WHYY: Original Post: https://whyy.org/articles/end-of-temporary-fema-housing-for-puerto-rican-evacuees-wont-be-catastrophic-in-philly/

Philadelphia Inquirer

by Jason Laughlin August 8, 2018 – 11:34 AM

The 20 or so people lining 22^nd Street’s bike lane on a gorgeous morning in July earned high fives, cheers, and a few bicycle bell rings from passing cyclists.

The predominantly white demonstrators were protesting poorly painted lane markers and motorists’ tendency to park in the bike lane to pick up coffee from Wawa, which created a potentially dangerous situation, though no one has been badly hurt. The last traffic-related death on 22nd in Center City was in 2013. The victim was a pedestrian.

Two weeks earlier, at Luzerne Street and Whitaker Avenue, Tomas Montañez Jr., a 40-year-old Hispanic man, was run over by a truck while riding his bicycle. He was the second person to die at that corner in four years.

The streets where Montañez died have no bike lanes. Riding on Whitaker means choosing between pedaling in a four-lane road’s shoulder next to cars that often far exceed the 30 mph speed limit or on a sidewalk intermittently blocked by parked cars.

From 2013 to 2017, more than 56,630 crashes were reported in the city, according to PennDot data, killing 474, just a little less than the average enrollment of a Pennsylvania high school.

As of July 22, traffic crashes have killed 56 so far this year, according to the Bicycle Coalition, a tally that includes interstate deaths not counted by PennDot.

Advocacy for safe streets has been dominated by an active cycling community, which has succeeded in making the issue a policy priority, a critical accomplishment in a city rated among the worst large American metropolises for street safety. Mayor Kenney introduced in September a three-year plan to implement Vision Zero, a program that seeks to eliminate traffic-related deaths throughout Philadelphia.

Bike advocates tend to be white in the city, with a focus on the city’s wealthier, central neighborhoods. Media coverage follows suit. Many safe-streets initiatives, whether the recent addition of bike lanes to Market and JFK or a push for more traffic enforcement in the city core, are in those central neighborhoods, too. Five of seven street safety projects either completed or underway through the city’s Complete Streets program are in Center City. The other two are in University City and West Philadelphia.

But neighborhoods like Center City and University City are not where the rates of fatal crashes are highest, according to an analysis of crash rates by traffic volume conducted by the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News.

The study of crashes from 2013 to 2017 found the likelihood of a person being killed in a traffic crash, whether it’s a driver, cyclist, or someone on foot, was nearly three times higher in large swaths of North Philadelphia compared to Center City. West Philadelphia, the communities around and east of Temple University, and South Philadelphia from Washington Avenue to the Walt Whitman Bridge also had higher fatal crash rates.

Where Traffic Fatalities Are Most Likely in Philadelphia

An analysis of five years of data on traffic volume and fatalities shows that areas of North Philadelphia have the highest likelihood of traffic fatalities, when measured as a rate based on traffic volume. The rate in Center City, which has Philadelphia’s highest traffic volume, is lower than the city average of 3.5 fatalities per 100,000 vehicle-miles traveled.

Click and zoom in on the map for more information.

SOURCES: PennDot; Philadelphia Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems

Staff Graphic

Many of the city’s most dangerous roads also are in the city’s low-income communities. A Bicycle Coalition analysis this year found that almost half of the streets on the city’s high injury network, a map that highlights the streets with the highest concentration of serious injuries and deaths in Philadelphia, were in poor neighborhoods heavily populated with people of color.

The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News analysis did not account for pedestrian and bicycle traffic volumes. And the 15 planning districts Philadelphia uses to measure traffic volumes are large, making it impossible to zero in on specific neighborhoods. It suggests, though, the odds of being killed in traffic are lower on Center City’s roads than almost any other part of Philadelphia.

“It’s hard to get the perfect denominator,” said Chris Puchalsky, director of policy and strategic initiatives for the city’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS). “It does show that you can’t just concentrate on Center City, though.”

City officials said attention to Center City is warranted. The concentration of traffic, pedestrians, businesses, and public transit there heightens the importance of the area, said Mike Carroll, deputy managing director for OTIS. In the last five years, 25 people have died there, a larger raw number than most of the other planning districts in the city. Cyclist Emily Fredricks was killed by a truck in November at Spruce and 11th Streets.

Carroll noted there hadn’t been a concerted effort to focus on street safety in the city’s recent past, and Center City hasn’t benefited exclusively. Bridge repair work, adding a second crew this year to the city’s street paving operation, and equipping city trucks with side guards and 360 degree cameras benefit the entire city. Other ongoing efforts, such as installing speed cushions on neighborhood roads, help communities outside the city core, Carroll said.

Even so, activists, residents, and city legislators all say they’re concerned many of the city’s neighborhoods haven’t gotten the same attention as the wealthiest communities.

Vision Zero promises a more even distribution, Puchalsky said, describing plans for community outreach, traffic studies, and some low-cost solutions for neighborhoods that can be rolled out quickly starting this fall.

“As Vision Zero goes along, we’re going to focus our work on where we see the problems,” he said. “Most of that is out of Center City, so our focus is going to be broadly over the entire city.”

>>READ MORE: Philadelphia has a blueprint on how to make city streets safer

Neighborhood organizations, such as Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha, say they have been striving to make Philadelphia’s streets safer but have struggled to be heard. Misha Rodriguez, special projects coordinator for the organization, which serves neighborhoods bracketed by Ninth and American Streets, and Jefferson Street and Lehigh Avenue (which has seen nine fatal crashes in the last five years), has noticed the difference between safe streets advocates in Center City, where she lives, and the community where she works.

“They’re louder about it,” she said. “They’re more vocal about it.”

In other neighborhoods, she said, “a lot of the residents, (they’re) maybe not recognizing that it’s something you’re allowed to be loud about or allowed to be upset about.”

One block captain in Fairhill noted that rallying a community around street safety is a challenge in neighborhoods with so many other serious safety concerns.

“They’re selling drugs around the corner,” said Ana Catalosi, who lives on Ella Street about a half mile from where Montañez died and just two blocks from where a pedestrian was killed in traffic in 2015.

In Fairhill, about five miles north of Center City, people pointed out a stop sign it took the city nearly a year to replace, a pothole so deep people have to swerve around it, and drivers who ignore streets signs and speed limits on narrow neighborhood roads bracketed by churches, bodegas, and dense housing.

“They speed through here like it’s a race track,” said Juan Camargo, who also lives on Ella Street.

Drivers’ behavior encourages people on foot to disobey the rules of the road, too.

“I’m cautious. I don’t trust stop signs,” said Rebekah Holt, a mother of four who watched her children and three of their cousins as they played in a fire hydrant’s spray. “I feel more safe crossing in the middle of the road than at stop signs.”

A number of factors affect the fatality rates outside Center City. A big one is 14-mile, high-speed Roosevelt Boulevard, traversed by about 90,000 vehicles a day as it cuts through densely populated neighborhoods in North and Northeast Philadelphia. Already this year, 11 people have died on the road —  more than are usually killed there over a full year.

“The boulevard especially is on our mind unfortunately almost every day,” Puchalsky said.

The road is the focus of its own initiative, the Route to Change, and for about two years has been the subject of a $5 million study to find short- and long-term solutions. In September, legislators in Harrisburg will again push to legalize speed cameras, a tool policy makers say is needed to slow down drivers.

The conditions that make Roosevelt Boulevard so dangerous are to a lesser degree replicated along other arterial streets such as Lehigh, Allegheny and Erie Avenues.

“Where you have more speeding and wide intersections with streets that resemble highways, people are more susceptible to crashes and the kind of crashes that kill,” said Sarah Clark Stuart, director of the Bicycle Coalition.

Also, people are more likely to be on foot in the city’s poorer neighborhoods. About 41 percent of people making less than $25,000 a year walk or take public transportation to work, according to the U.S. Census, compared to about a third of the city’s total working population.

In Center City, Second Street is marked by historic brick homes and a thriving restaurant and bar scene. About four miles north, amid the city’s vast thicket of row homes, walking along the same street can mean navigating sidewalks sprouting thick weeds and clogged with trash, or blocked by parked cars that force pedestrians into the street.

>>READ MORE: For safer streets, Philly looks to more traffic cops in Center City

The Philadelphia Parking Authority does not conduct scheduled patrols in neighborhoods without regulated parking, officials said, and city data show the Philadelphia Police Department is spending the least amount of time in the last five years ticketing for driving violations.

The Parking Authority would consider expanding areas of restricted parking, said Scott Petri, its chief executive, but that would require the approval of residents.

Policy makers have noticed the disparity in activism and action between the city’s wealthier neighborhoods and low income ones.

“There is a race and economics issue,” said City Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sanchez, whose district includes Fairhill.

The communities she represents have plenty of people who rely on bicycles or walking, but they haven’t gained the traction of Center City’s street safety activists.

“They’re not in the organized type of biking constituency,” she said.

The Bicycle Coalition is trying to redirect energy beyond Philadelphia’s white, wealthier neighborhoods. The organization hosts vigils for people who died on a bicycle throughout the city, including one for Montañez at the site of his death, which drew 70 people. It plans listening sessions this fall citywide.

“We are trying to encourage that passion to come to other neighborhoods outside of Center City,” Clark Stuart said.

Differences in the geography, building styles and even language in some neighborhoods could make a solution that works in Center City unfit for other parts of Philadelphia.

“I don’t think we always ask people what they want to see,” Quiñones-Sanchez said. “It’s a culture shift. How do we have conversations about the amenities built for the people that were there?”

If the city were to immediately improve streets in the neighborhoods around Allegheny Avenue — the site of four fatal crashes in the last five years — with new painted lines, more extensive bike lanes, and enforcement for driving and parking violations, the change would be greeted with suspicion, said Stasia Monteiro, program director for Hispanic Association of Contractors & Enterprises (H.A.C.E.),  a nonprofit supporting economic development in Hispanic communities.

” ‘Are you just gentrifying this neighborhood to push me out?’ ” residents would ask, she said, “if they weren’t at all consulted and it wasn’t made clear to them that this is a benefit to them.”

Activist organizations in low-income communities are overwhelmed with the need in those areas, Monteiro said. She abhors having to sidestep trash and parked cars when she walks the streets near her office on Allegheny, she said, but the Conrail tracks running through the neighborhood had been a nexus for Philadelphia’s opioid epidemic, and that, along with the community’s request for more programs for children, had to be the priority.

“Getting people to organize in the neighborhood is difficult,” she said. “There’s a lot of kind of pushing issues around and not taking responsibility.”

>>READ MORE: West Philly neighborhood offers microcosm of city’s traffic woes

Going forward, the city’s safe streets projects will be dictated by the high injury network map, officials said. Among planned projects are a safety study focusing on three intersections on Lehigh Avenue, trolley track removal at Broad Street and Erie Avenue, a school slow zone at Cramp Elementary School in Fairhill, and repaving on Frankford Avenue, Carroll said. Future work will include extensive community outreach.

“Giving residents a voice in infrastructure decisions that affect their lives is one of our key principles going forward,” Puchalsky said.

The city expects to issue a one-year progress report on Vision Zero this fall, Carroll said.

“We intend to very clearly demonstrate the breadth geographically, in terms of the scope and scale, of the projects we’ve taken on and will be taking on,” he said.

The city has limited resources, though, and the need is vast. Vision Zero has just $1 million allocated out of the Streets Department’s $23 million budget in FY 2018 and $500,000 allocated for operating expenses at OTIS. Supplemental grants will be needed, and the city plans to ensure that money isn’t gobbled up by wealthier neighborhoods with the resources, information, and clout that gets policy makers’ attention, Puchalsky said.

Making changes to street design — an effective but expensive way to improve safety — often requires the approval of City Council, and the 17 council members have differing agendas.

“We still need to be very conscientious and driving and drilling down to make sure that measures we’re implementing in one zip code we’re at least making an attempt to provide in another zip code,” said Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, who held hearings on Vision Zero earlier this summer and is reserving judgment on the program’s effectiveness.

Along with concerns about respecting the cultural norms, Quiñones-Sanchez also was skeptical of the city or the Bicycle Coalition setting priorities for the neighborhoods.

“I still think there’s a cultural gap around how some of that stuff gets introduced into the community,” she said. “When you have a bunch of white, middle-class people, they can’t talk to people in these communities.”

With resources spread thin, some groups are taking street safety into their own hands. Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha recently responded to the hit-and-run injury to a 3-year-old near a playground between Fifth and Reese Streets by working with the city’s public health department to place tire planters on sidewalks as a barrier to keep cars from parking there.

“Kids were often zigzagging across the street because you don’t have a direct walkway,” said Rodriguez, from the association.

At the intersection where Montañez died, the ghost bike placed by the Bicycle Coalition is surrounded by messages from his friends and family. One is from his wife, Cici, saying she loves him.

Whitaker and Luzerne remains an inhospitable intersection.

On 22nd Street in Center City, meanwhile, an area developer has already repainted a section of the bike lane’s faded lines.

“It’s easier to get things done in Center City where you have a lot more visibility,” Rodriguez said. “You don’t have to deal with race, having a translator. I’m still hopeful it’s eventually going to spread out a little bit more.”

Original Post – http://www2.philly.com/philly/business/transportation/biking-walking-car-accidents-deaths-philadelphia-neighborhoods-20180808.html

Philadelphia Inquirer July 25, 2018

by Jesenia De Moya Correa, Staff Writer  @JeseniaDeMoyaC |  jdemoyacorrea@philly.com

Since its creation in 2008, Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability had been poor at outreach.

While it focused on its internal operations — working on the policies that regulate energy consumption; access to food, air and water; and carbon emissions reduction by 2050 — it rarely included the insights of local residents or connect with neighborhood projects. And the office wasn’t thinking about reaching specific communities, like Latinos, either.

It turns out this is not specific to Philadelphia. According to a June study out of Yale University, a large percentage of U.S. Latinos (72 percent Spanish speakers; 63 percent English speakers) have never been contacted by an environmental organization working to reduce global warming or tackle climate change.

It’s a finding with significant implications when you consider that a 2017 survey showed that Latinos — particularly those who prefer to speak Spanish  — care more and are more aware of the issue than African Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Asian Americans, and Caucasians.

Anthony Leiserowitz, the study’s main author and director of Yale’s Program on Climate Change Communication, said he and his colleagues began researching the topic about 10 years ago when they became curious about ethnic groups that care most about climate change. What they found is U.S. Latinos are far less likely to act politically on global warming — one reason being because they’ve never been engaged by an organization working on the issue.

“The common wisdom then, and even today, is that it’s an issue that only ‘upper-middle class, white, latte-sipping liberals’ care about. It turns out that that’s just not true,” Leiserowitz said, adding that other global studies suggest that Latinos of North, Central, and South America also rate global warming as a higher personal threat that any other region. “We still don’t really know why.”

Mark Magaña, the CEO and founding president of Green Latinos, said Latinos are inherently conservation minded. Still, the 8,000-member advocacy organization out of Washington, D.C., formed six years ago to harness the habits of these communities, he said.

“Latinos learn their stewardship of the land through their grandmothers and parents,” Magaña said. “They eat all the food on the plate, turn off the light when they leave the room, eat all the parts of the animal, use water wisely because it might not come the next day; things that we do organically, because it’s in the back of the chanclas,” he explained, using a phrase that best translates as “back of your mind” but alludes to the Spanish word for flip flops, a cultural touchstone because they’re ubiquitous — to wear, even to discipline with.

Still, Green Latinos had no experience with local outreach efforts. So it partnered last year with Moms Clean Air Force, a national coalition of parents who wanted to reach Latinos in a more “culturally competent” way, said national field director Karin Quimby, especially after its own poll showed that women of color, particularly Latina grandmothers and mothers, were even more concerned than white women about climate and pollution.

“The poll confirmed what we knew,” Quimby said. “The environmental movement as a whole hasn’t done good work with communities of color.”

We had amazing meetings today with @RepJackyRosen and @SenCortezMasto! pic.twitter.com/C9MYrFyXVp

— Nevada Moms (@CleanAirMoms_NV) July 12, 2018

The result — Ecomadres, which will help get resources to Latinas already doing local advocacy work — is rare in a U.S. movement that’s predominantly white. A 2014 studyof 280 environmental institutions found that less than 16 percent of the board or staff at mainstream NGOs, foundations, and government agencies identified as part of an ethnic minority.

In Philadelphia, the only group targeting Latinos in a coalition of more than 90 stakeholders that engage with residents on climate change issues, is Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM), which works on projects such as the Sustainable Communities Initiative and Paseo Verde.

Victoria Cubillos-Cañón, APM’s neighborhood advisory committee coordinator, explained that the best outreach methods prioritize a residents’ needs.

“We have learned to create conversations around the main problem and the layers that relate to their problems,” Cubillos-Cañón said. For instance, APM might interest a homeowner about installing water retention systems like rain barrels by framing it around how to lower water bills.

Cubillos-Cañón shares that message with pastors before Mass, with a list of about 50 block captains, on fliers she places on the stoops and window frames of homeowners.

The city’s Office of Sustainability recognized its outreach efforts needed work, especially after input for its sustainability plan for 2016 showed people wanted to be included in the process. In fact, director Christine Knapp said the office had never had a community outreach strategist until May.

“We haven’t engaged Latinos, and we haven’t engaged with any community sufficiently well on these issues,” Knapp said.

Ciara Williams, the outreach strategist, will be working full-time on a number of sustainability programs, including The Heat Vulnerability Index, a pilot project that launched Wednesday with the intent to reduce temperatures in neighborhoods. Hunting Park in North Philadelphia, for example, is one of the hottest spots, and is largely populated by African American and Latino communities.

To engage those residents, the city partnered with two neighborhood organizations with connections to Hunting Park’s west side (the Lenfest Center) and east side (Esperanza). Esperanza already has a network of volunteers for outreach, so for the index, those volunteers might ask residents whether they need more trees, know how white roofs can cool structures, or understand how heat affects health.

Celita Campos, a Hunting Park resident of 20 years, was contacted by Esperanza two years ago, the first time she had ever heard from an environmental organization. It was a meeting that helped her realize how certain factors were contributing to her children’s health: three of four whom suffer from asthma, she said.

She eventually became a volunteer for beautification projects, and plans to join Esperanza in its work on the heat index.

“This is for the sake of my children,” said Campos, 44, “and [the community] needs their [the city’s] support to watch our families thrive in a positive way.”

Original Article: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/latinos-climate-change-heat-vulnerability-index-esperanza-apm-20180725.html

From WHYY  • Kyrie Greenberg   January 14, 2018

Three Kings Day and Octavitas are two post-Christmas holiday celebrations important in Latin America. For recent arrivals from Puerto Rico it felt like home when they visited a community center in North Philadelphia this weekend.
They were treated to a party packed with families drinking hot chocolate and eating cake. During the event, Raul Berrios reflects why he and his nine-year-old son Asaf left his home a couple months ago. A musician, Berrios says his family has deep roots in San Juan and never thought a storm would chase them out since they had weathered several hurricanes
“But Maria? Wow, man…we had to move here because when the hurricane came. It’s something that if I explain to you- I can’t imagine that that’s going to happen,” he said.
Every part of his life there is now unrecognizable. “I was part of a brass band and we had just finished an album of music for kids and were planning a big concert in the city’s main plaza,” said Berrios. “That plaza is gone and I haven’t seen any of those guys [since the storm], they all moved to different places.”
Nydia Lugos is a social worker for Asociacion Puertorriquenos en Marcha or APM who says her organization sees about five new displaced Puerto Rican families a day seeking services. She says the biggest obstacles for her clients are the time limits on federal emergency aid and the city’s lack of affordable housing.
“Many of these people, they don’t have any plan to go back to the island,” explained Lugos. “And I feel that the help they are getting is limited because they are expecting them to go back,” she said.
The tipping point for the Berrios family was when the devastation interrupted Raul’s cancer treatment and Asaf acquired a serious infection from polluted water. Asaf’s mother already was living in Philly for work, which lead them to join the estimated 800 Puerto Rican families who have relocated here following Hurricane Maria in October.
Dressed as one of the three kings or wise men, who according to tradition visit the baby Jesus, Tashonn Bungy helped distribute presents to every child at the celebration. Bungee is a resource coordinator for APM, which sponsored the event. Recent snow days delayed the Three Kings Day celebration, he explained, so they’re technically celebrating Octavitas — a Puerto Rican tradition of celebrating the eight days following the epiphany, which is on January 6th.
“It’s about people coming over and realizing you’re not alone, that there are people here to encourage, people here you can feel safe with and people that you feel like, ‘OK, that’s something I can recognize and I can be a part of and I can appreciate and they actually appreciate me, they’re thinking about me,” said Bungee before donning a blue robe and gold crown.
Nydia Lugos says most families have wasted no time finding work here and enrolling their kids in public schools. “They are really moving on it,” she said.
After lining up medical treatment for himself and Asaf, Raul Berrios says he’s found work doing what he did back home: teaching music and making instruments out of recycled materials, this time for kids in Camden and North Philly.
He still worries about their new life here: his temporary apartment funded through FEMA ends in two weeks and Asaf is still adjusting to his new fourth grade class. But for Three Kings Day, they looked at home playing in the party’s calypso band.

Original Post: https://whyy.org/articles/three-kings-octavitas-bring-taste-home-puerto-ricans-starting-philly/

Philadelphia Tribune – Health Briefs – January 9, 2018

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced $1.3 million has been awarded to Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha, Inc., commonly known as APM, to assist low-income persons living with HIV/AIDS in Philadelphia. This funding is offered through HUD’s Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS Program and will be used to continue providing 30 households with Tenant-Based Rental Assistance and supportive services. Additionally, APM will assist 30 households with permanent housing placement services annually. The majority of program participants are low-income/homeless Latino persons living with HIV/AIDS.

Original post: http://www.phillytrib.com/news/health/health-briefs/article_706f2b31-5dd1-5f05-a6e8-6dd7fe1f3c90.html

SEE FULL STORY: http://thenotebook.org/articles/2017/12/19/first-hearings-held-for-nine-proposed-new-charters

THE NOTEBOOK (December 19, 2017)-

First hearings held for nine proposed new charters

Eight management companies seeking to open nine new charter schools in Philadelphia made their initial pitches on Monday to a hearing officer for the School Reform Commission.

Among the companies was ASPIRA. Just last week, the SRC voted to close two of ASPIRA’s charter schools — Olney High and Stetson Middle.

ASPIRA wants to expand two charter schools and move one, despite evidence that it has been unable to operate its existing charter schools without running deficits. The Charter Schools Office has found, among other irregularities, that ASPIRA uses money meant for the education of students at Stetson Middle and Olney High —both of which are former District-run schools— to guarantee loans that the organization took out to purchase other buildings offering different services. The SRC voted 4-1 on Thursday not to renew those charters, and it is making plans to return the schools to District control.

The company’s finances were further hurt by payouts from sexual harassment lawsuitsagainst CEO Alfredo Calderon.

“The SRC continued to fund these Aspira schools despite serious allegations of fraud, ghost contractors for painting Olney high school, admitted misuse of taxpayer dollars, failure to make PSERS payments, and other serious financial transgressions,” Lisa Haver said during her public comment at the hearing. Haver is the co-founder of the Alliance for Public Schools (APPS), an activist group that considers itself a watchdog of the SRC and charter expansion. “After following the Aspira financial and academic scandals for over two years, it’s hard to believe that they believe they are in line to open more schools.”

ASPIRA wants to relocate the Antonio Pantoja Preparatory Charter School to 4322 N. Fifth St. in the Hunting Park neighborhood of North Philadelphia. The building now houses ASPIRA’s corporate headquarters. The K-8 school would also expand its enrollment cap, serving up to 925 students at full enrollment, and would open with 425 students in the 2018-19 school year. It’s unclear what this would mean for some of the existing students because the school’s enrollment is now 700.

Most of the charter school presentations compared academic metrics between the charter company’s existing schools and the public schools in the neighborhood where they would open.

But ASPIRA did things a bit differently. It compared Antonio Pantoja to the 9th-grade and 5th-grade classes at Olney and Stetson respectively — their own schools now slated for closure. And it showed that its students who spent four years at Antonio Pantoja for middle school were outperforming 9th-graders at Olney.

The assumption was that all students entering the 9th grade at Olney came from one of the neighborhood public schools, and so their poor performance was implied to be a reflection of those schools. But North Philadelphia has a high concentration of charter schools, and Olney also accepts students through a lottery — factors that were not cited by ASPIRA.

ASPIRA did not offer direct comparisons with neighborhood public schools. State data show that Antonio Pantoja is struggling with standardized test scores and is in the second-lowest of five tiers, although it is making growth expectations in math and English language arts.

The school’s last evaluation from the District Charter Schools Office showed that it is the guarantor of a $5.4 million mortgage on its current building, though that loan is in forbearance. The evaluation found that the school’s short-term and long-term financial health was “significantly below standard,” and the school is more than $14 million in debt.

Last year, the school had $9.8 million in revenue and just over $11 million in expenses.

ASPIRA also wants to expand Eugenio Maria de Hostos from its current 440 students to 850, starting with 750 in the 2018-19 school year.

De Hostos ranks in the lowest tier of the state’s school performance profiles and is meeting testing growth goals only in math. The District, which has its own school performance measure,  has evaluated the school more favorably than the state, putting its academics in the second-lowest category and giving the school an overall rating of “reinforce,” the second-highest tier.

The charter office’s annual evaluation found that the school’s short- and long-term financial health is significantly below standard and that the school is more than $9 million in debt.

Last year, the school had $9.1 million in revenue and $8.8 million in expenses. At that rate, without expanding, it would take the school roughly 30 years to pay off its $9 million in debt.

De Hostos is located in the massive old Cardinal Dougherty High School building, which is the source of most of ASPIRA’s debt.  The organization has used state funds meant for operating Olney and Stetson to guarantee the mortgage on the Dougherty building. Those loans are also now in forbearance, and the organization plans to secure new short-term bridge loans to begin paying again — a financial practice that is frowned upon.

Expanding enrollment at its existing charter schools would help it make those payments because it would receive per-pupil amounts from the state and District for the additional students.

•••

Another well-known operator that is applying for more seats is Mastery Charter, which proposed to open a new K-8 school at 900 W. Jefferson St. in North Philadelphia. The school would open in the 2019-20 school year, serving grades K-2, and would then expand, serving all grades with 672 students by the 2022-23 school year.

“Assessment and data are really the backbone of our program,” Mastery CEO Scott Gordon told hearing officer Allison Peterson. “We look not only where the student is, but at where they were previously. … That information is translated into a visual dashboard for teachers and administrators.”

Gordon added that Mastery plans to incorporate “social and emotional programming” into its elementary school curriculum and that it now trains all its staff in “trauma-informed care.”

The school would have a catchment area of one mile around, making a perfect circle on the map. It would be located in the building that formerly housed Wakisha Charter School, which closed in the middle of the school year after it failed to get enough students and teachers to sustain itself.

Gordon said Mastery has already raised $1.3 million in start-up costs. The company has a long history of successful private fundraising, including millions from the Philadelphia School Partnership.

•••

Franklin Towne, which currently runs a national blue-ribbon charter high school, is proposing to open its own middle school at 5301 Tacony St. in Frankford — in the same building as its high school. It would link Franklin Towne’s elementary school to its high school, acting as a feeder. The school would serve grades 6-8 and open in the 2019-20 school year at its maximum enrollment of 450 students.

“If granted, we would be able, capable, willing and anxious to open a middle school to better serve the students in the 19137 area,” said Patrick Field, chief academic officer of Franklin Towne.

Franklin Towne has a solid academic record at both its elementary school and its high school.

However, the company is also known for running schools where the vast majority of the student body is white — 71 percent at its high school and 86 percent at its elementary school.

•••

The Asociacion Puertorriquenos en Marcha (Association of Puerto Ricans on the March), which runs four Head Start programs in the city, is applying to open a K-8 charter school at 405 E. Roosevelt Blvd. in the Olney neighborhood of North Philadelphia. The school would enroll 312 K-4 students when it opened in the 2018-19 school year and 624 K-8 students in the 2021-22 school year at full enrollment.

APM would also use the building as a hub for other community services that it already offers: financial counseling and behavioral health. It also constructd affordable housing in the same neighborhood.

“Our satisfied preschool parents have constantly asked us — particularly when it comes time to transitioning into kindergarten — for a charter school,” said Don Price, APM’s vice president for education and training. He called his vision for the school a “true community charter school.”

There will also be an emphasis on Spanish, with students beginning to learn the language in kindergarten.

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MaST has proposed opening a K-12 school that, if approved, would be the biggest charter school in the city. It would open with 1,000 K-4 students in the 2018-19 school year and would reach a full enrollment of 2,600 students in all grades. The school would be located at 1 Crown Way, near the Northeast Philadelphia Airport.

The original MaST won national blue-ribbon designation.  The second school was founded in 2016, so no academic data are available from the state or city.

The new school would receive support from several school-choice advocacy groups: the Charter School Growth Fund, the Philadelphia School Partnership, Coalition of Charter Schools and the Keystone Alliance.

John Swoyer III, CEO of MaST’s first school, said the new school “won’t give preference to any zip codes” unless the District otherwise specifies, in which case he would be willing to give up to 50 percent of the seats to zip codes specified by the District.

Like Franklin Towne, MaST is one of just a handful of schools in the city that are majority white.

Swoyer said he thinks the school’s proximity to union headquarters in  Northeast Philadelphia would make it easy to create partnerships with trade unions. The school plans to offer courses in the trades as well as 3D design and manufacturing.

Swoyer also plans to build a Drone Zone, a space used for students to fly and design their own drones — like those that may be used as delivery vehicles in the future.

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A national charter operator called Hebrew Public proposed opening a school at 3300 Henry Ave, in the East Falls neighborhood. The school would open in the 2019-20 school year with 156 students in grade K-1. By the 2026-27 school year, it would reach full capacity of 702 students in grades K-8.

Students would get daily instruction in the Hebrew language and extended daily instruction in math and English.

Students would learn the language “accompanying the study of the history and present reality of the state of Israel,” according to Jon Rosenberg, CEO of Hebrew Public. The non-profit also organizes and fundraises for a 10-day trip to Israel for interested students.

The organization already runs several charter schools in New York state.

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Qor Charter School proposed to open an elementary school at 4290 Penn St. in Frankford. It would open in the 2019-20 school year, serving 72 students in grades K-1. It would reach full enrollment of 312 students in the 2024-25 school year.

The school would use a project-based learning curriculum, although it would still include traditional assessments. Teachers would also use kinesthetic learning, the use of physical activities during academic coursework. Special education students would be included in every classroom, as opposed to learning in a separate special education classroom.

Teachers would help design personalized student learning plans, then periodically re-evaluate them as students are given new personal goals.

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Roundball Education Inc., located in Texas, wants to open the Pennsylvania Institute Academy Charter School, a high school, in the 2019-20 school year with 320 seats.

The CEO of Roundball, Ronald Ravenell, said the school would “serve students who have been sent to alternative education programs or are at risk of academic failure.”

The school’s curriculum would be part of the Jesuit College Preparatory Model.

“The national dropout rate is high, and our prisons are full to capacity,” Ravenell said. “The outcome after experiencing academic failure tends to be a life of crime.”

Roundball’s 990 form, last filed in 2011, shows that Ravenell is the only person associated with the company, which raised a little over $16,000 between 2007 and 2011.

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“Aspira had to settle several suits brought against the company because of the sexual harassment perpetrated by Aspira Philadelphia CEO Alfredo Calderone. Unbelievably, he is still CEO… [Dawn Lynn Kacer, head of the CSO] testified that the financial improprieties had not only not been resolved, as promised by Kenneth Trujillo in May 2016, they had actually gotten worse,” Haver said in her public comment. “For the SRC to agree to put the education of more young people into the hands of Aspira would be a clear dereliction of duty.”

She ceded the floor to several other activists from the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools (APPS), familiar faces to anyone who regularly attends the SRC.

“Corporate charter schools continue to fight the SRC even today challenging the District’s right to oversee our public school students’ academic progress in their schools,” Lynda Rubin said during her public comment. “The SRC was put in place to purportedly shore up the financial supports for real public education in Phialdelphia. Not to hold a fire sale, selling or giving away its parts to private companies masquerading as public education stakeholders.”

Karel Kilimnik took issue with the argument made by SRC commissioners like Bill Green, that the SRC is not legally allowed to consider the financial impact that authoizing new charter schools would have on the District, since students take state dollars with them when they leave to attend a charter.

Kilimnik read from the 2015 SRC testimony of David Lapp, who was then an attorney with the Education Law Center:

“I testified to the District that, when reviewing new charter school applications, the factors the District should consider cut against approval of new charters in the current fiscal and educational climate. This is especially true given the dearth of evidence that the charter sector has achieved superior results.

“There have been recent public comments that suggest a mistaken belief that the charter law requires the SRC to approve new applications without considering the impact on District students. To the contrary, since the District has been declared to be in fiscal distress and the state constitution still requries that there be a ‘thorough and efficient system of public education,’ the impact of charter expansion on all students should be the most important consideration of all. But since questions have been raised, I wish to briefly clarify why such considerations are also legally valid.

“The bottom line is that there has never been a [Charter Appeals Board] or court holding that a fiscally distressed school district is prevented from considering the educational impact on all students, including students in District schools and existing charter schools, when deciding whether to approve a new charter school application. In addition, no cases have addressed these issus since the charter reimbursement was eliminated. As you identify problems with the merits of a partricular charter application, you should be sure to also include, in the alternative, evidence and findings that approving the charter would negatively impact the educational experience of all students, including District students.”