January 2nd students, teachers, and administrators were returning to school from winter break. Everyone but Janice I. Solkov. Dr. Solkov has resigned on December 31st as principal of one of the 20 lowest achieving Philadelphia Public schools.
It all started with a Phone call from Edison's Human Resources Office in July. She was still working as a manager of administrative services and second language instruction in a suburban school district in Montgomery County, Pa. Enthusiastic and eager to make a difference in Philly. She was bringing in an outside company to run some of them. As she had explained to the Edison recruiter her experience in bilingual education and in administration made it a good bet to lead one the city's bilingual schools. The company agreed and offered Dr. Solkov a position to be an Edison Principle.
To her surprise a week later Edison was considering her for a third, smaller school, with a 35 percent Spanish speaking school in West Philly. She accepted the job to be Principal of Morton McMichael Elementary, which had a 100 percent African American student population.
4 Months later she resigned

It says in the New York Times Dr. Solkov resigned because the system’s bureaucracy ultimately defeated her.
Even Dr. Solkov says, "Privatizing schools just shouldn't be this hard." This proves my point showing that Privatizing schools wont work and handing them over for companies to run was just a bad idea. Even if we were to privatize every under achieving school in Philadelphia we still have problems such as funding. It seems that we have to start with basics such as having enough textbooks, having teachers that are capable, having new and clean facilities. Philadelphia has a ways to go.

    Some of the surprises and difficulties I had was the lack of information that I could collect. This is because the awareness of Philadelphia Student Union. Close to no people know what P.S.U is or even care about it. Its not very well known and so its hard to gather and good information.
    One success was that I can easily schedule an appointment with the head of P.S.U. I’ve actually been working with Nijmie just at Sayer’s high school and so getting a short interview wont be as difficult as most.
    My plan is to fully understand everything that goes on at P.S.U and work with Nijmie for a long time to make changes. There’s only so much I can do in 2 or 3 months but over the course of years I can make a much bigger impact. Im interested in becoming a member of P.S.U and building the way to better education.

Just like any organization the Philadelphia Student Union has a CEO and a board of directors.The backbone of P.S.U is Nijmie Dzuriko, and she's been working with P.S.U for 9 years now. Nijmie has been a great help and has been moving the Union forward. The Union is very fortunate to have Nijmie as the Director.
Some of Nijmies achievements are a BA from University of Pennsylvania in English, and a Masters degree at Temple in urban studies. For a little while Nijmie left the organization to order to help found an international human rights organization, but stayed involved on a basis and was still very much apart of the Union.

       When Nijmie is not around Erika Alimony the assistant director is sure to be helping around in various groups on issues that can range from youth rights, media organizing, housing, or to labor. She's also the organizer for the Bodine chapter. A friend of Erika is Megan Williamson; she is an organizer for P.S.U and mainly focuses in funding of the schools, and media training. Megan has been in many different organizations to stop things such as ending violence against women, addressing U.S imperialism, creating affordable and collective house, and developing popular education.

       One of the founders of P.S.U and the first executive director is Eric Baxton. He's the lead organizer for the West Philadelphia Chapter. Eric is, as of right now working on getting a BA in Liberal arts at Goddard College. Another organizer Phillip Pierce runs everything for West Philadelphia High School, he was has been apart of P.S.U while he was in high school. Helping Phillip is Lawrence Jones who is a student organizer for the same school. Lawrence has a shown a serious amount of commitment to PSU for the past 3 years and continues to help the cause.