Harrisburg’s school board members were expecting to meet with Superintendent Sybil Knight-Burney in an executive session tonight to discuss a running list of concerns. That was until they learned this morning that Knight-Burney will be unable to attend the meeting.
Knowing that, board member Carrie Fowler, Judd Pittman and Brian Carter said today they are boycotting the session. They were hopeful of scratching the surface on a long list of outstanding questions, which include the status of 2019-2020 budget and where the district is in terms of hiring a chief financial officer, a full-time principal at John Harris High School and a full-time business manager.
The Harrisburg School District Board director Judd Pittman during a special meeting to vote on hiring in-house solicitor James Ellison, Monday, April 22, 2019. Vicki Vellios Briner | Special to PennLiveVicki Vellios Briner | Special to PennLive
Other questions that board members wanted answered related to school safety, the state audit and proposed policies that haven’t been reviewed, as well as an update on School Improvement Grants funding that was supposed to be used to finance a Blended Transition Academy.
As for Knight-Burney, the National Center on Education and the Economy advertised weeks ago her attendance as a panelist today at an event in Washington, D.C., according to a NCEE correspondence.
“Knight-Burney, who will be joined by fellow Pennsylvania superintendent Thomas Washington of Crawford Central School District, will share stories from on the ground in Harrisburg and offer examples of how the education reform agenda laid out in [Marc] Tucker’s book (“Leading High-Performance School Systems: Lessons form the World’s Best”) is being implemented in the district,” the correspondence said.
Tucker is the founder, CEO, and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy.