HARRISBURG (PRNewswire-USNewswire) – Citing improved financial controls in the Chester-Upland School District that resulted from the litigation initiated by the Department of Education, Secretary of Education Gerald L. Zahorchak announced that a sound financial structure had been reestablished in the district and that he has appointed an empowerment board to oversee the academic recovery of the district.
In the 2003-04 and 2004-05 fiscal years, the district grossly overspent its budget during the school year. As a result, the department initiated litigation against the Special Board of Control, requesting a receivership for the district. In October of 2006 the court appointed the secretary as interim receiver. As receiver the secretary has had access to all of the district’s financial information and has had the power to review and approve all payments and contracts in excess of $5,000.
As a result of these controls, together with changes in the district’s financial operation that were made in response to the litigation and the court’s scrutiny, the secretary concluded that a sound financial structure had been reestablished.
The determination does not mean that all the problems in the district have been solved. As Zahorchak pointed out, “Under the current controls, the district has a sound financial structure. However it has significant long term financial challenges and it does not offer a high quality education to its students. An empowerment board will be appointed that includes experts in education who will ensure fiscal solvency and offer expertise and galvanize community resources that will help in boosting student achievement.”
Current law requires that the state appoint a three-member empowerment board comprised of at least two residents of Delaware County. The secretary is appointing Kathy Schultz, a resident of the county and a member of the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, and Dr. Juan Baughn, also a resident of the county and an experienced academic leader with 40 years of experience in education management and extensive background in the Chester Upland School District, where he served as Dean of Students from 1970-1974 and more recently as the Department of Education’s lead liaison on district matters and the oversight of the department’s Distinguished Educators currently placed in the district.
The secretary also appointed Marc Woolley, a resident of Philadelphia who served as the former general counsel to the Philadelphia Housing Authority, is now the director for strategy and planning for the Delaware River Port Authority, and who has been volunteering for the last three months in an assistant capacity to Special Board of Control member John Estey, as the secretary’s designee and chairperson of the board. Mr. Estey will serve on the newly created empowerment board in a non-voting capacity.
“This new board will make sure the district starts school next year with enough teachers. This year, the district has employed 39 substitutes, many of whom change weekly. As a result, the students are being shortchanged. This new board will shepherd in an era of high quality academic programming and services for the students that guarantee they will succeed after graduation,” Zahorchak added.
The secretary noted that the new board will have the ongoing support and engagement of the Department of Education. The department has placed some the most talented educators in the state in the district to help turn around the academic results. Last year, the district’s PSSA scores moved in the right direction for the first time. In addition, the department has provided critical financial expertise to the district, provided funding for a high quality tutoring program for students as well as ensured that the elementary school has a standardized and proven reading and math curriculum with the support of Johns Hopkins University.
The department will continue to bring necessary resources to the district including sufficient funding to close the teacher shortage gap, technical assistance aimed at implementing reforms at the middle and high school, leadership training to improve management and the development of partnerships with area institutions that can offer the students services, internships and augment district resources. The area universities have offered to mobilize faculty and students to assist with student tutoring and student projects and related activities that will boost student achievement and increase applied learning opportunities for students. The empowerment board will review the operations of the district’s charter schools. This review may require the revocation of charters that do not demonstrate academic performance and caps on charter enrollment to ensure the district’s fiscal stability.
In addition, the empowerment board will be given the recommendations prepared by the department that close the budget deficit for the current year as well as ensure subsequent budgets are in balance. Chief among these recommendations is the termination of numerous professional service contracts that divert funds from the classroom to pay for administrative expenses at a ratio much higher than most districts in the state.
“This empowerment board is comprised of dedicated individuals who will put the interests of students first,” said Zahorchak. “These fine individuals understand that they need to carefully use the resources at their disposal to boost student achievement. There is no other measure of success for these individuals. I urge the parents and community residents to rally to help these new leaders ensure that the educational opportunity in Chester Upland improves every year and more and more children achieve their full potential.”