Victoria Brownworth

If you love Philadelphia, you hate Arlene Ackerman. It’s difficult to imagine a more despised figure in recent city history than former School Superintendent Ackerman, who has bilked Philly school kids of millions since she landed her half-million-a-year job with the School District. At the height of the controversy over former dog-killer Michael Vick being hired by the Eagles, the quarterback wasn’t as despised as Ackerman is. But then unlike Vick, Ackerman has never been punished and seems to think the only person deserving of restitution is herself. She just shatters kids lives wherever she goes.

If you are one of the handful of very vocal people in the city who keep defending her (and yes, I am talking to you Jannie Blackwell and Kenny Gamble), you may think that’s an unfair statement. But Ackerman isn’t who deserves defending. It’s the 200,000+ kids in Philadelphia’s public schools who should be our concern. Unfortunately for Philadelphia, those children were never on Ackerman’s radar while she was Superintendent. Only the city’s money was.

I’ve written numerous columns about Ackerman. I protested when she was hired, citing her record of divisiveness and controversy in previous superintendent positions and questioning why she was chosen, given the fragile nature of the Philadelphia School District. I continued to call her out over her brief but costly tenure here, like when she was being investigated, when she owed the IRS, despite her half million dollar salary, when she targeted whistle-blowers within the school district, when she failed repeatedly to address issues of violence and black-on- Asian racial attacks in several city schools which resulted in a federal civil rights investigation and citation against the city.

When Ackerman’s contract was about to be up, I urged the Mayor to seek out Michele Rhee, one of the best educators in the country, who was then available. And if not Rhee, I argued, at least not more Ackerman. Because, I asserted, Ackerman would do what she had done previously–create a problem, leave the school district and demand a big payout.

I would have liked to have been wrong about Ackerman, but a pattern is a pattern and Ackerman’s pattern, had anyone bothered to vet her before she was hired, was clearly defined. Take the money and run.

Philadelphia has always had an ethics problem. All big cities do, but Philadelphia is second only to Chicago for through-and-through corruption and the sheer volume of political figures who end up at the least, indicted, or actually in prison.

That was supposed to change under Michael Nutter’s mayoralty, and while it hasn’t been the pay-to-play revolving door between the U.S. Attorney’s office and Graterford that existed under John Street, it definitely hasn’t been as clean as most of us would have liked.

The Ackerman situation has smacked of corruption from the outset. Why was she hired? Why was her salary so munificent when the School District was in financial peril? Who vetted her? What happened to sunder her relationship with the School District between her being rehired in January 2011 and her being–what?–fired, forced to resign, eased out–back in September?

The latest slap to the city–all the way from New Mexico where Ackerman is currently living–is that the former Superintendent, who squeezed just under $1million from the city when her tenure mysteriously ended a few months ago now wants to collect unemployment.

It takes some bold brass ones to be sitting on a million dollars in another city and still want to collect $600 a week from school kids in the poorest big city in America.

In the big picture of the School District’s money woes, another $2,400 a month isn’t a lot of money. Maybe just a portion of one of the food programs that help the largely poor and hungry demographic of Philly public school kids, two-thirds of whom are living below the poverty level. Which is, in case you aren’t one of the families living at that level, less than half of what Ackerman will be collecting from those kids for doing nothing.

And make no mistake, the money to pay for Ackerman’s unemployment compensation, which could run as long as 24 months under current recession guidelines, will be coming directly out of the School District coffers.

Ackerman, who has become adept at playing both the diva and the victim over the years, released a statement about filing for unemployment. She noted, “I loved my job with the School District of Philadelphia. I did not quit my job. I am not working right now. And therefore I am entitled to unemployment.”

Entitled was perhaps a poor choice of words for Ackerman, since the main complaint about her during her tenure in Philadelphia was her sense of entitlement. She ran roughshod over everyone from the Mayor to PFT President Jerry Jordan to the teachers and the students themselves. When she and the city severed their connection back in September, Ackerman had been MIA for weeks. Then suddenly she was out without explanation. Leading inexorably back to the inevitable question of why she was ever hired in the first place.

Nutter was as non-plussed by Ackerman’s latest stunner as most Philadelphians were.

He told reporters, “Given the financial crisis facing the Philadelphia School District and the nearly one million dollar settlement agreement that the former superintendent received, it’s astounding to me that she’s coming back to the District seeking unemployment compensation.”

Jordan was equally stunned, telling 6ABC,

“I thought Halloween was last month. This is clearly a trick on the public and on the members of my union and other unions who were laid off and clearly, it sounds like a treat for her.”

Fernando Gallard, the School District spokesperson said that in accordance with her separation agreement with the School District, there would be no contesting of her unemployment.

Why not? Ackerman suggests that she was fired. She doesn’t come out and say “fired,” but she does say she didn’t quit. She certainly wasn’t laid off. So she was fired. Which means she isn’t eligible for unemployment–unless her separation agreement says she is.

Which brings us back yet again to the question of what happened between January and September that caused the city to kick Ackerman off the active payroll.

Philadelphians should be demanding some answers about the entire Ackerman controversy. This woman has taken a huge wad of cash from Philly school kids and I would like to know why she was allowed to do so. What kind of deal was brokered with her that created this expensive mess? And how will this be averted in the future?

For weeks Philadelphians have been hearing about the huge costs to the city of Occupy Philly. The hundreds of protestors cost the city nearly $1million in police overtime and sanitation clean up. Why hasn’t there been equal coverage given to Ackerman’s bilking of the city?

There are many questions that still demand answers regarding the Ackerman debacle. I’d personally like to see an audit of what services she is supposed to have provided for her $350,000 annual salary plus $100,000 bonus. I’d like to know why when so many teachers and other vital School District staff like nurses and janitors were laid off, Ackerman is still coming to the city for a handout. Perhaps the reason she is currently unemployed is because she either doesn’t want to work if she can still take money from us, or she can’t find another school district to take her on after she has pulled her buyout gambit on yet another city–ours.

Accountability has never been high on the list of concerns of Philadelphia politicians, but the Ackerman debacle, since Ackerman herself refuses to go away, demands it.

This isn’t just a question of money–although that is certainly at issue. But the point that has yet to be made in any of the discourse on Ackerman is this: Philadelphia public schools are among the worst in the country–most violent, least effective, highest drop-out rates. The demographic for public schools is 65 percent African-American, 17 percent Latino, 13 percent white and 5 percent Asian. The kids who do graduate–and they represent less than half of the student population–are often functionally illiterate. I know, because I have taught literacy classes as well as remedial reading to students enrolled in local associate colleges in the city.

One reason I’d like an audit of Ackerman’s alleged achievements is because the kids in my neighborhood are virtually illiterate. The elementary school a block from my house has no library and the kids who go there, nearly 100 percent of whom are African American, have so little working knowledge of English, reading and math, that their chances grow slimmer by the day.

What are we doing about that? Why can’t we address it? It’s a crisis–an absolute crisis. There’s a reason why Philadelphia is the poorest of the top ten largest cities–we’ve created a permanent underclass in this town.

Ackerman was hired to help fix what is broken in this city: the educational system for the city’s most vulnerable and most at-risk kids, the ones who can’t afford to go to anywhere but the local public school. She didn’t create the problem, but she did absolutely nothing to fix it. And then she got a big payout and even received an award for ignoring the hideous levels of violence and shifting some test score numbers around. I dare anyone in city government or on the School Review Board to come to my neighborhood and quiz kids here. Finding a child who can read at their grade level is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack: it can’t be done.

Ackerman’s greed and insensitivity and the Mayor’s and Jerry Jordan’s faux outrage are only part of the problem.

Local NAACP head Jerry Mondesire was quick to say that the vilification of Ackerman was racist. Seriously? Everyone involved is black–the review board, the Mayor, most of City Council, Jordan. In point of fact, one would have hoped that Ackerman, as a woman of color, would have shown a little more concern for a student body that was 87 percent of color.

The concerns in this city are utterly skewed. The terms of Ackerman’s severance package should be made public, her bid for more money should be denied and the School District should be making some semblance of effort to make literacy a goal of our schools. This isn’t about ginned up test scores, it’s about whether kids can actually read or understand English or do basic math or comprehend science, history and geography.

Our kids deserve so much better than they are getting. But until we stop putting the entitled before the vulnerable and needy, Philadelphia school kids will continue to achieve less and less and the school crisis will get worse and worse. Public schools are broken in Philadelphia. It’s time to say no to the Ackermans and find someone who can help save our schools and the lives of our most needy children.