COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, April 5, 2006 10:25 a.m. - - - PRESENT: COUNCIL PRESIDENT ANNA C. VERNA COUNCILWOMAN JANNIE BLACKWELL COUNCILMAN DARRELL L. CLARKE COUNCILMAN JAMES F. KENNEY COUNCILWOMAN DONNA REED MILLER COUNCILMAN MICHAEL A. NUTTER COUNCILWOMAN BLONDELL REYNOLDS BROWN COUNCILMAN FRANK RIZZO COUNCILWOMAN MARIAN B. TASCO BILLS 060001, 060002, 060003, 060004, 060006, 060007, 060008, 060014, 060089, 060090 RESOLUTIONS 060019, 060099, 060100, 060119, 060172 - - - V A R A L L O Incorporated Litigation Support Services Eleven Penn Center 1835 Market Street, Suite 600 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103 215.561.2220 215.567.2670 2
Good morning, everyone. This is the continued public hearing of the Committee of the Whole. Mr. Vallas, would you please approach the witness table. I am told that there were letters that were distributed this morning from your office.
Yes. I can summarize the material that we're circulating in response to the --
Great. First of all, we're going to be providing Councilman Nutter -- and obviously we're going to make a copy available to the Committee, too -- with the transportation RFP, with directions on the transportation contracts that were awarded. We can't give any information on the bidders or the specific contract award until the School Reform Commission 3 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. has voted for it. We'd be violating disclosure laws on that. But we are going to provide him with everything else. We're also going to be providing a copy of the School Bus Operators Training Manual. We're also going to be circulating a copy of our drop-out testimony before Representative Roebuck's committee. The drop-out testimony explained the issue, talked about the collaborative, identified the problem and the scope of the problem, and then laid out the things that we were doing and that we were recommending. It is very comprehensive, and I think you'll find it -- while it's very comprehensive, it's not a thick presentation. It's one of our more economical presentations, but it's straight and to the point. So we'll circulate that and make that available to the Councilwoman who requested it and to the Committee as a whole.
If 4 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. you don't mind, Mr. Vallas, whatever responses that you're going to be sending in, would you send them to the Chair --
-- and we'll make certain that they're distributed. Thank you.
Also, two more things, the behavioral supports and enhanced partnerships with the City. We're circulating copies of that. And the John Hopkins report on drop-outs. John Hopkins is going to make that report public on Saturday. We're going to distribute copies, but we're going to ask that those copies be embargoed until Saturday when they have their press conference. This is their report. It's an independent report that we've been a big part of, but it's still just as a courtesy to them. They said we could distribute it, but they do not want it to be made public until Saturday when they have 5 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. their event. We are also finalizing the breakdown that you asked for in that specific line. It's going to take us a just a little longer, but we'll get it to you before the end of the day.
Thank you, Madam President. First, I'd just like to comment or ask you a question on how come you were so wrong on that PIAA thing you did.
No. I guess they can't. Let me point out, though, I mentioned yesterday, Councilman Kenney, that not only did we obviously do very well in two categories and the team that finished second actually could have easily competed at the small school 6 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. level, but they went up two levels because they felt their team was more competitive. But that same week, we sent nine Odyssey of the Mind academic decathlon teams to the state finals, and we're sending two of our teams to national competitions in chess. And, of course, there was just something in the paper today about the mock trial, about our successes with mock trials.
So I guess the rest of the state knows who we are now, right?
Is that the reason why we lost the million, you 19 think? 20
You know, there's 21 an argument to be made for anonymity. 22 The Archdiocese, of course, has 23 talked about or there's been stories 24 about them contemplating joining the 25 PIAA, too, so we're excited about that. 7 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC.
On a serious note, I wonder if you could go through a little bit on the $25 million loss and what it means and what's in the works to try to restore it or to try to mitigate the loss and what could we do.
Well, I've been told by leadership in Harrisburg that the $25 million is going to be there and that they're going to work to make sure that it's there. That said and done, let me say that when I was recruited to Philadelphia and I met with representatives from the legislature and I also met with the Governor at the time, Governor Schweiker, no one ever said that a portion of that money was going to be permanent. So this is totally news to us. And Governor Schweiker as recently as two weeks ago had told me that that money was intended to be permanent. So the whole idea that that money was temporary is simply incorrect, 8 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. or at least if it was temporary, it was never communicated to us, certainly not communicated to me. Secondly, I made a commitment when we negotiated with the legislature on how that money would be used, that I would earmark that money for the private partnerships, and that's where the money is going. It's going to the private partnerships.
So do you think that this is an initial kind of posturing and maybe there's a good chance that leadership can kind of get that back in some form?
I think it's posturing. I mean, people want to put other people on the spot. They want to say, Look, you're giving more money to Philadelphia. And, you know, they want 9 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. to do that to the Governor. They may want to do that to the Speaker, who has always been an advocate for Philadelphia. So I think that that's a part of it. I'll also tell you, a comment was made that, Well, Philadelphia gets 8 percent of the money and they have 13, 14 9 percent of the population. Well, that's 10 what funding formulas are about. They're 11 about earmarking money to the districts 12 that are most in need. I mean, that's 13 what funding formulas are supposed to 14 have elements of equity in them, and the 15 School District has the vast majority 16 of -- I mean, 85 percent of our kids are 17 eligible for the free and reduced school 18 lunch program. Rather than going in and cutting the funding for one district, why don't you raise the funding for all the districts, you see? I mean, districts outside Philadelphia do not benefit when Philadelphia is cut. Simply saying districts who are complaining that 10 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. they're underfunded, you're not going to solve their problem by cutting funding to another district. You solve their problem by doing real school funding reform and providing real and providing meaningful increases in funding. States across the nation are addressing this issue of school funding. Texas is doing it again. New York State is doing it. California is doing it. I mean, we need to do it here.
So at this point now, you believe that your lobbying efforts in Harrisburg are going in the right direction that we don't have to push the panic button and really don't need any type --
Yeah. I think it's early in the process, and I don't think we need to be panicking at this point. I think you have to let the legislature play things out, and sometimes the less said, the better.
If we can 11 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. help, please let us know.
Thank you, Councilman. Mr. Vallas, let me ask a question. In terms of after-school programs and expanded after school, we're continuing on with them. I mean, there's no threat that they're being cancelled?
No. Despite the apparent elimination of the federal earmarks, our after-school and summer school programs have been worked into our general budget. And in the past, we used part of the Specter money to fund after-school and summer school programs. We have reprogrammed existing dollars so we can sustain those programs. If we get the Specter earmarks restored, and the Senator is working very hard to restore that money -- he's been responsible for adding $7 billion to the 12 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. health education and human resources budget. If we are able to get additional money, I will use that money for our alternative schools and our transition schools; in other words, our drop-out prevention and drop-out intervention programs. So if that money is available. So the after-school, summer school program money is there. It's in the budget. It's going to remain in the budget regardless of what happens in Harrisburg with the million. And any 14 money that we get from the federal 15 government, if we get the federal 16 earmarks restored, we'll use that money 17 for drop-out prevention and drop-out 18 intervention. 19
Thank 20 you. 21 Councilman Kenney, are you 22 finished? 23
Thank 25 you very much. 13 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. Councilman Rizzo.
Did I hear yesterday, Mr. Vallas, that -- and maybe your transportation person can come to the table, if necessary. Maybe you can answer the question. Did I hear you say we have 30,000 students that we transport?
Well, I say this in gest, but it seems some mornings and afternoons that we have a bus for each of the 33,000.
Yeah. We also bus for the parochial and private school kids and we bus for all the charter school 14 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. kids.
The point that I want to make today is that I know that this isn't a science, but it seems to me that something needs to be done, when I look up at a bus at the beginning or midway through their day when there's two or three students on a bus that has the capacity to haul 40 children or more. And I don't know about your own buses, but the ones that we -- if we're paying a vendor to provide a school bus that provides transportation for 40 people and we're putting ten students on the bus, something is wrong with that picture. When can we get to the point where we can size the vehicle -- especially with the cost of fuel, diesel fuel now, and these buses are all diesel. It's starting to skyrocket. I think we need to adjust and adjust quickly. We can't, in my opinion, transport a half a dozen, a dozen students in a vehicle that's probably getting six, seven miles 15 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. to a gallon of diesel fuel when it has the capacity of transporting 40. So I think one of the missions immediately should be that we start supplying vehicles to meet the need rather than one size fits all.
Right. Let me respond, because I've been wrestling with bussing issues for years. When it comes to the general population, you'll rarely find a bus with 35, 40 kids. If you do see a bus with three or four students on it or five or six students, you get that bus number, that driver's license, and you send it to us, and we'll tell you whether or not it's a special education bus or a general population bus. If you see a bus with a more limited number of students, a lot of times we have to bus for IEPs. In fact, we have to bus -- we bus some kids ten miles out of the City for an IEP. There are instances where we have to bus a 16 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. single individual. Now, hopefully they're not a large -- they're in a special ed bus. In some cases, they're in a taxi cab. But the IEPs drive a lot of our bussing, too. When we do our general bus route pick-ups, whether it's public school, parochial and private, there are a number of pick-up routes, and we do the routing so that we can maximize the number of kids on the bus so that we can, in effect, fill the buses so that we can control our costs. But we have to bus thousands of special education kids for their specific IEPs. And a lot of times we cannot mix the general population kids with the special education kids. You see what I mean? So some of those buses may be buses for special ed or special needs kids. But I'm going to ask -- I don't know if you have an additional comment, but I'll be more than happy to give you a 17 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. breakdown of buses and the number of kids who are routed on the bus.
Honestly, I don't need to nit-pick in that detail. All I'm saying --
-- as a citizen, when I gested about having one bus for each student, at night you go to some major intersections -- what made me think of this, I was in the Northeast at the intersection five points where all those intersections come together. It's Rising Sun, Cottman. Without exaggeration, I just looked around the intersection. There were a dozen school buses, one at every intersection at that location. It just looked like there was just nothing but school buses. And I looked around and I didn't see one of them that was full. One location there were three in a line. It just seems to me that based on transportation costs today, that we 18 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. need to -- whether we can do it in-house or have to get a consultant involved in reworking. Three or four years ago at this hearing, SEPTA became receptive of working with the School District. I know there are certain restrictions that SEPTA cannot do, but they opened the door a crack to say, Come to us. Maybe they could also be a vendor of school bus services to the School District, because they have the equipment, that they are local, that maybe that could bring down your cost. SEPTA never said no. They said they needed to talk about it. And I asked the people at SEPTA, and they said that there was no conversation with them about potentially transporting some of your students. I understand that there was a time when they were prohibited from doing that. I don't know if anything changed. Maybe they're still not permitted to. 19 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. But, again, they didn't slam the door in my face on that one. They said, Hey, look, we could talk about it. So I don't know whether that would be a value to you to have SEPTA involved in this process.
We can certainly talk to SEPTA again, but let me point out because I don't want -- first of all, all your points are well taken, but I don't want to create any impressions that buses are driving around half full. If you are a general bus for our general bus services, we route specifically to maximize the number of kids on those buses. I know. We meet regularly on transportation, trying to identify additional transportation cost savings, and we've done most of the routing that needs to be done. I will tell you this: Up in the Northeast, that's where we store many of our buses, and a lot of buses after they've done their routes make their way 20 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. to the bus barn on the Shelcroft property in the Northeast. So if you're in Northeast Philadelphia an hour and a half after the school day ends, you're going to see a lot of buses with maybe a handful of kids, because they have multiple routes and they'll be dropping those children out on multiple routes. But that said and done, your point is well taken. We'll get back to you. We'll explore that again.
In all fairness, I think I started my conversation saying that, look, I could have caught it at the end of the run. I could have caught it in the middle. Not really an accurate observation, but all I know is that if we have some areas where we don't fill every seat. To your transportation person, my last question is, there's some media reports recently that seatbelts might be coming and other protective devices for school buses. Are we monitoring that 21 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. very closely? I know it's interesting to me why we still don't have protective restraints in school buses. Where are we with that and would we be permitted to install seatbelts in our buses today or do we have to wait for the legislation?
Right now we're restricted from installing because of the type of seat and fastening devices that need to be in the buses are not in the old buses. So when they pass the legislation -- and, like you said, they talk every year about this, and we attend the national conferences and we do pay close attention to that. When it happens, we'll be ready, and it will probably come in with legislation that new buses will have it and they probably won't do a retrofit just because of the structural devices needed to hold the seatbelts.
Could I ask you to consider this, because from what I 22 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. hear, it's very close to happening: If we buy any new buses, could we buy them so they could be retrofitted, could the anchorage be put in? In other words, could we have a vehicle that would be relatively inexpensive, because I hate to have a vehicle in our fleet that would maybe have a longevity of eight, ten years and we say, Oh, unfortunately, we bought it in 2006 or 7 and we didn't put the anchoring plates in that we need for belts. So even if we don't, I don't think it will be much of an upcharge to have a vehicle that could be retrofitted, or check on the possibility of us being able to put seatbelts in those vehicles even though the legislation doesn't require.
I wanted to mention, in the last three years, we have purchased -- we have about 600 buses. We have purchased 50 small buses now for the routes that you were talking about that only have nine, ten students. So we now 23 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. have 50 of the small buses. And federal law requires those buses to have seatbelts. So all of those 50 out of our 600 do have seatbelts. So the students are becoming used to seeing seatbelts and learning about how to use them.
Great. And, again, my observations are strictly based as a layman, with no knowledge of how it works other than -- and, again, I learned something today. I could be just witnessing that particular intersection as one that all the buses pass through. But it seems we have a tremendous amount of buses. Thank you.
Good point. Just to make a general point about transportation, we spend upwards to $95 million in transportation, and we only get -- we're only reimbursed on the average about one-third. So that scenario, as we look to bring more efficiencies, that scenario, we're 24 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. struggling to get more efficiencies. And I'll tell you, we transport for everybody, everybody. So, I mean, it is a huge financial burden. When you consider that, that's about four percent of the entire budget. So any savings in that area is savings that can go directly into the classroom.
One other area that I think that you could possibly reconsider is that for years, we've been talking about more of a relationship with our Fleet Management people, and we talked about that for many years, and from what I understand, our Fleet Management people have very little interaction with the School District. There were some thoughts that you probably could save a few bucks if our Fleet Management and your fleet people got together in areas of maintenance and areas of part purchases, that that could also drive down your cost. Because Fleet Management was very interested in joining 25 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. hands with you, but, again, I understand from Fleet Management that there was very little movement, if not some resistance, in doing that.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Brown.
Thank you, Madam President. Good morning, everyone. Could we please go to of the document that you shared with us, walk through a couple of those items regarding additional savings and efficiencies. The first, with the new teaching hiring bonus being eliminated, please provide the why and what has been the impact.
It's going forward 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. and there's really no impact, in part because we have three applications for every single vacancy. So what we're doing with that six-month bonus is, we're -- there's a three-year bonus of about $3,500. We're actually going to be looking at establishing a single bonus that would cover the teachers in Year 3 and to give the teachers either an option of getting the bonus or actually having their Master's degree paid for. So, in effect, what was the point of giving someone a bonus after five months? I call it the "being there" bonus, particularly when we have more applicants than we have positions for. Rather, let's backload the third year bonus, because we want teachers to be here for two or three years, and then let's give the students the option of either taking the bonus or having their Master's degree subsidized. We're actually negotiating with an institution right now that would, in 27 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. effect, provide -- that would put teachers in an 18-month Master's degree program that would guarantee that they were highly qualified long term, and the cost of that program would not be much more than the cost of the individual bonus.
Oh, let me also point out, this doesn't affect the -- we still have the hard-to-fill bonuses. So all the schools -- teachers who locate in tough schools are teachers who locate in -- who are teachers who are filling hard-to-fill positions, those bonuses start immediately. Those bonuses impact them the first day on the job. So the only bonuses we're looking at consolidating are those that really went 28 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. for just the general teachers. So rather than do it in the fifth month, we want to make sure that the teachers are here for three years, and then we give them the option of taking the bonus or getting the School District to subsidize their Master's degree. But there's no impact on hard-to-fill positions or at-risk positions, at-risk schools.
Hard to fill are defined as a skill set, like math and science, purely?
That's right. Physics, math and science, ESL, things like that.
To principals -- let me first say thank you for responding to my letter regarding what I saw as a need for African-American male principals in our schools. Speak to us about the process 29 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. for getting men of color in the pipeline so that you have more teachers who move to leadership as principals to be in our schools.
Sure. Let me make a general comment that this year for the first time, the majority of principals in our system were basically minority principals, and the overwhelming vast majority of our African-American principals or -- well, when I talk about minority, the majority of our principals right now are African-American principals. And the ratio of male to female principals is improving. In other words, we are getting more male principals in. The District has, I don't think, ever had that threshold. On the teaching side, about a third of the teachers in the school system are African-American teachers, and that number has held steady the past couple of years. Let me point out that we are 30 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. recruiting more African-American teachers, higher percentage, but over the last three years, we've had, through early retirements, people leaving the system, taking retirement, taking the early retirement program, we had a large number of teachers leave, and a good percentage of those teachers who left were basically African-American teachers. So I think last year -- What were our recruiting numbers for African-American teachers?
Good morning. Tomas Hanna, Office of Human Resources. Our recruitment of total teachers of color last year was, about 18 percent of the new teachers we brought in 19 were teachers of color. 20
Twenty-three 23 percent, that's correct. Which is a number upon which we must improve, and to that end, the District has put forth the 31 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. Teacher Diversity Campaign, which we're actually wrapping up and plan to present to Mr. Vallas and to the SRC a series of recommendations that will sort of get us in a better place with regard to sourcing, to marketing the District, to ensuring that these populations that, call them underserved, we've got to do a better job of attracting. What we realize is that many of our future teachers of color are not in colleges of education. That's a challenge. And so we're looking at other opportunities, other sourcing opportunities, where might we find folks who are African-American, who are Latino, who are bilingual, who are Asian. It is a large population. Our District, as you're aware, is about 85 percent students of color, and our teaching population is about 40 percent. So we have to sort of deal with that.
So on 32 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. that, let me just put on the record at the time you deem appropriate, could you please forward some semblance of that report to the Chair --
-- so that we could be better informed and hopefully reduce the questions around that? So, again, back to principals. What type of incentives, initiatives, recruitment strategies do you use to get men of color in the pipeline so that they move to leadership?
Well, what we do, let me -- before I answer that question, let me give you a statistic. I think about the most recent statistics I've looked at is, the colleges of education nationwide, I think about ten percent of the teachers that they graduate from the colleges of education are African-American teachers. So the struggle here is going to where the African-American teacher candidates 33 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. are. Even the local universities, if you look at the percentage of teachers that they're graduating from the local colleges, they're embarrassingly low. So we have got to recruit nationally. So one of the things we do when it comes to recruiting new teachers, one of the things that we do when it comes to recruiting new principals is, we simply don't recruit locally. We recruit nationally. We've also begun to subsidize -- we set up a program last year where we subsidized student teachers. We have a student teacher subsidy program. We take student teachers and, in effect, we provide them with a subsidy. We give them pay. But in return, they have to go through all the training that a first-year teacher goes through, 100 hours of professional development training. They also then do extra duties in the schools, and many of 34 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. them work in the after-school and summer school program. This has allowed us to triple the number of student teachers who work in our system in a given year. This has also allowed us to recruit a much broader pool of student teachers and increase the diversity of our student teacher pool. So we think this program alone will help us improve those numbers, because if you have 1,100 student teachers, 1,200 student teachers in your system during the course of the year -- it used to be 300, 350 -- and maybe 250, 300 are basically teachers of color, it gives you a lot of flexibility to recruit those individuals into permanent positions and improve your diversity numbers. Let me speak to principals. Fifty-two percent of our principals, they just gave me the statistics, are African-American. And I think in part it's because three years ago we set up a 35 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. program where we created a Teachers Academy. That Teachers Academy has now evolved into the School District's Leadership Academy, and we just recently received a $4.2 million grant from the Broad Foundation to support that academy. And what we're doing every year is, we are identifying 30 to 40 top principal candidates and we are, in effect, training them, putting them through a year-long training program to train them to be principals. And obviously when we recruit our principal candidates, we have much greater flexibility when it comes to recruiting and advancing our diversity goals, too. So if you would look at our graduating class from the Principals Academy over the last three years, over half of the graduates have been basically minority principal candidates. Most of those principal candidates find their way into principal vacancies in the School District. 36 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. So that has helped us, because, in effect, we're growing our own. We're identifying high-quality teachers, teacher leaders, assistant principals who have great track records, and we're putting them in an intensive training program to train them to be principals. We are certainly recruiting with diversity in mind, and as a result, we have a much broader and more diverse pool when it comes to selecting new leaders for our schools.
Okay. I am encouraged by that, but when we look at the discussion yesterday raised by Councilman Goode on the plight of African-American boys and when we know what research tells us about the need for role models for African-American boys, then the thinking might follow then that there needs to be an added aggressive reach for African-American men leaders so that you have them in the schools to be role models for these boys, because that 37 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. all contributes to their ultimate success or lack thereof. So I'm encouraged to hear about African-American -- the numbers, but my principal question again is, what added strategies are being considered to recruit African-American male principals?
One of the strategies that we're putting forth in the Teacher Diversity Campaign is identifying best practices around the country. You may be aware of the Call Me Mister Program out of South Carolina that --
It's called the Call Me Mister Program in South Carolina and it attracts African-American males into teaching, but with the focus of down the line looking at them as potential leaders in schools. And when you see the report, you'll see that it's based on some of those best practices in terms of 38 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. what we might be able to do in the District. That's one major issue that we're looking at. The second one is, when we look at recruiting teachers from outside the District, we have a program called the Philadelphia Teaching Fellows, and it's a contract with an organization called the New Teacher Project, and built into that contract in fact is a goal of 35 to 40 percent teachers of color being brought in. So we've built that into that contract and understanding that that is a major goal of the District. So those are two major issues. As you asked, we'll forward the report to you with regard to how that's looking. And the Teaching Fellows is an alternative certification program. So all of our alternative certification programs have that goal in mind. Beyond that, there are two other areas. One, we're looking at 39 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. enhancing our work with power professionals. Seventy-six percent of our power professionals are people of color, and we believe that a large number of them are highly qualified already, have an Associate's degree or 60 credits or more, and they're in our schools currently. They understand our District. They understand our City, understand our children. And so we want to build relationships with them. Understand that it's going to take a little while, but they're already with us and it's an area that we want to follow up on. Lastly, the Philadelphia High School Academies, Inc. has an Urban Education Academy and there are a number of these academies in our high schools. So it's not just looking at power professionals. It's also looking at our current high school population and instilling in them the love for teaching and an opportunity to go to college and to come back to Philadelphia and work 40 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. here. We're poised, as these young men and women come out of the programs and go into college, in essence, to offer a job guarantee. If you were a District student and you've gone through this program and you're certified, we're prepared to offer you a position.
Has there been an inventory amongst the African-American male teachers in the school system wherein you could find out which of those want to move to leadership principal positions? Has that kind of inventory taken place?
The inventory is less of an inventory and more us identifying top educators through our principals. And also, the Principals Training Academy is so well known and so popular, top-performing teachers will apply for admissions into the Principals Training Academy. So we have no shortage of 41 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. candidates who want to enter the Principal Academy. So we are literally able to be very selective, and we only select the highest quality candidates with the most potential. Also, the real good news here is, we get a diversity of applicants. So we've been able to enroll in the academy with an eye towards diversity. It's been much easier for us to make our administrators core much more diverse than it has been the rank and file 14 teachers, in part because it's a smaller group. But the bottom line here is, once again, just to point to the leadership statistics -- first of all, diversity of my management team is well known, but among the principals, 52 percent of the principals are African-American and I think over 60 percent of the principals who I have appointed since I've been here, since 2002, are African-American. So we've been experiencing a lot of success in recruiting minority 42 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. educators to positions of leadership in the School District's central office, regional office, at the same time also at the local school level. The greater challenge for us obviously is the rank and file teachers, but I think we've got the programs in place to do that. I think our numbers are going to improve, despite the fact that the colleges of education are not aggressive about recruiting potential teacher candidates for their colleges of education.
There have been some informal discussions about that. Has there been a sit-down with the Deans of the Department of Education in the local universities to respond to this phenomena?
Certainly. We've met with approximately 13 universities to talk about the whole issue with respect to teacher recruitment, and what we're saying to the 43 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. universities is that we really want and value a diverse teaching force, and we're asking them to provide opportunities to somewhat put the finger on the scale to provide some incentives to increase the numbers in the college of education. I think there are two issues. It's not so much around recruitment, but there's an issue around retention of folk, and our efforts have been two-pronged. Not only to recruit, because I think we've cast our net wide with national searches. This year for the first time in many years, we employed an executive search firm to identify quality leaders of color. We are beginning to recruit in places such as NABSE. National Association of Black School Educators is a frequent place we're looking. We've developed partnerships and we continue to develop partnerships with the historically black universities who have that formal alumni network that 44 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. we can certainly reach out to. But the other work is around once we attract folk to the City, how do we keep folk, and we've begun to put in systems. Mr. Vallas and I meet with a group of senior African-American leaders monthly to talk about support systems that we can provide administrators coming in, mentors and things of that nature. So the effort is two-pronged, recruitment as well as retention.
What has been the response, reaction, level of commitment from the college Deans in the local universities?
The world is pulling at them. I mean, the reality of it is that when you look at many universities -- and one that comes to mind is Spellman. When we talked with the folks in Spellman, they graduated 17 educators. Spellman is a very well known liberal arts school in Georgia. And probably what the Deans are telling us in 45 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. places like that, there are probably 200 to 300 school districts that are after those folks. 5 So certainly one of the things 6 we're going to begin, and I think 7 Mr. Hanna spoke to it, is the fact that 8 to grow your own really appears to be the 9 most effective strategy for people coming 10 to the City and staying in the City. I 11 think that's a vital piece. 12
So I need 13 to ask the question again. What has been 14 the reaction, the level of commitment 15 from the Deans of the college of 16 educations of the local universities? 17
Very positive. The state university system has talked about the fact that even constructing a dormitory in Philadelphia which would allow this to be a regional center. Specific conversations with Temple have been very, very positive. St. Joseph's has been very, very positive. So we're very encouraged. 46 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC.
That they're willing to work and partner with us to provide, in the critical areas, folk of color by allowing and putting their finger on recruitment efforts for them bringing young people into the college.
But I'll tell you this: There are wrestling issues that go far beyond the diversity issues. They're wrestling with accountability issues. They're wrestling with increasing pressure on the part of the United States Department of Education to now require tougher standards for the colleges and universities. I mean, believe me, they're being tugged in multiple directions, too. Plus, many universities have shaken up their own Departments of Education and have made leadership changes in their own Education Department. 47 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. So believe me when I say the best way -- we need to work on a grow-our-own strategy, but ultimately our most effective programs to recruit minority teachers are alternative certification, are programs like Teach America, are programs like the student teacher subsidy program, because that allows us to get a very large pool of teacher students, and the larger the pool, the more diverse that pool is going to be or the larger number of minority teachers you're going to have in that pool. I mean, those are the type of things ultimately that are going to -- and then recruiting nationwide. You know, one of the reasons we've been strengthening our relationship with the United Negro College Fund is so that we can be more effective about recruiting on the campuses of Howard University and other universities, you see? So those are the things 48 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. ultimately that are going to help us improve our numbers. One final point to make, too, is, the introduction of site selection into the School District's union contracts is also, I think, going to have a long-term positive effect on making our teaching core more diverse. Why? Because now teachers can be selected just not based on seniority. And if the majority of your principals are African-American; in other words, the majority of the individuals who are making decisions about teacher selection, and they can make selections based on talent, based on need, based on the need for a talented minority teacher, based on the need to have a male teacher in the school, they're not going to be blocked by rigid seniority rules. They're going to be able to make that decision based on what the best need for the school is. Last year, we recruited how many new teachers through site selection? 49 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC.
Through site selection, we brought in about 700 new teachers, and I will tell you that during the site selection process, 40 percent of the new teachers who were hired prior to August were in fact teachers of color.
That data I don't have currently. I can get that for you. That's a good point, though.
We're talking about we have a shortage of white men, Latino men, African-American men. We're outnumbered.
Of all the arena, there's a shortage of African-American men. All right.
Some people would say that's good. 50 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC.
It would depend upon who you're talking to. A few years ago, you discussed this innovative out-of-the-box measure where you were recruiting former men in the Armed Services. What's the status, developments, update on that?
You mean besides the fact that many of their tours of duty have been extended? Believe it. I'm not exaggerating. I mean, there's been a lot of retirements that have been postponed or a lot of individuals -- they've referred to it as a back-door draft, where individuals have not been allowed to leave the Service because of the severe shortages. It's called Troops to Teachers, and we're not getting the numbers we'd like.
That's right. That's right. We think that there's a lot of reasons for that. Part of the 51 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. reason is, tours of duty are being extended. It's not that people are re-upped. It's this back-door draft where people's tours of duty are being extended.
I was excited about that program. Let's move now to student trainees saving 4 million. What will be done to meet the need of the nurse, the psychologist, the bilingual ESOL and other professionals since you're moving -- you're filling them with student trainees; is that what this means?
Well, what we're doing is -- we have shortages in those areas that we've had difficulty filling, and so what we're doing is, we're expanding our apprenticeship program so that we can significantly increase the numbers and address our shortages. For example, counselors, we have a ratio of counselors one to 450, 52 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. one to 500. Incidentally, it used to be one to 1,000. So we would like to hire more counselors, but we don't have the money to hire more counselors. So what we've decided to do is, we've decided to recruit on the college campuses and the various related departments that provide individuals with the counseling training. Our goal this year is to recruit about 150 counselors, and the ability to do that ultimately is going to save us money, as opposed to if we went out and we hired 30 full-time counselors. So we're referring to efficiencies not so much that we're going to replace existing counselors with university counselors, but rather more that we're going to try to increase our numbers by expanding our university intern and apprenticeship programs, thus bringing efficiencies to those. So we're able to take the numbers up a notch, get the ratios down and not incur the cost that we would have 53 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. to incur if we were simply going out there and hiring additional professionals.
And the same, I would imagine, would apply for nurses.
We're doing it in all areas. For example, there's a lot of student nurses. The dental programs here have -- we've been talking to the various dental programs about getting dental services out to our schools. We have a relationship with the Philadelphia College of Optometry, and they work with our nurses to provide eye exams. Now, these are their students providing the eye exams. But we're just not doing vision screenings. We're now doing eye exams. I mean, one of the things that I did in Chicago in '97-'98, I decided to look at the students who had faced retention and to look at their vision problems. Because if I take off my glasses, I can't recognize anybody on 54 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. the floor here, and I didn't find out that I had this horrendous eyesight issue until I was like in 8th grade. So anyway, I decided that I would test all the 8th graders, and we discovered that percent of all the 8th 8 graders who had failed failed their eye 9 exams, not just failed their screening. 10 Thirty percent failed their screening. 11 Two-thirds of the 30 percent ultimately 12 failed their exam. 13 So we decided to embark upon 14 this campaign to give thousands of kids 15 eye exams. And I don't know. To date, 16 we've given probably 6,000, 7,000 kids 17 eye exams, and they actually buy them 18 glasses if they failed their eye exams. 19 We could never do this 20 in-house. We don't have the nurses and the in-house staff to do it. We could not hire the professional ophthalmologist to do it, so we've worked out relationships with the universities. Their students go in and they serve 55 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. their -- they do their medical apprenticeships. They get the experience. They get the training. We, in turn, get the discounted eye examinations. So we're trying to do this with psychologists, counselors, social workers, in addition to the student teachers.
Okay. Madam President, I have many more questions, and yesterday you had the ten-minute rule. So I just have one follow-up question on the eye piece and then I need to participate in this ten-minute round.
Follow-up eye question. The Eagles initiative, is that system-wide?
The Philadelphia Eagle eye -- 56 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC.
Well, it's system-wide in that they go from school to school, but they don't have the resources to address all of our needs.
No. It's all schools. Brenda is coming. The eye initiative with the College of Optometry is costing us about a half a million. If we did this through the various ophthalmologist professionals, it would probably cost us upwards of $2, $3 million to have those types of exams done.
We actually screened about 170,000 students this past school year, and out of that number, 21,000, a little over 21,000, failed the 57 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. vision screening. And what the Eagle Eye Mobile does, it actually goes out and it follows up with the screening and it actually fits children for glasses.
Yeah. The College of Optometry also fits children for glasses, not one but two pair so that they have a back-up pair as well. We've served approximately 21,200 students this past year.
Through the glasses. Those are children that we're getting glasses for and who in the past would never get glasses. I was screened every other year when I was in school, but no one ever took me to the eye doctor, and it wasn't like I was neglected at home. I had two parents. I had grandparents who lived with us for about 20 years, and the Eisenharts upstairs who thought we were their kids, too. So we had all sorts of 58 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. parents, but nobody ever took -- no one ever asked the question that, Well, does he have vision problems, is he struggling academically because he has vision problems. So it wasn't until 8th grade that I got my glasses. And now I wear my glasses constantly. So 21,000 kids who would not have glasses have glasses today because not only obviously the Eye Mobile, but also the work of the Philadelphia College of Optometry.
So finally on this issue then, given the number of children that were diagnosed and need glasses, that becomes a one-time saving grace for them. What kind of follow-up is done with parents to help them get it, that young people need to be evaluated every two years, whatever the profession says?
We screen. We screen. We are required by law to screen all the time. So if you screen, you fail 59 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. your screening, we look to see if you have glasses. If you don't have glasses, boom, you're, in effect, provided with an eye exam and you're provided with glasses. So the screening is done all the time. It's just not once-in-a-lifetime screening. We're supposed to screen -- it's an annual screening that we do. So that's helping us. I'll tell you, there was a case two years ago where through the eye exam we discovered that a student had a brain tumor, and we were able to have that student treated and the student was able to recover. The student would have died had it not been for the eye examination. So there are just -- there's some great stories as a result of this effort. But we would never be able to do it if we weren't taking advantage of these university partnerships and if we didn't -- because, once again, I think 60 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. the university system in the Philadelphia metropolitan area is one of its greatest resources.
We didn't have a College of Optometry when we were in Chicago that we could just go to to do this type of partnership. We had to do it with all these individual providers. We had a contract out with groups like Mobile Vision to go in and to do eye exams in individual schools. So we're very fortunate that we have this initiative, and I think Brenda has done a superb job, which we're beginning to try to do the same thing with dentistry. We're making some progress and there's a lot of interest in that. And so now we have this mobile dental program that goes from school to school. They spend about two weeks in the school and they check all the kids' teeth. And so we're moving in that direction. 61 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Miller.
Thank you, Madam President. Good morning, Mr. Vallas and company. I just have a few questions. Mr. Vallas, I can't remember the category of schools. The only thing I can remember is a reconstructed school. But the schools that were low performing and caused the state takeover, what do you call those?
So I was wondering if any of those schools have progress to the point that the academic performance is progress to the point that maybe the category might change?
Yeah. When the 62 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. state takeover occurred and I arrived, we put some schools under the private managers, the universities incidentally, and then we had a group of schools that we put in the restructured categories. These were like School District-managed failing schools. Many of those; in fact, well over half of those schools that we put in our restructured school category, actually made AYP and they moved out of the restructured school category. Many of the schools taken over by the private managers have in fact made AYP and have moved out of that category of low performing or struggling schools. So all told, we've gone from 19 schools in 2002 making adequate yearly 20 progress, the No Child Left Behind 21 definition for improving schools, to 132 22 schools making adequate yearly progress, and the number of schools making adequate yearly progress two years or more has grown to 108. In fact, it more than 63 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. doubled just last year alone. So the answer to it all is, yes, there are many schools that are no 5 longer in that like lowest performing category and they've moved out.
That's really good to know. Do we have a list of who those schools are?
Absolutely. We could get you that list. We'll submit the list.
Okay. Great. Yesterday and in reviewing your testimony, one of the things you said, and you said something similar today, yesterday I had a question that said what is a highly qualified teacher. What certifies that a person is highly qualified or top performing? Is there a test? Are there evaluations? How do we know who is and who isn't?
There are so many 64 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. definitions.
Tomas Hanna, Office of Human Resources. Highly qualified is a moniker that's been labeled by the federal government under No Child Left Behind. That means a person who is either certified, has passed a test that demonstrates the candidate's proficiency in that subject matter. So they have to have a Bachelor's degree, be certified and have taken some sort of test that determines that they are highly qualified in their content area.
So they could be highly qualified coming in the door?
It has nothing to do with experience, classroom performance, test scores?
Typically full certification is akin to being highly qualified, correct. 65 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC.
Does that also include top performing? What's top performing? What's a top-performing teacher, which is a term that's been used here by the School District, specifically Mr. Vallas, top-performing teachers?
I think I used the term "highly qualified" synonymously with a top-qualified teacher, highly qualified teacher.
Okay. So now if a teacher comes in with all the certification and the college education and has passed a test and maybe they're not performing, I mean, what happens? How do you know that? Who monitors that?
We have a number of ways in which to monitor. Our biggest -- the way that I think we get at it best is around student effectiveness. We have put together a very strong instructional management system which allows us to take a look at youngsters every six weeks to see if youngsters are 66 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. developing at a pace. Then we put together a series of interventions and supports. Just as we have intervention and supports for students when they're not performing at a level in which they need, we have those same types of interventions for teachers, and they can range in having a mentor teacher or a new teacher coach working with them, to visitations, to even strategic coursework to allow the teacher to make the gains that are necessary for student effectiveness. And eventually certainly on some rare occasions sometimes we just are unable to make those interventions and sometimes we may ask the teacher to leave.
So I guess one day we'll read that we have so many students in Philadelphia schools really performing well. I think that's the goal that we all have. Based on the number of charter 67 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. students, how many Philadelphia public school students do we now have? It's about 225,000?
It varies from day to day, as you can imagine. We're in the neighborhood of 225 to 275, correct.
Okay. And I think that after-school programs really help, not so much the academic programs but also the extracurricular activities. I think it really helps children buy into and feel better about that individual school. So I was really glad -- I did see Germantown High's band out there practicing one day, and we were really shocked. I mean, we parked the car and sat there and watched for a long time, because we thought it was really good. Do you have music instruction in some of the schools other than the bands?
Most definitely. Throughout the region, certainly we don't 68 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. have as much as we'd like. One of the things we've done is began to take a regional perspective with respect to having programs in each region, which allows us to, where we don't have concrete programs in each school, to regionally get together. We have more bands now than we've ever had. We've increased our bands threefold in the last 48 months.
But, Councilwoman, to answer your question about specific music and art programs, yeah, there are music and art programs in the schools. To address the issue of lack of funding, what we've done -- before last year or entering into last year, there were about 40 schools without an art teacher and/or music teacher. So what we did was, we created a number of programs, a number of contract programs. One of those programs was called the Artist and Residency Program. In effect, what we did was, we contracted out with community-based 69 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. organizations, like Germantown School of Music and things like that, and universities. Once again, the university model. What we did was, we would be able to send artists and music teachers to schools, where they would spend about on the average two days a week in that school working on art and music programs. So it was an attempt to make sure that everybody was covered. So if the question is does every elementary school have a full-time, five-day-a-week art teacher and a full-time, five-day-a-week music teacher, the answer is no. But does every school have an art and music teacher at least part time working in that school during the school year? The answer is yes.
Good. And what about the instruments? I know that my daughter when she was in public school and joined -- and she had a music teacher that came a couple times a 70 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. week -- we had to purchase her instrument, which prevented a lot of children from being involved in the instruction.
In addition to the full-time and part-time music teachers in the schools, we have the itinerant teachers, who, incidentally, will spend at least a half a day to a day in every school teaching individual students musical instruments. These are the specialized music teachers. So we still have those. I think there's still about 70 of them who go from school to school. But when it comes to musical instruments, there's no problem there, because we used the sports facility authority money that has been allocated to us to issue what we call a school equity bond, and we've used a portion of that proceeds to purchase art, music and sports equipment. We've purchased, I think, upwards to $2 million in band and musical instruments just in the last 71 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. couple years alone. I can give you an exact number. So what we've told schools is, if you need musical instruments, we'll give them to you. So believe me when I say -- and that's a direct result of the leadership of the Council. Blondell Reynolds Brown, I believe, Councilwoman Brown, that was the initiative you pushed about getting the stadiums to earmark money to schools. We've used that money, obviously supported by the Council as a whole, we've used that proceeds to replenish our equipment. So I'd like to think from an equipment standpoint when it comes to instruments, when it comes to sports equipment, things like that, we're close to being on par with some of our suburban counterparts. We still have shortages in individual schools that may not have a full-time, five-day-a-week music and art teacher, but I think we're making strides 72 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. by having these part-time teachers in the schools.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilman Nutter.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, Mr. Vallas, Ms. Olanipekun-Lewis and Mr. Thornton. First, thank you for the wealth of information that you provided, which I will read through, regarding yesterday's discussion about school buses. And for all of the District employees who spent, I'm sure, the better part of last night trying to put all those materials together, I extend my apologies to you and your families, and hopefully we can still remain friends. I'll get through 73 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. those materials, but I do appreciate the quick turnaround. I had some questions from yesterday and then, of course, some new ones from today. The first is, let me start in the binders that I know one person spent a lot of time putting together, so she'd be very upset if I didn't walk you through all tabs. 11 Tab 9 I believe is health 12 services, student health services. You 13 had already gone through the issue of the 14 vision screenings and the eyeglasses. I 15 commend you for that activity. What I'd like to know is, how many school nurses do we have?
Good morning. We have approximately 300 school nurses. We have a nurse shortage, so we also have a contract of services for our shortage. We service the parochial schools, as well as our public schools, and we staff the parochial schools at one to 1,500 students, and we 74 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. staff --
I'm sorry. That was parochial schools is one to 1,500?
And who provides school nurse services for the charter schools?
Point of information, Madam President. 75 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC.
The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Brown for a point of information.
On the issue of charter schools and nurses, who makes the decisions?
Right. So who makes the decisions on how a charter school spends its dollars that it receives?
All we can do is hold charter schools accountable for performance.
Academically or financial performance or if there are issues involving life safety, but we cannot go in and tell charter schools 76 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. that they have to hire a music teacher, an art teacher, that they have to reduce class size. We can't tell them what programs to add. We can't tell them what curriculum to use. They're really independent, autonomous schools. We provide the number. We provide the money. We provide the transportation, but we cannot provide them with -- and we hold them accountable, and that's the limit to what we can do. And the state law is very, very specific; in fact, very restrictive, on our ability to interfere with charters.
Well, okay. But having said all that, I mean, where does this school health program fit in with regard to the general dictates of what you have to have in the school? School health is not an essential service? 77 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC.
There are state mandates, school health-related mandates, that the state puts down that the charters have to implement; for example, the mandatory vision screening and things like that, the vaccinations, the various exams that are mandated. But we are not supposed to provide those services. The charters are given roughly the same funding allocation that our individual schools have, including the Title 1 and Chapter 1 and discretionary money, and it's really up to them to make a determination how they're going to meet those needs. So the state kind of lays out what their mandates are, like they lay out what our healthcare mandates are, and then it's up to them to implement the mandates. I can't go in, for example, and look at a charter and tell them that they have to do this and this and this on the healthcare side. Our oversight is really restricted to academics and 78 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. financial. Beyond that, the law is pretty clear about our -- and even that, we can't do -- we can only do academics on a year-to-year basis. I can only do financial on an every five-year basis. So our ability to go in and really monitor them and micromanage them is limited. They've got the mandates. The legislature's attitude is, they've got the mandates, they've got the money, now they've got to implement the mandates.
The public school code mandates a certified nurse, one nurse, for every 1,500 students. So they have to follow those guidelines.
Which means if they have 800 students, they may have a part-time nurse.
Let me ask this question: Just in the public school setting, one to 800. We have 300 nurses. Those are School District employees?
We have 278 School 79 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. District-employed nurses and then we had contracted services, but we also provide services for private and parochial schools.
Both. We have both in there. We have public school nurses in there and we have contracted services.
So where does the 278 number come in versus the 300 that you gave me earlier?
The 278 are actually District-hired nurses. Then the balance are contracted services, because we have a shortage of nurses.
And those 300 people are covering -- is the number still 264? Do we still have 264 schools?
Well, public 80 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. school kids here, we have 175,000 public school children and we have -- there's close to 30,000 charter school children. And then I'm not sure how many parochial school children. There are about 264, 265 schools, give or take a few.
So you're covering 264 public schools. How many parochial schools?
I don't want to -- a number comes to my head. I don't want to throw it out because it might be wrong.
So how many days a week does each school have a nurse in the building and for how long?
Some schools have full-time nurses. It's based also on the student population and the need of that population. If there are medically 81 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. fragile students assigned to a particular building or programs with medically fragile students, we may assign a nurse more frequently than others. But every school in the District has at least the part-time service of a nurse. And there's also a plan in place on the day that the nurse is not in the school, the nurse assigned to that school has a back-up plan in place. If she or he needs to get there immediately, they will get there, but there's a health service plan in each school that the building administrator and the health team has access to.
Well, is there ever an occasion where there's not a school nurse in the building?
There are occasions when there's no school nurse in the building. On that occasion, if a medical emergency occurs, there's a back-up plan, and the nurse in the neighboring area is sent for or the nurse 82 4/5/06 - WHOLE - BILL 060001, ETC. assigned to that school. What we try to do is assign a nurse to schools in the general vicinity so that he or she can get there immediately.