Speaking at Board of Education Meetings

Tips for Speaking at School Board Meetings

Testifying at a School Board Meeting

Philadelphia Board of Education conducts 4 types of meetings:

  • Actions meetings, held on the third Thursday of every month
  • Goals and Guardrail meetings, held on the 2nd Tuesday of every month
  • Policy Committee meetings, held every 3 months
  • Public Hearing, held twice a year in the Fall and Spring

The meetings are held in the auditorium of the District Administration Building at 440 N. Broad Street unless otherwise specified. All of these meetings are open to the public.  You can find the meetings listed on the Board’s Calendar page. The public is welcome to speak at any of those meetings.

Action Meetings

Action meetings are held on the 3rd or 4th Thursday of every month.

The agenda for these meetings is posted 2 weeks before the meeting and can be found on the Meeting Materials page of the Board’s website The Board can add additional items to the agenda up until 48 hours before the meeting.

The number of public speakers at the Action meeting is limited to 30. Each speaker is a limited to 2 minutes of testimony. The number of student speakers is limited to 15. Students may speak for 3 minutes each. You may speak in person or remotely.

Registration to speak at an Action meeting opens a 4 p.m. on the Monday before the meeting and closes at 4 p.m. the day before the meeting or when 30 speakers have registered. Because the number of speakers are limited to 30 at all meetings except the Public Hearings, it is best to register close to 4 p.m. on the Monday before the meeting.

You can register online here, or by phone at 215-400-5959. You will need to provide your name, email, topic and status (parent, teacher, community member, etc.), and indicate whether you will speak in person or remotely via the District zoom link or by phone.

You can also submit written comments online here or by hand delivery.  They must be submitted by 4 p.m. on the business day before the meeting.  There is no limit to the number of written comments you can make; there is no word limit on written testimonies. They are counted, summarized, and printed in the Board minutes.

You can live stream the meetings or watch them on X-finity Channel 52 or Vios Channel 20.  The link to the live stream can be found on the day of the meeting in a banner at the top of the District’s home page or on the Board’s Calendar page. 

You can register to speak at the Policy meetings, the Goals and Guardrails meetings and the Public Hearings using the same registration link or phone number you would use to register for the Action Meetings. There is no limit to the number of people who can speak at the Public Hearing meetings.

Talking Points for Creating your Testimony

You can incorporate any of these talking points into your testimony. These are just suggestions to help you get started.

Talk about your experiences in a school library and how you benefited from it.

Talk about the inequities of not having a school library.

Research talking points:

  • Two out of three children in Philadelphia cannot read on grade level by 4th grade.
  • Children who can’t read on grade level by 4th grade are six times more likely to drop out of school.
  • Research shows that students who attend school with full-time professional school librarians score significantly better on reading tests than students whose schools don’t have librarians.
  • The School district of Philadelphia had 176 librarians for 259 schools in 1991, but the district stopped funding librarian positions from the central budget in the late 1990s and closed its Office of School Libraries in the early-2000s
  • The School District of Philadelphia currently has 3 full-time librarians for its 220 schools and over 117,000 students. This is ratio of 1 librarian to 39,302 students.
  • Read "Why School Librarians Matter: What Years of Research Tells Us" by Keith Curry Lance and Debra Kachel

What school libraries with a certified school librarian provide:

  • a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space
  • a diverse and up-to-date collection designed to inspire the joy of reading with children and allow them to see themselves reflected in texts while opening up other worlds to them
  • technologies to access and create information
  • a planned curriculum of information, inquiry, and media instruction that empowers students with the skills and attitudes for their personal, social and academic growth.

Here are additional prompts to help with your testimony.