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It's Our Money

I’m a longtime advocate for transparency in government. Back in 2009, I attended the first-ever transparency camp. Earlier this month, I attended the Investigative Reporters & Editors annual conference. So my antennae went up when I read Philadelphia City Council had fast-tracked a bill to authorize the City to buy land on which to build a new prison.

I helped mobilize a coalition of journalists, advocacy groups and activists to stop what would have been a $7.26 million down payment on the school-to-prison pipeline. I was particularly concerned about the lack of transparency. The bill to authorize the City to purchase the land was introduced by Councilman Bobby Henon on April 30. Two months later, we still don’t know who owns the property at 7777 State Road.

On the same day that Henon tabled his bill, the Philadelphia Daily News reported the land is contaminated with nuclear waste.

The school-to-prison bill is dead, for now. City Council is on summer recess, but the battle for transparency and accountability continues. So on September 10, I will launch @PHLWatchdog, a citizen-led initiative to monitor and report on what the City is doing with our money.

Philly taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent. We will use social media to share information and calls to action. We will shine a light on government spending because sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Got tips? Send all tips to [email protected]. For updates, follow @PHLWatchdog on Twitter.

Philly’s School to Prison Pipeline

Tuesday is Election Day in Philly. For the Philadelphia School District, it’s Groundhog Dog. The school district is facing yet another budget crisis. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

The city charter requires the school district to adopt its budget by May 30, but funding from the city and state are a giant question mark at this point, leading to the possibility that the district might violate the charter and go past its deadline for the second straight year.

[…]

In a similar situation last year, the SRC [School Reform Commission] opted to wait until receiving assurances from Council on a sales tax extension and other measures before passing a budget in late June. Green predicted that Council and the mayor would agree on a short term fix to help close the district’s $85 million projected deficit while they wait on the state, but no one knows for sure.

According to a recent poll, education is the most important issue for Philly voters.

Still, City Council ain’t got time for education. They’ll deal with the school budget deficit when they get around to it. In the meantime, Council is scheduled to vote on a bill sponsored by Councilman Bobby Henon that would authorize the Commissioner of Public Property to spend up to $7.26 million to acquire the land to build a prison. The bill was introduced on April 30 and referred to the Committee on Public Property and Public Works, which Henon chairs. A Council rule was suspended to allow for a vote on the bill on Thursday.

Why the rush? The price tag for the proposed prison is between $300 million and $500 million. The proposed prison is just that – a proposal by lame-duck Mayor Michael Nutter.

The new mayor will have the final say on spending priorities. In response to Decarcerate PA’s mayoral candidate survey, Jim Kenney, the likely next mayor, said he will not move forward on Nutter’s plan to expand the Philadelphia Prison System. He supports a moratorium on the construction of new jails and detention centers.

Get this: Henon said he found the condition of the House of Correction “deplorable.” Has he taken a tour of our public schools? Students are trapped in 100-year-old buildings without librarians, school nurses, guidance counselors or air conditioning.

900AM-WURD host Solomon Jones has been sounding the alarm about the new prison. Jones was the keynote speaker at the school district’s Family Education Summit:

I’m trying to tell you about principles. The only thing that stands between our kids and that prison is us. City Council has its priorities. Our priorities are these kids.

Jones continued:

They know where that $300 million is coming from, but they don’t know where the money is coming from to close the school district’s $85 million deficit. We must make sure their priorities line up with ours. … The bottom line: If you have $300 million for a prison, then you have $85 million for the schools. Take it from the Capital Budget if you have to, but do what you have to do to fund our schools. ... Vote on Tuesday, and then whoever doesn’t do what’s right by our schools, vote them out.

Doing what’s right means stopping Philly’s school to prison pipeline. City Council and the next mayor must be held accountable. To do so, we must turn Election Day into Accountability Day.

Knight News Challenge on Elections

The Knight Foundation issued an open call for ideas on how to get more Americans involved in their communities so that they will have a voice in local, state and national issues. I answered the call and submitted an idea to increase Millennials’ interest in elections, boost voter turnout and jump-start civic participation.

Some background. Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 have the lowest turnout. In Philadelphia, Millennials are not targeted for voter outreach because they are “inactive” (meaning they have not voted in five years or are not registered to vote).

With the cutback in civic education in the schools and no targeted outreach, it’s not surprising that Millennials are not showing up on Election Day. In 2014, turnout for Pennsylvania’s competitive gubernatorial race was 36 percent. That was Philadelphia’s lowest citywide turnout in a midterm election since 1998. By one estimate, youth turnout was 20 percent, the worst turnout in a midterm election since 1940.

The takeaway of the 2008 and 2012 elections is that young people will turn out if they are the target of voter education initiatives. But the dirty little secret about voting is that incumbents have a vested interest in keeping the electorate small. Philly’s political machine spends few, if any, resources encouraging new voters to get involved. The lack of information and the city’s archaic ward system are barriers to participation.

Yo! Philly Votes will bridge the information gap. Our mobile app will provide a calendar of nonpartisan candidate and policy forums, and an Election Day incident reporting tool. The flattening of newsrooms means there are fewer journalists to report on what’s happening at polling places. So we will crowdsource election protection.

For more information, check out Yo! Philly Votes at Knight News Challenge.

Death of a School System

Two weeks from today, the Philadelphia School District will open the doors to buildings that are schools in name only. Traditional public schools increasingly are joyless places where children are warehoused and opportunities for learning are elusive.

Superintendent William R. Hite recently announced that schools will open on time with another $31 million in cuts:

Today, just three weeks from school opening, we once again find ourselves having to make unbelievably tough choices. As we announced more than a month ago, we have an $81 million shortfall in our current year budget, which must be closed through additional revenues or cost reductions.

For the sake of minimizing disruptions for families and for the sake of educating children, we have made the decision to make a series of additional difficult – and, hopefully, temporary – cuts in order to open schools on time.

The “temporary” cuts include:

• Fewer school police officers
• Less frequent cleaning of schools
• Fewer cleaning supplies
• Delayed repairs at schools

Hite said he hoped to “realize significant revenues from additional building sales.”

On Friday, the William Penn Development Coalition withdrew its legal action that had effectively blocked the sale of William Penn High School to Temple University. William Penn was temporarily closed in 2009. (Full disclosure: I am a member of the WPDC Executive Board.)

The decision to withdraw its lis pendens was in recognition that WPDC had exhausted that legal remedy. WPDC President Inez Henderson-Purnell said in a statement:

We fought the good fight. With this action, the sale of William Penn to Temple University will go forward. But the fight to save William Penn is broader than one school. William Penn has become a metaphor in the struggle to ensure our children have access to high quality traditional public schools.

Sadly, we are witnessing death by a thousand cuts.

In the late ‘90s, my mentor Milton Bins took me on a site visit to William Penn. Now deceased, Milton was a longtime advocate for public education with the Council of the Great City Schools.

Back in the day, William Penn was a highly successful school. Its death is an object lesson on what happens when a school is systematically and deliberately stripped of resources. The building becomes a shadow of its former glory. WPDC Treasurer Priscilla Woods observed:

William Penn is a cautionary tale about what happens when a school is deprived of resources. The School District of Philadelphia’s disinvestment led to the death of the 1st Governor’s School of Excellence at William Penn, which was the best equipped educational facility of its day with five academic academies.

We now see this happening districtwide. In September, schools will open with even fewer resources than “the inadequate and insufficient resources schools had last year.”

Woods’ concerns were underscored by state Sen. Vincent Hughes who last week released a report on conditions in Philadelphia public schools. In a statement, Hughes said:

While I am grateful that students and parents will not have to deal with the disruption of our public schools opening late, I am deeply concerned that the continued lack of adequate funding will further erode conditions in our classrooms. The cuts that were announced today, as well as the ongoing insecurity given the lack of additional funds from Harrisburg, are simply unacceptable. The lack of commitment to our public schools in Philadelphia and across the Commonwealth has become a national embarrassment.

We already know that current funding levels are not enough to create an environment to prepare our students for the challenges of the 21st Century. Conditions in our public schools were deplorable last year and now the system is gearing up for a repeat at best, with likely even less funding and more cuts to vital programs. We cannot expect our children to shine academically while providing them with such woefully inadequate resources.

Had enough? If you care about our children, bear witness to what’s happening in your school. Let your voices be heard.

For more info about the town hall meeting, go here.

Philly School Daze

Yesterday was Open House at the Philadelphia School District’s last remaining prized property, William Penn High School, which has a market value of $32 million.

One would think that a school district too broke to pay attention would ask for the market price and settle for what it can get. Think again. In this notoriously “corrupt and contented” city, the asking price for William Penn is a mere $15 million.

The bidding process for William Penn makes a mockery of the School District’s Adaptive Sale and Reuse policy. The promise that school properties will be disposed of in a “transparent and responsible manner” rings hollow.

Putting aside the lack of transparency in closing William Penn, the asking price of $15 million doesn’t pass the smell test.

Temple University has expressed an interest in William Penn. The sale is being expedited by the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation whose board of directors includes Temple’s Senior Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs.

Are Philly taxpayers expected to believe it’s a coincidence the asking price is less than half the market value? To borrow a phrase from Elie Wiesel, there are no coincidences.

Philadelphia Schools Superintendent William Hite says he needs $216 million more to maintain the shameful status quo. Why then is the School District throwing away $17 million? The asking price begs the question: Who benefits?

It’s wrong to deny taxpayers an opportunity to ask why the School District is selling William Penn for pennies on the dollar. So the Pennsylvania State Chapter National Action Network will file a complaint with the Office of the Inspector General. Perhaps then the community will get some answers.

#myPhillyPD

On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder  announced the Justice Department is launching a new initiative to collect data about stops, searches and arrests in an effort to “reduce tensions between law enforcement and minority communities.” Holder said:

This overrepresentation of young men of color in our criminal justice system is a problem we must confront—not only as an issue of individual responsibility but also as one of fundamental fairness, and as an issue of effective law enforcement. Racial disparities contribute to tension in our nation generally and within communities of color specifically, and tend to breed resentment towards law enforcement that is counterproductive to the goal of reducing crime.

Recent incidents of racial profiling have exacerbated tensions between Philly police officers and minority communities.

On Jan. 7, 2014, Darrin Manning, a 16-year-old honor student from a good family, was minding his own business. On a record cold day in Philadelphia, he was wearing a hoodie on his way to play in his school’s basketball game. That was enough for a Philadelphia police officer to stop him for “acting suspiciously.” Less than 24 hours after the illegal investigatory stop and violent pat down by a white female officer, Darrin underwent emergency surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Fast forward three months. Philippe Holland, a 20-year-old black man from a good family, is in critical condition at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania after two plainclothes police officers fired 14 shots into his car. Three of the bullets hit him. Holland is a pizza deliveryman who was on his second job when he was shot. This hard-working man may lose an eye because two Philly cops deemed a black man wearing a hoodie with his hands in his pockets is acting suspiciously.

The two illegal stops run amok, coupled with the decision not to prosecute rogue Philly cops caught on camera, have sparked outrage.

A Philly.com reader, Willphill1, commented:

Reminiscent of the Frank Rizzo regime, he must be smiling from the grave. Just another gang of thugs with no regard for the law and rights of citizens they are sworn and paid to uphold… 'Tainted justice'? That's just the tip of the iceberg. The cops are shooting innocent people in the streets like animals. That pizza delivery guy didn't choose to be in that neighborhood at that hour. It was his job. He was just trying to get home to his family. The fact that an innocent man with not even a traffic warrant ran for his life in that situation definitely indicates that there was something seriously wrong in the way they approached him. In his trying to protect his life they shot him down like a dog. It has to stop. Truly the worst of times have arrived when law abiding citizens need protection from so-called 'law enforcement.'

Indeed, from former Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo to current Commissioner Ramsey Charles, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The new National Center for Building Community Trust and Justice should collect data about Philadelphia, where it’s always Groundhog Day. In 1979, the Justice Department accused then-Mayor Frank Rizzo of “condoning policies to commit random beatings, unjustified shootings and other flagrant civil rights violations.” The lawsuit noted the victims of police misconduct were overwhelmingly black or Hispanic.

But we don’t have to wait on the feds to hold officials, including the next mayor, accountable. Philadelphia Daily News columnist Will Bunch recently wrote:

Ask the men and women who want to be Philadelphia's next mayor after Nutter leaves office in 2015 what they will do to change the current system where so few allegations of police misconduct stick (remember this guy) and the end result is so often that the officer accused of wrongdoing gets his job back with back overtime pay (what is that, even?).

Sure, we can complain but to have an impact we must do something. So with a hat tip to the New York Police Department, we will use #myPhillyPD to tell the story of the Philadelphia Police Department’s pattern or practice of racial bias in law enforcement. The crowdsourced interactive map will help citizens hold officials accountable for their failure to end the culture of corruption that taints Philly police officers and breeds resentment and distrust in communities of color.

To get involved, post a photo to Twitter with the hashtag #myPhillyPD. Not on Twitter? No problem. Go to http://bit.ly/myPhillyPD and upload your photos.

To stay informed, follow us on Twitter: @myPhillyPD.

Downstairs at the Showboat

I am spearheading All That Philly Jazz, a digital history project that’s mapping Philly’s rich jazz heritage. While jazz enthusiasts know about John Coltrane’s Philadelphia, the map tells the rest of the story.

From the organ joints on 52nd Street, aka “The Strip,” to Columbia Avenue’s “Miracle Mile” (now Cecil B. Moore Avenue), there was a jazz spot on nearly every block. South Philly was known as the Harlem Quarter.

There was so much jazz happening that folks in West Philly didn’t venture into North Philly and vice versa. Time after time I’ve heard, “You stayed in your neighborhood.” But there were two legendary spots that no matter where folks lived, they went – Pep’s Musical Bar at Broad and South streets and the Showboat on Broad and Lombard.

The World Communications Charter School now sits in Pep’s footprint. Given Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s appreciation for jazz, it may be more than coincidence that the Roots’ mural is on one of the school’s walls.

The building that housed the Showboat is still there. The jazz club was in the basement of what was then the Douglass Hotel. The historical marker out front notes that Billie Holiday “often lived here.”

Last fall, I visited what used to be the Showboat with Yasuhiro “Fuji” Fujioka, founder of the Coltrane House of Osaka and co-author of “The John Coltrane Reference”; Lenora Early, founder of the Philadelphia John Coltrane House; and Dr. George E. Allen, former chair of Overbrook High School’s Art and Music Department and author of “I Was Not Asked.”

Until that visit, I assumed the Showboat was in the basement space with the two windows facing Lombard Street. As we descended the stairs, Dr. Allen said something was wrong. Back then, there was no landing between the steps. Instead, the club was down a steep set of stairs.

And sure enough, after a bit of snooping, we found what remains of the original steps that led down to the Showboat.

So imagine the likes of Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Cannonball Adderley, Philly Joe Jones, Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington, Ramsey Lewis, Ray Charles, Lee Morgan, Percy, Jimmy, and Tootie Heath (the Heath Brothers), and Nina Simon descending those steps to take up their place on the stage that was behind the bar.

As we build out the All That Philly Jazz interactive map, we will have images, video and audio that will take you back to the day when jazz and blues giants were live at the Showboat.

For updates on All That Philly Jazz, follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.