9/8/2023 0 Comments Upland paIn 2013, the district’s graduation rate was 56%. A 2007 Johns Hopkins University report put Chester High School among the 1700 schools nationally with exceptionally high drop out rates. The district’s rankings based on the state Big Standardized Test (the PSSA) placed it solidly within the bottom five districts in the state (Pennsylvania has roughly 500 school districts). The financial instability of the district was one issue, but its academics have been another. None of these takeovers actually helped, but they did shatter any hope for continuity of leadership in Chester. Within two years, the first such officer was removed by the state secretary of education via the courts, and replaced with another state-appointed receiver. But in 2012 yet another school takeover law was passed, and the district was once again under the thumb of the state, this time via a Chief Recovery Officer. In 2007 another state takeover board, the Empowerment Board of Control, took control of the district for both financial and academic reasons, and stayed in charge until the law that put them in place ran out in 2010. In 2005 Governor Ed Rendell called on the board members to resign and be replaced they were overspending their budgets by millions of dollars. Pennsylvania’s first attempt at a private takeover of a public system had failed. The district reportedly had a huge hidden deficit, Edison battled the local administration, and in June of 2005, saying they had not been fully paid and that “we were no longer going to be enough of an active agent for positive change,” Edison pulled out. There were reports of violence and a lack of safety in the schools. School takeovers have a poor track record for a variety of reasons. In just a few months, the state would be pushing for them to take over Philadelphia schools as well. Still, they were the leading takeover artists in the country. The bulk of the contract went to Edison Schools, Inc., the for-profit edubiz launched by Chris Whittle in 1995 by 2001, they had acquired a somewhat checkered history, both educationally and financially. “We wanted to create a level of competition,” board president Thomas E. One of the board’s first moves was to hire three different private sector companies to run the district’s schools. In 2000, the state declared the district financially distressed, meaning that they would be taken over by a state-appointed Board of Control. Chester Uplands School District is a fine example of how that simply didn’t happen.īy 1994, the district was named the worst-performing school in the state, and has remained consistently among the lowest performers in the state. schools had entered the modern age of accountability in which, theoretically, performance problems would be identified so that the state could help out. With the community’s middle class hollowed out Chester Upland schools found themselves increasingly in trouble, both fiscally and academically. Segregation in Delaware County remains a “fact but not a policy.” Chester Upland covers just five square miles, packed in between the four districts that each cover less than ten square miles, with fewer than 25,000 residents. All four adjacent districts are wealthier and far whiter than Chester Upland. Wallingford-Swarthmore has a Niche rating of A+. Penn-Delco, which seceded from Chester Upland in 1960, and Ridley are both rated B, “above-average” districts. Today, Chester Upland shares boundaries with four other districts. The PHRC ruled that the Chester School Board had broken the law, and the district was ordered to desegregate, a ruling that went through appeals for three years before the board voted to “eliminate or substantially reduce segregation” in October of 1967. Governor William Scranton negotiated a peace in part by creating the Pennsylvania Human Relations Committee. National civil rights leaders came to Chester, as did state troopers. Board of Education ruling, but the school superintendent noted that the decision wouldn’t have any legal ramifications for the county “where segregation is admittedly a fact but not a policy.”Ī series of protests and demonstrations culminated in almost nightly protests in April of 1964, all centered on ending de facto segregation in the schools. “The bond issue was,” McClarnon writes, “in fact, a #3.5 million re-segregation project.” Shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court issued its Brown v. In 1953, the board floated a $3.5 million bond issue intended to finance a redrawing of school boundaries.
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