Independence Day?

by Daniel Brook

Though you couldn’t hear the votes over the chants of “No Edison!” and “Just Say No!” the School Reform Commission (SRC) unanimously decided Tuesday to make Edison Schools Inc. the “lead adviser” to the school district as it embarks on the nation’s largest experiment in privatizing public education. But SRC members say they feel the votes that weren’t drowned out -- those authorizing firms other than Edison to handle district problems ranging from safety to improving information technology -- were just as important.

SRC Chairman Jim Nevels says he believes the dispersal of the contracts away from the governor's beloved Edison shows that he and the commission have that quintessential Philadelphia virtue: independence.

"What you expected is not what you got," Jim Nevels said after the hearing. "This isn't the model you anticipated, folks. We are a deliberative body."

Critics of the SRC couldn't disagree more. They said the SRC members succumbed to that quintessential Philadelphia vice:political patronage, in this case, to the governor who put most of them in place. During the hearing, the commission meeting was heckled with lines like "it feels like we're watching a puppet show."

During the public-comment portion of the meeting, Girls High junior Sonia Isard said the process is about "putting profits in the pockets of the governor's friends."

Activist Helen Gym of Philadelphians United to Support Public Schools said the commissioners were put in place to "execute [the governor's] marching orders."

But Steve Aaron, a spokesman for Gov. Mark Schweiker, says the commission is no puppet show. "None of [the commissioners] would be surprised if you told them that the governor favors Edison. He thinks that Edison is best-suited for a significant role in the district, [but] the SRC has clearly demonstrated that it is a group of five independent thinkers who move at their own pace and make up their own minds."

Aaron maintained that the governor stayed out of the selection process.

With so much of the public outcry focused on Edison, the question is whether spreading out the contracts to a number of firms will dissipate the anger.

Nevels denied that he was pursuing this type of strategy. The non-Edison providers were chosen "on merit," Nevels said, not as "dissipaters of heat in terms of publicity."

In April or May, when contracts for individual schools are awarded, it will be clearer whether the SRC intends to pacify its critics or steamroll them. Despite the vocal grassroots opposition to privatization, Nevels says he has no intention of turning over all or most schools to the nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher learning vying for contracts alongside for-profit companies like Edison. "Nonprofits and universities are still private sources," Nevels says, suggesting that choosing them would not placate privatization opponents.

What would satisfy the SRC's opponents? Nevels says success at turning around underperforming schools regardless of who runs them will win people over.

Gym says Nevels and the commission has another thing coming to them. "They are dreaming if they think they can go into a school [and privatize it] with this much opposition," she says.

Philadelphia may be justly proud of its history, but it was hardly a source of pride that the city’s voting machines looked like artifacts from colonial days. Some were 50 years old -- so antiquated that many replacement parts are no longer being manufactured. The “young” ones were 25.

All this will change in time for the May primary when new electronic voting machines will be deployed in the city's 1,681 polling places. The machines, which are brand-new, have a 1980s retro look, since they were patented 20 years ago. Red lights flash beneath a translucent paper ballot highlighting each race. Just push next to the candidate's name you want to vote for and a light appears next to the name while the flashing light disappears. It is impossible to "overvote" (vote for too many candidates) or to miss a race (if you choose not to vote for, say, state representative, you have to press the "no vote" button). The machine can even take write-ins.

At the end of the day, the results are already tallied by a computer in the machine, eliminating the possibility of human error or tampering. Robert Lee, the city's voter registration administrator, says that, with the machines, there are "no interpretation issues." Remember those hanging chads?

Indeed, ever since the Palm Beach County fiasco in the 2000 presidential election, the nation has been focused on replacing antiquated and confusing voting machines, but don't think for a moment that the chads had anything to do with this. The new machines were recommended by a city task force in 1994, passed by ballot initiative in 1998 and ordered ready for Election Day 2000. The machines cost the city just shy of $20 million, though Lee points out that they come with a 10-year warrantee on parts.

Despite being a year and half too late, they may be a few months too early. Congress is currently considering providing funds to help municipalities upgrade their voting machines. If such funding comes through, Philadelphia's initiative may come back to haunt it. If the process had only been delayed a few more months, the city might have been able to get the feds to foot the bill. But with shorter lines for the Rendell-Casey showdown on May 21, how many Philadelphians will be worrying about the $20 million?