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New faces on the Philly school board? Mayor’s nominating panel submits 27 names.

Kenney has 10 days to request more names from the board; after he makes his final choices, City Council weighs in, a new step in the school board process.

Mayor Jim Kenney's education nominating panel meets on Feb. 12, 2020 to submit 27 names for consideration to the Philadelphia school board. They are, left to right, Peter Gonzales, Maura McCarthy, Derren Magnum, Ivy Olesh, Wendell Pritchett, Michael Mullins, Kimberly Pham and Sean Vereen.
Mayor Jim Kenney's education nominating panel meets on Feb. 12, 2020 to submit 27 names for consideration to the Philadelphia school board. They are, left to right, Peter Gonzales, Maura McCarthy, Derren Magnum, Ivy Olesh, Wendell Pritchett, Michael Mullins, Kimberly Pham and Sean Vereen.Read moreKristen A. Graham

Philadelphia’s education nominating panel, charged with selecting potential school board members for Mayor Jim Kenney to choose from, made 27 names public Wednesday.

Eight of the nine current board members were renominated: Julia Danzy, Leticia Egea-Hinton, Mallory Fix Lopez, Lee Huang, Maria McColgan, Chris McGinley, Angela McIver, and board President Joyce Wilkerson.

Wayne Walker, the current vice president, said recently that he was not seeking a new term because of a family commitment that requires him to spend long periods of time out of town.

Nineteen other names joined the list of potential board members.

The mayor now has 10 days if he wishes to request more names from the board. A spokesperson said Kenney expects to make his picks by the end of the month.

City Council then gets to weigh in, a new step in the process happening because of a City Charter change voters agreed to in 2018, after the first board had been selected.

The scripted and sparsely attended meeting drew fire from two members of the public who said the board’s secret deliberations were inappropriate and a violation of the state Sunshine Act.

“The people of Philadelphia, including the stakeholders of this district, have been shut out of this process,” said Lisa Haver, a retired Philadelphia teacher.

“Your actions mirror the undemocratic maneuverings playing out on the national level,” said Karel Kilimnik, a retired teacher, who objected that no meeting agenda or list of candidates was made public. “It’s a disgrace.”

Wendell Pritchett, chair of the nominating panel, disagreed. “We followed the law,” he said.

More about the nominees

On the current board members: Julia Danzy has a social services background and was Philadelphia director of social services in Mayor John F. Street’s administration; Leticia Egea-Hinton was a top official with Philadelphia agencies that help the homeless; Mallory Fix Lopez is a linguist and small-business owner who teaches at Community College of Philadelphia; Lee Huang is senior vice president and principal at Econsult Solutions Inc., a Philadelphia economic-analysis company; Maria McColgan is a pediatrician and educator; Christopher McGinley is an education professor at Temple University, and a former Philadelphia teacher and administrator and suburban superintendent; Angela McIver, who holds a doctorate in teaching, learning and curriculum, is CEO and founder of Math Foundations LLC and Trapezium Math Club; Joyce Wilkerson is former chief of staff to Street and currently is a senior adviser for community relations and development at Temple.

Other nominees include:

Valerie Adams-Bass, a professor and researcher studying youth development and education; Ameen Akbar, a senior associate at Grovider, a management consulting firm; Sarah-Ashley Andrews, a master’s degree student in counseling psychology at Lincoln University; Dawn Ang, an immigrant from Singapore and a supporter of children with special needs; Dario Bellot, the CFO and COO at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf; Alison Cohen, who founded and runs Bicycle Transit Systems, a company that deploys and manages urban bike-share systems; Susan DeJarnatt, a law professor at Temple’s Beasley School of Law; A.J. Ernst, dean of the High School Academy for Girard College; Cindy Farlino, a former principal of Philadelphia’s Meredith Elementary; Cheryl Harper, a former Philadelphia School District director of employment services; Tremaine Johnson, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Partner for Catalyst: Ed, an education nonprofit; Gavin Keirans, a partner at Riptide Partners, a management consulting business; Chad Lassiter, executive director of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission; Donna Laws, who has worked as a legislative staffer in the federal and Pennsylvania Houses of Representatives; Nina Liou, a consultant on affordable housing; Rosybell Maria, who was a first-generation low-income college student and who has recently served as a scholarships officer for Philadelphia Foundation; William Peebles, program director for the Philadelphia School District’s ELECT program, which helps teen parents complete high school; Andrew Stober, who has served on the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission; and David Thomas, an associate vice president for strategic initiatives, dean for the division of access and community engagement, and executive director for the Institute for Community Engagement and Civic Leadership at Community College of Philadelphia.