Skip to content
Politics
Link copied to clipboard

SRC, pre-K, commission on women, and language access on ballot questions

Voters will weigh in on four ballot questions Tuesday that would change Philadelphia's Home Rule Charter, the city's governing document.

An election polling place station during a United States election. (iStock Photo)
An election polling place station during a United States election. (iStock Photo)Read more

Voters will weigh in on four ballot questions Tuesday that would change Philadelphia's Home Rule Charter, the city's governing document.

Two pertain to education: one to abolish the School Reform Commission and another to explore offering universal prekindergarten. A third would create a commission to study the advancement of women, while the fourth would require city offices to plan for providing access to non-English speakers.

History shows that the questions have a good chance of passing. Of nearly two dozen ballot questions sent to voters since 2010, only one has been turned down.

SRC. This nonbinding question calls on Harrisburg to abolish the School Reform Commission. The SRC, created in 2001 to replace the local Board of Education, can be dissolved only by voting itself out of existence.

Last year, about 40,000 school activists signed a petition pushing for the city to take back control of its schools from the state and demanding the question be placed on the ballot.

Pre-K. Voters will decide whether the city should create a commission that would recommend a plan for achieving universal pre-K.

The city has about 43,500 3- and 4-year-olds, 34,000 of whom are eligible for publicly funded free prekindergarten education based off their parents' income. Because of a lack of funding, though, only one-third of those eligible students get free pre-K, leaving about 20,000 students without.

A cost for the commission has not been released.

Women. If approved, the Commission for Women would seek to facilitate partnerships among women, city government, and the business community.

Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, who sponsored the bill that placed the question on the ballot, said such commissions are common in other cities, including New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. The annual cost for the commission, including an executive director and an assistant, she said, would not exceed $150,000.

Language access. A handful of city offices - including City Council, the District Attorney's Office, and the Sheriff's Office - are not bound to comply with a city requirement that they have a formal plan for providing access to non-English-speaking residents. Although some of those bodies have adopted their own language-access plans, the proposed charter change seeks to ensure uniform standards across all city agencies, boards, and commissions.

The charter change would also require compliance monitoring, including making annual reports for each agency available to the public.

215-854-2730 @TriciaNadolny