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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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?
Okay. And so, for the record would you be able to provide that information from the Collective Bargaining Agreement --
-- 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?
Okay. So the question is though, can schools negotiate lower school --
Well, can schools negotiate lower class size caps?
We referenced that for career and technical education classrooms as a cap of 24.
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.
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?
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?
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 --
-- 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.
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?
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. Great. And then one thing I wanted to notate based on Dr. Cooper's testimony was around the recruitment for teachers.
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 --
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. 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?
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 --
Leveling. And good to see you, Councilmember Squilla, as always.
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?
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.
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.
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 --
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 --
-- 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 --
-- 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?
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.
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