A street shooting in Norristown last week led investigators to discover two sex-trafficking operations that transported women from New York to Montgomery County to engage in prostitution, prosecutors said Thursday.
A dispute between two men who ran rival enterprises erupted in gunfire on Feb. 13, police said, when one shot the other in the thigh during a confrontation on the 400 block of Sandy Street.
On Tuesday, authorities arrested both men.
Efran Flores-Rodriguez, 24, of Norristown, and Fernando Meza-Ramirez, 42, of Corona, Queens, are each charged with trafficking individuals and involuntary servitude. Flores-Rodriguez faces additional charges, including attempted murder, in connection with the shooting.
Officers responding to reports of gunfire found Meza-Ramirez inside a bullet-riddled Toyota RAV4, police said. He had been shot in the thigh.
Meza-Ramirez told police that a stolen white Acura TLX had followed him from Lafayette Street to Sandy Street. When he pulled over, he said, the sedan pulled up beside him and someone opened fire. A witness identified Flores-Rodriguez as the shooter, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
But investigators say the shooting exposed more than a personal feud.
At the hospital where Meza-Ramirez was treated, officers found business cards in his wallet bearing photographs of scantily clad women posing on beds, according to the affidavit.
Days later, on Feb. 17, police searched Flores-Rodriguez’s home and encountered a woman from Flushing, Queens, who told them she had worked as a prostitute under his direction last summer.
She said Flores-Rodriguez, whom she knew as “Guerro,” drove her to Norristown six days a week, provided her a room and charged clients $60 for 10-minute sexual encounters. She told police she sometimes had as many as 15 encounters a day and kept half the money he collected.
The woman said she also worked this year for Meza-Ramirez, whom she knew as “Leo,” under the same arrangement, according to the affidavit.
Both men were denied bail at arraignment and are being held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility.
Within the serpentine halls and stairways of Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, congregants have established several private, off-limits rooms ― each a potential last-stand space where members would try to shield immigrants from ICE, should agents breach the sanctuary.
Church leaders call them Fourth Amendment areas, named for the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The plan would be to stop ICE officers at the thresholds and demand proof that they carry legal authority to make an arrest, such as a signed judicial warrant.
“It’s a protective space,” said the Rev. Peter Ahn, pastor of the Spring Garden church. “While you’re here, you’re safe, is what we want to assert.”
Could it come to that? A pastor confronting armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the hallway of a church?
It’s impossible to know. But across Philadelphia, churches, community groups, immigration advocates, and block leaders are actively preparing for the time ― maybe soon, maybe later, maybe never ― that the Trump administration deploys thousands of federal agents. People say they must be ready if the president tries to turn Philadelphia into Minneapolis ― or Los Angeles, Chicago, or Washington, D.C.
People participate in an anti-ICE protest outside of the Governors Residence on Feb. 6, in St. Paul, Minn.
Know-your-rights trainings are popping up everywhere, often to standing-room-only attendance, and ICE-watch groups are abuzz on social media.
The First United Methodist Church of Germantown held a seminar last week to learn about nonviolent resistance, “so that we will be ready for whatever comes,” said senior pastor Alisa Lasater Wailoo.
“That may mean putting our bodies in the path to protect other vulnerable bodies,” she said. “We’re seeing that in Minnesota.”
In Center City, Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel has ordered 300 whistles ― portable and efficient tools to immediately alert neighbors to ICE presence and warn immigrants to seek safety.
“There was a sense of needing to support our neighbors if it comes down to it,” said Rabbi Abi Weber. “God forbid, should there start to be ICE raids in our neighborhood, people will be prepared.”
In other places around the country, immigrant allies have similarly readied themselves for ICE’s arrival, and organized to react in concert when agents show up.
In Washington state, the group WA Whistles has distributed more than 100,000 free whistles to create what it calls “an immediate first line of community defense.” Chicago residents set up volunteer street patrols to warn immigrants of ICE and to contact family members of those detained. In Los Angeles, people raised money to support food-cart vendors, and organized an “adopt a corner” program to protect day laborers who seek work outside Home Depot stores.
A small sign at the Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, where the Rev. Peter Ahn is creating space to shield immigrants if necessary.
The agency’s Philadelphia office serves as headquarters not just for the city but for all of Pennsylvania and for Delaware and West Virginia as well. Arrests take place every day in the Philadelphia region.
“You all seem to be ‘preparing’ for something that’s already happened,” veteran activist Miguel Andrade wrote on Facebook.
What has changed, however, is the dramatic escalation in ICE enforcement, particularly visible in Democratic-run cities like Minneapolis, where agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in January.
ICE detained 307,713 people across the country in 2025, a 230% increase over the 93,342 in 2024. What federal immigration agencies record as detentions closely mirror arrests.
For immigrants who have no legal permission to be in the U.S. ― an estimated 14 million people ― the rising ICE presence steals sleep and peace of mind. They know not just that they could be arrested and deported at any moment, which has always been true, but also that the U.S. government is expending vast resources to try to make that happen.
A woman who came to Philadelphia from Jamaica last year, and who asked not to be identified because she is undocumented, said she rarely leaves her home. She said she steps outside only to go to the grocery store, a doctor, or an attorney.
She recently asked her daughter to check something on the computer, and the girl balked ― afraid to even touch the machine, worried that ICE could track her keystrokes and identify their location, the woman said.
“How can I tell her it’s going to be OK when I don’t know it’s going to be OK?”asked the woman, who came to the U.S. to escape potential violence in Jamaica. “You come here expecting freedom, but here it’s like you’re in jail except for the [physical] barriers of the four walls.”
Some say President Donald Trump doesn’t want to ruin the summer celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday, or spoil the grandeur of the World Cup or Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Others suggest that he might be timing an ICE deployment to do exactly that.
City Council President Kenyatta Johnson speaking at the City Council’s first session of the year Jan. 22. He said this month that it’s time to stand up for immigrants in Philadelphia. “It’s my responsibility to step up in this space and be more vocal,” he said.
Trump told NBC News this month that he is “very strongly” looking at five new cities.
Some people are not waiting to see if Philadelphia is on the list.
The monthly Zoom meeting of the Cresheim VillageNeighbors usually draws about 20 people. But a hundred logged on in January to hear a presentation: What to do if/when ICE comes to our neighborhood.
The short advice: If it happens, get out your phone and hit “record.”
“If I see ICE agents, I will film,” said neighbors group coordinator Steve Stroiman, a retired teacher and rabbi. “I have a constitutional right to do that.”
Federal immigration enforcement agents shatter a truck window and detain two men outside a Home Depot in Evanston, Ill., on Dec. 17, 2025.
In a sliver of University City, Miriam Oppenheimer has helped lead three block meetings where neighbors gathered to discuss how they would respond.
They set up a Signal channel so people can communicate. And they formulated a loose plan of action: People will come outside their homes and take video recordings ― and try to get the names and birth dates of anyone taken into custody, so they can be located later.
“Courage is contagious,” Oppenheimer said. “Everybody is waiting for somebody else to do something, but we have to be the ones.”
Inside Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, doorways to some rooms now bear black-and-white signs that say, “Staff and authorized personnel only.”
Issues around ICE access to churches have become more urgent since Trump rescinded the agency policy on “sensitive locations,” which had generally barred enforcement at schools, hospitals, and houses of worship.
Legal advocates such as the ACLU say ICE agents can lawfully enter the public areas of churches, including the sanctuaries where people gather to worship. But to go into private spaces they must present a warrant signed by a judge.
“There are many front lines right now,” said Ahn, the Olivet pastor. “We’re not trying to be simply anti-ICE, or anti-anybody. We’re just trying to be for the rights of the Fourth Amendment.”
Staff writer Joe Yerardi contributed to this article.
Shareholders of Camden-based American Water Works and Bryn Mawr-based Essential Utilities, which owns the Aqua water and sewer companies, voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to merge and create a combined company with nearly $30 billion in yearly water and sewer sales.
More than 99% of the 161 million American Water shares that were voted were cast in favor of the deal, the company told the Securities & Exchange Commission. Essential’s online proposal to merge was approved by around 95% of voting shareholders.
The planned combination of these rivals, which have competed for more than 100 years to manage water and sewer for the small number of U.S. communities that allow for-profit operators, still needs approval from state public utility commissions.
The combined companies’ sales are concentrated in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In suburban Philadelphia, Aqua serves West Chester, northern Delaware County, parts of Lower Bucks, and Main Line communities. American Water serves Abington, King of Prussia, Norristown, Phoenixville, and nearby towns.
New Jersey American Water serves towns along the PATCO rail line in Camden County, in northern and central Burlington County, and in Shore communities such as Absecon and Ocean City. Aqua New Jersey has customers in the three suburban South Jersey counties and at the Shore.
American Water’s 14 million U.S. customers include systems in 12 other states, and on 18 U.S. military bases. Essential has around 3 million customers, including systems in six other states,and Pittsburgh-based Peoples Gas, which serves 750,000 in western Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
American Water is already the nation’s largest private operator of water and sewer systems, and the deal will make it a larger player in competition with Florida-based NextEra Water Group and France-based Veolia’s U.S. operations, among other private systems that have been seeking to expand.
A separate vote on an Essential executive pay package drew some opposition, with 85%approving.
That package included more than $17 million in severance compensation and stock grants for departing Essential CEO Christopher H. Franklin, plus medical benefits and up to three years’ professional assistance helping him land another job, plus millions more for his four top deputies.
The merged company’s larger size, as big as many of the leading natural-gas companies that dominate utility stock-index funds, will boost its visibility to investors, John C. Griffith, the American Water chief executive who will run the combined companies, said in announcing the deal last fall.
The companies disclosed the approvals Tuesday afternoon and said more details on the vote and their plans would come later this week.
Deal backers say the combination should enable Griffith to cut management costs, boost profits, drive up the share price, and could ease pressure to keep raising water rates.
Regulators in New Jersey and Pennsylvania are weighing the company’s latest rate increase requests. American Water’s New Jersey affiliate is asking the state Board of Public Utilities for an average 10% water and 8% sewer rate hike on Jan. 16 for 2.9 million customers, which it said would fund improvements to aging water and sewer systems. Customers would pay an average of $18 more a month.
Pennsylvania’s Public Utility Commission said last month that it would consider the company’s request to boost water and sewer rates on 2.4 million customers by an average 15%, or $20 a month.
Critics had urged Essential to seek rival buyers to drive up the share price and shareholder profits from the sale, noting that both stocks had dropped after the merger was proposed last year.
Tim Quast, founder of Colorado-based ModernIR, a consultant the companies hired to help explain the merger, said share price declines are now typical, even for merger-target companies like Essential whose shares command a premium from buyers like American Water because index-fund investors such as Vanguard and BlackRock tend not to buy more shares of merging companies until a deal is completed.
Even after long competition from U.S. and foreign utility owners, private water companies serve only about one in six Americans. In recent years, customers of public utilities serving parts of Chester, Delaware, and Bucks Counties have defeated privatization campaigns, though some towns in Pennsylvania and New Jersey have signed on. Pennsylvania also has asked private operators to take over small, troubled public systems.
A Norristown police sergeant who struck a naked, unarmed man with his patrol SUV last week has been charged with assault, official oppression, and related crimes, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Sgt. Daniel DeOrzio, 52, used unnecessary force in the Feb. 4 incident, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said. He was placed on administrative leave after the encounter.
Prosecutors said officers had been dispatched to the intersection of West Airy and Stanbridge Streets after reports that the naked man was yelling and damaging cars in the intersection. DeOrzio was among several officers who responded and, according to investigators, he positioned his police SUV behind a gray pickup truck blocking the roadway.
After ordering the truck removed, authorities said, DeOrzio accelerated and struck the man, who was standing in the intersection with his hands on his hips.
The impact sent the man airborne before he slammed onto the pavement, prosecutors said. He was taken to Main Line Health Paoli Hospital and released two days later.
Investigators concluded that DeOrzio, the highest-ranking officer at the scene, used unnecessary force and failed to attempt basic de-escalation tactics, including verbal commands, before resorting to violence, the district attorney said.
“This was not a necessary use of deadly force in this response incident,” Steele said in a statement.
The incident drew criticism at a public meeting last week, where Norristown Police Chief Mike Trail fielded questions from residents upset over the officer’s actions. Trail said he would like to form a mental health co-responder program that would pair officers with mental health experts to de-escalate future situations.
“People experiencing mental health behavioral episodes are more likely to … be subject to use of force by responding law enforcement officers because they lack the tools and the sophisticated training necessary to de-escalate,” he said.
DeOrzio turned himself in Tuesday morning and was arraigned. District Judge Cathleen Kelly Rebar set his bail at $100,000. DeOrzio could not be immediately reached for comment.
One cannot truly claim to understand American history without knowing African American history, and without understanding America’s complete history, we’re condemned to repeat past mistakes.
With that recent obfuscation in mind — and in celebration of Black History Month — I’d like to introduce readers to some little-known history from Philadelphia during World War II.
Philadelphia’s newspapers legally listed nonfederal defense job openings and apartment rentals by race.
Newsreels and movies about the iconic battles of Guadalcanal, Saipan, the Bulge, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa almost never featured any Black servicemen, but they were there.
Cpl. Waverly B. Woodson Jr. was an army medic assigned to the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion. The battalion’s job was to set up explosive-rigged balloons to deter German planes. At a time when the military was still segregated by race, the balloon battalion was the only African American combat unit to land on Normandy on June 6, 1944.
On D-Day, Overbrook High grad Waverly B. Woodson Jr., a Black combat medic who, despite being wounded, treated over 200 soldiers at an Omaha Beach field dressing station. After toiling for over 30 straight hours and being completely exhausted, he resuscitated three soldiers who had nearly drowned in the frigid waters off the English Channel.
In 1943, Milton R. Henry, a Philadelphia Tuskegee pilot, got into a confrontation with an armed white Montgomery, Ala., bus driver over being forced to sit in the back of a bus. Henry might have been murdered if not for the quick intervention of several white English pilots.
A Philadelphia Transit Co. (which would eventually become SEPTA) protest supporting Black trolley drivers enters Reyburn Plaza across from City Hall on Nov. 8, 1943.
In 1944, racists struck the Philadelphia Transit Co., SEPTA’s predecessor, and prevented workers from using trolleys, buses, and subways for several days. Worker absenteeism caused the loss of a million war matériel production hours. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered 5,000 troops to Philadelphia — instead of to Europe or the Pacific — to restart and guard its transit system.
First lady Eleanor Roosevelt got a flight over the Tuskegee Institute with C. Alfred Anderson at the controls.
Irrespective of the Tuskegee Airmen’s flying skills, after the war, none was hired by a commercial airline. Some pilots had received their initial training from Bryn Mawr native C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson. In March 1941, Anderson flew Eleanor Roosevelt around Tuskegee, Ala., which caused some War Department skeptics to reevaluate their initial hesitancy with Black pilot training.
In April 1945, 101 Tuskegee Airmen, including several Philadelphians, were arrested for disobeying an unlawful discriminatory order. The charges were quickly dropped, but administrative reprimands were placed in these officers’ 201 files.
Philadelphia native William T. Coleman, a summa cum laude University of Pennsylvania graduate, interrupted his Harvard Law School studies to serve as an Army Air Force officer. Honorably discharged, he returned to Harvard, graduated first in his class, and clerked for a federal appeals court judge and a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Armed with his very substantial résumé and glowing recommendations, he initially moved to New York — as no white Philadelphia firm would hire him.
Throughout the war, while Philadelphia-based Whitman’s Chocolates was producing millions of pounds of “Samplers,” it was also producing “Pickaninny Peppermints,” despite protests by the NAACP to remove the offensive slur from the product’s name.
The Woodside Amusement Park. The Fairmount Park Transit Co.’s trolley stopped at the park until the line closed in 1946.
Paul L. Newman is an amateur historian specializing in African American history of the first half of the 20th century. He has created a mini-series docudrama that highlights the events in this essay.
A former Villanova professor says in a federal lawsuit filed this week she was fired from the Catholic university after accusing its law school of racial discrimination involving one of her students.
Stephanie Sena, who had been an anti-poverty fellow in the law school and taught at Villanova for more than 20 years, was dismissed in 2024 for what the school said were “student complaints,” according to the lawsuit.
But Sena’s lawyers say the dismissal was due to her filing an ethics complaint against the school for racial discrimination for comments that administrators made around a decision not to give her student a financial award that would have alleviated her debt, citing a speech the student made at a law school symposium.
The student, Antionna Fuller, accused Villanova of racialdiscrimination and failing to appropriately support her with financial aid during a 2021 symposium speech at the university, titled “Shifting the Poverty Lens: Caritas in Focus.” Sena hosted the symposium, during which Fuller also publicly asked for an apology from Villanova.
“How can you say caritas [which means love and charity in Latin] and Black lives matter with no thought to a Black life in front of you, systematically oppressed by your hands?” Fuller said,according to a video of the speech. “It’s not only hypocritical, but it’s embarrassing. We cannot talk about oppression and white supremacy without acknowledging its very presence here.”
Her speech drew a standing ovation, but later caused consternation among law school leadership.
Sena found out that law school dean Mark Alexander, in a letter to the scholarship committee, asked that Fuller not receive the debt relief award because she “maliciously maligned” the law school, according to the suit.
Sena‘s lawsuit alleges that then-law school vice dean Michael Risch said after the student’s speech that the student was “lucky” to have gotten into the law school and that she would not be there if she were white.
Villanova said in a statement Wednesday that Sena’s lawsuit “lacks merit” and that the university “will vigorously defend against these baseless allegations.”
“We look forward to presenting the actual facts surrounding the plaintiff’s separation from Villanova. To be clear, Villanova University does not tolerate discrimination or retaliation of any kind, and the allegations in Plaintiff’s lawsuit are contrary to our written policies and conflict with the core values of our University.”
Sena, 46, of Media, declined to comment.
Fuller, 29, who now lives with her mother in the South, said in an interview Wednesday that she feels both relieved and anxious about seeing the issue aired publicly.
“I am happy, at least relieved, that truth is coming out,” said Fuller, who graduated summa cum laude from the University of South Carolina and got her Villanova law degree in 2022. “I’ve been in such an isolated place and just carrying this trauma for so long.”
She said she sought therapy after the reaction she got to her speech from Villanova administrators and last year wrote a book, I Almost Sued My Law School, about her journey as a first-generation, low-income Black student. She no longer wants to practice law, she said, and is still figuring out her next steps.
But she said she was grateful to Sena, whom, during the symposium speech, she called “my hero, advocate, and my friend.”
“She was the first person to publicly stand up for me,” Fuller said.
Stephanie Sena stands at site of an encampment along Kensington Avenue in 2021.
Fallout from symposium speech
Sena, a longtime activist who has worked to help people experiencing homelessness and opened a homeless shelter in Upper Darby in 2022, was fired in 2016 from her job as an adjunct professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after defending students who accused a classmate of rape. She sued PAFA and the case ended in a confidential settlement.
She also led activists in lawsuits against the city in 2021 over its intentions to remove homeless people in a Kensington encampment. In 2023, the head of Norristown’s municipal council planned to bus homeless people to Villanova’s campus because of Sena’s advocacy for the homeless in Norristown. Villanova at the time was criticized for not defending Sena and making a stronger response.
Sena was hired to teach at Villanova in 2003 and began to work at the law school in 2020, serving as a full-time faculty member and anti poverty fellow. She was also an adjunct professor at Villanova’s Center for Peace and Justice.
In herlawsuit against Villanova, Sena asserts that law school leadership met with her in 2022, several months after Fuller’s symposium speech, and asked her if she had known what Fuller planned to say. Matthew Saleh, former assistant dean for admissions, told her it would be harder to attract Black students to the school because of the speech, according to the suit. Risch, the vice dean, made the comment about Fuller not being at Villanova if she had been white, the suit says.
Saleh, who now is the senior associate dean of enrollment management and financial aid at Rutgers’ law school, said in an interview that he does not recall making that comment and that he doesn’t think it’s even the case that Fuller’s speech would hurt recruiting.
“That would not have even come to my mind,” he said. “I couldn’t reasonably see a way that it would impact recruiting.”
Sena “objected to the race discriminatory and retaliatory comments” made to her in that meeting, according to the suit.
In October 2023, she complained again about the comments in an email to two administrators who headed diversity, equity, and inclusion at Villanova,according to the lawsuit complaint. Then came the award committee meeting on Jan. 30, 2024, where the dean in a letter argued against Fuller’s receiving the award, according to the suit.
Students who were in the award committee meeting and were upset about the law school dean’s reactionapproached Sena and asked what they could do, according to the suit. Sena said the students, who are not named in her lawsuit, could contact the diversity, equity, and inclusion office and file a climate complaint.
Sena, according to the suit, complained again one day after the award committee meeting that Villanova “had engaged in a dangerous pattern of race discrimination” and filed an ethics complaint with the university. She also expressed her concerns in an email to faculty and in a meeting with a law professor, who told her the students had committed an ethics violation by revealing confidential details of the awards meeting they were in, according to the suit.
After filing the complaint, Sena said in her lawsuit, she was “treated differently,” “unjustly criticized,” and “blamed for issues outside her control.”
In June 2024, human resources informed her that she was under investigation after students said she had pressured them to file complaints against the deans, which Sena denied, the suit said.
She was fired July 30, 2024, even though, the suit said, she had no prior performance or disciplinary issues and had received awards and promotions. She is seeking damages including economic loss, compensatory and punitive, and attorneys’ fees and costs.
An apology and acknowledgement
During the symposium, Fuller had said she wished Villanova would apologize and acknowledge what happened. She said that the school had given her $15,000 in financial aid toward her annual $65,000 cost, but that she subsequently learned other students had gotten more, even though her mother worked multiple jobs as a nurse’s aide to support the family.
“I was confused,” she told the audience. “How can a student with seemingly the most need graduate with the most debt?”
She learned of a free-tuition public interest scholarship that Villanova awards to incoming students and sought it after she was enrolled, she said. She was turned down repeatedly, she said, even though Villanova had recently awarded its largest group of the scholarships.
“Am I invisible?” she asked. “To walk into this law school building every day, to be surrounded by wealth and prestige, while struggling and burdened with debt, and while expected to perform like those who are not feels inhumane.”
She said during the speech she would graduate with almost $200,000 in student debt. Villanova officials, she said Wednesday, later accused her of exaggerating because she was including her undergraduate debt, too, and maintained that the total was really $160,000 — $126,000 of which was from the law school.
Fuller said Wednesday she had apologized to law school leadership, hugged them at graduation, and thought everything had been resolved. She said she was surprised to hear that the dean wanted to block her access to the debt award, she said.
“My intent wasn’t to harm, attack or mislead,” Fuller wrote in her book, “but to share my personal experience — my fears and financial anxieties — as part of the larger conversation about finding solutions to reduce poverty, which the conference was centered around.”
Staff writer Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.
The Norristown Area School District’s board is moving to oustits superintendent, saying the district needs a new leader to reverse years of poor test scores.
The move to replace Superintendent Christopher Dormer, who has led the Montgomery County district since 2018 and whose contract expires June 30, comes after five new members were elected to the nine-person school board in November. The board voted unanimously Jan. 20 to give Dormer notice they would not renew his contract.
Some community members expressed shock at the decision to part ways with Dormer, who is also the president of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators. Dormer has been a vocal advocate for increasing funding to Norristown, which is considered underfunded by the state, and where nearly three-quarters of students are economically disadvantaged.
Jeremiah Lemke, who joined the Norristown school board in December and is now its president, acknowledged Dormer as “a leader statewide” in advocating for a new school funding system and a superintendent who has done “many good things for the district.” But, he said at the Jan. 20 meeting, test scores are a concern.
“Student achievement in Norristown hasn’t been winning, under Mr. Dormer, for years, not months, but years — seven to be exact,“ Lemke said in an emailed statement Wednesday. ”If the Eagles didn’t win for seven years, regardless of what positive developments happened in the organization, there would be no questions asked when the head coach was replaced.“
Norristown, a majority Hispanic district, enrolls about 8,000 students.
About 28% of Norristown’s third-through-eighth graders scored proficient or above in English language arts on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment standardized tests last year, compared to 48.5% statewide. In math, 27.4% of Norristown students were proficient, compared to 41.7% statewide.
Over the last few years, changes in Norristown’s test scores have largely tracked Pennsylvania’s as a whole, with ELA scores sliding, and math scores improving. In 2023, 30.7% of Norristown students scored proficient in ELA, compared to 53.7% of students at the state level. In math, 21.6% of Norristown students scored proficient in 2023, compared to 39.4% statewide.
In a message to staff and families after the Jan. 20 vote, Dormer said he was proud of what the district had accomplished during his tenure — “including consecutive years with minimal to no tax increases, the sizable and significant additions in staffing after years of reductions, the sustained investment in new instructional resources and educational opportunities after years of unaffordability, the development and implementation of our facilities master plan after decades of deferred maintenance, and the commitment to the principles of equity, inclusion, and belonging as we navigated a worldwide pandemic and an increasingly politically divided country.”
Dormer, who began his career in education as an educational assistant in the Lower Merion School District, spent 13 years as a teacher, coach, and athletic director in the Upper Darby School District before moving into administration in 2005. He became Upper Darby High School’s principal in 2008, a role he held for five years, and came to Norristown in 2016.
Performance reviews on the district’s website show Dormer was rated “proficient” by the board in 2021-22 and 2022-23. More recent reviews were not listed online.
On Wednesday, Dormer declined to comment.
Lemke — who works for a Philadelphia nonprofit, Jounce Partners, that has coached charter school leaders to improve teacher performance — said in a statement Wednesday that the decision was “thoughtful, reflective, data-informed, and unanimous, amongst new and continuing board members.”
The board last week voted to approve a $79,500 contract with Alma Advisory Group, a Chicago-based firm, to conduct a national search for a new superintendent.
Jordan Alexander, another new school board member, said during that board meeting that members “often have to make decisions that are very unpopular.”
“I’m gonna be honest, I wasn’t so sold,” Alexander said. A former Norristown student, Alexander said that when Dormer “came to the scene, the pride did go up, and it was a breath of fresh air.”
But “we cannot advocate ourselves to be the best if our performance does not reflect that,” Alexander said.
Community reaction to the ouster
Some community members accused the board of a predetermined decision.
“Staff were not aware of these changes … the community was not aware, or anybody. You guys just threw it out there,” Ericka Wharton, a parent and leader of a Norristown community center, told the board at last week’s meeting. Wharton warned the decision could create instability, including a decline in student achievement.
Carmina Taylor, a local advocate, told the board that community members deserved “a full explanation with dates and details that led to your decision.”
“This decision is short-sighted, abrupt, without consideration as to how the students will be impacted by this major shift in leadership,” said Taylor, co-founder of the Movement for Black and Brown Lives in Montgomery County.
The election of the new board came after infighting in the local Democratic Party. Chris Jaramillo, the former board president, lost the local Democratic Party’s endorsement for reelection last year. Jaramillo had opposed a tax break for a senior affordable housing development. Last week, the new board voted to rescind a November district policy that restricted tax abatements, saying it would replace it.
Jaramillo is also a co-founder of the Movement for Black and Brown Lives in Montgomery County. In an interview Wednesday, he described the board’s new leaders as inexperienced and questioned how it could quickly replace Dormer without causing disruption.
“I don’t think it’s a sound decision,” said Jaramillo. He said he worried the board would pick someone “without any sort of knowledge of how diverse Norristown and its surrounding area are.”
Taylor said Wednesday she wasn’t speaking on behalf of Jaramillo. She accused the board of “plotting” to remove Dormer.
“How in the world, if they didn’t have a sense of what they wanted to do, could they have even attempted to do that in the last 45 days?” said Taylor, who has filed a complaint with the school board, alleging insufficient transparency.
Lemke said it is “categorially false” that the board acted too quickly and without transparency. “Once we were installed, we had a short time period in which to make a decision because we knew that if we didn’t renew his contract it would not be a quick task to do a national search for a superintendent,” he said.
Taylor noted that while the district’s test scores “are bad,” Norristown has only been receiving additional state money under a new formula intended to remedy constitutional underfunding for the past two years. (The budget proposed by Gov. Josh Shapiro Tuesday would give underfunded districts their third installment of a nine-year plan.)
“It’s not enough to address the systemic issue, period,” she said.
Cocktails in Philly have been getting ever more savory, taking inspiration from pickles, salad, even soup — the last being the most seasonally timed. Several local bars like El Techo and Jerry’s Bar have even been poking fun at cocktail’s “soup season,” posting videos of people consuming their margaritas and espresso martinis with spoons, blowing on the sips as they go.
But there’s at least one soup cocktail taking the trend more seriously. Chef Thanh Nguyen’s signature pho cocktail at Gabriella’s Vietnam is a many-layered marvel. It’s not like drinking pho broth spiked with vodka. Instead, it’s warming and softly spicy — the heat hits the back of your throat and sinks into your chest — the beefiness only an umami-laden back note. It’s complex, mildly sweet, and more well-balanced than, say, a typical spicy margarita. A tiny squirt of Sriracha muddled with fresh culantro and ginger adds a soft orange hue.
Chef Thanh Nguyen prepares drinks at Gabriella’s Vietnam in Philadelphia on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024.
“Culantro is what gives you the true pho flavor,” said Nguyen. “In South Vietnam, we use culantro more for pho than basil, which they do here [in Philly]. And of course, we need Sriracha.”
The cocktail is shaken up with fresh lime juice, simple syrup, and a mix of vodkas (one part pho-infused vodka, three parts plain vodka).
The liquor license at Gabriella’s (a two-time pick for The 76 most essential restaurants in Philadelphia) is a satellite license associated with Five Saints Distilling — allowing the restaurant to serve any beer, wine, and liquor made in Pennsylvania — and so the Norristown distillery’s line of spirits forms the backbone of Gabriella’s bar program.
Two bottles of beef infused vodka: the one on the left has been steeping with herbs for six weeks and the one on the right has beef only and has been steeping for three weeks.
There’s actual beef steeped in the vodka that forms the base of Gabriella’s pho cocktail. Thin slices of brisket and eye of round, like the ones in a typical bowl of phở tái, are seared, then crammed into the bottles of vodka, to sit for three weeks, creating a lava-lamp effect as they release droplets of fat into the liquid. At the three-week mark, the vodka is strained multiple times through coffee filters. (Nguyen discards the beef that infuses the vodka with its meaty flavor. I tried a bite before it went in the bin, but that was all: If I had kept on eating, I risked inebriation by beef.)
Next, toasted spices are added to the bottle: fresh ginger, star anise, coriander, fennel seed, cardamon, cloves, and cinnamon. “The exact same spices for when I made pho,” said Nguyen. The concoction steeps for another three weeks, “until it’s the color of Coke,” said Nguyen.
Nguyen approaches mixing cocktails with the mind of a chef. This is most apparent in this cocktail, which is simultaneously an ode to the pho she served at her former restaurant, Melody’s Vietnam Grill in Ambler, and to the medicinal concoctions her now 94-year-old grandfather made her drink as a child and, later, as a postpartum mother.
“He would make vodka — yes, homemade vodka — and put garlic, ginseng, or ginger in it. This was his medicine. He’s never taken any other medicine in his life,” said Nguyen. “After I had my daughter, he had me drink this liquor with ginger soaked in it.”
Chef Thanh Nguyen posed for a portrait at her restaurant, Gabriella’s Vietnam on Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025 in Philadelphia.
Pho-spiced cocktails are common in bars in Vietnam, made popular at upmarket places like the Michelin-starred Anan Saigon and the Anantara Hoi An (whose pho cocktail is heavily garnished with fresh cilantro and whole star anise). The cocktail is frequently credited to Hanoi bartender Pham Tien Tiep. But each of these versions take the inspiration of pho far less literally than Nguyen does.
“I don’t want to limit myself to one thing,” Nguyen said, explaining her experimentation behind the bar. “I love cooking but I have more fun behind the bar sometimes.” And she wants there to be constant crossover between her kitchen and bar. The passion fruit that her beef carpaccio is marinated in goes into her margarita. The kumquats that appear seasonally in her salads are muddled into her Saigon smash cocktail and blended into margaritas.
As for the future of her soup-based cocktails, Nguyen is working on developing a bún bò huế-infused vodka. “I’m still trying to get shrimp paste and lemongrass flavors to come through,” she said.
A lifeline for Montgomery County’s low-income and homeless residents is running out of time.
The Norristown Hospitality Center, a nonprofit day shelter offering free meals, showers, laundry, legal aid, and other services, must move out of its home by the end of January.
Last year, the Hospitality Center offered services to 1,400 people, roughly a third of whom lacked housing, according to executive director Sunanda Charles. No other similar day shelters offer the same array of services in the immediate area.
“The community would be losing a very vital resource,” Charles said.
The Norristown Hospitality Center, which provides services for the homeless, is looking for a new location.
The Hospitality Center, which opened in 1992, has been heading toward this inflection point since it vacated its home of over two decades at 530 Church St. by the end June 2025.
It arranged a six-month lease with the Senior Adult Activities Center of Montgomery County, originally set to expire on Dec. 31. The center was granted a one-month extension, but is still searching for its next temporary and permanent home.
Zoning woes
The Hospitality Center’s search for a new location has been complicated by the organization’s needs and vocal NIMBYism.
The Hospitality Center’s longtime Church Street home was owned by St. John’s Episcopal Church, which notified the center in 2024 it needed to vacate the building. Charles said the church told them it was because of concerns about the optics of visitors loitering outside. The notice came as a surprise, she said, but they were given a year to find their next location.
St. John’s Rev. Christopher L. Schwenk disputed Charle’s characterization of why the church required the Hospitality Center to vacate the building, and said the center did not report property damage in 2023 that required renovations, and failed to pay rent on time for seven months of that year.
“After months of conversation with Director Sunanda Charles, and then the Center’s Board, we made the difficult decision to end their lease due to breach of contract. Director Charles’ characterization of this decision as rooted in ‘the optics of loitering’ is as disappointing as it is false. We see Christ in the faces of our neighbors living in homelessness and are proud to continue serving them right here on Church St.,” he said in a statement.
The Hospitality Center only shut down for three days as staff moved operations to the Senior Activities Center, but they knew this home would be temporary. Charles said the Senior Activities Center received funding for extensive renovations through the American Rescue Plan Act, which would expire if they don’t begin construction soon.
After a process of careful planning and community outreach, the Hospitality Center identified a new building at 336 E. Moore St. and entered a purchasing agreement for it in December 2024.
Mike Kingsley, program manager at the Norristown Hospitality Center, greets clients as they enter the center for breakfast Friday.
But doing so required a zoning variance request, which brought the matter before the Norristown Zoning Hearing Board in May. The proposed building was located in a residential area, which ignited the public. Norristown residents testified for hours both for and against the Hospitality Center’s move, with some speaking about the essential services the center provides, while others worried about those suffering from substance abuse loitering where their children are.
The board ultimately voted 2-1 against the center’s request.
“I get to see firsthand those who are truly living on the margins of the city of Norristown. It is extremely disappointing — the whole ‘not-in-my-backyard’ attitude — it’s disheartening,” the Rev. Andrea Gardner, board president of the Norristown Hospitality Center, told The Times Heraldfollowing the vote.
Charles said that the Hospitality Center has learned important lessons about the regulatory process and building community support from that experience as it searches for other options.
But most potential properties in Norristown would require a similar variance request or special exemption for the Hospitality Center to move in. When that time comes, Charles anticipates needing to argue again for the center’s existence in the heart of Norristown.
“These are people in the community. It is the community’s responsibility as well. Everyone can make a difference. And sometimes, the difference may be in the perspective of how you view people,” she said.
Staying in position
Until the Hospitality Center’s future is settled, Brian Van Scoyoc plans to keep spending every day there that he can.
Van Scoyoc, 54, has been homeless for about five years, since the Norristown home he shared with his ex-girlfriend caught fire and burned down. His ex had to pull him back from jumping into the blaze to rescue his dog, Loggie, who died in the fire.
“I got sort of displaced and didn’t know where to go or what to do,” he said.
He’s worked odd jobs here and there, spending his nights at a shelter or in a tent in the woods. But his visits to the Hospitality Center have been a welcome reprieve.
He comes for coffee and breakfast to start his day, a pleasant escape from the cold early mornings after the overnight shelter closes its doors. He enjoys the chance to chat, watch TV, and play games with the other visitors, and appreciates the center’s laundry and legal aid services. Having a place to plug in his phone and store his belongings in a locker are helpful too, he said.
Lockers at the Norristown Hospitality Center have been posted so clients know to empty them by Jan. 23.
Van Scoyoc recently picked up frostbite after spending a night in his tent when he believes he didn’t let his wet feet dry properly. It’s difficult and painful for him to walk, so the center has helped arranged rides for him to get around.
If the Hospitality Center were to close for an extended period time, Van Scoyoc said it would be a great distress.
“It’s a great place to be. You should go check it out,” he said.
As news has spread of the center’s plight, Charles said she’s received countless calls and emails from people who used its services in the past. They’ve expressed their support and gratitude, as well as their sadness at hearing that the center is up against the clock.
One voicemail in particular has kept Charles motivated. A woman who spent time at the center in 2009 called her to share that she has been sober since connecting them, and is no longer homeless. She said in her message: “God is going to do a wonderful thing for you. Stay in position,” according to Charles.
“We do believe there is a plan for us. And we are excited about it,” Charles said.
As Joshua Weikert shared ground rules for quizzes in his early morning international relations class, he sought to put his students at ease.
“I don’t want you stressing out about these,” he said Tuesday, as the new semester got underway at Immaculata University in Chester County.“I myself was a terrible student.”
Weikert, 47, of Collegeville, may not have been a star student, but he sure knows a lot.
The politics and public policy professor will compete onJeopardy! 2026 Tournament of Championsat 7 p.m. Friday on ABC, having won six games when he was on the show in March.
Joshua Weikert teaches a class in international relations at Immaculata University.
Over a couple weeks, Jeopardy! shows will feature him vying against 20 other champions, including Allegra Kuney, a doctoral student at Rutgers University’s New Brunswick campus, and Matt Massie, a Philadelphia lawyer who moved to the area in 2024, who also will appear on Friday’s show.
Friday’s match is a quarter-final, and if Weikert wins, he’ll advance to the semifinals. (Kuney won her quarter-final Tuesday.)
Weikert won about $103,000 when he competed last year, 10% of which he donated to a memorial scholarship fund named for his late friend, Jarrad Weikel, a Phoenixville man who died unexpectedly at age 40 in 2022. The winner of the champions tournament —which will conclude sometime in early February — will take home a grand prize of a quarter million.
Weikert will watch the show Friday among family and friends — including his fellow contestant Massie — at Troubles End Brewing in Collegeville, which named one of its beers after him. It’s an English Bitter, one of Weikert’s favorites, called “Who is Josh?”
At Immaculata, a Catholic college where Weikert has taught since 2016, students and staff are stoked. A campus watch party is planned, President Barbara Lettiere said.
His appearance last year, she said, has put a welcome spotlight on the school and brought an outpouring of enthusiasm from alumni. On tours, some prospective students and their parents who spot Weikert have recognized him, she said.
“I never knew that this show was as watched as it appears to be,” she said. “Win or lose, Immaculata wins.”
Student Ben Divens talks about his Jeopardy-star professor Joshua Weikert.
Ben Divens, 19, said it’s “jaw-dropping” and “surreal” to know his teacher will compete in the Jeopardy! champion tournament.
“I knew from the first time I met him he was a super, super smart person,” said Divens, a prelaw major from Souderton.
“He’s guided us so much in our major already,” added Bailey Kassis, 18, a political science major from Fort Washington.
“He’s guided us so much in our major already,” student Bailey Kassis said about her professor Joshua Weikert.
An early gamer
Weikert said he has watched Jeopardy! ever since he can remember, probably since 1984 when he was 6, and it came back on the air with Alex Trebek as host. He grew up just outside of Gettysburg in a family that loved to play games, he said.
“We took them very seriously, which is to say that they didn’t just let the kids win,” he said of his parents, both of whom had accounting degrees. “We were destroyed routinely in the games we played.”
About his performance as a student, he said he often skipped his homework.
“Just give me an exam,” he said, describing his attitude at the time. “I’ll pass it.”
He got his bachelor’s degree in international relations from West Chester University, master’s degrees from Villanova and Immaculata, and his doctorate from Temple. He also attended the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, where he studied modern standard Arabic while serving in the U.S. Army.
Joshua Weikert sets expectations for students as a new semester gets underway at Immaculata University.
In addition to teaching, he also works as a policy adviser to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives under state Rep. Joe Webster, a Democrat serving part of Montgomery County. He vets legislators’ ideas and offers ideas of his own.
“The only thing they’ve ever told me no on was [when] I tried to abolish the Pennsylvania Senate,” he said.
So many bills pass one body, then die in the other, he explained. If there were one legislative body where all House and Senate members served, that might be different, he said.
Weikert’s office walls are lined with framed newspaper front pages highlighting major events: “Nixon Resigns,” “Nazis Surrender,” “Man Walks on Moon,” “Kennedy Shot to Death.”
“Every once in a while, I just get up and read one of the stories,” he said.
He got them from his mother-in-law’s basement and put them up after his wife told him his office needed some decor.
Weikert’s status as a Jeopardy! champion makes clear he’s a fast thinker. He’s also a fast talker.
“I don’t really drink caffeine. I just talk this fast,” he told his students.
His wife, he told the class, tells him to slow down.
“Keep up,” he tells her, he said.
The road to Jeopardy
Since his mid-20s, Weikert has been trying to get on Jeopardy!. Years ago, he got a call from the game show, but he put the caller on hold to get to a quiet place. They hung up.
“I was like, well, I guess I missed that opportunity,” he said.
But he kept trying and started taking the online tests, which typically draw 200,000 participants annually. In 2024, he got an email, inviting him to take the test again — and then again under Zoom surveillance.
Next came a virtual audition and practice game in August 2024. That earned him a place in a pool of about 3,000 people, of whom a few hundred eventually became contestants.
Weikert got the call last January and was invited to fly to California the next month to compete.
In reality, his varied interests and life path had already prepared him for the show. He reads a lot. He’s a fan of historical fiction, pop culture, and movies. His work as a public policy scholar helps, too.
But to try and up his game, he read plots of Shakespeare plays and a book on great operas. He flipped through lists of presidents and vice presidents. His wife, Barbara, a Norristown School District middle school music teacher, read questions to him from old Jeopardy! shows. He knew about 80% of the answers, he said.
That, however, didn’t stop him from having panic dreams of being on stage and knowing nothing.
The toughest category for him, he said, is popular music. Movies, history, and politics are his strongest.
But the hardest questions, he said, are the ones with four or five strong possible answers.
“Getting a Jeopardy! answer right is more about knowing what it’s not than what it is,” he said.
Ultimately, he said, it’s impossible to really study for the game show.
“The odds that something you study would come up is almost zero,” he said.
It was an intense experience on stage last March, but the staff put contestants at ease, he said. Host Ken Jennings, formerly one of the show’s most successful contestants, told them, according to Weikert: “I promise you something today is going to be a win for you, so just relax and have fun.”
He has a hard time remembering his winning answers. He readily recalls his dumbest, he said.
The answer was “sacred cow.” He uttered “holy cow.”
“Even as it was coming out of my mouth, I knew it was wrong,” he said.
He’s proud that he only froze on one answer involving lyrics from the B-52’s “Love Shack,” he said.
There was less pressure competing in the championship match last month, given he was already a winner, he said. But it was harder in that the contestants were the best of the best.
“During the regular season, it’s a little under a quarter of a second between when you can start to buzz in and when the buzz actually comes,” he said. “In the tournament of champions, that drops to 0.08 seconds.”
This time, he also prepped by reading children’s books on topics such as basic cell biology, a tip he got from another contestant.
“It’s the simplest language they can use to convey the information,” he said.
He also read the book, Timelines of Everything: From Woolly Mammoths to World Wars.
He most enjoyed the camaraderie among contestants, he said. When filming was over, they hung out in a bar and — watched Jeopardy!.
