WHEREAS, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a seven part series, titled Assault on Learning in March-April 2011, which investigated the climate of pervasive violence in Philadelphia's public schools; and
WHEREAS, The series revealed that violence in City schools was widespread and underreported, with over 30,000 serious incidents over the last 5 school years, findings which were later corroborated by a Philadelphia School District panel on safety; and
WHEREAS, The series spurred an overhaul of incident reporting in the district and prompted the hiring of a state funded safe schools advocate; and
WHEREAS, Reporters John Sullivan, Sue Snyder, Kristen Graham, Dylan Purcell and Jeff Gammage spent a year examining the violence in public schools, conducting more than 300 interviews with teachers, administrators, students and their families, district officials, police officers, court officials and school violence experts; and
WHEREAS, Photographers David Swanson, Ron Tarver and Sharon Gekoski-Kimmel captured the faces of the victims of violence, both students and teachers, for the series; and
WHEREAS, Frank Wiese served as the series' multimedia editor. Mike Leary and Rose Ciotta were the project editors and the copy editor was Thom Guarnieri. In print, the series was laid out by designer Sterling Chen with graphics by artist Mike Placentra; and
WHEREAS, The reporting for the series was launched during the tenure of William K. Marimow and published under the direction of Editor in Chief Stan Wischnowski; and
WHEREAS, The award is the 19th Pulitzer Prize for the 183 year old newspaper and its first since 1997. This is the third Pulitzer for public service that the Inquirer has received; now therefore
RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That we hereby honor and commend The Philadelphia Inquirer on winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
RESOLVED FURTHER, That an Engrossed copy of this resolution be presented to the editors, reporters, photographers, designers and artists involved in the series, further evidencing the sincere appreciation and admiration of this legislative body.
End