Foundations withdraws its bid to run King High School

IN THE STRUGGLE to determine the fate of Martin Luther King High School, parents and community members locked horns with two political giants.

It's a scene that plays out with many major decisions in the city, where deals are made in back rooms and protests by community groups usually don't mean much.

This time, the parents and community won.

An educational management company backed by state Rep. Dwight Evans on Wednesday withdrew its bid to run King as a charter school in the wake of revelations of a closed-door meeting involving Evans and School Reform Commission Chairman Robert Archie.

The longtime friends allegedly strong-armed Mosaica, the first choice of the school's parent-led advisory council and the SRC, into backing out last month. New Jersey-based Foundations Inc. got the gig instead.

Members of the committee and community members resisted the change, dug in their heels and demanded that the district honor their choice, or take King off the turnaround list for next fall.

A vote during next week's SRC meeting was supposed to seal the deal, but Foundations CEO Rhonda Lauer withdrew the group's bid to run King in a letter to the district Wednesday, ending its eight-year relationship with King.

In the letter sent to Archie and Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, Lauer said that Foundations' ability to continue running the school wasn't "possible in the climate of unrelenting hostility that has developed."

"Our strong preference would have been to implement the Renaissance plan [to overhaul underperforming schools], but it is clear that a small and vocal minority will make it immensely difficult for us to do so," she wrote.

A phone call to Lauer seeking comment was returned by Emilio Matticoli, Foundations' chief of staff, who declined to comment further.

Khym Lawson, a member of King's alumni association, relished the victory.

"We weren't going to back down," she said. "We may not have been a lot, but when you're persistent, have faith and make your voice as loud as you make it . . . it'll make a difference."

Foundations' announcement comes in the wake of a report this week by the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, an independent news service, that Archie discussed the fate of the school - only hours after recusing himself from a vote because of a possible conflict of interest - in a closed-door meeting with Evans and John Porter, head of Mosaica Turnaround Partners.