ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Allentown School Board Director Phoebe Harris told thousands of radio listeners Monday she’ll move to postpone a vote on hiring Acting Superintendent Carol Birks on a permanent basis.
Harris was interviewed on “El Relajo,” a morning show on Spanish radio station La Mega that reaches 130,000 Hispanics a week. During the conversation, she blasted the board for lacking a transparent process and urged community members to attend Thursday’s 6 p.m. school board meeting.
- Allentown School Board Director Phoebe Harris says she'll try to postpone a vote to make the interim superintendent permanent
- Harris says board leadership lacks commitment to transparency and community involvement
- The school board meeting is at 6 p.m. Thursday
The board is expected to vote on a new contract for Birks Thursday. She was appointed to the interim role on Oct. 27, 2022. Birks was the only candidate for the position after the board ousted former Superintendent John Stanford just a year into a five-year contract. The board cited no reason for his firing but promised to do another search to replace him.
“We are elected officials. Elected by the City of Allentown to take care of and be good stewards of their children. How dare we not tell what we are doing.”ASD School Board Director Phoebe Harris
Harris told interviewer Victor Martinez that School Board President Audrey Mathison and Vice President Nancy Wilt want to keep the board's actions secret and have denigrated her for speaking out openly.
“We are elected officials,” Harris said. “Elected by the City of Allentown to take care of and be good stewards of their children. How dare we not tell what we are doing.”
Birks is currently being paid $850 a day. Harris said she believed Birks will likely be offered the same pay rate as Stanford, which was $230,000 annually.
Allentown School District Solicitor Jeffrey Sultanik said the district's national consultant, Micah Ali, advised that the board forgo a search at a Feb. 25 retreat. Sultanik said there’s currently a lack of qualified applicants.
“The current marketplace for superintendents is the thinnest it's been in decades,” he said. “People don't want to do the job."
The newly-formed Allentown Latino Education Coalition met with Mathison and Wilt at the end of January to discuss how it could be involved in the search for a new superintendent. More than 70% of students in the district are Latino. Members of the group said in a recent statement they had hoped their voices would have been included in the process.
“We would like to state clearly that this hire is being made without first conducting a transparent search or even considering our recommended and highly qualified candidates who are from this region.”
Harris said she and Board Director Lisa Conover are the only ones on the board calling for a more transparent superintendent process.
Requests for comment about the board’s transparency were sent to the district’s spokeswoman, Mathison, Wilt, Conover, and Directors Patrick Palmer, LaTarsha Brown, Evelyn Santana and Jennifer Lynn Ortiz. No response was received by the time of publication.
Board Director Andrene Brown said she could not comment on whether she believed the community has had enough opportunity to give input on hiring Birks as the permanent superintendent until after Thursday.
“Carol Birks has had the longest audition for a school superintendent position,” she said. “I’m hoping that the community was watching her performance over the last four months to see why the decision was made to go in that direction.”
Harris said she wants members of the Allentown community to come to Thursday’s school board meeting and request more transparency. To succeed with her bid to postpone the confirmation, she said she’ll need someone on the board to second her motion.
“And then I want you to watch everybody how they vote,” she said.
