On the front page of this morning’s Inquirer, Superintendent Hite sent a strong message on the need to end teacher seniority and called the current budget crisis “an opportunity to reset our work, purpose, and values, and construct something that looks very different going forward.”

Giving more kids access to great schools means a change from how we’ve operated in the past, and few changes would be more powerful that this one. To date, we’ve invested over $20 million in nearly two dozen great schools and what we see again and again is thatgreat schools are led by great principals who have the freedom to decide which teachers are best able to meet the needs of their students.

This comes on the heels of some other big announcements this week:

• On Monday, we announced a $600,000 investment in our city’s Catholic high schools.
• On Wednesday evening, the SRC approved moves to start two school turnarounds in September (by our partners Mastery and Scholar Academies) and voted to renew five charter schools while closing one low-performing charter.

This is all very good news for Philadelphia kids and families. While the current budget crisis presents real challenges, we are seeing more and more signs of courageous leadership paving a new way forward for our schools.