School District of Philadelphia Board of Education President Joyce S. Wilkerson was honored with a well-deserved portrait at the Philadelphia Board of Education Building, marking her commitment to the education of Philadelphia students during her seven-year tenure with the School District. Ms. Wilkerson has achieved many highlights during her tenure including having guided the School District’s transition from the state-controlled School Reform Commission to the locally controlled Board of Education in 2018. Under Ms. Wilkerson’s leadership, the Board has developed partnerships that have generated additional support for students and has made investments to advance the Board’s strategic plan, known as Goals & Guardrails, a plan designed to increase student achievement while providing the necessary conditions that support learning.
Below are excerpts of the Philadelphia Inquirer article on it. Read the entire article, here.
Unveiled Wednesday, Wilkerson’s portrait is striking, colorful, and markedly different from the ones that preceded it. In the hallway outside the second-floor auditorium at Philadelphia School District headquarters, it hangs among rows of traditionally presented leaders: generally men, mostly wearing suits, mostly oil paintings.
“Joyful Determination,” the Wilkerson portrait by Philadelphia artist Sydney Carter, is a mixed-media work: acrylic paint, spray paint, paint crayons and gesso. Streater made Wilkerson responsible for finding the artist, and she wanted a public school graduate. Carter is an alumna of Central High; she has worked in Philadelphia schools as a teaching artist with the Mural Arts Program, and as a classroom counselor in a behavioral school that serves district children…
Despite her initial lack of enthusiasm about the project, Wilkerson loves the portrait, for which Carter was paid $2,200, money donated by the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia.
“She managed to capture who I think I am, and my values,” Wilkerson said. “I used it as my ID on my phone; it looks like me to me.”
To Streater, the portrait was a necessity. (Not every SRC chair or board president has one.)
“Whether people agree or not with the way Joyce has done things, one thing is undeniable: her laser focus on students,” said Streater. “I think that we have to give people their flowers. We don’t know what young lady, what Black girl, will see this portrait and follow her example.”
