Helen Gym Goes To The Head Of The Freshman Class

by Tony West

HELEN GYM … firebrand for change

Many people find careers in educational leadership. But in Philadelphia, where school achievement has been in short supply for decades, educational leadership has more often been a stumbling block than a stepping stone to high public office.

Helen Gym has carved out an unusual career as a leader against the educational establishment, critiquing it and mobilizing activists to change its ways. Fixing the city’s public schools has turned into a lifelong mission – and a mission that swept her into office in 2015 as a City Councilwoman at Large.

In 1994 Gym started Public School Notebook, an ambitious bimonthly newspaper that has become a widely respected and fearless independent eye on a huge urban school district. She co-founded in 2006 a tenacious public-school lobby, Parents United for Public Education, which never hesitates to pound on doors and block the sidewalks in quest of what it sees as Philadelphia children’s academic needs.

Not for a long time have their needs been needier. After the collapse of Gov. Ed Rendell’s expansive budgets, Republican rule in Harrisburg starting in 2011 has kept the Philadelphia School District teetering over a chronic fiscal crisis. The School Reform Commission was created in 1998 to dump the City’s academic costs onto the lap of the State. But as 2015 ended, the Republican House of Representatives was still firmly declining to cover its needs. State control had become State strangulation.

City schools emerged as the top political issue of the municipal election season – and Gym benefited from it. She knocked off a Democratic Party-endorsed incumbent in the May primary and led the Council-at-Large ticket in November.

When she’s in attack mode, slamming an establishment she finds worth slamming, Gym minces no words. “Fiery” is just first gear for her then.

But Gym thinks people who judge her by tempestuous soundbites miss the other side of who she is: the side that puts together organizations that can pull together and win.

“I am known for building coalitions and bringing a diversity of voices to bear on big, complicated public institutions – a process that makes us a stronger institution,” she explained in an interview this month.

Gym looks askance on top-down management and favors a progressive approach of collaboration and collegiality. This is the attitude needed to drive anybody’s agenda anywhere on City Council. She is hoping it will serve her well there.

“People who only see the combative side of me, miss why I got elected to City Council. It wasn’t just through bomb-throwing. I spent decades of trust-building all across the city,” she said.

Gym fell into school activism through its grass roots. She had just returned to Philadelphia, where she had attended the University of Pennsylvania, after a brief stint as a journalist in her native Ohio, when her boyfriend (now husband) attorney Bret Flaherty got a job here. She too found work, as a teacher at Lowell ES in Olney.

That began an immersion in community-based education for her. She developed a feel and a passion for the interconnections between neighborhood institutions. To this day, she retains ties to the communities of Far North Philadelphia – ties that showed in her strong vote from those wards this year.

Gym also became involved in the community struggles of Chinatown during the 1990s. Also she is Korean American, not Chinese, and does not live in Chinatown, she was excited by the bottom-up activism of Asian Americans United, which was struggling then to save Chinatown from renewal, fighting to maintain its character without being relocated.

“There was a tremendous amount of intellectual energy then,” she recalled. Gym thrives on bursts of energy, and on the sense of comradeship in campaigning. “We kept pushing for a vibrant Chinatown, kept connected with neighborhood leaders of an often-marginalized community,” she said. “We needed to see some engagement with the City in a more-robust fashion.”

So for her, schools are of a piece with the communities they serve. She will be an instinctive supporter (if not a mentor) of Mayor Jim Kenney’s vision of “community schools” as hubs of integrated public services alongside education.

But schools remain Job One for Gym. Of the School District, she said, “There is a lot of energy invested in leadership at the top, but not much to show for it. We see their big salaries, their egos, their entourages.

“But School District leaders don’t live to see the consequences of their policies. We live to pick up the pieces. My son is an 11th-grader. He’s seen seven Superintendents. So I would temper some of the urgency to grant any one person in power to wave a magic wand over the School District.”

Gym is leery of grand experiments in general. “What gets missed a lot is how many of our children live in poverty,” she remarked. “Academically, they need stability more than the latest fad. We want sustainability and substance. Instead, we get schools opening, schools closing … it’s chaotic.”

Although two of her three children have attended a charter school (Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures School in Chinatown), Gym said she wouldn’t want to advocate for charter schools in general.

“How many founders of charter schools send their own kids to their own charter schools?” she charged. “Why do so many charter schools fail? I am very partial to the independent charters but not to the chains. Cyber charters are the worst.”

Even when charters are good, she asserts, they cannot be held up as The Answer. “I am for educational innovation but I do not think innovation is always replicable,” Gym said. “For sure, charter schools are not a default solution. I have seen schools closed, families left without options. I am cautious and thoughtful about undoing public institutions. I do not think the private narrative has worked.”

Basic education has become “a cage match over public interests between the government and private industry. Our state has been fully hijacked by extremism,” she snapped.

To carry out her mission, though, Gym is going to have to sell her “public narrative” to a Capitol Hill in Harrisburg which will be run by Republicans at least until 2021.

Gym aims to take her Philly attitude to the ’Burg. “I expect to be testifying in Harrisburg a lot,” she said. “I’ll be talking appropriations, safety, economic development. It won’t be a one-time conversation.” Gym wants to see an end to the School Reform Commission, which she calls dysfunctional. On the other hand, she wants to increase the State-City funding ratio. “Our clear priority is the lost $300 million from the Corbett administration,” she said.

That’ll be a tall order for a junior councilor from the wrong party and wrong branch of government. But it is Gym’s style of play. And she thinks it may ultimately win the day.

“Corbett lost,” she noted. “The pro-education message resonated in Allentown and Scranton as well as Philadelphia. Some school districts saw property taxes doubled. Reining in these costs at the state level is smart, sane and doable.”

Gym makes no bones about City school spending either: She wants more. With taxes or without them. “We’re asking people to do a heavy lift,” she said. She would also like to shake down both the Feds and the local private sector for added revenue (more possible, perhaps, from our business community than from Congress at this hour).

But funding the School District doesn’t mean trusting the School District. “I have no confidence in the School District financial reports,” Gym said. “Clarity is what we need. People want to know what they’re buying. Colleagues want confidence that they know what they’re buying. I’ll be a bulldog.” She will find her attitude shared by many of her new colleagues on City Council – not least Council President Darrell Clarke.

Gym’s personal history persuades her that a driving purpose and relentless lobbying can overcome obstacles and sniff out funds. “We need many conversations, especially conversations about vision. Vision can drive resources,” she insisted.

On Monday, Gym will begin working with key colleagues 3rd Dist. Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who she said has been “personally welcoming and engaging, with a tremendous perspective,” and Councilwoman at Large Blondell Reynolds Brown. They’re the Chair and Vice Chair of the Education Committee. The conversations that ensue will be an important new test of Gym’s vision for Philadelphia schools.

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