‘Rising star’ leaves big shoes to fill
Parker’s departure means ASD must find another perfect fit
At the end of this school year, the Allentown School District will begin a process that has become all too familiar — searching for a new superintendent.
Superintendent Thomas Parker will leave Allentown one year shy of finishing his fiveyear contract. Parker will head back to Michigan, where his career in education began, to join the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in Flint.
Parker was a unique choice for Allentown when picked after a national search in 2017. At 38, he was the youngest to hold the job. He was also the first Black superintendent to lead the district, where 90% of its 16,500 students are
nonwhite.
But he has at least one thing in common with his predecessors. Parker, the fourth superintendent since 2010, is another Allentown leader whose tenure did not last long.
“When I applied, I was definitely here for the long haul,” Parker said recently in an interview with The Morning Call. “Ultimately, life changes and this is an opportunity that I can’t not accept.”
As the school board gears up for another superintendent search, some community leaders want the district to forgo a national search and instead choose someone local. Fed up with leadership upheaval, they want a seat at the table in the selection process.
“I think a community board should be developed to sift through the applications. It should be a collaborative system that gives voices to parents, students and the residents of Allentown,” said Hasshan Batts, executive director of Promise Neighborhoods.
School board President Nancy Wilt said the search likely will be a national one again. But, she added, that won’t stop the district from picking someone local.
The district will have an acting superintendent for the upcoming school year, leaving more time to search for a permanent one.
Community leaders want the next leader to be of color, which ideally the board would also like, Wilt said.
“If that person reflects the demographics of our school district, I think that would be the way to go,” she said. “But at the end of the day ... we’re looking at that as well as the merits that balance it.”
‘Really important in getting the right superintendent’
Leading the Allentown School District is no easy task.
Nearly three-quarters of Allentown’s students live in poverty. Almost 20% do not speak English as a first language. The district’s graduation rate is below the state average, and Allentown students consistently score among the lowest on standardized tests in the region.
Coupled with that, the rising costs of charter schools and educating special education children, who make up 20% of Allentown’s population, contribute to strained budgets.
In the last decade, Allentown has seen hundreds of positions eliminated and taxes raised to balance budgets.
“An urban setting is a very unique situation,” said Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association. “It requires an awareness and skills that may be different from a regular superintendency.”
Allentown officials had high hopes for Parker.
When he interviewed, he spoke of his fondness for urban education, which was nurtured during his time teaching in Detroit. As a superintendent of a tiny district in Michigan, Parker touted his success in turning it around academically and financially.
For Parker, a first-generation college graduate from rural Mississippi, his biggest goal was to show Allentown students that with support and an education, they can succeed, just like he did.
“I want our kids to know that we’re creating that same type of community for them,” Parker said.
In his nearly four years in Allentown, Parker faced his share of hurdles, including annual fiscal struggles and a pandemic that forced Allentown students, already academically behind, to learn virtually for a year.
But Parker also opened a new elementary school, embarked on a middle school transformation plan and boosted communication with families. He also became a favorite of the state Department of Education for sounding the alarm on Pennsylvania’s unfair funding formula.
Former school Director Robert Smith Jr., who is running for the board again, said he is disappointed Parker is leaving before his contract is up because there were such high hopes for him.
“He started off as this boy wonder, golden boy, rising star,” Smith said. “And now he quit on us.”
Charlie Thiel, the only current director who was on the board when Parker was hired, said he was “not totally shocked” when he learned Parker was leaving because last year he was recruited to apply for a job as superintendent in Nashville, Tennessee.
For the next search, Thiel believes the district should look outside Allentown, although he added the district has talented administrators who might apply.
“My opinion is it needs to be national because we need to open it up to everybody and anybody if you’re looking for the best potential candidate,” he said.
The board doesn’t want to rush a search, Thiel said.
“I think it’s really, really important in getting the right superintendent and someone who’s going to be here for 10 years,” he said. “We need that consistency for our community, for the organization, staff, students and our families.”
Gregory Edwards, founder and senior pastor of Resurrected Life Community Church in Allentown, said the revolving door of superintendents makes it difficult for the district to gain traction in meeting the needs of its students.
“We never really get to the itch that is causing the scratch,” Edwards said.
Yamelisa Taveras, founder and director of The Unidos Foundation, an Allentown nonprofit, said the next superintendent needs to be a person of color from the Lehigh Valley who understands Allentown students.
“That may be part of the reason why we’re not going to have Parker longer,” she said. “He was coming from the outside.”
A desire for another superintendent of color
Before winter break 2018, Parker visited every elementary school dressed as Santa.
The young students asked him about his reindeer and wondered why he didn’t have a beard. But a few asked a more serious question: How could Parker, a Black man, be Santa?
Parker said he wanted Allentown students to see themselves represented in leadership positions, even as Santa.
To that end, Parker has worked to make his administration more diverse. Currently, the district has two deputy superintendents who are both women of color. The three high school principals are all nonwhite and the number of assistant principals of color has doubled under Parker.
Students notice when their leaders look like them, Parker said.
“It creates a space, an opportunity for them that they no longer have to question whether there are limits or a glass ceiling,” he said.
Community leaders would like to see that progress continued by selecting another superintendent of color.
“It raises people’s hopes and dreams,” Edwards said.
But it may be easier said than done.
Domenech, the executive director of the School Superintendents Association, said only 4% of superintendents are people of color.
A significant reason is there isn’t a big pool of diverse educators to fill those positions. A 201718 survey found that nearly 80% of public school teachers were white while 9.3% were Latino, 7% were Black and 2% were Asian, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
“That gives you an indication of how difficult it is to find a superintendent of color,” Domenech said.
Whoever is picked, Batts said, that person will need support in taking the district to the next level. That means working with community leaders and elected officials at the state and local level to make sure Allentown gets the funding it needs.
“It’s going to take more than an individual,” Batts said. “It’s going to take a team to take it to the next level to really supply the things we need for kids.”
Lack of funding prevented progress
At first glance, Parker’s next move looks like an unusual one. After his entire career spent in public schools, he’ll now head to the foundation world to work on grants and forming partnerships to strengthen education in Flint.
His new job will allow him to help students without the constraints of school budgets.
“The reality is a lot of our time and intellectual energy has been focused on addressing a fiscal emergency,” Parker said. “And that was just the reality of where the district was.”
Because Pennsylvania’s funding formula relies more heavily on local taxes than on state and federal money, the scales tip in favor of wealthier suburban districts. Districts like Allentown are always one fiscal emergency away from disaster. And Parker learned that fast.
In his first year, Allentown was $10 million short just days away from needing to pass a budget at the end of June. That time, the state came through and handed Allentown the money it needed — no strings attached.
But every May, it was panic mode. Allentown’s budgets during Parker’s time included the board approving a controversial $10 million loan, a plea to charter schools to take a tuition cut and tax hikes. It allowed few opportunities to give Allentown students anything more.
To prevent the district from being even further in the hole, Parker had the Carbon-Lehigh Intermediate Unit 21 in 2018 do a systemic overhaul of the Allentown School District’s business office. He also brought in Philadelphia-based Public Financial Management which told the district what its financial scenarios could be if work wasn’t done to balance the budgets.
For Parker, the toughest part of the job was the lack of funding for programs that children needed because of a lack of money.
“There’s a lot of really innovative things that we had to put on the back burner just because of the financial statements of the district,” he said. “Hard decisions had to be made in terms of priority.”
Batts said Parker was hamstrung by an educational system that won’t give urban districts enough money to succeed and views their students as failures.
The next superintendent will face similar problems, Batts said.
“[Parker’s] not a miracle worker,” Batts said. “He was provided with a tool box full of Band Aids for a district that is full of children of promise.”