. We urge all elected representatives including the Governor, Pennsylvania 289 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 State Legislature, Major and Philadelphia City Council to reject privatization of public schools and to do all in their power to continue and maintain local governance by and for the citizens of Philadelphia passed on November 2, 2001. And I would like to say names of graduates including School Board Member Sandra Dungee-Glenn. I think Dorothy Sumners-Rush had a daughter went to Girls High. Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds-Brown; Arlene Parsens-Bennett, first African-American woman to graduate from Penn Medical School; Barbara Harris, the first woman Bishop in the Episcopal Church; Ann Hobson Pilot, Principal harpist to the Boston Symphony; and Judith Rodin, President of the University of Pennsylvania. The staff of girls high is equal to the staff or the staff of other schools are equal. All the school staffs are pretty much from the same source, so we're all good. (Applause.)
Hi, I'm Ed Schwartz. I'm here from the Institute for the Study of Civic Values. I want to thank you for holding this hearing, not just for holding it, but last week 290 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 I got real concerned understanding that there was greater unity on the part of the elected officials and the School Board and everybody else on this question and has existed in some kind, and yet since you serve in different legislate bodies, the only coverage and the only focus was on the splinter group here that has been for what is coming down. And I felt that there needed to be some gathering of all of you to demonstrate the unanimity that does exist on this question, and you have done this. And I think that's extraordinarily important and you deserve credit for having pulled this off because you immediately have changed the political context. And to the extent that citizens out here saying, "God, there's nothing we can do," a meeting like this tells us all that we have a lot that we can do. And I made a commitment to a few people last week that I was doing an analysis of this plan, not knowing it would be a hearing at which I would even have a chance to present it. So I was working on this anyway and I found out about the hearing yesterday when I called Alexis Moore over at the School District to tell her what I was doing. So I'm here first to the have the whole 291 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 analysis that I'm offering here read into your record, so it's part of the public report. Having said that, then, I wanted to summarize some of the points that I make here, some of which you know. But I have to say that the perspective I brought on their analysis was -- this is evidence of the work of this company. So you look at what kind of analysis do they do tells you something about how good they are or how weak they are. 7 million, then what kind of work are they going to do to manage the system. And I was coming at this, and I put a lot of appendices here to indicate this. As someone whose whole work is not really not as well known in Philadelphia because much of it happened before I came here. I was the national president of the United States National Student Association in 1967-68 before I came here by a good many of years. And I was the national leader of student run center educational reform. I wrote extensively about it. And Even while I've been here, I've done some national conferences on citizen education that have been done with the National Council of Social Studies, the AFLCIO, which again, have largely not 292 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 been known in Philadelphia. D. and various things. Along the way I must confess and almost apologize that I made discovery that Chris Whittle confirmed tonight. I must apologize that I seem to be partially responsible for him. It turns out I learned in an article about him, an interview with him, that his first inspiration to get involved in educational reform was in -- the article said 19700 -- at the conference of this radical organization called the Nation Student Association. And I thought, well, that was two years after I was there, but the project I developed was there. Well, tonight it turns out that it was in fact the year I was president. He said it was a conference at the University at Manhattan, Kansas. I said, yeah, that's the one I was president. And he said I took this booklet out and he went back to Tennessee with it. I wrote it. So you have you my apology. I told him tonight that I was embarrassed, in fact, to learn that I might have had something do with this. So To the extent that one must give full disclosure, I give it. 293 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 But I came at the Edison report looking for what they said. And I guess I came up with some conclusions that have been uttered here, but I put some numbers behind them that might be useful to you in the debate. The first thing is that Edison, of course, goes through how terrible Philadelphia is.
But its basic point is that even though we're terrible, we can be saved because there are other cities like us which have been saved. And they make a comment along the way, well, yeah, child poverty and some of these other obstacles in Philadelphia exist, but that's beyond the scope of their analysis. And besides, there are comparable cities with similar size, they say after that, that have solved problems better than Philadelphia and therefore Edison is in a position to do it here. And The four cities they pick -- three other cities are Houston; Broward County, Fort Lauderdale; and Clark County, Las Vegas. Now, on the surface, I think when you think Philadelphia, those other three cities don't just immediately jump to mind. So it's laughable on its face, but obviously we need to be a little more statistic. 294 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 Well, Edison says that child poverty is serious problem. So I looked up in these other cities. 35 percent. In Broward County it was percent. In 6 Clark County was 14 percent. Less than half. Only 7 Houston came close on that one, and that was 8 29 percent. But Houston has a very distinct 9 difference in a couple of ways. One is the number 10 of people in Houston who have college degrees. Huge 11 importance. After all, it's family of a person with 12 a college degree is going to have a little more 13 educational support at home than a family without 14 it. 2 families with college degrees. Houston had 22 percent. There's a legacy here that I'll go into in a moment of Philadelphia that I think is essential to it educational problems. The final one that no one mentions here in these comparisons is the portion of students who actually attend public school. This has not come out in the debate, but it really needs to. 2 percent of the students go to private school, parochial and Friends schools and the rest of that. 7 percent. 295 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 In Broward County it's percent. In Clark County, it's percent. So that means that the better 4 students, many of them, are all going to public 5 schools in those cities. And in Philadelphia those same students are going to private and parochial schools. So of course the test scores in this other cities are going to be better because they reflect this much larger population that were going to public education then go to public schools in Philadelphia. And of course, this is well known because Philadelphia's Catholic School system and our Friends systems has a legacy and a life all their own. But it's also true that many of the better students in the City end up in private and parochial schools for obvious reasons. And if they don't succeed, they have to leave those places. And where do they end up? In public schools. This is a constant complaint of our teachers. But the analysis from Edison don't take any of this into account. 7 million -- I was paid nothing to do this. 7 million to come up with an analysis and these comparisons that are fraudulent on their face. 296 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 Now, the other thing that they do is in some ways understate and glide over the critical problem that we do face. And Pedro Ramos and I have discussed this one for a long time. And that is that we have made progress in the last five or six years, not enough, but we've made some real progress in improving elementary schools. A year ago before all this started, I put on our web site 36 elementary schools that had, not 5 percent gains in improvement in a year, but 10 percent. And I put them on and wrote a piece for the Inquirer saying, you know, we really ought to look at what those school are doing that's right as basis for perhaps best practices in these other places. Right now, 87 of Philadelphia's 182 schools which administer the SAT-9 test had reached the point where 60 percent of their students are at basic or better. That's almost half the elementary schools in Philadelphia.
In contrast, however, all but one of Philadelphia's high schools, 22 neighborhood high schools, that is, fewer than 23 20 percent of the students tested basic or better. And the one exception to that is Washington High where 35 percent are basic or better. And this 297 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 deterioration is well under way by the time students reach middle school. Here, there are only four middle schools out of 33 where more than 80 percent of the students are at basic or better. There are six middle schools where more than 80 percent of the students are testing below basic or worse. So the problem that we have here is that the gains that we are making in elementary school are not being kicked up and ratcheted up to the middle schools and the high schools. And anyone who wants the so-called quick fix now that we're all looking for has got to put a laser on that set of problems and really start figuring out how we can solve them. Well, the point is that the last place on educational earth where we can expect experience in that area is Edison Schools because it turns out that they never run, really, a high school. And I learned that rather happenstance at the annual meeting of the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs coalition where Reverence Flake spoke. " And his answer was we haven't gotten that far yet. And I said, "What? " I didn't say that 298 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. " He said, "What we do is sort of go up from one grade at a time. And then I looked at their web site in writing this report, and it's all sort of borne out there. Out of 136 schools, they've got 5 high schools. And only one of those high schools has been in operation for more than two years. I just wanted to be sure I was accurate with this tonight, the statement I make in the report that they have not yet produced a high school graduate, Chris Whittle confirmed with me in conversation tonight that that is accurate. Now, there is one school where they've had four or five years and that's the school called Mount Clemens in a little town in Michigan. And As it happens, one of the great evaluations of Edison which drove them ballistic because it was fair was done by Western Michigan University. And Their conclusions about Mount Clemens as follows: Mount Clemens Secondary Academies is a district contract school established in 1996. Both the Edison middle school and Edison high school share a common building with their district's only other middle and high school, Edison reported that the total enrollment in their Secondary Academies 299 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 totalled 481. Wouldn't we like have to have a high school that had only 481 students? 9 percent than non-white students. 9 percent in 1999-2000. This is their high school, folks. 5 percent in 1999-2000. So in the only high school that Edison has managed for as long as five years, A sizable proportion of the poorest and most challenged students have dropped out. And This is the track record that Edison will apply to our high schools in Philadelphia? If you're required serious surgery, would you hire a doctor who has never performed the operation? Yet this is what Governor Schweiker and Edison School wants us to do. Edison's general approach to improving high schools would take years to implement. "Please note," they say on their web site, "Edison contracts are typically K to 12 300 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. " So If implemented on this basis, it would take five to seven years more on the learn whether this long-range strategy will work. That's the basis for their seven-year contract. Now, Edison has modified this strategy for Philadelphia, however. Here they propose 60 to 80 schools suitable for private management that would be comprised to five to seven K to group, 12 each group consisting of a high school, an elementary, and middle schools that feed into it. Selection of actual schools for this group would be based primarily on academic performance.
However, strong community significant school reform would be factors in these selections Does this sound familiar somehow? It should. What Edison is now proposing is the cluster system under David Hornbeck's Children Achieving that we have just dismantled. Both this system and the rationale behind it are the same. We created a network of schools linked to a high school to achieve continuity in curriculum and development. We use the network to build support from groups in 301 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 the surrounding neighborhoods. And as students work their way through the system, they improve. This was Hornbeck's argument for the clusters back in 1995 and it made sense. But It didn't work. Whatever we gained at the elementary school level didn't stick later on. And yet now, what Edison wants is to try it again, This time using a better more coordinated curriculum. " Those of you who have seen that movie know what that metaphor meant. The other breathtaking proposal from Edison appears in the cost-savings section. It's been alluded to, but let's go into this. While every other group that examined our schools has stressed the importance of smaller classes, meaning more teachers, Edison insists that we can cut the number of teachers in the system over the next three to five years and still improve the quality of education. Well, on what base basis do they make this claim? Well, It's that comparable districts again. We're Back to our old friends. Broward County, Las Vegas, all those cities, but they have a broader one. 9:1 302 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 student/teacher ratio is really out of whack with the 100 largest school districts, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. Well, I went to the very article where they got the number. And the National Council is a little smarter, it seems, than Edison is because they make it clear that the hundred largest school district are homogeneous and certain characteristics such as race, ethnicity, poverty level, and disability status vary across these districts. The percentage of title one students varies from less than one to 95 percent. So how can Edison propose that we use this broad group of districts as a basis for any comparison, let alone to justify as important as reducing the number of student teachers needed to help at-risk disadvantaged young people succeed at school. Is certainly a distressed City. Now, Edison adds one other city that I thought was interesting, and it turns out to be even more interesting based on who was here today from them, and that was Detroit. They put Detroit in there. And Detroit is certainly a distressed city. So What I chose to do, since we heard so much about detroit today of former superintendent -- I didn't 303 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 have any idea this person would be here or they were part of the so-called Edison team, nut last night as I was putting this together I went on to the Detroit school system web site. And there on of my report their test scores. And As you can see in Detroit it appears that a whole bunch of school basically have less than percent of their 9 students reading and testing at grade level and only 10 a handful of schools, you know, above that. If this 11 is what it's supposed to justify, cutting the number 12 of teachers, Detroit, with failures like this, who 13 needs success -- or rather would success like this, 14 rather, who needs failure? 15 So there is a tremendous gap between 16 rhetoric and reality, between promise and 17 performance that lies at the heart at everything 18 Edison does. 19 As a start-up firm in the 1990s that 20 promised investors a fast route to wealth by buying into a surefire solution to problems facing urban education all over the United States, that's what its article said. But Now, as it has to turn the profit, it pleads that innovation takes time. Edison tells local School Districts that 304 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES.
010642 they can achieve miracles at a reasonable price. But then we read about all these school districts that have drummed them out for costing too much. Edison boasts that they can do a better job than the existing public schools, but then resents it when evaluators compare their performance with other comparable schools in a district, such as you heard today, and finds no appreciable difference. At that point, Edison has argued that comparisons are inappropriate. They should be only measured against what they propose to do. Edison is now trying to lure a handful of politicians, and you've had this dialogue tonight and neighborhood activist in Philadelphia with the promise of community control. Sort of charter school with more money. But its own report calls for ways to bring cost of charter schools down. This is a franchising operation, Edison. And bringing a Edison School to your neighborhood would be the educational counterpart to Wendy's. Nobody who is allowed to manage it. And now Chris Whittle tells a Philadelphia reporter, "We've been training for this for 13 years, in 50 cities. We've invested 305 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 $500 million to figure out 'how do you turn around struggling schools,'" when they've managed just one high school for more than four years with a dropout rate of low income and special education kids no 6 different from anywhere else. Edison tells us we need them because we're really sick. The question remains, would you let these people perform surgery on you? We believe Edison tells us that by having the right organizational and political contacts and by committing to a comprehensive improvement plan, the Philadelphia School District can become a national model for performance improvement. Well, the political context surrounding Edison has already been created. The Governor is trying to impose, as we've talked, against our will this whole plan. And here's where the political context lies, as I see it. Of seven state senators, six voted against it. Of state representatives, 21 23 voted against it. The Mayor of Philadelphia called 24 it fancy land when he read about it in the newspaper 25 the next day. Fifteen members out of 17 of this 306 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 City Council, I'm told, signed the resolution 3 opposing all of this. And Our representatives in the House of Representatives has indicated this evening led by Congress Chaka Fattah they are all against it as well. Both local newspapers have come out against the Edison takeover, along with Home and School Association, the parents union, all the groups you've heard tonight. This is the political context that Edison has helped to create. They tell us that in other imposed turnarounds, it did not matter how the governing body was selected, but by what the governing body did. Even they admit that various few stay or city turnarounds of local districts can be considered unqualified successes. The returns are in and it's a loser. But Edison doesn't care. In effect, Edison seems to be guided by Macchiavelli's principal in "The Prince" that it is much safer to be feared than loved. That they leave they can work successfully in Philadelphia on this basis, a place which values personal relationships and neighborhood and politics above just about everything else ought to by itself disqualify them for the assignment. 307 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 So Edison may be a business, but it has no business running our School District. It has misdiagnosed our problems in order to fit their prescribed solutions. In has no track record whatsoever in running an entire School District and it's managed only one school for more than two years, high school. It projects success for its efforts based on comparable cities that are not comparable to Philadelphia in any meaningful way.
It has chosen to involve itself here not through some meaningful process of negotiation and dialogue with the leadership and the people of this City, but as the enforcer of an imposed takeover by what amounts to a Colonial Government in Harrisburg. There are huge educational and fiscal problems facing the School District. The illnesses are quite real. Edison Schools is not the cure. I hope this is useful to you. I will be out on our web site tonight and getting to the press. I've tried to give some statistical ammunition for some of the points that we are making. I do feel in terms of the general public, just in terms of my reaction and by advise to you that when I learned that Edison had never run a high 308 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 school, that blew me away as I was sitting at that meeting. I think that getting that word out -- some of these other things are a bit more complicated, but that is simple. They pretend to have a track record. Everybody knows they've never run a system. But I'm sure that not many people know they've never even run a high school. And We know how necessary it will be to get somebody helping us in trying to rebuild these high schools. I want thank you for what you're doing here. I want to offer my continued help. If you go onto out web site, you will know or if you're e-mail listed every day I now have Philadelphia versus Harrisburg and I am putting on for easy-to-read every morning somebody can go to the web site and read the latest stories like this on what has happened each day. And I have renamed what used to be just called state government with a banner and a picture of our new governor under the battle the Colonial Government of Harrisburg. So when you go to the Colonial Government of Harrisburg, you can immediately e-mail the Governor, it's all there. As well as send e-mail to all of our elected officials. So I'm doing what I can and I'm really delighted -- 309 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642
Well, it's a good city in which to practice this imposition. And as I said to Chris Whittles -- I did say this to Chis Whittle tonight, I said, you know --
Let's just do this. I want to recess the hearing until Saturday at 10:00 a.m. and Then you and Ortiz can continue to talk.
Madam Chairwoman, I just want to thank the Chairwoman, Councilman Ortiz, Representative Mark Cohen, School Board Members who are still here, Sandra Dungee-Glenn, Vice President Dorothy Sumners-Rush, Chris James-Brown. I also want to thank Dr. Bivens and Mr. Bivens right here are going to return -- have waited all this time and decided to return on Saturday. We look forward to seeing you. You're always real troopers even when 310 11/8/01 - EDUCATION - RES. 010642 you're beating us up, so we really appreciate it.
And we'll make sure that you are among the first people. Thank you for staying. We really appreciate it. Thank you. (Council adjourned at 10:30 p.m.) - - - 311 C E R T I F I C A T I O N I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of November 8, 2001, were reported fully and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. RE: COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY ___________________________ Maureen Broderick, RPR and Notary Public