Vallas To Exit; District Looks For Kid-Friendly Leader

Paul Vallas is packing his things, has rented a U-Haul truck and will be outta here as soon as possible. The superintendent of the school district, the guy with a plan to turn every other building in Philadelphia into a magnet school, says five years is enough.

His loss will most likely be celebrated by some, and sadden others, but the main thing is: The School District of Philadelphia needs a new superintendent who cares about the students.

“I think it’s a major blow to the city of Philadelphia and the school district,” Greg Wade, president of the Home and School Council, the district’s parents’ group, said of Vallas’ departure. “Say what you want about the man, he had our best interests at heart. I truly believe that.”

Yeah. I mean, what about all those school superintendents who hate kids and routinely beat them with rulers? Paul Vallas wasn’t one of them. Whoo!

Vallas to leave city schools post [Inquirer]

Memo Madness Re: Philly Schools Report

You might remember Ellen Green-Ceisler from such posts last week as this one. She’s a lawyer who is running for a judgeship this year, but she also monitored the police department as head of the city’s Integrity and Accountability Office and prepared a report on discipline in the Philadelphia School District released earlier this month.

But whoops! Gar Joseph reports today on a memo accidentally attached to the report when it went out. It was penned by Green-Ceisler, and she wrote about how she felt the commission she did was simply a way for Paul Vallas to attack ex-school safety head Harvey Rice.

Accidentally stuck to the end of the report (”a large, stupid error,” said a schools spokeswoman) is a June memo exchange between Ceisler and Heather Frattone, the district’s director of policy and planning.

In it, Ceisler writes, “At different points during this project, Paul and [other] personnel expressed significant consternation about the OSSA [Rice's Office of Safe Schools Advocate]… . As my study progressed, I sensed that Paul and [others'] main concern was that I discredit the OSSA. In fact during one session with an… employee, I requested some data regarding student arrests. That individual, in my presence, called an employee from the School Police and stated something to the effect that I needed this information because I was hired to ‘trash Harvey Rice’s Office.’ ”

Ceisler goes on to say, “If I had reason to believe, at the outset, that the sole purpose of my contract was to ‘trash’ a critic of the School District, I never would have agreed to undertake this study.”

Even though the woman who authored the report admitted in a memo the district was mainly concerned with trashing Harvey Rice, a school district spokesperson lied, “To suggest that we would go to those lengths is a little absurd… the agenda was clearly not to trash Harvey.”

In other news, whoever accidentally attached that memo to the report has totally been fired.

Gar Joseph | Memo says Vallas hired consultant to fry Rice [Daily News]
[Photo via Al Día]
March 3: Ellen Green-Ceisler Will Attempt To Reform City’s Institutions One-By-One If She Has To

Pot, Kettle Call Each Other Black

There was some sparring at City Hall yesterday between World’s Greatest Leader Paul Vallas and Mayor John Street.

Vallas and Street’s back and forth was not really all that unexpected. The school district, you see, recently realized that (whoops!) it had a $70 million dollar deficit. It’s easy to realize how that could be misplaced. Street was not only angered at the deficit — he called it “a financial failure of the greatest magnitude” — he was angered that they just found out about the deficit now:

”I can’t think of a set of circumstances where somebody in the finance department wouldn’t know. I just can’t imagine that you just wouldn’t know that. Its just too much money. It’s 70 million dollars!… I have never seen anything like that in all of my 27 years in local government. I have never seen anything like that.”

Think about that for a second: John Street says he’s never seen anything this stupid. John. Street. Let that sink in. Yes, that’s how bad, uh, misplacing $70 million is. I guess.

Vallas, though, had some responses of his own, warning Street that “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” He’s using the nice old strategy of saying “Oh, you suck too, so it’s okay if I suck.” Excellent.

But Vallas’ real zinger came later:

“If I want schools to be adequately funded, I’d be better off petitioning Bloomberg in New York to make Philadelphia the sixth borough.”

Jesus. That was, like, what, a year ago? Last summer, even! People aren’t still quoting, say, Anchorman or making Napoleon Dynamite references, are they? (Uhh, don’t answer that.)

Mayor Street, Schools CEO Vallas Bicker Over Budget Shortfall [KYW 1060]
Monday: Enron, Adelphia Also Win Awards

Enron, Adelphia Also Win Awards

Currently on the front page of Philly.com:

Gee, was Terrell Owens on the list, too?

Vallas named among top U.S. leaders [Inquirer]
$70M in school cuts could soar to $100M [Daily News]