Nonpaid school board service has long been a national tradition. Far less than 1% of all school boards in the U.S. pay their staff members anything at all, and the issue of expenses for them is hotly contested and severly limited.

The average school board member is elected to serve one four year term and often does not complete that term. There are few "career" school board members. School board members are inherently very junior partners in educational administration.

Standards for judging school boards would include the degree to which they do their job of setting general direction for educaitonal policy, the degree to which they involve the public, and the degree to which their tenure improves public education. They inherently have to be graded on a curve because of the limited time generally available to them to do their job.

Public education in terms of free schools only began in the 1830's or later in most places around our country (Massachusetts began it in the 1600's, with legislators there selling it on the ground--placed in the purpose section of the legislation--that students had to be able to read to resist the tempatations of "ye old seducer Satan.")

The effect of having short-term school board members and career teachers and administrators is that there is a lot of throwing one's weight around by the board members as they attempt to establish their relevancy. I remember a meeting I had with Vallas in which he appeared terrified at the possibility of being late for an upcoming meeting with Nevels.

Board members are "compensated" by being able to gain preferential treatment in hiring and promotions for friends and family members, by greater public access to public and private decision-makers, and in an ability to steer contracts the school districts issue.

If Nevels is able to get governmental support for a professional soccer team that he is a stockholder of, he will have been well compensated for his years of service. All in all, it often would be cheaper to pay them a salary and more vigorously limit their capacity for personal dealing.

One former board President, I learned recently, had the Philadelphia school district buy up land owned by his friends, whom he sometimes had professional relationships with; sale of this land fortunately proved to be a good source of revenue and profit for the school district during Vallas' last year.

One longtime administrator outside Philadelphia and education professor suggested to me that school boards should be abolished and administrators report instead to local government officials. This fits in with the business model of government beloved by chambers of commerce almost everywhere, but it limits citizen participation.

The financial system they operate on is old, maybe 12-15 years old. It's a pain to use and difficult to get information from, but software isn't the reason for this deficit. The problem is honestly senior personnel; people who have very limited experience other than their tenure with the District and who make decisions not based on GAAP or private-sector theory but rather the simple postulate of "this is how we've always done it." It was a surprise because everyone made generous budget forecasts and rosy-scenarios to get in the good graces of Vallas but didn't sound the alarm fast enough because they thought they could fix it before he noticed. That, combined with rising fuel costs, skyrocketing charter school payments, and a failure to really capitalize on the sale of the 3 main administration buildings after the purchase of the new one is what led to this deficit.

As far as the SRC, you have to remember that these people are not educators, but are still dictating education policy. It can be very dangerous when you assign someone a high-level position of authority over a subject matter they have very little understanding of (see: Mike Brown, FEMA). With that said, Nevels could have only done so much based on his limited experience. The mistake he made as chair was to spend more time trying to bring about change in the classroom (which I felt he was unqualified to speak of) and too little time trying to really reform the institutional aspects of the District, which is what I believe he was brought in to do. It's sort of that "teach a man to fish" scenario. His job was to repair the infrastructure so that the educators had the systems they needed in place to affect classroom environment. Instead, he got too involved in the classroom, which was not where he was needed the most.

Dungee-Glenn brings a great deal of passion, humility, and a fundamental understanding of our communities to the District. But she is an education-policy specialist, not an educator. I do have high hopes for her, because I think she's someone who has the ability to get things done. I'm happy she's taking over as Nutter is coming in, because I think they will balance out what the other lacks (Nutter's lack of understanding in education-policy; Dungee Glenn's lack of management expertise, especially with public finance).

I am trying to be hopeful but continue to be weary.

Nevel's came into the School District with a flawed philosphy believing schools would benefit from an open competitive system. He believed privatization would promote competition and improve schools. The non-partisan Rand Report echoed conclusions of other substantiated research proving competiton due to privatization has no positive effect on student performance.
Dungee, familiar with the failed track record of Edison Schools knew this. She knew as the Nevels administration discovered but couldn't admit too, that small class size makes the biggest difference.
Now we need to cut down on student on student violence which will eliminate student on teacher violence. I believe she will do this as well as institute the recently promised smaller classes. Watch out Philadelphia, your schools are about to improve dramatically.

As for merit pay.... fuggehtaboutit, it's not the answer either, but that is another discussion.