While I dislike programming in PHP (the syntax is ugly mostly), and I like Python and JS, I don't think getting away from PHP is a solution and the solution. PHP is not the problem in this situation. It's the people who is working there with OP.
This is what a lot of it is about, balance. When we write open source software, we don't usually have costs, time isn't a factor, we aren't being rushed by a long todo list, so we can invest in the code. In business, we don't always have this luxury.