‘The kids are not learning’: employees inside a North Philly charter detail chaos inside their school

The leadership meeting happened at mid-afternoon on a Tuesday at Alliance for Progress Charter School: It was a small huddle to discuss how the new school year was going.

Unexpectedly, CEO Stacey Scott burst into the Aug. 25 meeting held inside the main office, disrupting the discussion.

“You b—!” Scott said to the principal, Eric Langston, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the meeting. She then spoke to the others in the room. “You can’t trust this snake! Motherf—!”

Scott then walked out of the room, shouting, “F — this school,” and left.

The extraordinary outburst, insiders say, Alliance for Progress, whose charter, which is up for renewal this year, is a school in turmoil.

The Inquirer interviewed multiple people directly involved with the school, all of whom declined to be publicly identified because they fear reprisal.

The North Philadelphia charter has churned through staff. Paraprofessionals — workers without college degrees or educational licenses — are providing instruction, those inside the school say. Students who never attended a day of school last year remained on Alliance’s rolls for the entire year, meaning the charter received payment for children they did not educate.

Scott remains CEO, but is no longer working inside the building, according to the sources.

Alliance, a K-8 school on Cecil B. Moore Avenue, had 616 students on roll last year.

Both Scott and Larry Griffin, the president of the school’s board of directors, were asked to comment on the allegations. Griffin sent The Inquirer a statement. Scott did not respond.

“Alliance For Progress Charter School continues our important work of educating our economically disadvantaged student populations,” Griffin wrote. “Respecting the privacy of all our AFPCS employees, we decline to comment on personnel matter.”

Langston declined comment.

The Philadelphia School District’s charter schools office declined to comment. Officials from the charter office are expected to visit Alliance in late October to begin the enhanced review process that accompanies charter renewal.

The school’s board of directors is scheduled to meet Tuesday night.

Six weeks after joining Alliance as principal in July, Langston, who has spent time as a leader in the Mastery Charter system and at Northwood Academy, sent a confidential email outlining concerns he had about the school to the Alliance Board of Directors.

The concerns, he said, according to the message obtained by The Inquirer, “have reached a level that gives me significant pause regarding leadership practices, organizational culture, transparency, and the long-term health of Alliance.”

Langston asked for the board to shield him from possible retaliation. In 2025, the school’s former director of business and compliance filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging he suffered reprisal — demotion — after reporting significant problems at the school.

Raheem Harvey, who left Alliance last year, said he flagged to school and board officials violations of state and local bidding requirements, contracts issued without board approval, a student enrollment problem, skipped payroll taxes and more.

Scott, in December, told The Inquirer Alliance officials “categorically deny all the allegations asserted by this disgruntled former employee.” That suit is still pending.

Langston, in his email, laid out several issues raised by employees around ”Scott’s leadership and decision-making, including questions about whether decisions are consistently being made in the best interest of the school.” Alliance, he added, does not have “the level of psychological and professional safety necessary for adults to openly communicate, learn, disagree, grow and lead.”

Different organizational structures are needed at the school, Langston said in the email. He proposed becoming Chief Schools officer — a promotion — which he said would result in “creating clearer lines of accountability and appropriately limit the extent to which Ms. Scott is involved in the daily instructional and operational decision-making of the school.”

Langston also raised alarm over Scott instructing human resources to withhold the bonus an employee earned because the employee was taking family medical leave to care for an ill relative. Scott, he said, wanted to make sure the employee returned to Alliance after their leave.

“I am deeply concerned that conditioning compensation already earned or otherwise due upon an employee’s return from protected leave may create significant legal, ethical and organizational exposure for Alliance,” Langston wrote.

Langston also suggested Scott was misrepresenting staff vacancies, and counting classes covered by substitutes as filled.

“Our reporting should distinguish between FTE-filled positions, substitute-covered vacancies, and completely uncovered vacancies,” Langston wrote. “Anything less creates an inaccurate picture of our staffing reality. I believe the board deserves complete and transparent information upon which to make governance decisions.”

Four days after Langston sent the email to the board, Scott burst into his meeting shouting profanities, according to those with direct knowledge.

Langston immediately notified the board of Scott’s conduct and asked for a meeting, which happened the next day.

Some board members apologized for Scott’s behavior, but Griffin, the board president, neither offered an apology nor discussed the issues Langston raised, according to multiple insiders.

Soon after the meeting, the board’s lawyer instructed Langston and the board to have no contact with each other. Alliance, at its lawyer’s instruction, has hired an outside consultant to investigate the situation.

Langston remains on site at Alliance for Progress; Scott is working remotely, sending emails and issuing directives.

Employees say Scott “has created a scope at the school where nothing can go on without her,” one employee said.

The school’s atmosphere is “such a toxic working environment, not a healthy space. The kids are losing, the families are losing,” the employee said.

“There are grave concerns,” said the employee. “We service families that come from challenging backgrounds, and we cannot assume that just the children have struggles. We have parents that cannot read. They do not know their children are not being serviced, their children are not being prioritized.”

The employee said while the school’s climate is decent, Alliance lacks some organizational basics, including human resources processes and a formal student discipline cycle. Some students remained on roll all year who never attended the school, they said — an assertion confirmed by other employees.

Some classes have been taught “for years” by unlicensed paraprofessionals, the first employee said.

“It lacks stuff that a normal school understands,” the employee said. “It’s a very low-tier, low level of support. The kids are not learning.”

Just 9% of the school’s students meet state standards in reading, and 5% reached math standards. That’s far below district and state achievement — in the Philadelphia School District, 33% of students were considered at grade level in reading and 25% in math; across Pennsylvania public schools, 50% of students are considered proficient in reading, and 42% in math.

A second employee, who also asked for anonymity for fear of reprisal, is particularly troubled by the school’s academic issues.

“Our school is predominately Black and brown children, and they can’t read, and they’re just passed on to the next grade, and we go into these meetings, and they say, ‘These are the worst test scores I’ve ever seen.’ But what are we doing to make that different?”

The second employee also said they were also alarmed by students on Alliance’s books who had left the school.

“We noticed that students who’ve withdrawn were back on our roll. Students who haven’t been there for years. They literally lied on enrollment documentation,” the second employee said.

Charters are allotted funding based on the number of students enrolled.

“Something,” the second employee said, “is very wrong.”