I was going to hold off on this post until I saw A-1 of Monday’s New York Times. Reading the story, I got the familiar sense that when it comes to great challenges like reviving our public schools, instead of tackling the issues, the media makes it about the people – and no one embodies the cult of personality bigger than Paul Vallas. There’s a love-hate relationship with the man that overwhelms the more important dialogue about the impact of the past five years of reform and what type of leader the Philadelphia public schools need today in order to move forward.

That willful blindness is perfectly embodied in Philly Mag’s Sept. 2007 Vallas profile: “Reformer R.I.P.” (http://www.phillymag.com/home/articles/power_reformer_rip/page1)

I’m not quite sure how anyone goes from leaving chaos, and a $200 million deficit, in their wake to exiting in a poof of stardust, but this is Philly Mag after all. A few choice quotes from the profile:

• “He moves fast, pursuing his agenda with military urgency, chafing those accustomed to the status quo”;
• “the most effective schools CEO in a generation”;
• “an accessible leader who would make things happen”;
• “uncensored, quirky candor”
• “perception of superhuman ubiquity”

While one might give a pass to an outsider’s awe of Vallas’ outsized personality, the characterizations of SRC Chairman James Nevels are nothing short of bizarre:

• “If Vallas was Batman, Nevels was Commissioner Gordon.”
• “Nevels brought equilibrium, legitimacy and a mandate”;
• “[Nevels] often worked behind the scenes, the quiet curator of district support and stability”

(Funny, most of us see the latter reference as rather Karl Rovian.)

For the record, I am professionally indifferent to Paul Vallas, and personally – well, all I can say is, he believed what he said at the time he was saying it.

But when we talk about schools, I have no desire to talk about Vallas and whether he was charming or ambitious, engaging, eager or brilliant. He was all of those at some point. Any review of Vallas can’t be measured by whether he brings “hope” (talk about low-balling), or whether he was too ambitious for the poverty stricken resources of his District (so was Hornbeck but we didn’t see Philly Mag loving him up). In the end, a promise was made to Philadelphia that a broke struggling school system would be turned around, that charters, privatization, state governance and new money would revolutionize the public schools in ways that our tired status quo hadn’t. So how did we do?

But the conversation rarely focuses on a nuanced and complicated assessment of that (other than trotting out a handful of numbers, most of which contradict each other). Instead, the media can’t see education beyond Vallas’ persona. Even his flagrant disregard for finances is treated as some kind of charming eccentricity done in the best interest of kids, while overlooking his outsourcing of tens of millions of dollars in questionable contracts, charters, and quiet destabilizing of school-based spending.

It is amazingly disingenuous for reporter Adam Fifield to suggest that Vallas had no knowledge of a budget deficit until October 2006 when District insiders had been talking about it for more than a year, and parents had organized around the District’s lack of openess about its finances since the previous spring when the District increased class sizes, cut hundreds of teachers, announced leveling, and cut bus service.

Equally as irresponsible is to suggest that the machinations of a weak-willed SRC were what ultimately brought Vallas down. Fifield’s exhibits shocking obliviousness to the history of the SRC and its responsibility for the deficit (through significant contracting and letting loose a wild CEO with few checks).

The combination of wild and reckless spending, along with a culture of entitlement and patronage at the District ($15,000 worth of Four Seasons dinners on the District dime by the SRC Chair James Nevels, Vallas’ use of District $$ to pay for Chicago consultants) showed tremendous disregard for the prudence and discipline that was needed in this supposed time of “reform.” Today, class sizes have gone up, and the drop-out rate for high school has barely moved. We’ve got $2.2 billion poured into this system, and schools crying poverty. Is this entirely Vallas' fault? Of course not, but he and we as a community were all too eager to leave it up to him to either fail or succeed with far too little oversight. Vallas’ accomplishments – and there are quite a few – should stand for as long as they can, but frankly, most of them threaten to be undone by the deficit he and the SRC left us.

We don’t need more of this resurrecting of the myth of the messianic CEO. It’s no mystery about what makes public schools work. The question for us is whether we have the political will to get this thing done. What we need now, post-Vallas, is not a man and a myth but a leadership team that works in conjunction with the city, state and community to focus on the inglorious nuts and bolts of making schools work, of investing in classrooms and professional development, of cultivating our internal capacity for leadership and curricular expertise, of canning the no-bid, non-performance based contracts that have sucked the finances and energy of our system, and of seeing our children as long-term investments that ought to be measured by more than just the annual testing data.

Everyday, 270-plus school doors open, 10,000 teachers show up for work, 200,000 meals are served, 60,000 windows open and close, and 175,000 children carry the hope and future of this city with them. They, and we, deserve better.