Committee on Education, February 21, 2024

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, February 21, 2024 10:20 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCILMAN ISAIAH THOMAS, CHAIR COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS, VICE-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER

240007 RESOLUTION: 240028 - - -

Good morning, everybody. Today is Wednesday, February 21st and this is the Committee on Education. Before we start today's hearing, myself along with my colleagues and most of the people in City Hall as well as City government, we today mourn the unfortunate passing of our Chief Clerk Mr. Michael Decker. So before we start today's hearing, I'm not the Council President so I can't do it the way the Council President would do, but I at least want to take a moment of silence to recognize his life, his legacy, his work as well as his 40-plus years of service to the City of Philadelphia. (Moment of Silence.)

Thank you, everybody. Again, today is Wednesday, February 21st. I now note that the hour has come. Mr. Maynard, will you please call the roll to take attendance. Those who are in attendance -- we're not virtual. Mr. Maynard.

Chair Thomas.

Good morning. I'm present.

Vice-Chair Phillips.

Present. Good morning, everyone.

Councilmember Squilla. (No response.)

Councilmember Gauthier.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and colleagues. Present.

Councilmember Lozada. (No response.)

Councilmember Ahmad.

Present. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Brooks. (No response.)

Mr. Chair, a quorum is present.

Thank you. A quorum of the Committee is present and this hearing is now called to order. This is the public hearing on the Committee of Education regarding Bill No. 240007 and Resolution No. 240028. Mr. Maynard, will you please read the titles of the bill 18 and hearing resolution to be heard before this Committee today.

Bill 240007, an ordinance amending The Philadelphia Code to add a new Chapter 21-3400, entitled "Youth, Name, Image and Likeness Protection," to establish provisions related to education and counseling for certain Philadelphia youth and their families who are considering licensing publicity rights, all under certain terms and conditions. And Resolution 240028, authorizing the Committee on Education to hold hearings concerning the practice of leveling and its impact on students and teachers in the School District of Philadelphia, especially following the learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Please be advised the Committee will hear Bill 240007. Then exit public hearing, go into public meeting to vote on the bill 19 and then resume the public hearing to hear testimony on Resolution 21 240028.

Thank you, Mr. Maynard. Before we start our hearing today, would any member of the Committee like to make any openings remarks? (No response.)

Hearing none, Mr. Maynard, will you please call the first panel we have to testify this morning.

The first panel that we have consists of Professor Kenneth Jacobsen from Temple University School of Law. Professor Jacobsen. (Witness approached Witness table.)

Good morning, Professor. Please state your name for the record and you can proceed with your testimony.

Thank you. Good morning. My name is Kenneth Jacobsen and I am a practice Professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law and also the Director of the Sports Law Program at Temple Law School. I'm here today to support the Youth, Name, Image and Likeness Protection bill. Preliminarily, I want to commend Councilmember Thomas for his foresight and wisdom in bringing this bill to the floor. By way of background to give you some idea who I am apart from being a professor, I have negotiated sponsorship and endorsement deals for professional athletes. I'm a nationally recognized expert on name, image and likeness. I've published in Bloomberg and other media outlets. I conduct continuing legal education programs on name, image, likeness and I have a deep personal interest in name, image and likeness as well which is why I'm here today. The name, image and likeness is as its name suggests. It is a way where an individual can make money off of their persona, off of their name, off of their nicknames and other things. Because of a change before 2021, both high school and college athletes were not allowed to make any money off of their name, image and likeness or they would lose their amateur status and eligibility. That all changed in 2021 on a college level. And on a high school level, our athletic association, Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association has promulgated rules and regulations governing NIL, so high school athletes are able to monetize their name, image and likeness. The problem is that the regulations on both the college level and high school level are confusing. They are on a college level not consistent and there are traps for the unwary. If a student does not strictly follow those rules and makes a misstep, they could lose their eligibility in high school. They could also lose their eligibility in college depending on what happened. Also, where there is money, there are bad actors out there who could exploit athletes. I have seen contracts where agents that are representing athletes want 40 percent commissions. I've seen contracts where the fine print in those contracts require that athlete to give up his or her name, image and likeness rights in perpetuity in one deal. It was interesting to me, just yesterday I was very fortunate to meet with 75 athletic directors and the Supervisor for Athletics for the Philadelphia School District. We had a wonderful meeting. And there an athletic director came to me with questions that one of his students had. For example, under high school regulations you are not allowed to wear your school uniform. And a question was to me, well, can you wear the colors of your school even if you can't wear the uniform? This was a question from an athlete. Another question was, well, I'm receiving a pair of sneakers, is that compensation? The answer to that is yes. I'm receiving some other things. Is that taxable? And the answer to that could be yes, depending on your tax bracket. So the area of name, image and likeness is one that has a lot of ambiguity. And what we want to do, and I'm going to kind of summarize at the end, Temple University wants to partner with the Councilmember and with the City on this. The other aspect of this bill, which is important and also came up yesterday, is the National Letter of Intent. The National Letter of Intent is a high school player decides he want to go to -- he or she wants to go to a college and they sign a commitment letter to that school. And with that commitment letter is a financial arrangement. The university says, look, you come and play sports for us and here's what we're going to give you, athletic scholarships and other things. The problem is there's a lot of conditions attached to those other things, grade point averages, misconduct. And the athletic director yesterday, which I knew it but it was very good to hear directly from people dealing with this said, Professor -- I said, Please call me Ken -- we need help.

We need help because our students are coming to us with these offers from various universities for scholarships, but they're really not understanding what the documents say. They're really not appreciating what they're committing to. They're not understanding the possibility that they could lose those scholarships if they do or do not do certain things. So I have recognized and Councilmember Thomas, to his credit, has recognized that there is room for assistance in this space. And that's where we come in with Temple University and Temple Law School. We want to partner with the City in order to provide a couple of different things. Number one, we have already established a hotline that Temple Law has established the number to field calls so if a student is presented with an NIL contract or if the student has questions about the National Letter of Intent, they're able to call and someone will get back to them immediately. We also apropos of our meeting yesterday will be doing inperson educational programs in the schools with either individual families, the athletes, the coaches, the athletic directors. And as we said yesterday, we don't care if it's one student or 100 students with an assembly. We will there because I believe in this kind of inperson interaction. One of the things that I do want to underscore about this bill 17 is it is neutral in terms of its effect on taxpayers. There's no 19 taxpayer money involved in this. That's where we come in. And I say this because we at Temple not only are very interested, you know, we like to think of ourselves as the City's law school. We do clinics for immigration. We do clinics for landlord/tenant and we view this as part of our ongoing commitment for public service for the City of Philadelphia. So I have two students who are dedicated to this project. And as a result of some earlier hearings, I have a network of volunteer lawyers who are Temple Law alumni who will work with me because there are certain restrictions on who the advisors to the athletes could be. They have to be licensed barred attorneys or certified agents. And I have a network of lawyers who will work with me in order to provide this service. So we are talking about legal counseling, financial literacy, educational programs on NIL early, early intervention. I call it the three pillars; education, protection and prevention to get to our youth athletes before they make a mistake, before there's a misstep. And the same thing with the National Letter of Intent, to educate them with the coaches, with the athletic directors in partnership with them on what the National Letter of Intent process is and if they want to review those documents, to review those as well. I think this is a fantastic bill. We are throwing our weight, that is, Temple Law School behind this initiative. Again, I commend Councilman Thomas for understanding the need, for recognizing the need and for helping to establish what I think is a constructive partnership going forward that is really not free -- it's free to the taxpayer. It doesn't cost the taxpayer money. And the benefits we get out of it is our public service to the City of Philadelphia as well as our students, my students, will benefit from the personal interaction that they will have with the youth and with the community of Philadelphia and that's what we're about. So with that, I urge passage of this bill and I will be happy to answer any questions that any of you may have.

Thank you, Professor. Before we jump into questions, I want to take a moment to note for the record that Councilmember Squilla has joined us and he's marked present. As we explore where we are with NIL, you mentioned the hotline as well. What has been some of the activity on the hotline thus far? We know it's only been open for a couple of weeks, but for members of the Committee as well as folks of the listening public, how has it been going so far?

It's been a slow roll but intentionally so, Councilmember. We didn't want to get too far ahead of ourselves because we understand that this process is going on. But in terms of the -- like yesterday, I handed out the palm cards. I expect a -- in fact, I was told to expect a heavy surge of calls after the basketball playoffs are over, but immediately there will be more calls coming in. But we really have -- we have had several, not all from athletes. We have had some calls from someone that runs a nonprofit organization that wanted to know how that person could interact with the athletes. It's not exactly what the hotline is designed for --

Correct.

-- but we're going to answer the question. We're not here to be too lawyerly and say talk to someone else. We just say, look, we'll answer the question. But it's expected to certainly accelerate. But the other part of this that I personally and my students are really interested in is the inperson engagement. I really think that that's where the rubber is going to meet the road a lot. Yes, we'll handle emergency calls to a hotline, but getting in, you know, my view as I said if someone has an NIL contract and they're calling up because they need help, we want to help them. We also want to get in before so that they have some kind of understanding of what the NIL, NLI process is before they're handed that contract so that they can have that baseline preparation and also know who to call.

So we've talked a lot about NIL but not necessarily NLI, and even myself who's strategically involved in the sports space, I'm not too familiar with issues around NLI. Can you just give us a little more detailed information as it relates to things we should be concerned about as it relates to NLI and some of the risks that might exist for young people who don't have the proper support system around them?

Yes. And again, this was reaffirmed yesterday and it was more than just anecdotal because the ADs were talking about specific instances. So you may have a student who has National Letter of Intent, signs for National Letter of Intent and gets a better offer from another school. What does he or she do, what are they allowed to do. These are areas where the students really don't know and the athletic directors provide whatever guidance they can. And the ones I met yesterday were just superlative, they were wonderful but they're not quite sure what to do, or if they get a National Letter of Intent. And again, accompanying that National Letter of Intent is a term sheet and it could be several pages along about what is expected of that athlete and it's a contract. And some of the terminology, some of the terms -- because the schools want that student to come there, they want to recruit that student but they're also going to do it on terms that perhaps are more favorable to the school than they are to the athlete. And unless the athlete knows what all of those terms are, what kind of grade point average you have to maintain, what would constitute grounds for terminating that athletic scholarship. Unless the athlete can understand and knows what those different terms are and they vary from offer to offer, then that athlete probably will not be able to make a fully-informed decision. So on the NLI piece, Councilmember, I was surprised in a way at the immediate need for that kind of education. I knew that it was out there, but to hear it directly from the athletic directors who are on the ground dealing with these students and helping them try and navigate these issues, certainly that was interesting to me and reaffirms how the NLI piece of this bill is important as well as the NIL piece. I hope that answered your question.

No, it answered it. And I think it's extremely helpful to myself and those in the listening audience who often view a National Letter of Intent as nothing but a good thing, never necessarily thinking about some of the unintended consequences that can come from maybe being in 11th grade and signing that letter too early and then coming back your senior year and getting opportunities that might be a better fit for your individual situation. So I think that that was very informative. Are there any questions -- a couple of questions. So Chair recognizes Councilmember Gauthier and then Councilmember Ahmad.

I don't have questions. I just want to commend you and commend Temple for being willing to offer this resource to young people in the City. It's incredibly generous of you and makes me proud to be a Temple alumna. And wanted to also commend the Councilmember on brokering such a valuable partnership. It's really great.

Thank you. Thank you, colleague.

Thank you. Thank you for those comments.

Chair recognizes Councilmember Ahmad.

Thank you, Chair. Good morning --

Good morning.

-- Professor. I actually have a Temple Owl in your class who is very interested in this and has told me much about this.

This I know.

Yes. First of all, I want to commend my Councilmember here who brought this up and then all of you to be participating in it. My question was about the early intervention you mentioned. How do you identify the athletes to do their early intervention? That's one. And the second part is, what is your relationship with our high schools here in order to sort of spot or be present so they know that this opportunity exists?

Okay. For the first part, we really don't want to isolate any one particular athlete unless they have an NIL deal. Our goal is to talk to all of the athletes and their families. And when I say early intervention, I think for NIL and NLI we're talking freshman, sophomore years. I don't think it's too early to start talking to them and having them knowledgeable about what NIL and NLI are because by their junior year, they're going to be engaged in that process of looking at colleges, looking at universities, looking at financial aid. So that's what I mean by early intervention. Obviously, if someone has an NIL deal, we will look at that. But we want to reach them before that so that they understand what the process is, they understand what the risks are, they understand what is prohibited. There are certain prohibited activities. You can't sponsor gambling. You can't sponsor marijuana. You can't sponsor other kinds of businesses, so that's something that from early on even before they're presented with an NIL deal, we can certainly educate them. With respect to the high schools if yesterday is any indication, we are going to be welcome with open arms because I can't say enough about how productive, how insightful the questions were. I know Councilmember Thomas has his own relationships with the high school -- quite candidly, when I went and I met with some of the people I said, look, not that I'm concerned, I'm aware, who are we to go in and tell the high schools what to do. I'm certainly aware of that. I'm not a politician but I can be political. And I was sensitive to that. I was sensitive to that issue. We certainly don't want to displace anything that the ADs or the coaches or the guidance counselors or the superintendents or anyone else is doing, but we think we can bring value added because this is a very confusing area, even for the most educated people in high schools. I get up every morning and read three different electronic newsletters about NLI, National Letters of Intent and other sports- related issues. And I do it for two reasons: Number one, I want to know, I want the latest knowledge. And number two, people like your daughter who are very good, I don't want them to be smarter than me. So the point is that even some of the athletic directors understandably are not aware of all of the rules and regulations, and certainly on a college level, and I think we'll see on a high school level, these things change daily. On a college level, NIL changes daily because of court battles, because of battles with the NCAA. So that was kind of a long-winded answer to your question. So far our reception in high schools has been tremendous. We expect that to continue. I followed up after our meeting and we expect to be in the schools with the athletic directors. And as I said, if they want us to meet with one athlete and her family, we'll do that. If they want to do an assembly, we'll do that but those are details to be worked out. But right now our relationship from everything that I've seen is outstanding.

Thank you.

And we appreciate the School District's participation in this endeavor.

Thank you, Councilmember. And I just what to echo the sentiments of my colleague, some of what Councilmember Gauthier said. Thank you for the great work you're doing. Thank you to Temple for stepping up to the plate and providing a phenomenal resource that essentially cost the taxpayers of the City of Philadelphia nothing. Some of what Councilmember Ahmad said, the engagement with the young people is important. And for those who don't know, we plan on working with some of the student athletes and businesses across the City to put together an NIL convention where we can connect student athletes to prospective lucrative opportunities to put them in a position to use their name, image, likeness in a responsible capacity, but also learn a lot of the information that was communicated to us today as well as the things that may evolve as this NIL snowball continues to go down the hill and get bigger and better. Are there any other questions from members of the Committee? (No response.)

I do want to take a moment to acknowledge that our Majority Leader Councilmember Gilmore Richardson has joined us this morning. Good morning. Thank you for being here. Are there any more questions from members of this Committee for this particular panel? Chair recognizes Councilmember Squilla.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think this is great what you're doing. Is there a benefit to have a standard of operations for our schools to follow if we create through our District schools or even our private schools that they all follow the same process so that all kids are getting the same information?

Wow. Now, you're getting me in trouble in talking about what the School District should do.

No, no. Just a question.

No. In fairness, I think there's a benefit to consistency. I think that would be good. I think that certainly best practices are something that can be developed. It's something that is in our wheelhouse that we could do in order to provide kind of a curriculum, if you will, on name, image and likeness on NLI. And I think that that could be standardized. It doesn't have to be. Right now I envision individual meetings with athletes and with high schools, but could there be or should there be a standard of curriculum in this space? I think that that would be absolutely appropriate.

And let me just say the reason why is because some schools are going to be better than other schools. Naturally, some people are more interested than other people, whether it's an athletic director where that's his main focus or maybe he does it as a job with the school and not every kid will get the same benefits as a kid in the schools that really pay attention to this. So maybe it's something -- I mean, listen, we can't control everything the School District does either, but it's always good to put something out there that maybe they could eventually follow. And if there is a standard, there's still going to be people who go above that standard which is great, but at least we know there's a standard that everybody gets.

I would really be happy to engage in that conversation with the School District about whether this kind of process that we're doing now initially and we're still rolling it out on an individual basis could be standardized and that there could be a baseline curriculum in this area. And we have the people to do it. I mean, you're looking at one.

That's perfect.

We have other lawyers who are Temple Law alumni who have read about this already, who have called me up or emailed me and said, I want in, this sounds great, I want to participate. I have former students who are now -- I was having a conversation earlier. I have former students who went out and practiced law and now are full- time NIL lawyers in the NIL space who are a part of my group. So I would welcome that conversation with the School District to talk about how we can standardize and have a consistent program across the School District. That would be I think a great opportunity.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the question.

Thank you, Councilmember. I appreciate the line of questioning. I think that Councilmember Squilla made some great points. Dr. Watlington and his team are here today. I'm sure they're listening to the dialogue that's happening right now. For those in the listening public, I just want to note for the record that -- and the Professor alluded to this in his testimony, that schools themselves cannot directly be involved in NIL deals with the young people. So when we're coming up with the standard and its baseline of what information we should be giving student athletes as it relates to the content that was discussed today, we also have to remember that the schools themselves cannot be in communication with the business or a student athlete about a potential NIL deal. So whatever we decide to do as it relates to what that baseline consist of, because I think Councilmember Squilla and the Professor are onto something, it has to be done in a way that doesn't allow interaction that the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association limits, if that makes sense. And I know most of us on the legislative side understand that, but for those of us in the listening audience who really care about this issue, I think that that's an important component to consider.

Mr. Chairman, I think that's really important because by having a standard, you could also protect the schools from maybe doing the wrong thing.

Exactly.

And making sure they know what they can and can't do. So maybe some -- when the School District testifies, we'll see. But I think it's important to know. A lot of times some people don't know, like is this a gray area. We even get called sometimes on ethics, right.

Yes.

He's been doing this, he asked this question, he asked that. But if there is something we can't do, we have to refer you to these people, we have to do this and that. Sometimes that helps us from doing the wrong thing when we're trying to help the other people.

If I may follow up on that, that's an absolutely great point. And Councilmember Thomas is exactly right. There's an irony to where I am sitting here today. I can provide and review contracts for high school students, but I can't review contracts for Temple University athletes because I am employed by Temple University and that would be involving me in a deal, and that's the way the state statute is written. Now, what I can do and what I do do and I think that the distinction, and there should be a distinction, and I meet with the Temple basketball team and other teams for educational purposes. I am allowed to give them NIL education, but I can't be involved in their direct deal. So will that change when I say that, you know, I think things are going to -- not I think, things are going to change on a collegiate level as well. Right now it's a moving target. But where I sit, I can't be involved in the deal. I can't do what we're offering to do for high school athletes for my own university. That will change I am absolutely confident.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman. Are there any other questions from members of this Committee?

I have one quick question.

Sure. Go ahead.

I'm new to --

Councilmember Ahmad. No, no, you're fine.

Yes. A question about financial literacy. This is a great effort to do wealth-building, right, and to do wealth-building correctly. So I just wanted to know what component of financial literacy sort of tutoring would happen for the families involved in this process, including the athletes themselves? And have you thought that through or maybe you're in the process of who can be in that space so they know what to do with their resources, how to invest properly and do things of that nature and make sure that their taxes and everything are up on all of that as well?

Okay. It's is a great question, that is a work-in-progress. It's something we're working through right now. Certainly we've given a lot of thought to it. For example, the example I gave before about income goods. A 14-year-old kid may not realize that if they get a pair of sneakers, that's income. That's something that might depending on their tax bracket be a taxable event. They may not realize that there could be tax consequences for that. Things of that nature, to just understand the basics of contract law that without getting too lawyerly. And this is the program I did for our own Temple basketball team, that you can have an agreement that's not in writing. If you say, yeah, let's do this, you formed an oral contract. So basic things, but things -- I'm a real practical person because I didn't percolate up through academia. I was a practicing lawyer for many years and I take a very practical approach to how I do things. Things that are basic to an understanding of how a contract is formed, what tax consequences may be that you can have compensation without having money, things like that we have thought through although we're still developing what that financial literacy piece would look like in our program, and we're working at it very actively right now.

Thank you.

Thank you, colleague. Are there any other questions from members of this Committee for this particular panel? (No response.)

Hearing none, I want to say thank you to our amazing colleague and partner for this specific initiative. Professor, your knowledge, your expertise and your service to the City is greatly appreciated, so thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Members. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today.

Thank you. Colleagues, before we go to our next resolution, we are now going to conclude the hearing. So are there any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? (No response.)

Hearing none, there being no further questions or comments from members of the Committee and no other witnesses to testify, I'll ask that if there's anyone that's present whose name we failed to call that wishes to offer testimony on the bill being considered today? (No response.)

Hearing none, this now briefly concludes the public hearing of the Committee. We will now go into the public meeting to consider the action to be taken on the bill 7 before this Committee today. After we take action, we'll resume the public hearing to hear testimony on Resolution No. 240028. Mr. Maynard, will you please call the roll to take attendance.

Yes, Mr. Chair. Chairman Thomas.

Present.

Vice-Chair Phillips.

Present.

Councilmember Squilla. (No response.)

Councilmember Gauthier.

Present.

Councilmember Lozada. (No response.)

Councilmember Ahmad.

Present.

And, Councilmember Brooks.

Present.

Thank you --

Just a moment. Madam Majority Leader, did you want to vote on this motion on the bill?

I can since I'm here.

It's up to you.

I can.

We don't need you for quorum.

Right.

It's your discretion.

It's fine. I don't have to if you don't need me.

Okay. That's why I was asking.

A quorum is present. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Phillips for a motion on Bill No. 240007.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that Bill No. 240007 be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit the first reading of this bill at the next session of Council.

Second. (Duly seconded.)

Thank you, colleague. It's been moved and properly seconded by the bill 6 just read by Councilmember Phillips be reported from the Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit the first reading of the bill at the next session of Council. All those in favor will signify by saying aye. (Aye.)

Those opposed? (No response.)

The ayes have it and the motion carries. Thank you, colleagues. And when Councilmember Squilla comes back, we will get his vote on the record as well. That concludes the meeting and now we'll return to the public hearing. This concludes the business before the Committee of Education and we'll now to return to the public hearing to hear testimony on Resolution No. 240028. Mr. Maynard, in order for us to go back to the public hearing, we will again -- no, we don't need you to call roll. We will invite the first panel to testify in a minute. So that first panel will be Dr. Watlington and his team. But before we invite the first panel to testify, I wanted to take a moment to see if any members of the Committee as well as our Majority Leader wanted to give any opening remarks before we start our hearing resolution on Resolution 23 No. 240028. Chair recognizes Councilmember Gilmore Richardson.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, Chairman Thomas, for the opportunity to hold the hearing on Resolution No. 240028 regarding leveling with the School District. Mr. Chairman, I'm not certain because I was not here if we held a brief moment of silence for our departed Chief Clerk Michael Decker, but I just wanted to honor his life and his legacy in all of the work that he did for so many of us for so long here in City Council. Regarding leveling, I've been deeply disturbed around the leveling policy with the School District of Philadelphia and have learned the policy more intimately this year as a result of my youngest child, my son, who attends a public elementary school here in the City of Philadelphia, in fact, the same one that I had the privilege of attending as a child. And I felt that he was doing a really, really good job learning and really advancing and excelling early on at the onset of the school year, and then his class size doubled overnight and they also had lost a teaching assistant for a while. And so, it really brought to the surface for me this policy around leveling. I had not really heard a lot about leveling over the last several years, but this year in particular I heard from a ton of parents about leveling and because I was experiencing the issue in a very intimate way, I knew that we had to continue to uplift this issue, talk about leveling, particularly in advance of our budget hearings, recognizing that this will be a very tough year for all of us, not just for the City of Philadelphia but also for the School District. I think it's a policy that we have to look at and figure out how we resolve, because so many other urban school districts around the country no longer have leveling as a part of their process within their school district. And so, I am looking forward to this hearing today. I want to thank all of the parents of young people who have joined us today. We have a 5th grader who sent us testimony around leveling that I will read later on in the hearing. To all of our union partners who are here, our community partners, we know that there's an AFT conference currently happening but the PFT also sent written testimony to our partners at the School District. Thank you for being amenable, for being here and for working with us to move this policy forward and to make the necessary changes so that we are not dealing with this next school year. So I'm looking forward to this hearing. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Councilmember Gilmore Richardson. Thank you for your leadership on this issue. Chair recognizes Councilmember Brooks.

Thank you so much, Councilmember. You know, like our Majority Leader, this leveling issue has been an ongoing issue to me. And first, I said I wasn't going to speak on it going into it, but after my amazing visit to T.M. Peirce today and seeing the advocacy work and the legacy of my advocacy and activism put into action just being in the building, it brought me to tears today. It was the weirdest thing. I would be remiss if I didn't speak on the long fight around this leveling issue. Most of you know I have five children. Most of them are grown now. My baby is now getting ready to be 16. And leveling has been a long issue in our neighborhood school and we've seen classroom sizes grow immediately come October when children are doing so very well, and I'm really excited to have this hearing now on the other side. Before I remember advocating with parents and advocates around the City around this leveling issue, so I want to commend the parents that have stepped forward around this issue once again and have brought this to the hearing level because this is tragic. In some of our schools where children are already struggling, post-COVID is much worse than it was before, and just imagine your children having an amazing educational experience for a few months and then come October, classroom size go from to 32, 6 that's huge. 7 Not only is it traumatic 8 for the young people, but it's 9 traumatic for our educators and 10 it's hard to maintain a class of 32 11 students, especially from K to 3, 12 and 4th grade as well, 4th grade is 13 hard. And I'm speaking from a 14 sister of teachers. I'm the only 15 one who is not a classroom teacher. 16 From a super volunteer in every school my children attended, except my older -- this one here in high school, she doesn't have the same mother as the other ones do. But we really have to do better. And while our children is in an educational crisis, if there is a way for us to maintain quality education for our kids long-term, we would really be moving our District in the right direction, so I think this is an important hearing. Thank you so much, Majority Leader, for bringing this back full circle for me. And I look forward to see what we can do to work around this leveling. Because like I said, our children deserve so much better. And like I said, after having a tour of T.M. Peirce today to see what the better could be just with facilities, just imagine the better what it could be around educational attainment and just the quality of one-on-one care that our children that are already traumatized in some schools deserve. So thank you for having this hearing.

Thank you both for your remarks and your passion around this issue. Clearly we have some parents up here on Council who's concerned about the well-being of not just our children but all children around the City of Philadelphia. So thank you all. I appreciate you, colleagues. And, Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson, thank you for your remarks around Mike Decker. We did have a moment of silence before the hearing started, but there's no such thing as giving too many compliments for somebody who does such great work for the City of Philadelphia. So thank you for your kind words. Mr. Maynard, will you do us a favor and please call the first panel to testify before this issue this morning.

Of course, Mr. Chair. The first panel will consist of Robin Cooper from CASA; Archbishop Mary Floyd Palmer; and Emily of Houston Home and School Association, whose last name I will skip butchering; Christina Jackson, parent at Houston Elementary School; Luis Ramirez from Clara Barton Elementary and Seleny Fernandez from Clara Barton Elementary. As we have multiple people, let's have Dr. Cooper and the Archbishop take the seats first. Thank you, ladies. And then we'll call up people in batches of two after that just to avoid crowding the podium. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Thank you, Mr. Maynard. Welcome to you both. We appreciate your presence here before City Council. Clearly it's neither one of your first time coming before this body and working with us on a number of different issues to improve the quality of life for the citizens of Philadelphia. With that being said, if you want to go rock, paper, scissors, whoever wants to go first, feel free to communicate your name for the record and begin with your testimony.

Dr. Robin P. Cooper. Setting the level is a common practice in business and industry as a positive practice of raising the bar so achievement can become a continuous process of improvement. Yet the educational practice in the School District of Philadelphia of leveling is a continuous practice that takes four classes of reasonable size of or 19 25 students and then levels down to 20 three classes of 33 students. 21 The PFT contract has a 22 class size maximum of 33 students 23 in Grades 4 through 12. Up to 24 Grade 3, the class size maximum is 30. In that case, leveling takes five classes of 24 students and then creates four classes of 30. The maximum is currently used as a minimum by the School District. Leveling takes a teacher from one school community and sends the person to a totally different school community some time between mid to late October just when positive academic and social relationships are starting to bloom. It is a self-manifestation issue that starts with our schools that need more resources, facing low enrollment projections in spring budget timelines. Thus, they lose established teachers. Then when actual student enrollment becomes a reality in September, schools lose more teachers to cover vacancies that were actually filled in the spring. The District says leveling is done in the interest of educational efficiency but how efficient is it to cut teaching positions in the spring just to reallocate in the fall. A recent study by the Penn State Center for Evaluation and Educational Policy Analysis in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Where Are Philly Teachers Going by Kristen Graham on February 11, 2024 reported that Philadelphia employs percent of teachers each year in 12 Pennsylvania, yet accounts for 30 13 percent of the attrition which 14 equates to approximately 1200 15 teachers per year. 16 The study went on to say 17 that it cost $27,000 to recruit, 18 hire and train a new teacher. How 19 is cutting then leveling education 20 efficient. We lose the 27,000 for the teacher we cut. Then pay an additional 27,000 to train the new teacher, if they are even available in mid-summer to late fall. How many of those teachers were cut out of the budgets in the spring just to be called back in the mid-summer or fall? While most, if not all, of the displaced teachers find work without much trouble in the suburbs, the suburbs do most of their hiring in the spring just when Philadelphia's dropping positions due to undercounting of enrollment. Philadelphia in essence becomes the training ground for the suburban districts that already have quality teachers. Philadelphia is a major league city. Why should we train, prepare and provide experienced teachers to the suburbs. It should be that the suburbs are providing teachers to us. What would work better? Perhaps we hold all schools with allegedly falling enrollments steady in the spring and add positions to those schools experiencing increased enrollment. Then in the early September when enrollments actualize, if apple school has excess teacher, then the teacher can move to the cherry school, which has more students than teachers. In other words, let's hold on to who we have rather than cut and then level. Class size maximums of 30 for early elementary and 33 for Grades 4 through are not 12 designed to be class size minimums. K-12 research shows that early elementary classes K-4 work best with to students, and 16 secondary classes at 26 to 28 17 students. Philadelphia's talented 18 teachers should remain with us. 19 (Applause.) 20

Archbishop 21 Palmer, you may begin -- please 22 state your name for the record and 23 begin your testimony. 24 ARCHBISHOP FLOYD PALMER: 25 Thank you, sir. Good morning, Mr. Chair, Madam Vice-Chair, Madam Leader and fellow colleague Council Committee members. I'm Archbishop Mary Floyd Palmer, the Presiding Prelate and President of the Philadelphia Council of Clergy as well as the founding Pastor of the Samaritan Temple located in West Philadelphia. I'm a lifelong City resident whose primary education occurred beginning in the Christian School until 8th grade and then attended and graduated from the prestigious Philadelphia High School for Girls, Class No. 17 2241980. More importantly, I am a mother of five adult children who all graduated from the School District and the grandmother of nine grandchildren, in which one has graduated and five are currently students. My educational experience at the Philadelphia High School was stellar, although challenging and tough. In my four years, I became acclimated to the teachers that were taught before me. In each grade succession, I got to know them better and prepared for the next one. This continuum of care and teaching enabled me to graduate at a high level of my school and to begin my world in the secondary arena where those basic principles of consistency stick-to-itiveness and tenacity were the order of the day. Leveling, now called enrollment-driven resource review, is a longstanding and controversial action that has been used in Philadelphia for many years, and it is not usually practiced in other school districts. This controversy relates to the fact that although it's necessary to ensure that resources are used properly and efficiently, it is widely known that this action has an opposite effect on vulnerable children who are already met with challenges such as poverty, hunger, single-parent or no-parent homes, truancy, low self-esteem and instability of maintaining good health like eye appointments, dental and the weight concerns. The COVID-19 impact on the Philadelphia children had an insurmountable amount of trauma to them. Death was prominent and preeminent in their immediate families with loss of life, family members and friends; increased violence in 2020 with 499 homicides; 2021 with 562; 2022 with 514; and just last year 410 homicides, many of which our children witnessed in their neighborhoods primarily during the pandemic even if they stepped outside to get some fresh area. Although we can celebrate the decrease of homicides by percent, mental health and instability of their minds has increased by greater than 40 percent and suicides known for our children have increased at an insurmountable amount. Their spirits are low, hopeless, sad, depressed, anxious and frustrated and are very concerned about life safety matters that most children should not have to be concerned about just to exist in our society. Our District has shared that each leveled position that is examined by a team of experts who make this decision of what they feel is best, if I may ask have they visited the classrooms of the teachers who are on the hit list, have they spoken to the children who will be affected, have they talked to the parents who have to deal with the emotional impact and outbursts of losing a teacher they're children have knitted to? Have they spoken with the teachers who not only are replaced and transferred, but the impact of being in a new environment and beginning again which can be frustrating for them, have they spoken with the teacher who follows in the place of this action and heard the challenges they must face to not only adjust but to maintain a warm and caring environment? As a faith-based leader, I have spoken with a number of grandparents, parents, caregivers and those who provide kinship care who have stressed the heavy impact when leveling occurs at their schools.

Increased trauma reactions, need for affirmation, consideration, care, compassion and present support along with regular counseling to stabilize not only their emotions and mental health are what I have had to provide for many young people in which I encounter. As one who has been an educator for a brief moment, I understand the overwhelming responsibility of individual children who may want to do as they feel that rules and regulations can be set. However, our job sometimes can be impacted because we are overwhelmed and we are not able to perform at optimum level. There is no argument that we need to have increased retention of our teachers, as Dr. Cooper said, who then leave to go to another district on the outskirts of our city for nicer, cleaner, brighter classrooms and an increased salary and package that make them say so long. This does not mean that they have a less love for teaching, just that the environment has been set in which they can then do what they love to do. Given all of this, what can we do to adjust the action without the impact extending and exacerbating the trauma already felt and lived by our most precious commodity, our children, those who are not given a voice or a choice by those of us who pledge to serve and look out for their best interest. It's unrealistic to believe that even in this debate that we will all get what we want. Not so, and certainly it wasn't an option in my parents' home about whether to go to school or not. But despite rules, regulations and policies, I do believe that the educators of the School District and those in leadership along with this august body have to find a better way to resolve this issue and make sure that at the end of the day the excellent experiences that all of us might have had years in past will continue not only for the children now, but for the children to come. I'm certainly hoping that we'll be able to come to some resolution, that we'll be able to always keep us in the forefront of who we say and love. I love my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren as I'm sure you all do too. And this would be my final question: Would you want your child to go through this? Thank you. )

The Committee will next hear from Emily Pugilese and Christina Jackson.

Can we have questions for this panel --

Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Hold on. I apologize. So what we'll do is we'll do questions now for this panel and then we'll call the next group.

Right, because they are actually part of this same panel.

Okay. Because I was going to let the whole panel go and do them all at the same time, but you want to do -- we can do these two if you want.

Right.

Chair recognizes Councilmember Gilmore Richardson for questions for these particular witnesses and then we'll move on to the next. Councilmember Gilmore Richardson.

Thank you so much for the leeway, Mr. Chair.

Absolutely.

I wanted to just (inaudible) and thank you both for being here and for providing your testimony. From the school administrators' perspective, how does leveling impact your staffing after the onset of the school year, and particularly from a budgetary perspective?

So the belief from administrators is that the projections are never over but always under. So during the spring they spend so much time recruiting, trying to get the best fit for the school, but then following the first hired -- or the last hired, first fired. So when leveling comes around, they lose all of that. So they put so much time, effort and energy in these site selection committees. And then in the fall because they were underenrolled, those folks are the ones that have to leave. And so, then in a few months down the line they're over. Now, they have to start that process all over again, which is unfair. We're already facing a national teacher shortage and then to lose what you worked so hard for. Folks are saying, just send me what you have. And that's not good enough.

And to your point, do you think that the new special admit policy has had additional impacts on the leveling and/or budgeting issues as well as keeping the staff members in the school because actually yesterday (inaudible) the special admit process has unintended consequences relative to some schools not being able to receive additional students even if they are underenrolled. And so, once the leveling takes place in addition to this new policy, some schools may be grossly underfunded from a budgeting perspective because their enrollment cannot go up due to no 8 fault of their own.

Absolutely. I think you said it best.

Okay.

I think especially for the special admit schools first -- and I know we're as a District currently working on it, but for those folks to have seats and have additional seats, one of the things that as I'm understanding it is, that if you are on a waitlist, you have to go through or the principal has to go through the entire waitlist as opposed to actually waiting for the waitlist to go all the way through before a person that was on that first acceptance piece to be able to accept. So if they didn't accept and they want to accept, they're only given like a span of a week.

Right.

And we know that for our parents sometimes they don't get the email. We know we have a lot of computer technology issues. So a week is not a lot of time. So if my parents have the -- if they are in poverty, basically I missed the opportunity to attend my first choice because I only have that week. And so, once that week goes by, I have to wait for everybody, every round of that waitlist. And by that time if there's a parent, the parent is going to take other options. And typically, those other options are out of the District.

Right. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony and for all the work you're doing with all the administrators across the District.

Thank you.

And thank you so much, Archbishop Mary Floyd Palmer for your testimony. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Are there any other questions from members of this Committee for this particular set of panelists? (No response.)

Hearing none, thank you both for your testimony. Thank you for your service to the City of Philadelphia.

Thank you. ARCHBISHOP FLOYD PALMER: Thank you.

Mr. Clerk, will you please call the next witnesses to testify before the Committee.

Of course, Mr. Chair. The next witnesses we'll hear from is Emily Pugilese and Christina Jackson. Emily and Christina, if you're available. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Good morning. Please state your name for the record and you may proceed with your testimony.

Good morning. Emily Pugilese.

Christina Jackson.

Hi. My name is Emily Pugilese. I am the parent of a 5th grader and 2nd grader at Houston Elementary School which is our catchment neighborhood school in Mount Airy. First, I'd like to say thank you to Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson and all of Council for holding this hearing. We usually hear a lot of press and attention around leveling in late September, early October when it occurs. And then we tend to hear basically nothing about it until it happens again to the next set of kids, teachers and school communities the following year. I really appreciate the opportunity to address the issue in more detail and I hope we can make progress towards ending this traumatic process. I'm here today because my 5th grader's class at Houston was leveled earlier this school year. They went from having two classes of 16 kids to one class of 32. And I don't know if any of you have spent time with 5th graders recently, but that is a lot of 5th graders. There are so many ancillary impacts that follow a classroom that is leveled. My son tends to be more anxious and overwhelmed by school, which impacts his behavior at home. His classroom now includes way more distractions and disruptions from similarly overwhelmed classmates. As a direct result of leveling, at least two students in his class, including my son's best friend, have made the tough decision to move to special admit schools for 6th grade. This reality has led many families to reconsider sending their kids to their neighborhood school. We could discuss these impacts for hours, really I could. But the lack of transparency around the leveling process overall and the larger district-wide implications of leveling need to be addressed as well. When I was researching leveling before testifying at a School Board meeting in the fall, I came up with a lot more questions than answers. There were 59 schools leveled this school year, but according to articles in the Inquirer and Chalkbeat, there were another 49 schools who had grades under the class size required to justify two teachers that got to keep two classrooms. When I searched for the policy that identified how the District determines which classrooms get leveled and which get to keep their teachers, I could find no policy. In fact, the Chalkbeat article insinuated that special admit schools get preferential treatment and often get to keep their teachers, a revelation that was backed up by multiple accounts I heard of special admit schools and highly-resourced schools -- sorry, not only avoiding leveling, but in some cases being given extra teachers even if they didn't have the actual classrooms to put them in. The District has been heavily focused in recent years around equity, as they should be. But how is this process with no 14 written policy and no transparency equitable. We know that leveling impacts teacher retention, something the District is working hard on improving. We also know there is a teacher shortage of hundreds of teachers in the District this year. According to an article 23 published in the Inquirer on Monday, Philadelphia teachers are leaving the profession at alarming rates, higher than teachers in the rest of the state, with percent leaving the District in their first year. This threatens to make our already historic teacher shortage even worse. If I go back to our personal experience at Houston for a moment, I want to talk about the amazing teacher we lost, Ms. Lya. Ms. S. after teaching internationally for years, specifically to take the job at Houston. She bonded closely with the kids and staff as was extremely sad to leave and we were devastated to lose her. We learned last week that Ms. Lya recently took a job running an educational program at an art museum. She's part of that 18 percent of teachers who leave in the first year. And I'd bet that she wouldn't have left if she hadn't been leveled.

This is a huge loss for the District and our school community as we were hopeful that she would return to our school next year when the larger current 4th grade moves up to 5th. We realized that the District's systemic budget constraints along with the teacher shortage makes this a challenging issue to solve. We acknowledge that as much as we would love for leveling to be eliminated or drastically changed immediately, that's probably not realistic. There are things, however, that could be to greatly improve the process as we work toward a different policy all together: Number one, be transparent; create a policy that prioritizes equity and transparency. Two, provide support; provide resources and funds to school and classrooms that were leveled to help support the teacher and the students through the transition. Sidenote, Houston received absolutely no support from the School District when our classroom was leveled. It was parents and other school -- members of our school community coming in to help move furniture around and make the classroom work for 32 kids. Number three, look at longer term numbers; what is the class size of the grade below the one being leveled. Will the school have to rehire a teacher for that grade next year if the teacher is taken away. That's the case at Houston. There is over 50 students in the current 4th grade class that they're going to have to hire another teacher when that class moves up next year. Reconsider the rehiring policy. With the teacher shortage, the District policy that teachers who give less than 60 days notice before leaving the District and can never be rehired again seems self-destructive. Number five, research how other districts operate. As others have said, there are a lot of large urban districts similar to Philadelphia who do not level. New York City recently stopped the process all together, what is their policies, how can we learn from them. At the end of the School Board meeting in the fall when I testified, Superintendent Watlington made a statement about leveling and said that only 1 percent of teachers are impacted by leveling. But if we're looking at Philadelphia's school communities overall, it's almost percent of 20 schools impacted and thousands of 21 students. 22 Year after year this 23 happens to students in communities 24 in Philadelphia. Families protest 25 and news articles are written about how traumatic and disruptive it is. Yet no changes are made. I hope this hearing is the first step towards ending this outdated and harmful process. Thank you for your time.

Okay. Good morning, everyone. My name is Dr. Christina Jackson and I'm a parent of twin 5th graders Guari and Kaiya that were both at Houston Elementary. I'm also an Urban Sociologist and Professor at Stockton University in New Jersey and in the fall I'll be starting at Rutgers Camden in Sociology and heading up Africana Studies. First, I want to thank Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson and the rest of the Education Committee here for your steadfastness and choice to keep the topic of our kids' education a priority. I'm here to provide my experience and perspective about how leveling is among the many destabilizing ways that our scholars are constantly succumbed to. A little bit about me. I, myself, am a product of a Philadelphia neighborhood and special admit schools. W. Henry School from K to 8th grade and Creative Performing Arts High School from 9 to 12, so I am indeed a proud graduate of the School District of Philadelphia's public education system. Last time -- oh, and I also went to Temple. Go Owls. Last time I was actually here in this room in 2019, my daughter and I testified at the State of the Schools hearing and some of my advocacy along with my fellow allies helped to lead our historic victory that ruled Pennsylvania school funding system unconstitutional, so I am well-versed in the experience of living through and advocating for funding instability in our education system. As a sociologist, I am also interested in how low-income families of color in our city fare within institutions like our education system. While I do not formally study Philadelphia, I am used to feeling jolts and constant changes at our schools, even down to the classroom. Leveling is an illustrative example of these kinds of jolts. I'm sure that I don't have to take time to explain, as you already know that students in our predominantly Black and of color School District come from families with about an average of 47,000 a year. Given the environments many of our children come from, they are faced with cumulative disadvantages at the neighborhood level, racial and economic. " She was speaking as someone who is currently at Heston School after her school Leidy was also closed down. She not only teaches them academic and social skills but basic hygiene, helping them to brush their teeth, making themselves look presentable. There are a lot of reasons why that it is and it's definitely not my mom's responsibility, but it goes to show you that our students need our schools to be stabilizing places. I get that we as a School District can't solve City problems. But what we can do is make smaller strategic choices that don't disrupt the foundation of their classrooms. In September my children Guari and Kaiya were in two separate classrooms at the start of the year. As you've heard, a few weeks in after my daughter developed a relationship with her teacher Ms. Lya, she was given five days' notice that she would be leaving and the two classrooms would be combined into one. As you can imagine, this was devastating for our kids and even my son who had Ms. Lya too since she was a social studies and English teacher giving the benefits of the co-teaching model. We appreciate everything the remaining teacher, our principal and staff have done to help stabilize the classroom, but it still has been a tougher learning environment for my twins. So much so that my daughter, who was already a very sensitive learner, stopped wanting to go to school. It got so bad that we were dragging her to school metaphorically. For her, the learning environment was too noisy and there were too many behavioral incidences that increased. My son was initially sad about the loss in September and October, but he still wanted to go to school. Half of the year has now gone by and now he doesn't like going to school and is often asking me to take personal days because the classroom is loud and he wants to get called on more often.

Unfortunately, we did have to choose to take my daughter out and she is currently in PA Cyber Charter, which is a sad last resort. We have to remember an important aspect of the leveling is the trauma that is left on the classroom. Witnessing the loss of a teacher only inflicts further trauma on these young lives. Further, it causes a deterrent as others have said for teachers and students who loved and were committed to our school. Yes, our HSA and principal and teacher met to develop solutions, but why must we continue to do this. The classroom has suffered because of leveling. It has added to the already cumulative disadvantages that our students face. Months ago when us parents testified at the School Board public hearing, Superintendent Watlington reiterated that leveling only affects a small percentage of schools as Emily also said. But my response to that is, okay, but if something so small but yet deeply affect the educational environment at our schools over decades, then why is it okay for our kids to still endure it? I think it's a very simple question. Can we have new measures for determining what schools are leveled? It could be that schools can avoid leveling for one year if they already have been leveled in the previous three years. That's possible. We realize that the District's budget constraints along with the teacher shortage, but I also heard this every single year I've been in school. Why is it okay to continually have this as a reason? It's not enough for me. Even when our school funding was already deemed unconstitutional, these questions still loomed on my mind. Thank you so much for your time. I hope that this hearing is a continued step to bringing about the ending of this archaic process. Thank you for your attention to our testimonies.

Thank you for your testimony. Chair recognizes Councilmember Phillips and then I will recognize Councilmember Gilmore Richardson.

Listen, I just want to say thank you for your time today. It's really important to have heard your voice. Because if you're not in this situation, it's very difficult to understand this gravity. So this is very pivotal to hear. I'm hoping that our School District -- and I know they're listeners and I'm praying that we come up with a better solution for this, because what I'm hearing is that often time parents make decisions on where to send their child to school based on the teachers and the staff that are at that school. And then suddenly that changes over time. What that says to us is unfortunately the following, that these teachers are whetted more so to a system for the District as opposed to a fit culture for a school, and we have to get to a point where we fit teachers and staff based off of a school's climate and culture and need as opposed to just saying, oh, we need a resource. So other alternatives have to be met. That means that we have to go into some recruitment and I have to put my sneakers on or whatever to recruit some teachers. You know, I'm all for it. So just want to say thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman.

Chair recognizes Councilmember Gilmore Richardson. Then Councilmember Brooks.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And I just wanted to say thank you from one parent to another for your testimony, for sharing your story in talking about how traumatic it is for our young people to be a part of leveling in the classroom environment and how it really changes their overall experience. I know you offered some potential solutions around leveling to say if a school is leveled for three years prior, maybe give them a break one year. But I wanted to know if there were any additional recommendations you had while we have the ears of the School District?

I mean, I recommended at least providing more support to the schools that are leveled and continued support. I will say -- Christina, I think you'd back me up on this -- I kind of thought we'd go through a transition and it would get easier in the classroom, and that doesn't feel like it's happened. I think my kid is learning a ton, but it almost feels like the last couple of months have been harder. So I just think continued support in the classroom and more resources. If it's not another teacher, it would be -- like 32 kids is a lot, it's a lot of kids. Did you have any other --

Yeah. Thank you for that question. Because I'm a researcher, I have a researcher answer. I guess my issue is thinking about the measures that we're using to say which schools get leveled is very quantitative. It's a few numbers off, right, a few students off. So I think we need to do research around leveling, more qualitative research around leveling, coding that and then that will give us a lot of -- because it's gone on for so long, it can go on for decades, right. So I'd like us to think personally about the actual research measures that we use or best practice that we use to decide what schools are getting measured and how they're getting measured and when. Because right now -- I can be interpreting wrong. But right now it seems like it's very quantitative. Like it's based on, oh, you have this particular number, now we got to take the kids, now we have to take the teacher and then they go to another school. In our case, they now teach at a museum. So I would say that it's how we measure what schools get leveled personally.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, colleague. Chair recognizes Councilmember Brooks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to say -- all right, there I am. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I want to say thank you so much. I really appreciate for me just like seeing parents just picking up the baton where I kind of dropped the ball because we still never -- my oldest daughter is 32, right, so this has been an ongoing thing. So thank you for stepping up and pushing us further to a solution around leveling. And you mentioned a few things that I just have a few questions around what you said. So when the class was combined, did they get a classroom assistant --

No. 25

No 1 teacher's assistant. Okay. That's what I thought. And when you said resources, can you be a little bit more specific so we can have it on record?

I think it 7 can be as simple as making the 8 classrooms more comfortable. I 9 think our kids felt really down. 10 They felt -- they were really sad 11 to lose their teacher. They did a 12 lot of advocacy that we included 13 the kids in the banning. And I 14 know my kid was like, oh, there's 15 no way they're going to take our 16 teacher away. It was a lesson in 17 advocacy and what it means to 18 continue, always a good thing. 19 But they really felt the 20 impacts, and I think the class 21 overall was down. So even just 22 making the classrooms nicer. You 23 guys have been in Philly schools. 24 Our K through 3rd grade floor is beautiful because it got painted and they got all new furniture and then you walk upstairs and it's not the same. So even if just like something, small things in a classroom to make them feel, maybe some fidget toys, some areas they can move to, to get away when they're feeling overwhelmed in a large classroom, little resources like that. But I also think additional bodies. Maybe additional supports, and I know our school is doing this. But talking about social, emotional issues, talking about 5th graders start to, you know, there's some conflicts starting in that grade, talking about conflict resolution, being kind. All those things are happening in the classroom, but I think additional supports will really be helpful when you're in a smaller room with that many kids.

Yeah. I would just add additional teacher support. Our school, you know, I was really happy that the principal, we met and we were able to open up the classroom to make it a little bit bigger. And like Emily said, we were able to help with the classroom in terms of making it a better environment. But because there's just too many kids in the classroom, there are a lot of behavioral issues. And so, I think that in terms of resources it should also be actual physical support, like teachers' bodies that can help in the classroom.

Thank you. I figured that's what you meant, but I just wanted to make sure we had it on record. I remember the time that when my kids' class was leveled. I just so happen to be at home and I was classroom assistant, right. People don't have the ability to do that, and I'm sorry you had to transition your children into cyber education for a better learning environment. That's unacceptable. And some parents don't have that option and our kids continue to struggle. So I just wanted to make sure we were clear that we meant a person, also brighter colors, bean bags, stuff that make young people feel comfortable in the space that is already overcrowded. And I'm glad you mentioned social emotional learning tools. I was a restorative practitioner so I spent a lot of time training District teachers around restorative practices and how that can change a school environment even when you're going through trauma. So thank you so much for that.

Yeah, of course.

Thank you.

Thank you, colleague. Appreciate your questions. Chair recognizes Councilmember Ahmad.

Thank you, Chair. I wanted to commend both of you for being such active advocates for your children. Sadly not every parent is able to do that. In fact, that village doesn't exist for many of our children across Philadelphia. And also, thank you for being so clear, both of you. I know you're a researcher so you have brought really specific ideas. And you mentioned this and I would love to see more of this, behavioral health support that could come when these decisions were being made, both for the teachers, for the administration in the school as well as the children and parents. So we should probably talk to the School District about how those resources can be made available, whether we can talk to our Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disabilities to be a support for the School District. Again, I don't know the mechanics of it, but that would be really critical to do this. And you talked about the data being quantitative. And I was looking and thinking what is the cost-benefit analysis that has been done which will then say -- my bias is to think it'll show that it does not give us a benefit in the long- term. In our learning algorithm for the children, what does that look like because that can then come into a budgetary conversation to say the outcome is not beneficial. And so, in order to not have to have that outcome means more resources in the classroom, not to have to level the classroom because monetarily it does not make sense, right. So we need a financial modeling of this. We would love our economists to kind of speak to this so that when we draw out our trajectory, it is not helping our student body, our school and our city. So I thank you again for bringing these to our attention and hopefully we'll be able to build on all of this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all, like my colleague said, for your testimony today and thank you for taking the time to be a part of such an important conversation. I think more important than anything thank you for your advocacy and your passion as it relates to our students. It is very much appreciated. Are there any other questions for members of this Committee for this particular panel? (No response.)

Hearing none, thank you again for your testimony. Mr. Clerk, will you please call our next witnesses as it relates to this panel.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next witnesses the Committee will hear from are Luis Ramirez and Seleny Fernandez. Luis and Seleny, if you can come forward. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Good morning. You can start by stating your name for the record and after you've stated your name for the record, you may proceed with your testimony. Thank you for being here today. We very much appreciate it.

Good morning. Thank you. Well, actually afternoon almost. My name is Seleny Fernandez and I'm a parent of a 1st grade daughter. And when I hear that they invite us to come here, I was a little concerned about what I was about to say. And I was like, okay, I didn't know that I had to speak in front of you. But my concern is because my daughter, she is 7 years old, after I noticed that she was telling me that it was more students coming in the classroom. She was saying, Mommy, now is a lot of -- more kids here and it's a lot of noise. And I'm like, okay, what is going on. So my husband, he was speaking with her. And she say, I have trouble concentrating. And I say, Why? And she say, Oh, it's too many kids there and only one teacher. I say, For you being a 7-year-old, you are concerned about that. Oh, that's pretty smart. So this is a big deal for us because our community -- I'm from Dominican Republic and our community is big, the Spanish community in our neighborhood. A lot of those kids, they have big problem learning. And then if you taking away their teachers, what is going to happen? More problems. What I learned was in one of the meetings that we had in the school that half of the students, only like 50 percent are learning more than the other 50 percent. And this concerns me because how you being okay with the 50 percent is good to learning and the other 50 percent is not. I know a lot of parents there maybe they feel shy to go in public and talk or say something, but I'm speaking for all of them that are not showing here because some of them had to work, some of them are single parents and I see them every day, all the kids going, happy to learn. And only one teacher -- for my daughter I think they're like 27. Just this week she told me there was another new student coming in her classroom. And I'm like, wow, 27 or 28 kids. That is a lot of kids with only one teacher. And she's happy because she have more friends, but it concerns me because I had to speak with the doctors about her learning abilities. She is a little behind. And I'm like, okay, we have to raise our voice up and see what the City can do and the School District to help us about our future kids. They're the future. So this is my concern. I'm sorry. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Luis Ramirez. I'm Seleny's husband and the father of the 7-year-old girl at Clara Barton. I feel honored that you guys invited me here. I am also an immigrant. I came from a third world country. So being in this room is a bit overwhelming. It does feel like first world country here. When I went to the School District building, it feels even more like first world country, right. But when you go to my school, it feels like I'm back in the third world country. Okay. And the standards that my wife was making reference to, the numbers are impacted by leveling. So last year the target, the goal, was that only 51 percent of the kids would learn at grade level, 51 percent. 49 percent, imagine those numbers in politics, right. Imagine that. That's not acceptable. That's not first world standards, right. When we talk about leveling specifically, we grew up in third world countries. There were laws that prevented classroom sizes from being bigger than 20. And when we came to this country and we said, wow, first world, the richest country on earth. We're going to get very good class sizes. Now, we're talking about 28. So you are leaders in one of the biggest cities in the richest country on earth. You have a budget that is bigger than the entire budget of many countries around the world. The School District has I think around $4.5 billion. That is a lot of money. That is just a lot of money. So this is not a money problem. This cannot be a money problem. I'm an engineer by trade, and the numbers just don't add up here. Okay. This is not a money problem. When I look at the budget that the School District has, when I look at the number of students we have enrolled in the District, we pay more for each kid in the District than many private schools that have a much better performance. Okay. So this cannot be a money problem. Now, I think this leveling specifically is a transparency problem. One of the parent's testimony connected on that. You know, I have no idea how leveling is applied across the City. Does Penn Alexander get leveling. What is the class size at Penn Alexander and how does that compare to the average of the schools in the City? How does it compare to mine? When decisions are made about leveling, what is the criteria? How do we determine what schools will get leveled? So transparency is huge, right, which indicates a management problem, right. So there is a management problem at the School District. When I see the Superintendent joining here with an entourage of people, he cannot answer a question about leveling by himself, that's concerning, right. He's got to come with financial, human resource, all sorts of people to this meeting. That is concerning. He tells me there is a management problem here. I'm sorry. As a concerned parent, I get emotional because my daughter is in this mess. I want to end with just a correlation. To me leveling is the same thing as looting. The School District is coming to my school and looting us of the most valuable resources. Except when looting happens in Philadelphia, it happens at the rich stores, right. My sense is when leveling happens or looting happens at the School District, it happens at the lowest income neighborhoods. Unless the School District can prove me otherwise, show me the data, right. Be transparent and I don't think they are. I don't think they can be. I don't think they want to be. There are a lot of concerns as parents about leveling. The impact was very well-described by previous parents. You know, as City Council I urge you to make this a priority. Okay. Education has to be a priority for the City. I am very optimistic that our new Mayor will make it a priority. I hope she comes with the changes that are required to prevent leveling in a first world country and one of the biggest cities in this country. It's just not acceptable. It's not acceptable. I appreciate the time. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Thank you both for your passion and your testimony. Are there any questions from members of the Committee for this particular set of witnesses? Chair recognizes Councilmember Gilmore Richardson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to say thank you so much for your testimony and for coming down to share your feedback regarding what's happening at Clara Barton. I had the opportunity to visit Clara Barton twice in the last year and I'll be returning soon. I just want to say thank you for your feedback and know that we are taking this issue seriously. We want to see policy changes as a result of this hearing and our ongoing work with the District. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, colleague. And I echo the sentiments of Councilmember Gilmore Richardson. Chair recognizes Councilmember Brooks.

Yes, I also want to echo the sentiments of Majority Leader. But I also want to say thank you for coming. This is the people's house. I think that you should feel welcome and know that this is where we come to do the City's business. Just six years ago, six, I was over there. I was not here. Had no idea that I would be here. This advocacy work that you do, that you're doing for your daughter, it translates into work that needs to be done across the City. So I want you to know the intimidation has to go. We need you to come and say what the things are that you need. The School District needs your voice to be able to make the changes for your community because you know in our community -- because my neighborhood is not that far from yours -- everyone is not going to have the courage to be able to speak out. So I want to thank you both for taking the time out to do this, not just for your children but for children around the City, and you belong here. So let this be the last time you feel any level of intimidation. That's what I wanted to say. Six years ago I was there. Was not an elected official. This was the work that I did. So thank you. I really appreciate you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great remarks. Great remarks, colleague. Thank you. Chair recognizes Councilmember Ahmad.

I also want to congratulate you on being here. Like you, I'm an immigrant. And like you, I also come from a third world country, so I deeply resonate with you, with your comments about what expectations we had when we've come here, right, that I thought the roads were paved with gold, right. So it's a very rude awakening when you look at the inequity that exists in this society where there is so much. We are the richest country in the world and yet we're not able to educate our children with the highest level of support and that we have so much trauma in our city. So you have been heard. We have to figure this out with all my colleagues here. I'm new to Council. And so, it is very important for me to listen to all of you and to listen to my esteemed colleagues who have a lot more experience in many of these areas. But the passion of saying that our city can do better, must do better, will do better. So thank you for being here.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comment, colleague. And hopefully you feel more comfortable advocating and coming down to City Council letting us know what's going on in your community, your families and what we need to do to be able to improve quality of life for constituents across the City of Philadelphia. So thank you. Are there any other questions from members of this Committee for this particular panel? (No response.)

Hearing none, I want to say again thank you for your testimony. Mr. Clerk, I believe we have testimony that's supposed to be read into the record next?

That's correct, Mr. Chairman. We'll go to Councilmember Gilmore Richardson who will read testimony from a 5th grader who could not be here today because he's in class.

Makes sense. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Gilmore Richardson.

Yes. Well, thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ensure that we were able to put the testimony of Naomi Bloom on the record. She asked that I read this testimony into the record, so I will do just that. Hello. I am Naomi Bloom, a 5th grader at Henry H. Houston Elementary School. I would like to address the issue of leveling. Leveling happens when two or more classes do not have the minimum amount of students to have the current amount of classes. When this happens, the District combines the classes and usually one teacher to a different school, leaving the other teacher with a huge class. I have been directly affected by leveling. At the beginning of 5th grade, we had two classes. One class of 15 students and one of 16. Our two teachers were Ms. Douglass and Ms. Lya. Ms. Lya was new to our school this year and everyone was excited to meet her. What we were most excited about though was to have a small class. In 4th grade, we had a class of 32, and it was pretty crazy. Anyway, we were all really sad when she told us that she couldn't stay because the minimum amount of students needed to have two classes was 34 students and we had 31 in our grade. Now I have a class of 30 kids and a lot of times it's really loud and there is a lot of fights. It was annoying, but the thing that aggravated me the most was that not all schools have to deal with it. I have a friend who goes to a private school, and she told me that her maximum class size is 17 or 18 students while ours is 33. I understand that there are other kids in the District who have much bigger classes than us, but we hope you take into consideration that the way it works out for us right now isn't great for us kids. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you, colleague. We appreciate you. With that being said, Mr. Clerk, will you please call the next panel to testify.

Of course, Mr. Chairman. The next panel is Dr. Tony Watlington, the Superintendent of the Philadelphia School District, who has several colleagues with him to answer other questions as-needed. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Can we support them with -- yep, thank you. And, Mr. Superintendent, good morning. You have a PowerPoint presentation to go with your --

Yes, sir.

There you go. You guys are on it. Thank you. Good morning, Dr. Watlington and team. I know you've been through this before, so of course please start by stating your name for the record. We will begin with the testimony. If I do step away for a second, Councilmember Gilmore Richardson, our Majority Leader, will chair the hearing if I do have to step away. But, Dr. Watlington, please state your name for the record and you may begin with your testimony.

Tony Watlington, Superintendent, joined by Chief Financial Officer Mike Herbstman and Deputy Superintendent for Talent, Strategy and Culture, Jeremy Grant-Skinner. I also want to note that we have some other team members here with us that I'd like to recognize. Deputy Superintendent for Academic, Dr. Jermaine Dawson is with us. Chief -- yes, round of applause. All right. Chief of Staff, Sarah Galbally who you know. I hear another round of applause. And one more time for our Chief of Communications and Customer Service, Alex Coppadge. Chair Thomas, Majority Leader Richardson, Councilmember Phillips, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this morning. I first want to begin by saying thank you to our parents from both Houston and Barton who spoke this morning as well as the Archbishop and Dr. Cooper. Majority Leader Richardson, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts from your own experience earlier this year with Gompers Elementary. I want you to know that we do think that this is a very significant and serious issue. We're pleased to be here to let you know about how we've charged the team with doing a comprehensive review of our leveling process. We're going to take just a few minutes to give you an update. And so, we'll jump right into it. We're going to do three things before we take your questions and feedback. Number one, we want to answer the question what is leveling, the enrollment-driven resource review, what is it. Number two, how are other districts approaching this. Last time we spoke before this Council you asked some questions relative to some of the large urban school districts, and we're going to give you those answers today. And then third, most importantly, what are we doing about it. And then we'll go right into any questions or feedback that you have. Next slide, please. Advance two slides actually and we'll get right into what is the enrollment review or leveling. Long story short, schools are allotted funding based on a certain number of ratios of students. We're allotted for one teacher per 30 students in grades Kindergarten through 3rd grade. We're allotted for one teacher per 33 students in Grades 4 through 12. And we're allotted one teacher for 24 students in our career and technical education classrooms. Now, at the beginning of the year students don't always come in these nice bundles, by school or by classroom. " So there's 9 a precedent for how we do this 10 process. Also, it was noted earlier that we had some 50-something teachers who were leveled out of 9,000 teachers that were assigned -- who were actually assigned to a different school. I give you the number just so you have the data. I don't say this is good, bad, perfect. I say this is just the data. So we're not editorializing that data at this point. I just want you to have the numbers. On the next slide, Chair Thomas, the Committee asked us before, what do other large urbans do in some of these districts, you specifically referenced or someone referenced in our last visit. So we pulled together the data at the current time from the nation's four largest school districts. As you know although Philadelphia is the six largest city in the country, we have the 8th largest educational system in the country. So we pulled the largest district in the country, in the world for that matter, the New York City schools as well as the second largest district is Los Angeles Unified, the third largest district, there's been a toss-up in the past couple of years because of declining enrollment. Historically, that's been the Chicago Public Schools. I believe Miami is just ahead of Chicago now. So we'll make Miami three and Chicago four. We've been talking with our colleagues in other districts taking the time to study this process. Long story short, do these districts level as a mixed bag? Yes, for Los Angeles Unified School District.

In Miami-Dade, they do not do the leveling that we do, but they do have an involuntary transfer process that begins some time after the summer -- some time during the summer, excuse me, which is different than what we do here around the 20th day of school or so. And the New York City schools, no, but they do have a process that typically concludes some time in August where our process is well after school begins. And then the Chicago Public Schools, just got off the phone recently with the Superintendent there, and they continually monitor class sizes throughout the year to adjust for oversized classes such that they don't have to follow a leveling process the way we do. Next slide, please. So what are we doing about it. Shortly before -- around the time of the last visit to Council, Chair Thomas, I charged the School District team, my team, with conducting a comprehensive review of the leveling process, to make sure that one would understand exactly what has happened historically. Just the facts, be careful about editorializing it. We've been driven by the impacts on students, teachers and families, the impacts on the budget and impacts on our allocation of resources. Hence, we have our CFO Mike Herbstman here and the Deputy Chief -- Deputy Superintendent of Talent, Strategy and Culture who oversees the Human Resources Department of the organization here with me today. We're committed to getting this process, this review, comprehensive review completed inclusive of talking with people who've experienced the leveling process, talking with our colleagues in those other large districts and others. We agreed to get that process completed between October of 2023 and March of 2024. Now, we're close to that timeline, but we're not quite finished just yet, to be frank. What will happen when we complete our process, this comprehensive review? Next month I want to take my findings, the team's findings, my recommendations to the Board of Education. As you know, the Board is responsible for vision, policy, goals, hiring and evaluate the Superintendent. And certainly, this has policy and it has budgetary implications. So I'd like to take those findings and recommendations back to the Board of Education in March. And pending the Board of Education's feedback and direction, certainly would like to have an invitation to come back, Chair Thomas, to update this Committee and let you know what we intend to do. If we go over the final slide, I'm just going to conclude by saying that again we appreciate the feedback. We know that this is a strong impact. We understand it. We're committed to figuring out how to make this a process that is the best it absolutely can be. I don't want to get ahead of the final study findings and recommendations, but we look forward to coming back and updating you on our next steps. And with that, we would be happy to take any questions or feedback.

Thank you. I'm going to pass it to Councilmember Gilmore Richardson to chair the remaining of the hearing.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for your leeway for this hearing. It has been a difficult hours to say the least. 10 But I wanted to thank the 11 District and thank you, 12 Superintendent Watlington, and your 13 team for all of your support in 14 working with us with all the 15 questions that we have around some 16 of these policies. 17 I really want to thank 18 Dr. Dawson who I think has been an 19 excellent addition to the team and 20 has really heard our feedback and 21 seeks to resolve a number of the 22 issues that we have brought forth. 23 So I want to publicly say thank you 24 to Dr. Dawson who I think has just been a stellar addition and necessary addition to your team.

I agree. Thank you.

Thank you. I wanted to start off and I will be honest, I have a ton of questions and I need to get them all on the record for this hearing because this is probably the last opportunity that we will have prior to us undertaking our robust budget process. So is there a written policy on enrollment-driven resource review, i.e., leveling? Is there a written policy?

There is not a Board policy in the District that outlines the process for enrollment-driven resource review. And the process we do follow is looking at actual enrollment compared to those ratios that were shared, which are the same ratios used in the spring to allocate positions based on enrollment projections.

Okay. But to confirm, there is no written policy within the District that exists relative to enrollment-driven resource review, i.e., leveling?

That is correct. There are other issues in the District where we have to figure out how to best allocate resources that don't either have or sometimes warrant a District policy, and we just figure out how to do the work to do the greatest good for the greatest number of children.

Okay. And so, to that point there is no written policy on leveling. For the record for this hearing, can you notate -- and I know in your testimony you stated that there are 50 teachers that were moved as a result of leveling out of 9,000 -- can you notate how many schools were impacted?

Yes. Would you like that information?

Yes.

I'm going to ask Deputy Superintendent to speak to that.

I can speak to that. So there are 58 schools in all that ended up with lower teacher allocations. That originally totaled teacher position reductions of 87. Of those, there are reasons that the people did not actually move, including that we had -- some of those were at schools for our early access site selection. So 50 of those 87 teachers moved. I don't have the breakdown of exactly how many of those 50, but of the 87 that was at 58 schools. We can follow up with that information.

That would be excellent. If you could provide that information to Chairman Thomas so that he could disseminate that to the Committee and to the members of Council. And so, 50 out of 87 teachers, 58 actual schools. And you'll get us the list of each one so we can compare and contrast the list, right?

Yes.

And one question I do have based on several school visits that I had this week is around the special admission policy and the change in the special admission policy and the ability for school administrators to be able to pull young people off the list to go to their schools based on the fact that they may not have reached their enrollment cap for their particular school. We're hearing that enrollment is down at a number of schools. So you have this new special admission policy mixed with this leveling policy that is not written. How are you justifying that? How are you working through that? How are we helping schools to try to meet their enrollment caps when we know that a lot of schools have much larger facilities and they have very low enrollment?

To that point -- is this on still. To your point, Leader Gilmore Richardson, the data showed this year that, A, we have an actual increase in the number of students who are apply -- number of applicants, student applicants, to our criteria-based schools; B, we have an increase in the number of acceptances in our criteria-based schools. It is in part because we conducted an external review of our lottery process. We spent some time last summer with Dr. Dawson and other members of the team meeting with our criteria-based school principals. So I think the numbers there are going to show a promising trend this year. They're not all in yet. We're still in that process. I think it's also important to note for the record that we actually held harmless a lot of the would-be cuts to our criteria-based schools last year because we understood that we, A, need to look to the lottery external audit feedback and figure out how to better do it and, B, we need to make decisions in concert with talking to principals rather than just saying run a computer system and have at it. So I think we're going to end up in a better place and we'd like to be able to share that data with you.

Okay. I only ask that if you could check in with all of the principals not only for the criteria-based schools but for the CTE schools, because I think there is an issue which is an unintended consequence to change in the process that is holding them harmless and not giving them the ability to bring in additional young people into their schools if they do have the room and the staffing.

Duly noted. Happy to do so.

Okay. I just heard that yesterday so this was in my travels. So I wanted to ensure that we got that on the record. Thank you. I now have a question regarding the class size caps. And so, do we have class size caps based on schools? So if it's criteria-based or special admission, do we have class size caps? And if so, what are the cap numbers?

I'm going to have Deputy Superintendent Grant-Skinner, who oversees our labor and negotiations with PFT and others to speak to that.

Okay.

The class size caps that you saw across the District, there are a couple of very special cases in the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the teachers that go beyond the 30, 33 and 24, but they're very specialized and it's not different by school. So the 30, 33 and 24 applies across the District.

Okay. And to your point, you said there are specialized caps based on the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Can you detail what they are for the record?

It's for some specialized types of positions. They're very small numbers. I don't know in this moment exactly what they are, but it's specialized types of positions that are very rare.

Okay. So it's more so related to position and not specific school type, would you agree?

That's correct.

Okay. And so, for the record would you be able to provide that information from the Collective Bargaining Agreement --

Yes.

-- for the Committee. Okay. That'll be great. And my next question is we have heard that some schools have class size caps that are smaller than other District schools and the average that you've notated here today. So are you -- can individual schools negotiate lower class size caps?

That is not a part of the District policy.

Okay. So the question is though, can schools negotiate lower school --

No. 21

Go ahead.

I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Well, can schools negotiate lower class size caps?

We referenced that for career and technical education classrooms as a cap of 24.

Right.

Outside of that, we are a school system and not a system of schools. And so, we have uniform rules with some unique intricacies that the Deputy Superintendent will make sure to get to Council.

Right, I agree. And I'm asking this in this way for a reason. Can you confirm for the record Penn Alexander's class size caps, what they are?

Deputy Superintendent, can you speak to Penn Alexander in particular?

I'm not aware of anything unique to Penn Alexander. And some of our team members have just gone through the process to look at enrollment projections by school, by grade and we did not treat Penn Alexander differently than other schools.

Okay. And if we can just have that --

We do know that Penn Alexander receives some additional supports relative to the University of Pennsylvania. We might want to dig deep into what that looks like differently than other schools. And so, if that's kind of part of the spirit of that question, we'll be happy to detail what those extra supports are.

Okay. And can you just confirm whether or not they have different class sizes than other schools in the School District?

Certainly.

Okay. Now, for charter schools, are you involved in the leveling process for charter schools at all? And are charter schools leveled?

As you're aware, Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson, the charter schools -- in the School District of Philadelphia, the charter schools some time during the mid part of Bill Hites' tenure became a direct report of the Board of Education. And certainly, the Chief of Charters who works in the Board Office serves on the Superintendent's cabinet for collaboration, but we do not have detail or involved in how the charters staff their schools. Is that correct, Deputy Superintendent?

If I can add to that, our work with the charter schools is really around their payments, so they do get adjusted throughout the year to their actual enrollment. So we don't get involved in the hiring side there. But if they have fewer students than expected, then their overall funding will decrease from the School District as a result of it.

Okay. And so, their funding will decrease based on their internal leveling process, that there is no direct correlation from the District relative to how charter schools level and/or look at their sort of enrollment cap class size projections, things of that nature?

Correct, it's just the actual funding that is applied per pupil amount that each charter school receives is then multiplied by their daily average membership which is their enrollment. So as their enrollment goes down, they receive less funding but we're not involved in the actual how they use that funding.

On a monthly basis, Leader Richardson, I will look at the numbers to look at what our class sizes look like across the District, the District- operated schools. I do not do so with the charter schools.

Understood. And to your point, relative to the charter schools and their funding, is that the same when it's a special -- let me rephrase that. Not a special admission, but is that the same if it's a student with an IEP? You're still able to get the money back?

So we pay two different rates to charter schools. One is based on all students and then there's a second rate for students with IEPs. They receive that amount per student plus an additional amount on top of it.

Okay. So I have a further question about that. We can pause that for budget time, but I was always told or I thought that we're not able to be reimbursed for those particular students, whether they stay or go to a charter school?

Sorry. Could you repeat that?

Meaning, if you have a student who goes to a charter school that has an IEP and then they go back to the District school, do we get the full reimbursement?

So again, at the end of the year once everything is trued up, we're paying for their actual enrollment so we would adjust for both students with and without disabilities that have left the school to get to the final payment amounts.

Okay. I can hold on that one because that's not germane specifically to this resolution, but I know we were sort of going in that direction. One question I have based on the testimony from the parents around the support for the schools and for the teachers once a classroom is impacted by enrollment-driven resource review, which is leveling. So what type of resources do you provide? And then also for the schools that have been impacted by leveling this year, can you notate which grades? So whether it was kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, whatever grades it is, if you can just break it down by grade? And then notate the type of resources that the School District provided to the school and to the classroom.

Certainly. For teachers who have been leveled, our aspiration is not to say, hey, Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson, we're moving you from School A to B, show up on Tuesday, call us when you get there. We want to have good supports in customer service. I'll ask Deputy Superintendent Dawson if he can talk specifically about what that looks like in the schools in terms of support to teachers, in terms of helping to make sure the materials are moved, welcoming them. Dr. Dawson, could you maybe come to the podium and just say a quick word about that please?

And I want to preface this by saying, Superintendent Watlington, that the reason why I'm asking that question, and I can use this as a personal example, my son has an IEP for speech therapy and he has not had speech therapy all school year, not one day. So I've gone out and it's taken me months to find a place for him to have speech therapy, and I gladly pay for it and take him in the evenings after I've been here all day and out and about all day, and I'm sure other parents are experiencing this. So first, his classroom has been leveled. He hasn't had speech all year. How does the District explain that? And then it's -- and I get it, right. But how do we explain that, that a child goes all year without a needed, necessary support? The classroom has already been leveled, so the class size doubled. So while the class size was smaller, he was doing better because he was getting more individual attention. It was less behavior issues going on between the children and the classroom because it's so many kids and they're small. But how do you account for that?

It is absolutely my expectation as Superintendent that when services are written into an approved Individualized Education Plan, that children receive them. I will look into that issue personally.

Well, no, no. I'm not saying that for that reason because the District is already helping with that, and particularly Dr. Dawson. But I'm saying it to the point of saying that there are so many students out there who may have an IEP, who may need services, who have also been impacted by leveling, so now it's like a double conundrum that they're dealing with, that they're not receiving adequate service. And I'm not blaming this on the District, right. We understand that there are staffing shortages across industries that are not just in education. They're in health care. They're all over the place. Our workforce has been deeply impacted as a result of COVID-19. I'm not saying this in a way to place blame --

Sure.

-- but I'm saying this in a way of while we're trying to figure all of this out, we have one chance to get it right with our kids.

Right.

And this is a whole year that my son will miss speech therapy outside of the speech therapy that I've been able to find at an outside location that I take him to, that I pay for every single day that the District has not provided. And so, how do account for that when you're also leveling those same classrooms? And maybe if the class size was smaller and knowing that you can't provide the service, then they would get more individualized attention versus being now in a large classroom still not receiving the additional services they are supposed to have. And I know I'm not the only parent that's going through that. It's thousands of parents who are experiencing that because of the staffing shortages that we know to be true. So how do you account for that?

I agree with you that our kids have one shot at this. I also agree with your point that when there are some existing disparities or issues, that leveling absolutely can and does exacerbate those issues. Point and duly noted, and we'll take that under our review. With your permission, I'd like to ask Dr. Dawson to speak to what specific supports do we provide to teachers or have we provided in the past year that were leveled.

Thank you so much, Dr. Watlington. And hello, Councilwoman Gilmore Richardson. Our support for teachers where their classrooms have experienced leveling is through supports directly from the principal and the District Office to push in through what our professional learning specialists at the District Office level and also through an acronym SBTL or what we call school-based teacher leaders, who are coaches and instructional coaches in the school who provide direct support to teachers. In many cases, these school-based teacher leaders also do small group instruction for students alongside the teacher or they do what we call side-by-side coaching to support the teachers in the classroom with the students in realtime. Nothing can replace a highly-qualified teacher our Superintendent says all the time as one of the levers that really, really move the needle. But while we are going through the leveling process, these are some of the things that we put in place to ensure that teachers do not feel alone and that they can feel that there is some supports as they transition kids into the classroom. So where they may have had 27 kids and now they've gone to 30 or 31 kids, that SBTL or that school-based teacher leader is in that classroom for a period of time with that teacher, almost as two teachers in the room to support with the students getting acclimated to make sure that the teacher has the resources that he or she needs to support the teachers. And has it been in every case, absolutely probably not. But for the most part, we can say that teachers are provided that additional support. And where it has not been the case, we definitely would like to know that so that we can also push in and provide some additional supports for those teachers as well.

Okay. That will be great. And a couple of things I wanted to notate here based on your slide around what the District is doing to address this issue. You stated that the report is not quite ready, but you anticipate that it should be ready in or around March or April or so?

That is correct.

Can we receive a copy of that report?

We fully intend to come back to Council and present it to you, yes.

Okay. Excellent. And then we'll also receive an update to Council and District stakeholders after the report has been given to the Board, right?

Absolutely. Following the Board's review and feedback and direction -- again, I don't want to get ahead of the Board because there may be some budgetary impacts. We certainly look forward to coming back to Council and being very transparent and speaking with the full community because we know this is a big issue for a lot of people, parents in particular and staff.

Right. And while you're conducting this comprehensive review of the leveling process for the purpose of this report, you stated you talked to teachers and administrators and other folks in the school community. Have you spoken with students?

I have a Superintendent Student Advisory Council and they give me feedback on a number of issues, including those that personally experience leveling or have friends or schoolmates who've experienced it.

Okay. Excellent --

We meet every month by the way.

Okay. Great. And then one thing I wanted to notate based on Dr. Cooper's testimony was around the recruitment for teachers.

Mm-hmm.

And how typically last folks or the last teacher to be hired is the first one to be let go. How are you working to address the recruitment challenge based on recruiting teachers to come and then those who may be impacted by leveling?

I want to say a couple of words about that. There are districts that make decisions based on when there's a reduction in faculty because of enrollment. There are districts that follow a process based on seniority --

Right.

-- which means you're last in, first out.

Right.

There are districts that do something very different. They say we are going to make this about performance. If you are our highest performer regardless of where you stack in terms of seniority, we want to keep you at this school. There's not one gold standard way of doing it. I can tell you that on the front end we're working hard to increase our recruitment of teachers because the real root cause issue here is two things driving this. On the one hand, we have some students who are transient and move, and we're not exactly sure -- our projections are pretty good, but they're not always 100 percent accurate. On the other side of that nickel, Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson, we have a 71 percent decline in the number of teaching licenses that were administered, that were awarded here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania over the past decade. So that means we've got to, A, recruit more widely outside of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. That means we've got to go to New Jersey and Delaware. If we want to get more African American teachers, we've got to go to the south, because notwithstanding Lincoln and Cheyney being the first HBCUs, most of them are in the south. We also have to go to those predominantly White institutions across the country and expand our footprint. It takes resources. And we have to expand our footprint at MSIs, the minority serving institutions. We also are looking at investing in Grow Your Own opportunities in partnership with the PFT, I think College Unbound, Cheyney University, La Salle and Drexel, if I'm correct, to take people who already work in the School District and get them through their college degree debt- free in exchange for them to come back and work here in the School District. And then I just want to quickly mention as a part of our strategic plan Accelerate Philly, we intend to open a very unique teacher preparation middle college high school, where we intend to work with local university partners to get them through college debt- free similar to the paraprofessional initiative that we're already doing in exchange for coming back to work here. We want to grow our own teachers here in Philadelphia and we need to expand our recruitment footprint outside of Pennsylvania.

Excellent.

And in Pennsylvania quite frankly.

Excellent. I love the recruitment efforts that you all are undertaking. I want to pause to recognize the presence of Councilmember Mark Squilla and thank you very much for your attendance this afternoon. Do you have any questions, Councilmember Squilla? You're good?

No. 2

Okay. All right. And then finally, I wanted to ask from an equity perspective when you look at leveling of schools, are you taking into consideration sort of where the schools are located, if they're in underresourced neighborhoods? And then also, if there's no written policy relative to leveling, then I don't believe that there's an actual written policy around what you do once a school or a classroom is leveled. So I would just ask as a part of the comprehensive review that you all are undertaking if you could just put the policy whatever it may be in writing, and then what the next steps based on what you all will decide this enrollment-driven resource review is. Okay?

Certainly. I'll take the first part and I'll ask Deputy Superintendent Grant- Skinner --

It's leveling.

Leveling. And good to see you, Councilmember Squilla, as always.

Hello.

Relative to equity when I talk to my colleagues across urban districts across the country, it's no 14 different than New York, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Atlanta and the like. One of the equity issues of our time is that in the urban areas there are some neighborhoods and communities, geographic areas, that are experiencing significant population increases, and there are some parts of our cities across the country that are experiencing population decline. A tough question always comes about in terms of with our communities that are losing enrollment and population, but schools have always been the center of community, a gathering point, a beacon of hope, what produces better outcomes. How do we make sure to support those schools in a way that we're not just numbers-driven where you're having population increases. At the same time in the urban space when you have areas that are growing in population, as a Superintendent and a Board of Education we've got to figure out how to serve all of our communities because every kid who leaves to choose some other -- parent that leaves to choose some other schooling option, those are dollars not coming to the School District of Philadelphia. And so, we've got to make sure that we're serving all of our communities and employ that equity lens and we've got to be real careful about us versus them sometimes, because the squeaky voices sometimes -- what does it say, the squeaky wheel gets oiled?

Right.

And we've got to make sure that we're supporting those communities and families also who may not readily show up to make their voices heard. So anyway, long story short, yes, we're very driven by those equity considerations.

And I have to say I completely agree with you. I'm dealing with the same issues with the SEPTA Bus Revolution process. So know that I completely agree with your point there.

Thank you.

While you were talking, it made me think about the Northeast because we know a lot of schools in the Northeast, they are bursting at the seams. They have a ton of students in their areas. And then we have other areas like maybe out in West Philly or in North Philly where we have rapid decline in some of our larger buildings. I'll give you an example, like Overbrook as an example where I used to teach early in my career in Classroom 205. We didn't have a lot of students. And even when I taught there almost years ago, 18 the fourth and fifth floor were 19 closed even at that time. 20 So think about how we think differently about our school buildings, our beacons of hope. How do we look at those buildings differently and help them to be a service to the community and also to our students and to our young people. So when you talked about that, it's exactly what's happening here in the Northeast versus some of the other communities. And they'll probably need more schools and assistance with class sizes and capping class sizes in the Northeast just because of the amount of young people who are moving into that area, but whereas we have West Philly and North Philly and some of the other communities who will need additional assistance.

Absolutely. I'll just simply say what we really want to do to be able to better serve both scenarios is we want to stem the declining enrollment. We want to slow the bleed of the declining enrollment. And we see a vision for the day where not only we lose students, but we'll actually get to a place where we will begin to recruit more students into the School District of Philadelphia. It's one of the big priorities for our Chief of Communications and Customer Service, Alex Coppadge and her team.

Okay.

And so, we're making the case to families to say, listen, Harvard and Stanford just released a study in the past three weeks that says the School District of Philadelphia is leading all the urban school districts in terms of academic rebound through 3rd through 8th grade reading and math. So we're telling that story so that people will consider this School District as an option. Great parents like you who are already with us --

I'm trying to hold on.

We're going to hold on with you, Majority Leader. And for others who might choose to be a parent. We're committed to getting better and we want to do a better job telling our story, and we want to hear the voices of families and staff around leveling and let them know that it's not falling on deaf ears, that we intend to go to the Board, we intend to come back to Council and we intend to move to a better place.

That's great. And while your Chief of Communications is here, I wanted to notate something that I heard from the girls at Girls' High when I was there about a month ago and I will be going there every month until the end of the school year. But one recommendation they had that I want to share in this hearing directly from the young women was that we should be doing more marketing directly to families in the City. I'll give you an example. I receive postcards every summer, maybe three or four postcards from my local catchment school, which is technically a Renaissance charter school. I receive three or four postcards, although my younger two have never attended those schools. My older girl did. And so, I receive nothing from the local school outside of what we get on ClassDoJo, but meaning from a marketing perspective that is our closest local public school that's still available for our young people to attend. I had to go through Enrollment Management to even get my kids -- and you know that whole story, and I have to go there now -- to even get my kids enrolled in the closest public school. And so, while we're still working with the District and understanding this whole leveling piece because I think it all feeds into this issue, this enrollment issue, the cap class sizes, the special criteria-based schools, the CTE schools, I think all of this is feeding into this issue, this new special admission policy. All of this is going to impact the leveling. And then also I guess whenever you all produce this report, we need to look at how the District is recruiting young people to come to the School District of Philadelphia. Parents should not have to go through the Enrollment Office to simply sign their child up for their closest local public school. We shouldn't have to do that. The option should be on the website where the closest local public school should populate once you insert your address. And then once that school populates, then you can give the other choices and say, here's your closest local public school based on your catchment and then here are the other schools that are available and here's the distance from your home to those locations. But we shouldn't have to go through Enrollment Management in order to go to our closest local public school and the District certainly should not be doing the marketing for the charter schools if you're coming every year to tell us that it's a challenge around the funding. And I'm not against charter schools. I'm not even getting into that conversation. Okay. But all I'm asking is that if we're serious about increasing enrollment for the District schools, that we have to do a better job with marketing to local families and ensuring that when they come to philasd.org and they go to the school finder app on your website, that you all give them the closest local public school. And I know that's a larger conversation around the catchment area work that will continue to take place now under this new Administration over the next three or four years, which was taking place under the last one three or four years. But we have to be serious --

Sure.

-- about getting our young people to the right schools. If I'm a family or a parent that knows nothing about Philadelphia, I'm just moving here, I moved to this house or apartment, I follow your instructions and go to philasd.org, put in my address and a whole other school comes up, I wouldn't know the difference. If I'm new to Philadelphia, I wouldn't know the difference at all.

We recruited Chief Coppadge from another school organization here in the City because of her expertise in doing just that. We're always open to feedback. And she's here and hears that feedback, and I'm sure we will very strongly consider how we might do some of that extended marketing as well.

Right, and that was feedback directly from the girls at Girls' High. They said their enrollment has declined significantly since I was even a student at Girls' High 20-plus years ago now and -- wow, years 24 ago, a long time ago now. 25 But at any rate, what the girls were stating is that they wanted the opportunity to market Girls' High. They said, well, what if we did a billboard to tell people about our school. And I'm sure other students feel that way across the District. But I think to your point we have to talk about some of the gains that have been made and what the District is seeking to do --

Right.

-- to bring more families back into the District fold. But that direct communication, that direct marketing, those postcards I think are powerful because I even receive three or four of those every summer even though I'm not considering sending my kids to that particular school. Now, there's a few others I'm considering, but it's not that particular school. So I just wanted to put that out there. Okay. All right?

Thank you.

Okay. I don't have any additional questions, but I just wanted to say thank you for your time and for the work that you all are undertaking to perform this comprehensive review. And I just ask that we continue to receive this information via Chairman Thomas so that he can disseminate the information to the broader Council prior to us undertaking our budget process, because I do think recognizing where I'm sure you all know where you are and us recognizing where we will be, we have to make a lot of very important decisions over the next couple of months based on what we know to be true about our budget, and particularly for us in the outyears of that five-year plan. And so, for me I really want to see detailed, concrete information on exactly how some of the funding will be utilized to ensure that we avoid some of these hiccups and issues in the upcoming school year, but also how we're going to utilize the budget process as a time for us to really, really seek to help our young people get on grade level with reading and with math and preparing them for opportunities of the future. I think you all have done a stellar job with the attendance piece. Like I said, Superintendent Watlington, we get the papers at home. You have to be at least 95 percent for attendance. My daughter has been a little under the weather but they've been pretty much at school every single day, and we can feel that attendance push coming from the District. We want to feel the same way about some of the other issues that we know have been ongoing challenges in the District. We want to feel that not only as parents, but as folks who care about the broader education community in Philadelphia.

Duly noted. And, Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson, let me just say thank you, A, for the Council support of the District budgetarily. I hope you feel like we're being good stewards of those local tax dollars. And then second, thank you for the opportunity to testify at this hearing regarding leveling and we look forward to coming back in the next couple of months.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. And, Mr. Maynard, are there any other additional witnesses for this hearing?

Madam Majority Leader, we have no further witnesses for this hearing.

Okay. Hearing none, I want to thank all the panels and witnesses for their participation today. We value your opinions. This concludes the business of the Committee on Education. We will now recess this hearing to the call of the Chair, Chairman Isaiah Thomas. Have a good afternoon. Thank you.

And thank you, Madam Majority Leader.

Thank you. (Committee on Education concluded at 12:52 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL