The School Reform Commission last night approved the conversion of the three more public schools to charters, including the Samuel B. Huey School at 52nd and Pine.

The Global Leadership Academy Charter School, which currently operates a school at 4601 W. Girard Ave., will take over Huey beginning in the fall. The SRC also voted to convert Cooke (Logan) and Wister (Germantown) Elementary Schools into charters. The charters are tasked with turning around the “chronically under-performing” schools, often against the wishes of parents. Huey has an enrollment of about 550 students.

Meanwhile Councilwoman Helen Gym, who was elected last fall in part for her dedication to public schools, called for a moratorium on charter conversions.

The 2016 Pennsylvania Primary Election results are in, and here are some local results and a breakdown by wards on the vote for presidential candidates. Overall, West Philadelphia’s Democratic voters supported Hillary Clinton, except for the 27th Ward where Bernie Sanders came out on top. Note: the results below are unofficial and incomplete. To view more results, go here.

PA Representative, District 190

Vanessa Lowery Brown – 36.45 percent (5381 votes)
Wanda Logan – 28.37 percent (4188 votes)
Ray Bailey – 12.02 percent (1775 votes)
Darryl Thomas – 11.37 percent (1679 votes)

PA Representative, District 188 

James Roebuck (incumbent, unopposed) – 99.87 percent (12134 votes)

Representative in Congress, District 2 (Democrats)

Chaka Fattah (incumbent) – 36.76 percent (58821 votes)
Dwight Evans – 43.51 percent (69622 votes)

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Bids to convert three Philadelphia public schools, including Samuel B. Huey Elementary in West Philadelphia, into charters have received support from the District’s Charter Schools Office (CSO). The CSO has recommended the School Reform Commission to approve with conditions all three charter school applications. The SRC will vote on the applications on Thursday, which will determine whether Global Leadership Academy would take over Huey in the 2016-17 school year.

Samuel B. Huey Elementary School (Google Street View image).

Huey parents gathered outside the school at 52nd and Pine last week to protest its proposed conversion into a charter, saying that the school instead needs more resources, according to a report by The Notebook. They also said that they are not getting enough input on the school’s future.

Global Leadership Academy currently operates a K-8 school at 4600 West Girard Ave. The CSO found that the application for Huey, a low-performing school, from Global Leadership Academy is “rooted in culturally competent, progressive education that improves academic performance but also increases attendance and family engagement while decreasing student violence and suspension rates.”

Read the full report about the recommendations by the Charter Schools Office on The Notebook.

The Charter Schools Office recently released its first Annual Charter Evaluation (ACE) for all Philadelphia charter schools as part of its Authorizing Quality Initiative. The ACE includes school-specific performance evaluations based on academic success, organizational viability and compliance, and fiscal health and sustainability. The ACE can be viewed on the School District’s website.

UPDATE: Police are now saying that the 20-year-old woman who was abducted and sexually assaulted in an 11-hour ordeal on Saturday, knew her attacker. No other details are available at this time.

Police are looking for a man who they believe abducted and sexually assaulted a young woman early Saturday morning and held her 11 hours before she escaped near 57th and Larchwood.

The 20-year-old woman was forced into a black vehicle at gunpoint at about 4 a.m. near 49th and Lancaster. The vehicle had tinted windows and a garbage bag over the driver’s side rear window, she told police. She escaped from the vehicle at about 3 p.m. on Saturday near 57th and Larchwood, police said.

Her abductor was described as a black male, about 23 years old, with dreadlocks and a long beard.

Indego bike share station in Clark Park (archived photo).

Philly’s bike-share program Indego celebrated its first birthday this week by announcing a couple dozen more docking stations around the city, including a few in West Philly. The program also introduced new rates and ways for low-income residents to pay for the service and a snappy new app.

New docking stations will be located near 34th and Mantua, 42nd and Lancaster and 46th and Market. Indego will also start accepting Pennsylvania ACCESS cards and offer an unlimited number of one-hour rides for 30 days for $5 – down from $15. The new rates should widen the availability of the program, something Indego officials had hoped for when the program began.

The program’s new app will allow riders to find stations, check on bike availability, renew membership passes and search trip history.

Indego has been very popular over the past year, logging about 420,000 rides and more than 8,000 memberships.

About 40 percent of food in the United States is never eaten, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. It’s tough to point fingers when there is no one to blame. We’ve all bought meat or produce that has gone bad before we have gotten around to preparing it. The EAT (Everyone At the Table) Café, a nonprofit subsidiary of the Center for Hunger-free Communities at Drexel University, aims to approach food resources a little differently to reduce waste and make access to healthy food more affordable with a pay-what-you-can price structure.

Donnell Jones-Craven, EAT Café’s general manager, stresses that the Café is not a soup kitchen, as there will be seating and table service. “We’re like Sabrina’s or Honey’s; we suggest that price. We believe that 80 percent of our customer base will pay the suggested amount or more; it will help the 20 percent that cannot pay the full suggested price… We just want to make sure people will do their very best, because we want to stay viable, open and serving our community as large.”  Continue Reading