Hot debate about revoking K12’s science contract

by Paul Socolar

Back in 2002, throngs of protestors regularly descended on School Reform Commission meetings for raucous debates about contracts for private companies to provide educational services to the District.

On November 9, 2005, it was a debate and vote about K12 Inc., a private company contracting with the School District, that triggered perhaps the most impassioned scene at a School Reform Commission meeting since the votes on privatization in 2002.

The most heated controversies in the SRC’s short history have revolved around similar issues of contracting out and even involved a few of the same characters.

An estimated 100 activists and community members turned out at the November 9 meeting to call for termination of the School District’s $3 million contract with K12 Inc., an educational services company, because of racist remarks about Blacks, crime, and abortion made by K12 founder and former chairman William “Bill” Bennett. Bennett is a part owner of the company.

Angered by the School Reform Commission’s 3-2 vote to uphold the contract with K12, members of the audience brought the SRC meeting to a halt with their shouts of protest, prompting the commissioners to leave the auditorium. The crowd of protestors regrouped and then many stayed on to engage in an impromptu heated, hour-long dialogue with two SRC members and CEO Paul Vallas, who returned to the meeting room to face them.

The decision to maintain K12’s contract stands for now (it comes up for renewal in June), but opponents of K12 continue to organize and pressure the SRC to reverse their vote. Members of the Legislative Black Caucus have written letters to the District protesting the vote and say they are exploring a $3 million reduction in state education aid to Philadelphia if the $3 million contract is not revoked.

A. Bruce Crawley, who heads the African American Chamber of Commerce, noted, “Community people are starting to ask other questions too. The longer the District drags it out, the more attention is being paid to the District’s procurement process.”

Musing about race and genocide

Bennett, a former U.S. Secretary of Education in the Ronald Reagan administration who is now a talk show host, triggered this chain of events with a comment on his radio show in September. Bennett said, “if you wanted to reduce crime … you could abort every Black baby in the country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.” Bennett subsequently defended his remarks as “a thought experiment on public policy.”