Ackerman backers say she is being bypassed

Locked in a battle for her job, Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman has been marginalized as the day-to-day leader of the Philadelphia School District, her supporters said Wednesday.

State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams (D., Phila.) - who blasted the School Reform Commission at a dramatic public meeting - said Ackerman told him that district decisions were being made without her, and that officials were issuing directives to her staff without her consent.

Ackerman was conspicuously absent from the meeting.

"I think there's a strong desire by the members of the SRC for her no longer to be here," Williams told reporters. "I think that they are conducting themselves in ways that send that message, including today."

Williams, an Ackerman booster, said he had questions about the SRC's "decision-making process and how they are conducting themselves with the superintendent." He described the battle over Ackerman as a "food fight amongst adults" and said that under her leadership, the district had made unprecedented academic gains.

He demanded a meeting between the SRC and the Senate Education Committee, said he no longer supported the current governance structure of the district, and made clear he would work to abolish the SRC, created by the state when it took over the district in 2001.

Williams also called on Mayor Nutter to clarify his position on the superintendent. Activist Pamela Williams, who is unrelated to the senator, attended a meeting with the superintendent Tuesday night and said Nutter and the SRC were engineering Ackerman's ouster.

"The mayor is not pushing anybody out," Mark McDonald, Nutter's spokesman, said Wednesday. "The superintendent works for the SRC, and the mayor doesn't discuss personnel matters related to other agencies."

Nutter voiced strong support for Ackerman in the past, but has been silent in recent months.

A district spokeswoman, commenting on Ackerman's absence, said she was ill. Answering a direct question from Sen. Williams about the superintendent's whereabouts, SRC Chairman Robert L. Archie Jr. said she "chose not to be here."

Of Ackerman's absence, Sen. Williams said, "I don't think it's because she chose not to be here. I frankly have other information." He declined to elaborate.