Reinventing

HR at school
district of
Philadelphia
 • The district faced a hostile state takeover due to chronically low academic achievement
and a $200 million operating deficit.
• The republican governor Mark Schweiker and Street created a new five-member

2001 governing board, the School Reform Commission (SRC), who selected the district’s CEO,
assumed fiduciary responsibility for the district.

• Student performance on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests had
improved steadily, with the District’s annual achievement gains outpacing state averages.
• In August 2002, Vallas appointed Tomás Hanna as his special assistant for recruitment and
2002 retention, a newly created position independent of the HR office.
 • A blue-ribbon task force, known as the “Campaign for Human Capital,” (the Campaign) specifically cited the District’s
centralized hiring process as a key obstacle for recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers
• Hanna carved out three days of the District’s one-week summer academy for sitting principles to focus on improving
support for “rookie, novice, and veteran teachers.”
2003 • Hanna also launched a monthly leadership academy for aspiring principles that covered four topics: leadership, diversity,
school climate, teaching to proficiency, and parent/community and civic engagement

• In September 2004, vacancies increased temporarily to 143, primarily resulting from the fact that the District had to hire
400 more positions than prior years
• The number of teacher applications rose 44% between 2002 and 2004. Ninety-one percent of new teachers hired in SY04
2004 completed their first year in the classroom, as compared with 73% in SY03

• On January 10, 2005, Hanna reorganized the department into three new areas—1) employee entry, 2) employee service
operations, and 3) employee relations—purposefully renaming the offices with “employee” to signal customer service as

2005 a priority.
School district of Philadelphia was the eighth largest school of the country
and largest in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania

The school had 1.9$ BN annual budget and enrolled approximately 217405
PK-12 student in 274 school

In Dec 2001, school faced a hostile state takeover due to chronically low
academic achievement and a $200mn budget deficit

Republic governor Schweiker and mayor John Street created a new five
member governing board “the School Reform Commission (SRC)”

SRC appointed its first CEO , Paul Vallas IN 2002

Vallas was the head of Chicago public school from 1995-2001, he enacted a series of large scale reforms aimed in
improving academic achievement through out the district

By SY05, Vallas’ effort appeared to gaining traction

The SRC credited Vallas and his leadership team with ameliorating union relationship, building bridges to business,
philanthropic and university committee

120- person HR office was responsible for developing and implementing all personnel and employment policies

Multiple indicator suggested entrenched problem hampered HR effectiveness

Strengthening human capital management remained as intractable problem

There was no proper vision with which HR department employees worked

The executive level decisions had no say of the HR department

HR department was not given the importance of a strategic department

The HR department and Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) union had many differences

The HR department operated separately without connecting with other departments

The HR department operated internally only and needed changes

The HR department was structurally reporting to the incorrect person

 Reducing the
Apply the No Child
Make the teachers teachers’ turnover
Left Behind
available in the ratio and
requirement to all
poor areas increasing their
the schools
satisfaction

Implement site-
based recruitment
Hire the teachers Come up with a
and coordinate
who had varied plan to maintain
with the site-based
skills workforce quality
school committees
for recruitment
 The school district of Philadelphia has ousted four senior managers of the
01 Human Resource department

The School District of Philadelphia has got over 2,500 students with $1.9
02 billion budget and 2,17,405 students in 274 districts
The school has performed low academic achievements compared to the country on
03 average basis plus having $200 million deficit in operating budget
“Human Capital Management” named campaign has been recently conducted to
04 bring HR department performance back on track
The new HR director, who initiated the campaign with CEO support and government
05 officials, brought a lot of positive changes in the department
 OPTION 1
OPTION 1
To continue with the campaign “Human
Capital Management” recommendations.

03 01 OPTION 3
To separate the line-management
OPTION 2 of HR from COO to CEO and make
OPTION 2 OPTION 3 it engaged in more strategic
To provide learning and development activities by undertaking the
activities for HR team to build their second campaign focused on
capacity and equip the department
with technological upgrades to 02 improved services.
manage administrative process. This
will help the team operationally with
no major impact strategically.