Philadelphia Councilmember Isaiah Thomas and other City Council members gather a crowd to call for the closure of the Board of Education meeting on April 30, 2026. (Photo by Rebecca Redelmeier/Chalkbeat)
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat.
Furious over the Philadelphia Board of Education’s vote to close several schools, City Council Education Committee Chairman Isaiah Thomas wants to consider changing the board from a mayor-appointed to an elected one.
However, this would be an extremely complicated and politically discouraging process. State lawmakers would have to pass legislation, which the governor would have to sign. The mayor would have to give up appointing board members, and voters would have to approve the change.
The move to an elected board could also strip the City Council of much of its influence over the district. That’s because these and other legal changes could ultimately give the school board the main power it currently lacks: the power to levy taxes.
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Proposal from Tomasz follows a citywide outcry all around the district’s decision to close 17 schoolsto which he was vehemently opposed; he promised apply to suspend the closuresalthough no such suit has been created to date.
The highlight is his push to change the way school board members are elected long-term conflicts between various centers of political power in the city. It also raises concerns that, unlike every other school district in the state, Philadelphia residents lack direct representation when the board makes vital decisions about spending, charter school expansion, curriculum mandates, desegregation initiatives and more.
Under the current arrangement, school board members and the superintendent must go back to the mayor and council each year to insist on a portion of city taxes that would be sufficient to facilitate the district meet student needs, after many years of what the court found. there were insufficient state funding levels, which was a violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
This forces board members and district leaders to argue with the council over the budget every year. Even more stressful is the district’s long-standing structural deficit. For 2026-27 management just adopted budget of $4.6 billion, with cuts of $225 million to meet projections $300 million missing.
All of this means that if the school board gained its own taxing powers and could rely less on city government, “it would be a huge structural change in the way the city and the school district operate,” said Christopher McGinley, a former Philadelphia school board member who also served as superintendent in two suburban districts with elected boards.
It’s unclear what, if anything, would convince city officials to give up their current power over school funding and school board members. Last month, Thomas said that while he supports an elected school board, he does not support giving it taxing powers.
Mayor Cherelle Parker elected all nine current board members at the beginning of her term. Nominees are first verified by: Education Nominating Panelwho is also appointed by the mayor. They are then subject to the “advice and consent” of the City Council. (Board member Joyce Wilkerson was appointed by Parker but he never obtained council approvaland now serves as a “remaining” member who caused additional controversy.)
A spokesman for Parker did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
An elected school board could create modern political problems in Philadelphia even if it alleviates current ones. But some believe the existing process is insufficient to address the myriad challenges facing the district.
Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, a longtime critic of the board, pointed out that at local hearings on the proposed school closures, almost every speaker opposed them, but to no avail. For her, Philadelphia’s elected school board is also about integrity.
“Why should every other school district in Pennsylvania have an elected board and Philadelphia shouldn’t?” she said
School boards in Pennsylvania have taxing power – except for Philly’s
The most direct impact an elected and unelected board could have on the city’s schools would be the ability to raise tax dollars.
In all of the state’s other 500 school districts, elected boards of education collect taxes from schools, while municipal and county governments raise taxes for other needs, such as infrastructure and social services. Education and citizenship governing bodies are separate entities with their own taxing powers, geographic boundaries and sources of revenue. For example, Montgomery County includes 62 municipalities and 22 school districts.
Merely moving from an appointed to an elected school board would not automatically include taxing rights. Giving the elected school board taxing powers would require a vote of the state legislature and amendments to the state school code. It would also require voters to approve changes to the education portion of the city’s 1965 Charter of Home Rule.
However, unlike other jurisdictions, Philadelphia is its own county and its own school district. This means that even if an elected school board were given the power to levy taxes by the state government and voters, it would result in the City Council and the Board of Education drawing from the same sources of tax revenue.
Richard Feder, a former legislative chief at the city’s law department, said all of these changes would mean “cutting the City Council out of the process” of school funding, likely leading to the kind of sturdy council opposition that Thomas has already expressed.
In addition to the sedate political concerns, Feder said he doesn’t think giving the elected board taxing powers is a good idea from a fiscal standpoint.
“I’ve spent my career fighting for more school funding,” Feder said, “but we shouldn’t have two competing tax authorities fighting for the same limited tax base.”
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Susan Gobreski, former head of the advocacy group Education Voters PA, said Philadelphians already elect officials who fund schools. The council “is not a single-issue body” like the school board and can put all of the city’s needs into perspective, she added.
At the same time, she added, the feeling that the management board is accountable to no one is real. Gobreski said that even if the elected board lacked taxing powers, it would still be worthwhile to allow the public to elect its members so that voters could feel they had a say in choosing those responsible for education policy decisions.
Electing school board members could open Pandora’s box
But there would be another complication of changing the elected board. Feder said that to meet state requirements, Philadelphia voters would have to approve a change to the city’s charter to allow partisan elections. Otherwise, state voters would have to approve a school code amendment allowing Philadelphia to hold nonpartisan elections.
McGinley, who served on the School Reform Commission that previously ran Philadelphia schools and was superintendent at Lower Merion and Cheltenham, worries that electing school board members will open a political Pandora’s box, giving more influence to interest groups “that play their cards” on various issues.
But Elaine Simon, a retired urban planning professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is co-authoring a forthcoming book on the latest wave of school closures in 2013, said an elected board, especially one with regional representatives, would be more sensitive to the needs of different areas of the city.
“At this time, school board members do not represent the district,” she said.
Not surprisingly, Board of Education Chairman Reginald Streater is skeptical about the benefits Philadelphia would gain by electing school board members.
He said more time should pass before another major change in district management can be considered. Only this recently appeared from an even less democratic period, when a state commission ran city schools from 2001 to 2018 before ceding control to the local school board.
He emphasized that the state is moving towards adequacy of school financing after historic ruling of the Commonwealth Court, and that in Philadelphia, measures include test scores, attendance rates, and dropout rates are improving.
Conditions “are getting better… why change it now?” he said.
Chalkbeat’s Philadelphia bureau chief, Carly Sitrin, contributed to this article.
