He wants to create a virtual school to compete with cyber charter schools that now take district students. He wants to “professionalize teaching,” in Philadelphia, rework outdated graduation policies, improve student nutrition, boost the number of students who score well on the SAT and Advanced Placement exams, and increase the percentage of graduates who earn college degrees within six years.
He aims to fix outdated business practices “that put the whole district at risk,” and to insist on better customer service across the system, no small feat in a large bureaucracy historically slow to embrace change.
Yet, Hite knows he lacks the infrastructure to make the plan work.
And he’s aware he can’t spend money the system doesn’t have, as was previous district practice. This plan, he said, is revenue-neutral and still relies on the 37 school closings announced last month and a five-year financial plan that demands hundreds of millions in labor concessions and other savings. What he didn’t want was to is sue a fiat, a laundry list of lofty goals with no way to implement them, he said in an interview. Still, the plan has no time table, and the actions it calls for do not come with a pricetag or priority order.
And he didn’t mean for his “Action Plan v1.0” — the title is meant to signal it is a working document subject to change — to be the final word on his superintendency, which began more than three months ago.
“Naturally, we will have a set of metrics that are very rigorous and ambitious,” Hite said. “This gives us something to work toward.”
Two big ideas — Hite calls them his “anchor goals” — drive the plan: improving academics and establishing financial stability. Under those are six strategies, with actions for each.
The six strategies focus on ensuring financial stability; improving student outcomes; building a “system of excellent schools;” acknowledging, recruiting, and keeping top talent; becoming a “family- centered” organization; and becoming a more accountable system.
On the revenue side, the only mention of new money — other than the savings built into the fiveyear plan — is a call to “continuously seek additional resources from public and private sources.” A coalition of the district’s teachers’ union and community groups recently released its own report criticizing the district for failing to fight for more state revenue.
Hite said the district’s lax financial controls put it at risk. For instance, it has no “position control system,” meaning employees can be hired with no way to pay them.
“That’s wrought with the ability for mismanagement,” Hite said. “We could be paying more individuals than we have budgeted for.”
There’s no “asset management system,” no central way to keep track of goods the district buys. Textbooks could be bought at one school and sit lost in a closet somewhere.
Grants need to be managed better, too, he said. In the past, some federal grant money has had to be returned because it was not spent by the end of the year.
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