Should the state take over Harrisburg schools?

• Ed Mahon
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  Ed Mahon comes to Spotlight PA from PA Post, where he covered state politics and policy, produced radio stories that were broadcast on public media stations throughout the state and on NPR’s national newscasts, and co-wrote a weekday newsletter. Prior to joining PA Post, Ed worked for six years as an investigative and political reporter for the York Daily Record, part of the USA Today Network. His reporting on failures in Pennsylvania’s system for protecting domestic abuse victims was a finalist in the national 2018 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists in the local reporting category. He was also part of a team whose coverage of the criminal justice system, including the aggressive use of civil asset forfeiture by York County prosecutors, received the 2018 G. Richard Dew Award for Journalistic Service from the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. Before joining the York Daily Record, Ed covered K-12 education at the Centre Daily Times in State College and worked as a stringer for suburban sections of The Philadelphia Inquirer. He grew up in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

 Paul Chaplin / The Patriot-News

Harrisburg School District

From The Context, PA Post’s weekday email newsletter:

A closer look at takeovers

• The mayor of Harrisburg and state lawmakers who represent the city want the state to take over city schools there. The moves come after financial scandals, a grading investigation and in-fighting among board members, PennLive’s Christine Vendel reported.

• Meanwhile, PennLive’s Charlie Thompson explains how takeovers worked out in Duquesne City in Allegheny County and Chester-Upland in Delaware County. “We have no finances. We don’t have nothing here for people to stay for. There are no jobs,” the board president for Duquesne City schools told Charlie.

• The state nearly took over the York City School District back in 2014, but that fell through after Tom Wolf was first elected governor. Now, the district has filed paperwork to exit a state recovery plan. Andrea Berry, who was recently appointed superintendent for the district, told CBS21 that the “district is to the point in which we should start seeing data that highlights achievement.”

Best of the rest

Courtesy of Church World Service

Abel Perez (left) and Pablo Alvarez (right), are pictured holding their sons.

• WHYY’s Laura Benshoff takes a look at the case of two men from Cuba who have been held in immigration detention in York County Prison for more than a year. Laura shows how their cases fit into a larger and changing history of Cuban immigrants receiving favorable treatment in the United States.

• The president of Bloomsburg University, who was accused of sexual harassment months into the new job, was previously forced out of two jobs, a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation found.

• A recent study found that Pennsylvania’s approach of counting inmates based on where they are incarcerated — instead of where they are from — has given suburban and rural, predominantly white communities more political power when it comes to legislative districts, WITF’s Katie Meyer reports.