Schools panel votes to hire CEO

The Philadelphia School Reform Commission voted yesterday, 4-0, to hire Arlene Ackerman, a former San Francisco superintendent, as the district's chief executive officer.

With an annual base salary of $325,000, Ackerman, 61, will be paid $50,000 more than former schools chief Paul Vallas and will have one of the highest base salaries of any district leader in the country. She will start June 1.

Ackerman, who did not attend the meeting, said last night that she was pleased that the commission had chosen her. She said she was "ready now to roll up my sleeves and give 500 percent to . . . work with everybody to make Philadelphia's public schools the best in the country."

Ackerman said she was not sure how her base salary compared with those of other superintendents. "My goal is to take this school system to the top and that the community will find me worthy of the salary the commission has agreed to," she said.

"Dr. Ackerman is nationally recognized for her successes in raising student achievement, and she is 100 percent committed to children," said commission member Denise McGregor Armbrister, who called Ackerman "the best person to continue the reforms of the past six years."

Recent salary surveys by the Education Commission of the States and by the publication Scholastic Administrators for 2007 show that only Rudolph F. Crew, superintendent of the Miami-Dade School District in Florida, had a higher base salary than Ackerman's; he is paid $345,000.

The School Reform Commission is still negotiating with Ackerman on other terms and conditions of what it expects will be a five-year contract, including retention and performance bonuses.

Commission members said yesterday that while Ackerman's base salary may be higher than Vallas', they insist that her total compensation package will be comparable to Vallas' and in line with superintendents of other large urban districts.

"We have. . . a compensation package that is well within the normal range of large urban superintendencies across the country," Commission Chairwoman Sandra Dungee Glenn said after yesterday's meeting. "The package, in its entirety . . . will be a very comparable, competitive, but a fair package for her."

Vallas, hired in June 2002, collected $100,000 in annual bonuses.

Member Martin Bednarek said Ackerman's contract probably would include a $100,000 retention bonus in the third year. And Dungee Glenn said she likely would be eligible for performance bonuses after a few years if she meets a series of targets set by the commission.

Ackerman has pledged to return half of any performance bonuses she earns to the district for student scholarships and mini-grants to teachers.

Dungee Glenn said yesterday that she expected the negotiations with Ackerman to be concluded soon.

Although Gov. Rendell, Mayor Nutter and Dungee Glenn announced Ackerman's selection last month, yesterday's vote made it official.

Commission member James Gallagher did not attend yesterday's meeting, although he has said he supports her. Bednarek read a statement from Gallagher praising Ackerman's appointment.

He also thanked Tom Brady, who took over as interim CEO last summer. "I don't know of anyone who could have done a better job," Bednarek said.

Also yesterday, the Accountability Review Council issued a report on the district's academic progress during the 2006-07 school year and released the results of its analysis of the district's 61 charter schools.

James Earl Lyons Sr., Maryland's secretary of higher education, chairs the council, created to monitor the district's academic progress since the 2001 takeover by the state.

He pointed out that while the district has made great strides in boosting student achievement in the last five years, the council believes that the commission should set more realistic benchmarks and redo the timeline of its goals because the district is unlikely to meet most of them.

Lyons also said that a study of the district's charter schools found that they had a slightly higher percentage of students scoring "advanced" or "proficient" on state tests than district schools.

Overall, he said, the council sees a "cautiously promising trend" among charter schools but more detailed data were needed.

The legislation that led to the state takeover of the district in December 2001 called for an independent council to monitor school improvement in the district. It is composed of seven volunteer educational experts, lawyers and policymakers from across the nation.

Heidi A. Ramirez, the School Reform Commission's fifth member, finally took her seat yesterday. Earlier in the day, Ramirez was sworn in by Rendell at the district's headquarters on North Broad Street.

After the meeting, Dungee Glenn announced that the district yesterday had notified the alternative-education providers that at a cost of $49 million run disciplinary schools and programs aimed at keeping at-risk students in school that their contracts would be terminated at the end of the school year.

Cassandra Jones, interim chief academic officer, said the district intends to renegotiate all those contracts for the 2008-09 academic year. Dungee Glenn said the goal was to save money and improve efficiency.