Staff Blog
The principals’ principal arrives
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News intern Todd Miller filed this dispatch from today's City Hall press conference. To read the education plan Nutter released during his campaign for mayor, click here.
“There is a new CEO in town,” Mayor Michael A. Nutter said at today’s press conference to announce the new Chief Education Officer and Director of the Office of the Public School Family and Child Advocate.
Dr. Lori Shorr will serve at this position pending approval of city council. Shorr has served as Vice President of Policy and Planning at Philadelphia Youth Network since 2006 and as a special assistant to the Secretary of Education at the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
“We have goals and they are attainable,” Shorr said at City Hall today. “And we are not leaving until we have the political will and we have the strategies needed to reach … those goals.”
Mayor Nutter mentioned three points that he hopes Shorr, along with Sharon Tucker, new deputy chief education officer, can reach.
“First is to cut in half the high school drop outs over the next five to seven years. Second is to double the college degree obtainment rate over the next five to ten and third is to improve the literacy level of the people in our great city,” Nutter said.
Shorr knows the city’s education system well. Her children attended school in Philadelphia. She also has held a number of positions at Temple University, including serving on the Faculty of the Women’s Studies Program and in the School of Education.
“This is a real exciting day for the citizens of the city, especially the child,” Nutter concluded.
