Hite will leave superintendent post after nearly 10 years at the helm of Philadelphia schools

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Hite will leave superintendent post after nearly 10 years at the helm of Philadelphia schools

By Dale Mezzacappa and Johann Calhoun Sep 27, 2021, 10:30pm EDT


Superintendent William Hite will leave the top post in Philadelphia public schools next year, choosing not to renew his contract after nearly a decade in the job, he announced late Monday. Hite, 60, will step down in August 2022, following a challenging stretch managing education during the pandemic. In a letter to parents, Hite said he shared the news now so that there could be a “full and complete” search for the next superintendent and that he is “not going anywhere” in the meantime. “The work we do together for your children is critical and I am fully with you and supporting your families during this year,” he wrote.

Hite, a former teacher and principal, led the district through a period of severe austerity and is credited with bringing some stability to a chronically underfunded district charged with educating mostly low-income children with significant needs. Under his leadership, the district improved its financial condition enough to be returned to local control after nearly two decades under the state-dominated School Reform Commission. The state took the district over in 2001 citing fiscal and academic distress. But this month, dire shortages of bus drivers, food workers, classroom aides, and other vital workers caused a chaotic situation as schools struggled to reopen for in-person learning. Hite has said he considered his ninth year leading the school district to be his most arduous.

In March 2020, he was forced to shut down schools for 120,000 district students due to COVID-19. Hite’s administration did succeed in reaching a contract agreement by the Aug. 31 deadline with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers despite the union’s continual disagreement over school conditions, the first time in 30 years that a settlement was reached before the prior contract expired. During his time here, the city also saw a marked increase in charter schools, which now educate a third of the district’s students. In 2012 and 2013, the district closed 24 of its schools and merged or relocated five more, which had a wrenching impact on many communities and caused public outrage.

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Hite would be the latest in a series of big-city school district leaders to resign, retire or otherwise step down in recent months, some citing fatigue as a reason for learning their posts. Chicago Schools CEO Janice Jackson left her role in May, following similar moves by the leaders in Los Angeles, New York City, and Broward County, Florida. “This year has been difficult. It’s been difficult for everybody,” Hite said in an interview with Chalkbeat last March. “We’re navigating something we haven’t been through before.”

More: https://philadelphia.chalkbeat.org/2021/9/27/22697703/hite-tenure-expected-end-contract-philadelphia

He was brought here from Prince George's County, MD and learned that he was completely clueless about the depth and breadth of the school system here. Surburban-y Prince George's County is not like urban-y Philadelphia.

I won't put this all on the pandemic problems because that is universal, not just in the U.S., but worldwide, but on crap that happened well before. For example the idiocy of assuming most of the piece of junk school buildings had AC in the decision to start school for the first time ever the week before Labor Day a few years ago, and ending up with a typical heatwave that week where the schools had to be let out for 1/2 days most of that week. After the past couple years being forced to outfit some 60% of the schools with some kind of AC (mostly window units), they finally tried again the week before Labor Day this school year. The push for starting that early was the excuse that schools can be let out earlier in the spring vs the typical 3rd week of June.

Just a lot of loud bull-headed decisions that time after time, came back to haunt.

And as a note, the SRC (School Reform Commission) that was implemented under the Rendell administration at the state level that originally took over the District back in 2001, always had a provision that the city could regain local control upon the state's receipt of a detailed "plan".

Such a planwas finally announced in 2017 and the SRC was dissolved (after much whining by some members) and the resultant local/mayor-appointed School Board held its first meeting in 2018 (although there has been some turnover with it since - we don't have an elected Board).

I do know the SRC was nothing but a financial management entity with no concern or mandate associated with actual "education" but only on budget/spending, so I was glad that bullshit finally went away. It essentially oversaw the charterization/privatization of the school district, which in many (not all) cases, was a big fail. So what often happens when they do stats of the school district here and only quote the number of students for what was left without also including the number of students now in the still-associated charter schools, it makes the school system and the number of students it really has, look "smaller" than it really is.