OUT & ABOUT: Interview With Armond James, Fattah’s November Challenger

BY DENISE CLAY/ When Gregory Naylor, former Chief of Staff to Congressman Chaka Fattah, pled guilty to a series of complicated financial transactions connected to the Congressman’s 2007 mayoral campaign, speculation began in earnest about Fattah’s future.

The game of “When will Chaka resign?” has been played in earnest, mostly by Republicans on Facebook (Yes, I mean you, John Featherman) and others who have been silently grousing about the Congressman for years.

On Monday, I spoke to someone who may have more of a say about Congressman Fattah’s future than all of the pundits combined: Armond James, his Republican opponent.

I interviewed James as part of a story on educators. The 2008 Temple University graduate is a computer science and history teacher at South Philadelphia HS’s Creative Learning Academy, a high school for kids who have either been thrown out or left every other school they’ve gone to.

Because I taught similar kids as a media-arts teacher in Southwest Philadelphia, that became our starting point. We talked a little bit about how he manages to reach a group of complicated kids.

“I spend the first week getting to know them,” he said. “We just talk. I ask them questions and get them to talk about who they are.”

Seeing Philadelphia’s educational issues up close was one of the things that motivated James to run for office. He believes the 2nd Congressional Dist. deserves better than what it’s getting from Fattah, and it was a belief he had before the Congressman’s legal troubles began to surface, he said.

“I put my hat in the ring because I’m an educator and I see what is happening in our schools every day,” James said. “Our public schools have failed our children. They deserve a quality education. Parents should be able to use vouchers so that they can send their kids to a better school. A lot of parents don’t know they have a choice. I’d like to promote that so that they can put pressure on politicians to make sure they can exercise it.”

James was also concerned about the fact that many of his parents are working two and three jobs to make ends meet. That’s led him to have to conduct parent/teacher conferences over the phone and on weekends.

As a Congressman, he believes he can make a financial difference for them by bringing jobs back to the community.

“We have a lot of abandoned buildings in the district,” he said. “I’d like to bring some textile jobs and “green” jobs back to the city.”

But while James recognizes that there’s something he can contribute to education as a Congressman, he also believes the foundation of a stable home will help children learn better.

“My Mom and Dad just celebrated their 40th anniversary,” he said. “If you have a strong home, you can take advantage of any educational opportunity. I’ve always believed that it should be home, community, school.”

Election Day is Nov. 4.