By The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers
PHILADELPHIA–“In light of the unmitigated fiasco that is Source4Teachers, the District’s plan to repeat the same failed experiment with Kelly Services is absolutely mind-boggling.
“When the District first announced plans to outsource substitute services to Source4Teachers, I publicly made it very clear that this experiment would be a failure. All school year, the PFT has held press conferences, issued statements and testified before City Council about the extent of Source4Teachers’ failure to provide substitutes.
“The collaboration between the District and Source4Teachers was an even bigger disaster than we anticipated. While the District was failing to fill a stunning number of teacher vacancies, Source4Teachers left hundreds of Philly classrooms uncovered for months at schools like Muñoz Marín (0% fill rate from September through December).
“The District has been hearing from angry parents, educators and elected leaders, rightfully so, about the Source4Teachers debacle for nearly a year. The logical course of action would be to return to the previous–and far more effective–system of substitute services. And, since Kelly plans to pay substitutes at the originally contracted rates (and pass management costs to the District), millions of dollars would be saved by reverting to the old system.
Instead, the District is doubling down on its original mistake by hiring–and paying more for–Kelly Services, which, like Source4Teachers, has no experience in providing substitutes for a large urban school district like Philadelphia.
“The District’s actions are made more outrageous by the fact that we have already seen how this will end. It’s the proverbial definition of insanity: spending millions to repeat the same failed experiment to provide our schoolchildren with adequate substitutes, but hoping for a different result.
“Educators in Philly and across the nation routinely express frustration at having a lack of voice in the decisions that affect our schools. It’s ironic that, at the very end of Teacher Appreciation Week, Superintendent Hite is once again demonstrating the District’s steadfast refusal to consult, or even share their plans, with Philly’s educators.
“Along with the parents of our city’s schoolchildren, we are determined to fight back against the District’s privatization agenda, since it seems they are incapable of learning from their own mistakes.”
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