PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — William Hite, the superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia, is in his final days on the job. Most big-city superintendents don’t last for five years, but Hite served as Philadelphia’s schools chief for 10 years.
With his final school year waning, KYW Newsradio education reporter Mike DeNardo talked with Hite about his decade leading the district and highlighted six exit interview questions.
Question 1: Overall assessment
DeNardo: Looking back at the last 10 years, do you believe the district is better off now than when you arrived in 2012?
Hite: Yes, I do. We had teachers working for five years without contracts. Teachers’ average salaries were, I think, in the low $60,000s. Next year, the average salaries are going to be in the low $80,000s. Principals made less money. And we have better-performing schools. We have eliminated poor-performing schools. We have systems and structures now in place, like a student information system, a way to purchase goods and services, that's not a part of a blinking green prompt on a black screen.
And so yes, I think we're much improved. We have hydration stations in all schools. We have nurses in all schools, or a nurse position in all schools. We’ve increased the number of counselors. We eliminated itinerant music for a while. Not only did we add it back, we expanded beyond those programs so that now every K-8 student has access to music and art. I think we're in a much better position than we were.
I'm sorry I didn't mention the main thing — we were in a financial crisis. The five-year deficit when I arrived was $1.37 billion. And now we are in our fourth year, maybe, of a balanced budget, and our budget actually balances beyond the federal [stimulus] monies. I feel really good about the position that we put the district in. And we were able, during this period of time, to come back to local control.
Yes, we have a long ways to go and a lot of work to do. But more children are graduating. More children are reading on grade level. More children are in advanced placement classes, honors classes. We even have a high school [Parkway Middle College] whose children will finish with a college degree with their high school diploma.
So yeah, I mean, I think we're in a much better position than we were when I arrived.
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Question 2: School closings
Q: In your first two years as superintendent, you closed two dozen school buildings. Were you prepared to be the public face of that process? Did you know coming in that you would have to close buildings?
A: I expected it to be hard. I expected to have to lay people off, to close schools. I didn't expect to have to cut programs for students. I thought if we could address all of these other structural things, we would have the resources in order to provide students with what they needed.
Unlike other places where I've been, you did hard stuff, temporary. I mean, it was a temporary period. So you would furlough everybody for one year, and then the budget will balance, right? Here, we couldn't see anything but red on our budget charts for the foreseeable future, and so it felt like at the time, we seemingly had to just do one hard thing after another. What I didn't realize was the extent to which the deficit had evolved here in Philadelphia, I didn't realize that coming in, where even with all of those hard things, there was no end in sight.
And now thankfully, we're in a much different position. But I mean, for the first three years here, I remember when people were saying, “Why are you staying here? Like, this is not doable.” And it's like, "Well, I'm not going to be the person that comes into a city like Philadelphia, [cuts] a bunch of schools, lays off a bunch of people, and then hightails it out of town." There was a reason we had to do all of those things. I want that to be the product of all of those actions so that people can look back and say, “Oh yeah, we remember that it was hard. We'll remember when we had to do all of those things. But we're in a much better position now.”
Related podcast: About Hite's decision to step down.
Question 3: Academic performance
Q: Academically, there have been significant improvements in graduation rates. The number of students “below basic” on standardized tests has improved. Other indicators are kind of flat, though. Academically, are you satisfied?
Hite: You're never satisfied academically. I don't want to make this a resource conversation, but it is very much a resource conversation when the academic office, they don't even have content people. Until two years ago, we didn't have a math team in the content office that is responsible for math curricula. So what are people doing? They're going on the web, they're learning, I mean, they're just kind of giving students whatever they can come up with. And so it's also a byproduct of a lot of tough decisions around resources and budgets. We needed people to actually build and develop curricula. We needed people to train teachers on using those curricula. And then we needed individuals to train individuals and buy the instructional materials that align to the curriculum. We didn't have any of that. It was like every man and woman for themselves. And they were just trying to find stuff from years ago that we had on a website. That didn't even include the [U.S.] president who was in office at the time, right? So that's another byproduct of being resource-challenged when you're trying to make ends meet monetarily. And then some things had to be put on the back burner In order to get resources back into schools for children.
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Question 4: Motivation to step down
Q: The school board in your annual evaluation two years ago gave you grades of “needs improvement” – the next-to-lowest grade – in the areas of student growth and achievement, and in systems leadership and operation. Did that evaluation play into your decision not to seek a contract extension?
A: Not at all. First and foremost, I do a self-evaluation first. So "needs improvement" came from me. Because I think I needed to be the first to acknowledge that academically we needed to improve, right? So if I'm asking everybody else to be accountable, and to have integrity around children's outcomes, then I can't be the one to say, “Oh, I'm doing just fine,” and our outcomes look like that. And so that didn't have anything to do with it. And so the board agreed.
This had more to do with [how] 10 years is a long enough time to run an organization like this. And it takes energy and effort. My grandson, who was born the year I came to Philadelphia, is now 10 years old. He asked me last summer during my birthday, my big [60th] birthday, he asked me, “Gee, Pa, are you ever going to see me play a soccer match?” And I was like, “Jason, I'm gonna see you play.” And I just haven't had the opportunity. So there are other things that I need to attend to, and trying to be responsible for everyone else's children. And I don't want my grandchildren, and I have two, to experience what my two daughters experienced when I was a school administrator early on, when I wasn't getting to their events. I wasn't getting to their pageants. I wasn't there to support them. And I want to be a different person for my grandson. But I do think organizations like this need new energy. 10 years [of service], two contracts. Yeah, that's long enough. And I just think that it's time for new energy in the district. Not a new mission because you already have the mission, but just new leadership. And I think we have positioned the district to move forward faster, simply because [incoming Superintendent Tony] Watlington doesn't have to do a lot of the stuff that I had to do just to get the district positioned to meet payroll, or to bring kids to school or to keep doors open.
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Question 5: Playing politics
Q: Philadelphia is the only district in the state that doesn’t have taxing authority. So you're reliant on the city and state funders to keep the district going. That makes your job inherently political. Were there surprising allies or surprising adversaries that you found along the way?
A: Yes, yes. On both sides. And I do think it all depended on what the issue was. But I do think that there were adversaries and supporters, depending on what the issues are. And I do think, currently, I'm worried about the [Philadelphia property tax] reassessments. There was a reason why the city wanted to do reassessments, but then every time it comes around to make that decision, and you keep pushing that off and say, “We'll do it next year, or we do it the next cycle” — what people don't understand is that those are monies that impact dramatically what we're able to do. Because our number one revenue source is real estate taxes. So I do worry about [attempts to offset the new assessment and lower some tax bills], and no one is trying to do that to be destructive [to school district revenue]. I mean, they're trying to do that to be responsive to a constituency. But it's important to also understand the full impact of those types of actions on the children we serve. Because every one of them, I believe, would advocate for more resources. Don't take actions to take resources away. And that's what I worry about now. And so, we're working with them to hopefully make sure everyone understands the impact. I'm not going to name individuals. I mean, they're advocating for their purpose, their issues, their constituencies, and I understand that. We talk a lot and sometimes fuss a lot and sometimes scream at each other. But I mean, we try to do that behind closed doors, so that we know what each other are about. I'm not going to talk about who those individuals are.
I will say this though. Council President [Darrell Clarke] has been tremendous, and has been a tremendous leader in the whole time I've been here. And we didn't always start out in like, a good relationship. But I've learned so much from him. The education chair, both Jannie Blackwell, and now [Maria} Quiñones-Sánchez. Both have been tremendous. And so there are individuals who have tried to support what we're attempting to do. And every other city council person at some point in time has been very helpful. And sometimes not so much. But I'll keep the names to myself.
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Question 6: Legacy
Q: How you want to be remembered?
A: I don't know. I mean, I think that I want to be remembered as a person that came to Philadelphia and left something better than they found it. We could pick out hundreds of things. And we could pick out things that people would not necessarily agree with. So I think the fact that we have hydration stations in schools now, and we didn't have that before and we didn't think about it. I think the fact that we've removed miles of asbestos, and we still have a lot of work to do in that space. I think the fact that we built five new schools for the first time, in what, two decades? So I think that I'd like to be remembered as the person who left something better than they found it. And that may not be in every circumstance, but if someone is asking me, that's how I would rather be remembered.
This interview was edited for clarity.
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