Chalkbeat

To change football culture, Philly’s high school coaches tackle emotions

2026-09-03T09:30:00+00:00

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As head football coach at Martin Luther King High School in Philadelphia, Jordan Alexander faces dual challenges as the team begins its fall season.

His players are looking for a turnaround, after losing nine of their 10 games in 2025.‌ ‌

But Coach Alexander says most of the 60-man team has also experienced a loss at home, or a friend shot, or a parent sent to prison. He regularly takes phone calls from players dealing with housing instability or brushes with the law.

So this year, he’s hoping to tackle both challenges. He is among dozens of Philly-area football leaders who have been trained on trauma-informed coaching methods that teach players to pause before their emotions spiral into disorder or, in the worst case, violence. The coaches, some of whom are also educators, receive a stipend and a continuing education credit in exchange for taking 30 hours of cognitive science coursework.

Coach Alexander hopes that it will help his players improve not only their game, but also their lives.‌‌

Football remains the most played sport by American teenage boys. But in recent years, it has drawn more attention for its potential to provoke trauma than to address it. As legal battles continue over traumatic brain injuries in the N.F.L., new research has found that they are significantly more common than previously known. A recent study, which analyzed the cases of hundreds of former professional players, found that roughly one in four players had chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Some studies have shown that people who play heavy contact sports in their youth are more likely to commit violence later on.

Martin Luther King High School head football coach Jordan Alexander, left, at the Open Door Abuse Awareness Prevention football combine at the Mastery Charter Pickett campus in Philadelphia on Saturday, June 20, 2026.

Valencia Peterson, known as Coach V by the teams she works with, is a longtime Philadelphian and football lover who saw an opportunity to change the sport and save lives. Her father killed her mother when she was a child, which led her to later form Open Door Abuse Awareness Prevention, the organization leading the training program for coaches.

Five years ago, Coach V became‌ certified as a trauma-competent professional. She designed her football program based on coursework from multiple experts and organizations that teach about trauma and emotional regulation.

“I put it in what I would call ‘layman terms for the hood,’” she said. She has trained 30 coaches through the program and has 15 more signed up for this fall.

Some Philadelphia youth coaches say they‌’re unlearning bad habits gleaned from leaders who yelled at or antagonized players to get them to perform.

Khalif Mimms, 16, at the football combine.

At Cheltenham High School, about 40 minutes north of Philadelphia, four former coaches are facing criminal charges for not acting after learning about a pair of alleged locker-room assaults on a player.

Megan Bartlett, founder of the Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport in Illinois, described football as “ground zero for some of what’s wrong in sport coaching” because of its “inherent orientation towards violence.”‌‌

She has seen youth violence prevention programs in other sports, but she believes Coach V’s is one of the few that are focused on changing football culture.

“There are some things you have to rectify in football that you don’t have to address in cross country,” Ms. Bartlett said. “Convincing football coaches that this is necessary is harder work than it is in some other sports.”

Acknowledging emotions, teaching control

Some of the changes Coach V and her trainees hope to achieve on Philly’s high school football fields have already begun at the national level. Trauma awareness is popping up in professional football discussions, sometimes couched in terms like “mental toughness” or “mental performance.”

In March, the N.F.L. began requiring every team to hire a full-time mental health clinician, a step up from its 2019 mandate for part-time mental health staff members.

But Wade Gilbert, a professor at Fresno State and a former Olympic-level mental performance coach, said the model is more difficult to pull off in the high school and youth world, where many coaches are also educators making substantial sacrifices to keep teams afloat.

The program from Valencia Peterson, known as Coach V, echoes efforts like the Becoming a Man program in Chicago, which teaches young people impulse control and “positive anger expression.”

Coach V said that’s a big part of why she’s trying to support coaches, especially the ones in Philadelphia’s roughest neighborhoods, who deal with problems way bigger than football plays.

Her program echoes efforts like the Becoming a Man program in Chicago, which teaches young people impulse control and “positive anger expression.” It reduced violent crime arrests among participants by about 50% and increased graduation rates by nearly 20%, according to an independent study from the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

Though Becoming a Man isn’t a football program, Jens Ludwig, a lead researcher on that independent study, said sports create a perfect environment for putting youth in situations that “feel high stakes.” With the right training, coaches can turn arguments that erupt on the field into teaching moments, he said. The hope is that players use the same stop-and-think strategies on the streets.

“They’re giving you practice at navigating those difficult moments and giving you feedback where there’s no real risk,” Dr. Ludwig said.

In Philadelphia, arguments were the motive for about half of shootings, according to a 2022 analysis from multiple city agencies.

This is why at Vaux Big Picture High School in North Philly, Coach Jordan Holbert is more set on getting his players to graduation with decent grades than he is on getting them to the pros.

Head football coach Jordan Holbert reviews core values with the team at Vaux Big Picture High School in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026.

In 2024, one of Coach Holbert’s players was shot and killed while riding his bike. Since then, another player has been shot in the leg. And at one practice, Coach Holbert had to confront and calm a young person who showed up at the field with a firearm.

This year, a mother was shot dead at the corner store where the guys like to stop before and after practice.

Coach Holbert took Coach V’s course to learn how to respond to this kind of situation, and take care of himself in the process.

At a recent practice, his players sat down at desks and placed their helmets neatly next to their notebooks. Coach Holbert passed out a handwritten list of emotions and told the players to circle those that resonated with them most. “If you can identify your emotions, experience your emotions, then move with logic, then you are better than everyone else,” he said.

He hopes that players learn to get ahead of their feelings and express them calmly, instead of bottling them up and letting them explode at a later time. Coach Holbert’s players agree that managing their emotions keeps them safe. They also think it improves their game.

“Outside of football, if you is involving yourself in violence, if you got the wrong mind-set and you outside,” said Semaj Pridgen, a 17-year-old Vaux wide receiver, “it’s gonna get to you once you on the field.”

Semaj Pridgen, a wide reciever, left, and Jadon Bracy, a lineman and edge rusher at Vaux.

Jadon Bracy, an 18-year-old lineman and edge rusher starting his senior year at Vaux, said he used to be a hothead. But working with Coach Holbert helped him better manage his emotions.

“Me using anger as my motivation, it was a lot of mistakes,” he said. “You take out the anger on yourself, or maybe take it on your teammates, and it really messes up the dynamic, messes up the teamwork.”‌‌

As they bounce back from a challenging season, the players at Martin Luther King High School have embraced that approach as well. “Last year, people had been caught up in their emotions, attitudes,” said Lacey Johnson, a 17-year-old wide receiver at M.L.K. “They were crashin’ out.”

This is why at Vaux Big Picture High School in North Philly, Coach Jordan Holbert is more set on getting his players to graduation with decent grades than he is on getting them to the pros.

Lacey’s mother died of an overdose last winter. He said he leaned on the weight room as a way to stay grounded.

“If you play from anger, you’ll mess up,” Lacey said. “It’s about disciplining yourself. If you control your emotions the right way, you can use it at the right moment.”

The Vaux Big Picture High School football team at the locker room at the school in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026.

Can trauma-informed football win?

“When I first started coaching, I coached like people coached me,” Coach Alexander said. “Cursing kids out, yelling and screaming at kids, just not being supportive and understanding.”

Now Coach Alexander, who is also a dean of students and a father of three, shows up to practice ready to listen. He sits down with players who seem on edge or withdrawn and asks them what they need. He gives them breaks and tries to get them to refocus.

During Coach V’s course, coaches study psychological concepts such as secondary traumatic stress and acute versus chronic trauma exposure. Since taking it, Coach Alexander has started asking players: red or blue?

“The red brain is you’re in a very, very bad situation, you’re very upset, and now all of your decisions are being done through anger,” he said. “The blue brain means you’re calm, you’re collected, you can think.”

Mikaal Alexander, 16, at the Open Door Abuse Awareness Prevention football combine.

Mikaal Alexander, unrelated to the coach, is a 16-year-old M.L.K. offensive lineman. He lost a close friend to gun violence last year, and he has been around multiple other shootings.

He said his coaches always checked in on him and his teammates. “They say boys not supposed to cry,” Mikaal said. “If you got a mental problem, cry a little bit. It won’t hurt to shed a few tears.”

Coach V wants to expand her program as funding allows. She’s about to start applying it to boxing. But she doesn’t want to lose the tailored attention for coaches that’s at the model’s core.

“We do life with the people that we work with,” she said. “I’m bringing something I believe in to my little corner of the world.”

Vaux Big Picture High School Cougars football team huddle together after their morning warm up.

This article was published as part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The New York Times’s Headway Initiative, focused on gun violence in Philadelphia. This reporting is supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, with the Local Media Foundation serving as fiscal sponsor. Funders have no control over the selection, focus of stories or the editing process and do not review stories before publication.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Know a young musican? Chalkbeat’s back-to-school rap contest is here.

2026-09-01T20:01:43+00:00

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UPDATE: The deadline has been extended to Monday, Sept. 14.

School is almost back in session, and Chalkbeat Philadelphia wants to know which of Philadelphia’s young lyricists can lay down some bars about the school system.

Entries will be judged by Amir ‘The Bul Bey’ Richardson, whose music has been featured on “Abbott Elementary” and WHYY’s Albie’s Elevator. Submissions will be judged on lyrics, musicality, and performance.

The first place winner will receive three hours of staffed session time at Marsten House Recording studios and a performance slot in their Saturday cypher.

One runner-up will receive three hours of staffed session time at Audeoboi Studios.

A second runner-up plus the first two winners will receive the following:

An interview segment on Power 99 (WUSL/98.9 FM) and 105.3 WDAS-FM.
An invitation to perform on the mic at Deke’s Bar-B-Que, located at 137 Berkley St., Suite B, Philadelphia, Pa. on Sept. 23 at 7 p.m.

Entries can address what students are focused on or excited about at the start of the school year, their overall thoughts on the school system, or anything related to education.

This contest follows Chalkbeat’s earlier reporting on teens making anti-violence rap music as a way to prevent shootings in the city.

Need inspiration? Here’s a first-day-of-school song from rapper Tacori Aaria aka Philly Princess, and a rap about school closures from Philadelphia teen duo Zay Money and Tre da dancer.

Those 19 and younger are welcome to enter. Oh, and three more rules: no cursing, no violence, and no AI.

Interested students should record one original verse by Monday, Sept. 14 and follow these steps:

1. Follow Chalkbeat on Instagram at @chalkbeatorg.

2. Post your video and tag @chalkbeatorg, @thebulbey, @marstenhouse, and @audeoboi_studios.

3. DM us the entry along with the lyrics, your name, school, and grade level.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia kicks off a new school year as students, educators brace for looming school closures

2026-08-24T18:51:22+00:00

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After 120 years of operation, Philadelphia’s Overbrook Elementary School might have just had its final first day of school.

Kids skipped through the schoolyard and parents waved goodbye to students wearing fresh uniforms Monday morning as Overbrook and the entire Philadelphia school district kicked off the 2026-27 school year.

For some, the mood was somber. Overbrook is set to close at the end of this school year as the district moves forward with its plan to close 17 schools over the next decade. Nine schools, including Overbrook, will no longer welcome students next year.

“I’ve been to this school since I was in kindergarten,” said Overbrook fifth grader Mahogany. “I don’t want to lose something that I feel safe to have.”

District officials have promised robust support for families at closing schools and said the closures will ensure students can access higher-quality buildings and more educational opportunities. But many students, families, and educators say the looming closures are their major concern this school year. They worry about losing tight-knit communities and neighborhood gathering places. At some schools, the threat of sweeping changes — which would close the schools of more than 4,000 students over the next decade — is already having an effect.

Overbrook Principal Kenneth Glover said he didn’t yet have the school’s enrollment numbers for this year. But during a press conference Monday morning, he said he knew some families in the neighborhood had opted to enroll in nearby charter schools instead of returning to Overbrook for its final year.

Glover said he was prepared to work with the district’s school transition team “to make this a perfect school year for everyone.”

This year, he said “the focus needs to be instruction. The kids should not have to worry about this school being saved. That should be an adult issue.”

Fifth grader Mahogany has attended Overbrook since kindergarten, and worries about the planned school closure. “I don't want to lose something that I feel safe to have," she said.

The district has said that all students from the closing schools will be relocated to schools that are either higher-performing or in better-quality buildings. Its facilities plan reassigns Overbrook Elementary students to Guion S. Bluford and Lewis C. Cassidy schools. No teachers will lose their job due to the closures and instead will be reshuffled to empty positions at other schools.

Superintendent Tony Watlington, Board President Reginald Streater, and other dignitaries made no explicit mention of the closures at their morning back-to-school press conference at Alexander McClure Elementary School.

Streater said school leaders continue to work to help students succeed despite the district’s limited resources.

“While some decisions will be tough — and we all know some decisions have been tough — we must all remain resolute in our commitment to improving outcomes and create the conditions for every student to thrive,” he said.

Free backpacks, a DJ, and a batch of fresh-made smoothies greeted Parkway Northwest High School students on their return to classes.

Teachers, union leaders, and members of the City Council and state legislature say they plan to continue fighting the closures. But they have few levers to pull to influence the board’s decision. Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr., who represents the area around Overbrook Elementary, said he will introduce legislation to prevent the Overbrook property from being redeveloped into condos.

“We want to be civil; we want to be cooperative with the school district,” Jones said at the press conference outside Overbrook on Monday. “But we will act up.”

The school board has the final say over which schools close, and it has already approved the plan. Members of City Council are looking into changing the board’s governance structure, which could give the council more influence.

Watlington said during Monday’s back-to-school press conference at McClure Elementary that his focus is on improving the district’s academic performance.

“While we’ve made some significant improvement, we know that the majority of our young people are still not at grade level in reading (or) math,” Watlington said. He added that the district is going to double down this year and that “we won’t rest until all of our children are at grade level in reading and math.”

Students plan to ‘keep going and keep pushing’

Parkway Northwest High School in Germantown greeted returning students with a balloon archway, a DJ, and a batch of fresh tropical smoothies. It will also close at the end of this school year under the district’s closure plan.

David Samuel, 16, arrived early to distribute backpacks to fellow students. But he planned to leave early from school to testify in a lawsuit that a community advocate filed against the district over its plan.

“I have to miss out on the first day, because this is something that’s really near and dear to my heart,” he said. “Just hearing the news and seeing what the parents are going to go through — I can’t stop here. I still have to keep going and keep pushing.”

Students get their class schedules on the first day of school at Parkway Northwest High School. It's one of 17 campuses slated to close under the School District of Philadelphia's facilities plan.

District officials said schools were added to the closure list based on several factors, including building quality, enrollment, and whether they had space for special programs such as pre-K and gym class. As part of its facilities overhaul, the district also plans to renovate 170 buildings.

But many students say they just want to remain in their schools.

Calin Shakoor, a 10th grader at Parkway Northwest, is determined to keep his grades up this year in hopes of convincing the school district to keep the school open.

He attended multiple meetings with the school board and City Council last school year to oppose the closure.

“Some people feel like it’s a done deal, others are still fighting for it,” he said. “All we can do is try to keep it open, make sure our academics is good and all that.”

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that affect students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia to make digital hall pass and student tracking system available at all schools

2026-08-20T22:20:02+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district is making a digital hall pass available at all schools for the upcoming year that allows administrators to closely track students’ whereabouts.

Under the Infinite Campus system, which schools already use for course materials, students ask to leave the classroom through their Chromebooks. Once a teacher approves the request, the student’s journey will be logged on a “hall monitor grid” accessible to the school’s administrators and climate staff.

The system allows school staff to digitally deny students access to areas of campus where there may be a safety risk or staffing issue. Administrators can also automate the system to ensure certain students are not simultaneously approved for hallway access.

The system, which the district isn’t requiring schools to use, is designed to help prevent physical violence between students. Fights are a major concern in the district: Between 2021 and 2025 there was an average of about 550 incidents each year where police responded to an assault on a public school campus, according to data provided by the city police department. But in New York City, students and others have criticized a similar digital hall pass concept due to concerns about over-surveillance. And some worry the new technology will be more distracting than helpful.

Jade McCray, an assistant principal at Abraham Lincoln High School who recently got trained on the new software, said the system will track which students are out of the classroom, where they should be, and what time they left and returned. She said it could also help keep apart students who are in conflict.

“If we know a situation is brewing … it’s probably not the best idea for them to be in the halls to possibly run into each other at the same time,” she said.

But the system could hinder the staff who focus on student safety, said Nicole Hunt, the president of Local 634, the union representing Philadelphia school climate staff.

“It takes a second to start a fight,” Hunt said. “How do we watch out for when a fight’s about to happen when we’re watching the tablet?”

Some individual Philadelphia-area campuses have tried similar technology before, but the 2026-27 school year will be the first that such a system will be available for all schools.

District officials said it will take some time to get teachers and students trained on the new tool.

In other school safety news, the district’s Youth Violence Reduction Initiative will expand to William L. Sayre High School this year.

The program provides a calm space and consistent mentorship to students at highest risk of engaging in violence. At John Bartram High School, which piloted the Youth Violence Reduction Initiative, student-on-student assaults are down 31% since the program launched in 2023.

The initiative will now be in place at three high schools; it launched at Olney High School last year.

The Handle With Care program, in which police officers alert school staff when a child has witnessed trauma in their neighborhood, is expanding districtwide after a pilot run in the 22nd Police District.

The Safe Path program, which places trained adults on school perimeters to deescalate fights, will return to 25 campuses.

In addition, this will mark the first school year that all school safety officers will wear ballistic vests.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

‘You’re not wanted’: Philly teens who feel unwelcome downtown call for more ‘third spaces’ during summer

2026-07-30T16:49:20+00:00

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Earlier this year, 17-year-old Riyaz Brown-Cheeseboro walked into Center City’s Fashion District mall to do some afternoon shopping. She was by herself and minding her own business, she said, but mall security still escorted her out.

“They asked me for an ID, they walked me away, and I didn’t really know why.”

In 2023, following at least one instance of police responding to hundreds of teens at the mall, the Fashion District began requiring anyone under 18 be accompanied by an adult age 23 or older after 2 p.m. Minors who are working in the mall are exempt.

Teens feel excluded from other places as well. They told Chalkbeat they’ve been asked to leave convenience stores, fast-food restaurants, university campuses, and Center City parks.

“The attitude that’s being shown to them is like ‘you’re not wanted in public spaces,’” said Kharma Hillian, 19.

That attitude may be heightened this summer due to a wave of teen takeovers, or pop-up events that spread on social media and involve large groups of young people. Law enforcement has responded to shootings and other crimes during these types of meetups in Chicago; Raleigh, North Carolina, and Newport Beach, California.

While teen takeovers do happen in Philadelphia, youth say it’s not fair to assume that any group of teens is going to cause trouble.

“I would say, like, 90% of the time, they’re not up to bad stuff,” said James Field, 16. “It’s just people like to talk to each other and be social.”

Investing in third spaces for teens

Field, Hillian, and other local students are producing a video segment for PSTV, the School District of Philadelphia’s television station, on the need for youth-centered third spaces. The term refers to places other than work or school where people can spend time. Many experts in adolescent behavior argue third spaces lower stress, improve confidence, and increase academic motivation.

Hillian said if officials invested more in third spaces, they wouldn’t have to worry about teen takeovers.

“If you give teens a proper sense of community and a proper place of belonging, then there will be no need for fighting, there will be no need for violence,” she said.

Students with the WHYY Media Labs program conduct interviews for a video project about third spaces at the School District of Philadelphia on Tuesday July 28, 2026.

Many of the city-sanctioned spaces for young people in Philly are in deep disrepair. The school district is closing 17 school buildings that it can’t afford to fix or renovate. Meanwhile, some of the city’s recreation centers are similarly dilapidated.

Hillian said this makes people her age feel like there’s nowhere to go.

“Why invest hundreds and thousands of dollars into more police enforcement to make sure teens aren’t in Center City, when all that money can be poured into redecorating existing recreational centers, and giving them art supplies and roofs and plumbing systems?” she asked.

The city’s current budget allocates 10 times more to police than to the Parks and Recreation Department.

In 2017, the city invested more than $500 million to refurbish 72 recreation centers, parks, and libraries in a massive undertaking known as the Rebuild project. Nearly a decade later, a little over half are complete, according to a 2026 progress report.

The city is responsible for maintaining public spaces where teens feel safe, including by offering more evening hours, said Inella Ray, an advocate at Children First PA.

She worries that without those spaces, Black youth will have encounters with police that could land them in the juvenile justice system. In June, she witnessed officers breaking up a crowd of boys who were sitting at a nearby table in Dilworth Park — a large, public plaza at the heart of the city that seems designed to draw young people with food stands, sprinklers, skating rinks, and other activities.

“They were cracking jokes at each other, looking at girls, and all of a sudden these swarms of cops came and told them to disperse,” Ray said. “This idea that the Philadelphia police are coming into contact with young people on the basis of existence, it’s just a disaster.”

Brown-Cheeseboro said it’s OK for police to be on standby, but they should only intervene if something goes awry.

“We should be allowed to be in places, and once we overstay our welcome or are doing what’s not allowed, we should be escorted out,” said Brown-Cheeseboro. “That’s how it should be. Instead of just immediately rejecting us.”

Safety concerns and city supervision

Police provide necessary safeguards for large groups of young people, said 22nd District Capt. Brian Sprowal.

“I’m all for a meeting up, I’m all for kids being kids and doing what it is they like to do and engaging,” he said. “However, sometimes history has shown us that without that supervision or without that guardianship, things happen.”

The number of young people charged with crimes in Philadelphia dropped roughly 20% between 2024 and 2025, from 1,977 charges to 1,550, according to data provided to Chalkbeat Philadelphia by the District Attorney’s Office. The only category to see a slight uptick was robbery.

Jaylen Gordon, a rising high school senior who is not part of the video team, acknowledges that large groups of teens meeting up can be dangerous.

“With big parties and big linkups, it can lead to a shooting especially late at night,” he said. “It can lead to a big fight when people meet up, knowing that somebody that they don’t like could be there.”

But he still doesn’t get why he and his friends were dispersed while hanging out casually downtown this summer.

“Nothing was actually happening, and I was just really confused.”

Cities experiencing teen takeovers have responded with a range of actions including curfews, social media monitoring, and ramped-up law enforcement. Detroit launched a late-night basketball program in a recreation center in an effort to curb unauthorized gatherings.

In Philly, city agencies do provide free programming for teens. The School District of Philadelphia offers a six-week summer camp at 30 schools and publishes a map of summer programs. The Parks and Recreation Department has a sortable directory of activities. The city also runs evening resource centers that are open from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m., and receive children who are brought in under the city’s youth curfew. Dozens of neighborhood nonprofits also create safe spaces.

This summer, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department has been holding sanctioned teen takeovers where young people can hang out, eat, and dance. Their Summer Night Lights program with the police department has a similar goal.

Eric Westbrook, deputy director for community partnerships for the city’s Office of Public Safety, feels those initiatives have been helping young people stay safe.

“Let’s look at our summertimes, when gun violence numbers tend to increase, and let’s bring the resources to them,” he said. “Our engagement doesn’t have to be just strictly arrests. Our engagement should be connecting, making relationships.”

But students say they want less structured spaces where they don’t have to deal with many adults and can just relax.

Hillian’s video team is highlighting the Field Teen Center at the Parkway Central Library, where the activities are informed by a Teen Advisory Board. They also point to the Ginger Arts Center in Callowhill, which has a karaoke machine and a ping-pong table, as an example of an ideal space.

The student project is part of WHYY’s Media Labs program and will be screened at WHYY on Aug. 5 from 4 to 7 p.m. alongside other participant work. Register for free here.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania state budget includes $157 million more for Philadelphia’s schools

2026-07-13T17:59:38+00:00

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Pennsylvania school districts will receive $11.8 billion next year in the state budget Gov. Josh Shapiro signed over the weekend, a $670 million increase from last year.

The $50.8 billion budget includes an infusion of money for career training programs and special education, along with more funding for teacher training stipends and additional requirements for cyber charter schools to monitor students’ wellbeing.

But the budget, which often includes major education legislation, does not have the school cellphone ban Shapiro wanted, and less money for early childhood education than the governor sought.

The budget puts $157 million more towards Philadelphia’s schools, the state’s largest district.

In response to a 2023 court ruling that found the state’s school funding system was unconstitutional, the budget provides a $565 million increase to districts in what’s commonly known as “adequacy funding.” It also puts $58 million more towards basic education funding and $47 million more towards special education funding.

While the overall budget is some $2 billion less than Shapiro had proposed, the final amounts for education are greater than what he initially put forward.

“To me, a quality education doesn’t just require dollars and cents, it also requires common sense,” Shapiro said during his budget address Sunday. He said that’s why he pushed to require schools to give all K-5 students 30 minutes of recess each day, a mandate that’s in the budget. Philly schools guaranteed daily recess for all district students back in February.

Mai Miksic, executive director of the Pennsylvania-based advocacy group Children First, said in a statement the budget will help schools “maintain and build on the academic progress made possible by increased adequacy funds.”

But she was disappointed that the budget “did not go far enough to support early learning.” Shapiro had initially proposed a $10 million increase to a program meant to recruit and retain childcare workers, and a $7.5 million increase to the state’s free pre-Kindergarten program, Pre-K Counts. But the final budget only included half those increases.

Laura Boyce, the Pennsylvania executive director of the advocacy group Teach Plus, said the boost to adequacy funding and teacher stipends was “something to celebrate.”

But she had hoped the budget would increase early literacy funding rather than hold it steady at $10 million. That’s a “good down payment,” Boyce said, but “not close to what we will ultimately need” to help schools meet the literacy requirements slated to kick in during the 2027-28 school year, like implementing professional development and screenings.

Over the past two years, Philadelphia students’ English language arts and literature test scores have fallen. Around one-third of students in grades 3-8 scored proficient or above in ELA on the most recent state assessments.

Some conservatives were hoping the budget would include more investment in the state’s existing school choice tax credit programs, while the deadline looms for Shapiro to say whether Pennsylvania will opt into the federal tax credit program. “Unfortunately, the budget deal does not meaningfully expand educational choice,” said Nathan Benefield, chief policy officer at the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative think tank.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg said in a statement that he was disappointed the budget bill did not include a statewide cellphone ban. But he welcomed the additional overall funding for schools.

“We are, as ever, impatient for a faster schedule to close the adequacy gap between wealthy and non-wealthy districts once and for all,” Steinberg said.

Pennsylvania boosts funding for career training, student teachers

This year’s budget includes a $10 million increase for career and technical education programs as part of a $193 million total annual investment in workforce development. It also slightly changes testing requirements for those programs by allowing career training centers to administer the competency exams before students are in 12th grade, and therefore help them complete the programs.

Rep. Peter Schweyer, a Democrat and chair of the House Education Committee, applauded the changes, saying they would enable programs to enroll more students.

The budget also puts $10 million more towards the popular student-teacher stipend program, for a total of $40 million. The program has been oversubscribed in past years.

The increase means some 700 more student teachers and their cooperating teachers will receive stipends next year, according to a statement from the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

The budget also increased funding to the state’s childcare staff retention and recruitment program by $5 million for a total of $30 million.

Budget directs $120 million to K-12 mental health, safety

This year’s budget also includes $120 million for mental health and school safety improvements in K-12 schools. Last year, Shapiro’s administration approved the same amount for this category for school security updates, security personnel training, and mental health resources such as calming spaces inside schools.

Organizations that help prevent gun violence in Philadelphia and statewide will get $62.2 million from the new state budget, a similar amount to what was allocated last year. Violence prevention advocacy groups hailed the move, especially since those and similar efforts face threats on the federal level.

Last year, this funding also supported out-of-school-time activities that help children stay connected to trusted adults and reduce the risk of being exposed to violence.

The Shapiro administration credits the investment for a 35% decrease in homicides and a 40% decrease in firearm-related crimes statewide, according to Uniform Crime Reporting data cited on the state’s website.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Shootings often rise in Philly when school’s out. Violence prevention groups have plans to change that.

2026-06-02T20:25:33+00:00

Ian Dugan remembers James Easterling as “loud” with “a lot of smiles”. The young man used to be a regular in the Salvation Army Kroc Center computer lab where Dugan is an instructor.

“He liked to talk a lot,” Dugan said, pausing for just a moment while planting a flag bearing Easterling’s name on the center’s lawn.

Easterling was fatally shot in Germantown in September 2016 at age 22. His flag is one of roughly 700 the center has planted for gun violence victims since 2025.

“All of us who have been affected by people who’ve died over the years believe the more love we spread, the less flags there will be.”

Dugan was one of several dozen attendees at the center’s “Spread Love Not Bullets” event Monday that focused on preventing youth gun violence during the summer months. Shootings tend to rise in Philadelphia when the weather warms up. And even though gun violence has fallen recently in the city, children make up a growing share of shooting victims.

In response, gun violence prevention organizations are mounting programs to provide safe environments for Philadelphia’s young people in the summer.

“They’re going to have more freedom, they’re going to be exposed to violence more, because they’re not in school for half the day,” said Capt. Dana Bradley of the 39th Police District, who spoke on a panel at the Monday event. “It’s very important for our entire community to provide structured activities.”

This summer, 30 public schools will be part of the School District of Philadelphia’s “extended day, extended year” program, which includes a six-week summer camp. That’s up from 20 public schools last year.

“It gives our students an opportunity to be actively engaged and supervised by adults, and it keeps them out of the streets,” said Craig Johnson, the district’s deputy chief of school safety.

Philadelphia shootings are down about 40% since this time last year. Still, community leaders say young people are at high risk because of social media pressure to escalate violence, combined with the feeling that adults don’t care about or believe in them.

“It’s very important that we understand that kids want to do good,” said John Solomon, the 34-year-old founder of Endangered Kind, a violence prevention effort.

He said the “old school” mentality of approaching teens with a heavy hand doesn’t work with this generation.

“We have to come with a lot of respect,” he said. “If we don’t, then the trust is not built, and the connection is lost, and it makes it that much more difficult for us to begin to deter them or have conversations with them.”

Kyeme Hunter, 19, listened in on the panel and afterwards agreed that more summer activities could help teens avoid violence — but only if they feel safe attending in the first place.

“You got kids that want to do programs, but they’re in fear of the people they’re beefing with going to the same program,” Hunter said.

If adults know about young peoples’ needs, they can design spaces that incentivize them, Hunter said. For example, he said that for young people who are making rap music, programs can provide equipment to help them explore that. Being responsive in that way means “they’ll probably come here more often to relax themselves, just to get some space,” he said.

Michael “OG Law” Ta’Bon will be touring his “mobile community crisis event unit.” It’s a large truck equipped with a roof deck, a stage, a basketball hoop, a grill, and a movie projector. But the unit doesn’t just feature fun activities: Inside the trailer is a replica prison cell that Ta’Bon uses as an educational tool.

The truck has a sign that says: “Summer Onto September.”

“The key is making sure that as many young people make it from summer vacation to back-to-school in September safe, sound, alive and free,” Ta’Bon said.

Correction: June 2, 2025: A previous version of this story misstated the neighborhood where Playin’ it Safe in the 8th operates.

Sammy Caiola is Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s gun violence reporter, and this summer she’s focusing on education for justice-involved youth. If you have experience or ideas on that subtopic, reach her atscaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Philly ballot measure could bolster education oversight for kids in foster care, juvenile detention

2026-05-18T20:02:28+00:00

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A measure on Tuesday’s ballot could make permanent a small Philadelphia program that monitors quality of life for youth in foster homes, behavioral health treatment, and correctional facilities.

The city established the Office of the Youth Ombudsperson in 2022, in response to sustained advocacy by a group of young people who testified to the City Council about how they were harmed by the foster and juvenile justice systems.

Ombudsperson Tracie Johnson took her post in April 2023. But because the office was created by an executive order from former Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney, it can be dissolved by executive order, too.

The measure, called Ballot Question 2, would change the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter to make the office permanent. Supporters of the office say that’s an important change because it would allow the office to advocate for more funding and greater investigative power, which could lead to more oversight of the education, health, and safety of young people in residential placements.

Since its creation, the office has looked at seclusion policies in the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center, how facilities can support youth in placement during Ramadan, and created Know Your Rights training for students in foster homes and juvenile justice facilities. It also collects complaints about abuses in residential placement.

Malik Pickett, a senior attorney at Juvenile Law Center, was part of the initial advocacy that spurred the office’s creation. That movement came out of a long history of neglect and abuse in multiple juvenile facilities and group homes, he said.

“This office is extremely important, because [youth] are in a very vulnerable time in their lives, Pickett said. “Going to residential placements, being separated from your families and your loved ones, that causes real harm in these residential facility placements.”

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier highlighted the measure in a video posted in mid-May, in which she interviewed former foster youth and justice-involved youth about the ballot measure.

Johnson said she wants to see “corrective action taken when necessary,” and to update outdated policies and staff training.

The AFSCME District Council 47 labor union, which represents government workers among others, opposes the measure. The union said the office would have “significant oversight” of departments where its members work, “including independent investigatory authority over employees.”

Johnson’s work follows in the footsteps of a city-commissioned Youth Residential Placement Task Force. In 2019, that task force called out deficiencies in services provided to youth in residential placement, including the failure of these facilities to provide quality education.

The task force made 19 recommendations, three of which were about educational quality. The task force’s last formal report to the city on facilities metrics and goal progress was published in 2023.

Johnson’s office put out a follow-up report in May looking at much of the same data.

That report found that though the number of youth in foster care and mental health treatment has declined since 2022, the number of children in placement after interacting with the juvenile justice system has more than doubled.

It also found that authorities are placing young people in all types of residential placement further away from home than a few years ago. In 2025 only 33% were placed in Philadelphia or within a 10-mile radius of the city, compared with about half two years before.

And while the median length of placements for foster children decreased by half between 2023 and 2025, it increased by about 30% for youth in juvenile placement during that time. The median length of stay for youth in juvenile placement in 2024 was 143 days, or nearly five months.

Johnson’s office plans to release two new briefs and a progress report on June 10, the same day as a virtual town hall hosted by the office.

The office’s annual budget is $500,000, Johnson said. She hopes to see it expand in the future.

Your guide to Philadelphia’s upcoming school closure vote

2026-04-23T14:53:50+00:00

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Update: Board officials announced Thursday afternoon they will now meet April 30 to consider the resolution that includes the closures.

The Philadelphia Board of Education is moving ahead with plans to vote Thursday on the school district’s proposal to close 17 schools.

The closure plan, which the district first announced in January and initially targeted 20 schools, has received major pushback from school communities and local officials who worry shuttering schools will destabilize students, spark bullying and fights, and rob communities of vital resources.

“If we slow down just a little bit and just took more account for what the community says, what students say, we might get better results on how we should move forward,” said Overbrook Elementary School Principal Kenneth Glover at a Wednesday rally to save his school, which is on the closure list.

This week, students, educators, and policymakers launched a full-out campaign for the board to delay the vote. At the City Council earlier this week, members blasted School Board President Reginald Streater and Superintendent Tony Watlington, saying they were not sufficiently consulted in the planning and selection of the schools to be closed and modernized.

But Streater declined to postpone the vote. He said only that he would bring their concerns back to the other board members.

Watlington and district officials have said the closures and general rightsizing of the district are necessary and will expand educational opportunities for students. Over the past decade, enrollment in Philadelphia’s public schools has declined by more than 17,000 students. That’s left many students to learn in half-empty, inadequate school buildings that are costly to maintain.

District leaders say their facilities master plan, which includes the closures, will offer students safer school environments and will help the district better serve the needs of Philly students and families.

Here’s some additional information about the closure vote, and how you can get involved.

Where’s the most updated list of which schools would close?

The district is proposing to close 17 schools, modernize 169 schools, and colocate six schools.

The district’s facilities master plan website has more information about plans for each school.

Where is the vote happening and how do I participate?

The vote is part of the Board of Education’s Monthly Action Meeting, which is held at 440 North Broad Street and livestreamed online here. The meeting begins at 4 p.m.

You can submit written comments here (you must include your name and the subject line “Board Comments”). Or you can drop a statement off at the board office at the North Broad Street address.

What happens if the board votes yes?

If the board approves the resolution, the district and board will then move forward with required legal steps to close schools. The district may still make changes to the plan during that part of the process.

Per the plan, most closures would not go into effect until 2027. District officials have promised that schools identified for closure will have a planning year, during which staff and families will work with a “transition team” to ease students and teachers through the changes.

What other actions could the board take?

The board could decide to table the vote to give the district more time to receive community input. Board members could also vote against the closure plan and send it back to the district to make changes.

However, Watlington has said this version of the plan is the “final, final set of recommendations” he is putting forward.

How much will the facilities plan cost?

The district doesn’t have a firm plan to fund the proposal, which comes with a $3 billion price tag. Alongside the closures, the broader facilities master plan includes renovations to nearly 170 schools. That means fixing bathrooms, painting walls, and patching ceilings, among other repairs.

Watlington said the funding will come from a combination of philanthropic donations and district funds. However, the district is also facing a $300 million budget shortfall, which Mayor Cherelle Parker hopes to partially close with a controversial rideshare tax.

What will happen to teachers if their school closes?

Watlington has said no teachers will lose their jobs due to the closures. But the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union has not thrown their support behind the plan.

PFT President Arthur Steinberg joined calls this week to delay the vote and is planning to host a protest outside of the district building ahead of Thursday’s vote. Steinberg said the union is working on an alternative proposal that it plans to release in the next few weeks.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

The soundtrack to Philly’s waning gun violence

2026-04-12T10:00:00+00:00

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This story was published in collaboration with The New York Times.

Zayvion Hamiel, also known as ZayMoney, sits at a DJ booth surrounded by speakers nearly as big as he is. He queues up a remix of Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls),” as a line of teens prepare to walk a makeshift runway.

This is Zay’s House. From the street, it looks like a ‌‌nondescript building on a ‌narrow block in North Philadelphia, one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the city’s gun violence crisis. But inside is a community space where modeling practice, graphic design, and DJ-ing happen regularly, and where Hamiel, 13, his siblings and other aspiring creators spend some of their after-school time.

Teenagers in Philadelphia say music is key to helping them process the anger, grief, and loneliness that come with growing up around gunfire. Drill music, an aggressive subgenre of rap that has been accused of glorifying and inflaming violence, rose to prominence in the 2010s and has a hold on many teens. But a growing number of artists like Hamiel and programs in the city aim to harness music to deter violence.

Zayvion Hamiel, 13, known musically as the rapper ZayMoney, livestreams outside his home, behind a family car with branding for his event space, Zay's House.

“I started seeing these kids in the streets, and they’re fighting, they’re shooting each other, and I wanted them to stop,” Hamiel said. “That was when I was 6.”

That year, his cousin was shot. Hamiel soon started writing verses with his mother, who is also his music producer and manager and runs an anti-violence nonprofit. Their goal is to inspire young people to make and listen to rap that envisions a better Philadelphia.

Young, dying young trying to prove a point / Being Black in the hood and staying out of the joint.
Zayvion Hamiel

Zayvion Hamiel, who's learning the craft from DJ-ing from his friend, Tamaj Garner, who also goes by DJ Maj, DJs at Zay's House.

Zayvion Hamiel holds a microphone for his brother RJ, 4, during a livestream.

Qidere Johnson, aka LGP Qua, rose to prominence as a young North Philadelphia artist pushing for a different kind of rap in the city.

Johnson, a father of two, filmed videos on porches and at community events‌, with lyrics touching on systemic inequities.

Then on Mother’s Day last year, he was shot in broad daylight in the city’s Kensington section. He was 30.

The community response to his death was swift and heartfelt. Government officials named a street corner after him. The Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill paid tribute on Instagram.

For many young rappers, like Honesty Dawkins, 16, Johnson modeled success in the face of intense social and industry pressure to make violent rap.

“For him to go against what everybody else is saying, being like, ‘Hey, yo, this isn’t cool — like, this is what we doing, and it’s not right,’ it was very brave of him,” she said.

A street sign at the corner of 9th and Clearfield streets memorializes Philadelphia rapper and anti-violence advocate Qidere Johnson, known as LGP Qua. Johnson was shot and killed during an attempted robbery in 2025.

Dawkins, who goes by the artist name Honimommi, lost a close friend to gun violence in January. While grief is part of her reality, her music focuses on confidence and success.

She started laying tracks in a closet-size recording studio at a ‌violence prevention space not far from Zay’s House called As I Plant This Seed, where she still spends many ‌evenings‌.

“I don’t talk about harming people and stuff like that,” she said of her lyrics. “I don’t want my kids to grow up thinking that Philly is just a bunch of gun violence and people who are rapping about gun violence.”

Resisting the lure of drill

A lot of commercial and social pressure pushes young artists to rap about gun violence. Drill rap, which originated in Chicago, is highly popular and notoriously heavy. Videos often feature rappers backed up by large groups of masked people holding guns.

“The drill scene really took off, especially in West Philadelphia, especially during the pandemic,” said the rapper Clinton Mills Jr., 25, who goes by CJ Da Prodigy. “If you a Philly rapper, people expect you to rap about killing and about selling drugs.”

The “virality of violence” on YouTube and other platforms makes producing music about it more alluring than addressing its root causes, said Christopher R. Rogers, a scholar of Black culture and an assistant professor at Haverford College near Philadelphia.

But drill music has caught the attention of prosecutors. “The district attorney has gotten involved,” said Vinte Clemons, who makes music as ARSIN and is one of the city’s first adult artists to explicitly push against violent rap. “A lot of people have got locked up. A lot of people have died over it.”

Bill Fritze, an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, said his office’s investigations had diminished some groups, but he expected music celebrating bloodshed to continue as long as there was a profit motive.

Honesty Kearse, 19, said shifting music culture away from violence ‌feels urgent. She lost a sibling to gun violence, and worries about the influence drill has on her younger brother and the teenagers he hangs out with. She is taking a rap writing class as a way to process the grief, and to try to get a message across to her peers.

“I just want a world where I don’t have to worry about if my siblings is gunned down just because they’re wearing black,” she said.

Kearse’s after-school program is one of many that youth mentors say help young people channel an interest in music making in a different direction.

DJ Dommis guest lectures at a Spin Academy class hosted by FamFrequency, a nonprofit that helps young people learn skills for the music industry.

When Jonathan Edwards started FamFrequency Productions four years ago, drill music “was all that,” he said, even among his students who weren’t actively involved in street crime. Today, he encourages them to tap into their authentic experiences instead.

“Reflect on your week; put this in a lyric,” Edwards said. “Now half the city who is 15 years old, who just broke up with their girlfriend can relate to that lyric.”

Cassidy Brown, 20, credits FamFrequency for helping him find his own voice.

“My brand started with a sort of Batman persona,” said Brown, who performs under the name ‌c12. “It was dark. I was mad. I didn’t want anyone to know my face. I was kind of like a vigilante without the violence.”

Cassidy Brown, known musically as c12, mixes one of his songs.

After some time working with Edwards, he became more comfortable showing his face and rapping about subjects like race and gender identity.

“Tryna soften up a world that wants to see me as a brute. / Would my ancestors be proud to see how far I grew my roots?”
Cassidy Brown

“As I progressed with my music I was like, I want everybody to know,” he said. “It feels amazing. It feels freeing. Because it’s a coping mechanism for me, just to dump all of that out there and get it off my mind.”

To make it in the music industry, Brown is broadening his mix of relevant skills. In addition to writing music, he is studying mechanical engineering at Temple University and interning at a local recording studio.

Cassidy Brown mixes one of his songs.

Cassidy Brown sits for a portrait at MilkBoy the Studio, where he is currently an intern.

“Learning how to mix and match tracks and how to troubleshoot, learning how mics work,” he said‌. “‌That’s really where the money is at.”

Dancing to new beats

Close to 1,000 ‌teenagers crowded the edges of a carpeted rectangular dance floor on a recent Wednesday, cheering and shouting as a three-on-three dance battle heated up.

“Tanging,” the Philadelphia-grown dance style that competitors perform, is fast-paced, athletic, and at times combative. It’s set to bouncy and explosive beats‌, a far cry from the heavy tones‌ of drill rap.

A dance cypher at Level Up Philly, a West Philadelphia violence prevention initiative.

When someone threw down especially hard, teenagers stormed the floor. An emcee kept it moving, and a row of judges perched on lifeguard chairs determined the winners.

At Level Up Philly, a West Philadelphia violence prevention initiative, teens and organizers say the dance scene lets ‌young people burn energy while finding a sense of belonging they may otherwise seek from gangs.

Aaron Campbell, founder of Level Up Philly, walks with teens.

A participant dances in the middle of a dance cypher at Level Up Philly. The anti-violence group provides a safe space for kids to engage in activities outside of school.

“These are the ones who would just as easily be on the other side if we didn’t provide this,” said Aaron Campbell, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director.

On Campbell’s forearm, a tattooed line of seven stick figures marks every Level Up participant killed by a bullet from 2022 to 2025. Last summer, ‌a dance battle emcee was shot and killed.

And then there are the injured children. Citywide, there have been more than 1,000 nonfatal shooting victims under 18 since 2020. Shootings have declined significantly since 2023. Campbell keeps gauze in the kitchen for changing bandages.

Dance is one way for young people to block out the negative, said Tacori Aaria Mateen. She’s 15, a rapper, athlete, and “kid influencer” with close to 600,000 Instagram followers. She’s known as the Philly Princess and also performs under the name T-Cori.

One of her ‌most popular videos, “Hips,” features dozens of Philadelphia children goofing off with their friends, grooving in pajamas in their kitchens and dance-battling on their blocks.

“Dance like a butterfly, hips like a bee / Killin’ these moves like Muhammad Ali”
Tacori Aaria Mateen

“The whole point is giving kids something to do than being out in the streets,” Mateen said. “Instead, you could go make a dance to this, or you could start making your own songs.”

Mateen performs at school assemblies, skating rinks, and pizza parties, sometimes with other youth influencers, including ZayMoney.

Music artist, influencer, and entrepreneur Tacori Aaria Mateen, known both as T-Cori and Philly Princess, dances while her mother, Taliah Mateen, films her for a TikTok video.

Tacori Aaria Mateen stands for a portrait.

The violence prevention activist and music producer Tommy Blackwell said events where kids could express themselves were ‌critical to deterring gun violence.

But sustaining those spaces is a challenge. An open mic Blackwell used to organize with a stipend for nonviolent rap performances has been on hold since November because a state grant dried up.

The challenge gains urgency as ‌summer approaches‌, the prime season for block parties, music festivals and other opportunities for artists, and also when teenagers are out of school and shootings ‌typically spike.‌

“There are thousands of LGP Quas in the city of Philadelphia,” Blackwell said. “We have to provide those platforms if we want to save lives.”

Visuals by Kriston Jae Bethel.

This article was published as part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The New York Times’s Headway Initiative, focused on gun violence in Philadelphia. This reporting is supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with the Local Media Foundation serving as fiscal sponsor. Funders have no control over the selection, focus of stories or the editing process and do not review stories before publication.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Shootings are falling in Philly, but kids make up a growing share of gun-violence victims

2026-04-09T10:00:00+00:00

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The number of Philadelphia kids injured by gunfire is falling — but it’s not falling as fast as the total number of shooting victims.

In 2020, children who were injured by gunfire but not killed made up about 8% of Philly’s 2,245 shooting victims, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of data from the city’s Office of the Controller. But they made up 11% of that category in the city last year, when 939 people were shot.

The toll of the last few years has left an excruciating mark on the city, even as the numbers have begun to fall. And community experts and physicians say the rising share of those victims who are kids stems from the problem that unlike adults, young people are more susceptible to peer and social-media pressure to wield guns.

All across the city, children are recovering from bullet wounds. There have been 852 nonfatal shootings of people ages 17 and under since 2021, according to city data.

“The kids are just infatuated with this gun violence,” said Tone Barr, director of victim services for the Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia. “Until we get a hold on that you’re still going to see this turmoil, this trauma.”

Barr shared those comments at a press conference last Thursday, following the April 1 shooting of a 3-year-old boy in a South Philadelphia home. The child has a head wound and was in critical condition as of late last week. His 17-year-old uncle has been charged with a felony weapons offense.

A “ghost gun” — a type of firearm that’s hard to trace and easy to order online — was found under the teen’s bed, officials said. They noted a different weapon was used in the shooting.

“Please check bookbags, check rooms,” Barr pleaded. “This is a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened. We can’t normalize reckless behavior.”

Activists like Ant Brown say the key to combatting the trend is reaching teens through different media.

“If the music is all death culture, is negative, how do we expect for these young kids to act?” he said, adding that many “bouls” — Philly slang for young boys or young men — “want to be street dudes.”

He and a few other organizers recently teamed up with the University of Pennsylvania to launch Creators for Community Safety, which trains social media influencers on anti-violence messaging. A similar project in Chicago taps into social media to emphasize that guns are dangerous, not cool.

“I feel like it’s up to content creators to get involved, in how they push out content to young people that can also ease their mind in a way,” Brown said. “When we talk about the arts, we got to figure out a way where we’re not just re-traumatizing young people.”

City faces grim reality: ‘Guns are plentiful’

Two children have been killed by gunfire in Philadelphia in 2026. A 13-year-old was fatally shot in the city’s West Oak Lane section Tuesday night. And in January, a 16-year-old Imhotep Institute Charter High School student, Khyon Smith-Tate, was fatally shot in North Philadelphia.

During the height of the gun-violence crisis after the pandemic, Philadelphia’s students were shot while walking to school, at bus stops, and at football games.

At the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, ICU physician Dr. Anireddy Reddy treats traumatic brain injuries, abdomen wounds, and other complex physical trauma caused by bullets.

It’s part of why she and her colleague’s in the hospital’s Center for Violence Prevention now counsel families about safe firearm storage and provide gun locks.

“We know that access to a firearm significantly increases a child or a teen’s risk of either accidental injury, death by suicide, or other injury within the home,” she said.

Victoria Wylie, who started working to prevent gun violence after her 20-year-old brother was killed in 2008, said easy access to guns is especially dangerous in Philadelphia’s lowest-income communities.

“Guns are plentiful, and we’re dealing with a more traumatized society,” said Wylie, who cofounded the Donte Wylie Foundation support group for adults with long-term gunshot injuries, like people who use wheelchairs. “There’s more PTSD, there’s more anger in communities. And problems result in violence because of it.”

Even though gun violence in Philadelphia has declined recently, each shooting sends a ripple of grief and fear through entire school communities, said Nora Gross, an assistant professor of education at Barnard College.

In 2020, Gross spent significant time at a Philadelphia high school and collaborated with several young men on a short film, “Our Philadelphia,” about losing classmates to gun violence.

She argues schools should give students more grace and space to process their feelings after a student is shot. That might mean easing up on discipline and providing extra counselors after such incidents.

When gun violence happens, teachers and other adults step up, often without getting formal training beforehand, Gross said.

“There’s a lot of adults in school buildings who are doing this hidden emotional labor,” she said. “People like the secretaries in the main office, the security guards, the janitors, the lunch people.”

The School District of Philadelphia contracts with multiple violence prevention nonprofits to provide grief and trauma services. However, pending budget cuts could mean fewer adults are available to help kids affected by gun violence.

This story is part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The New York Times’s Headway Initiative, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) via the Local Media Foundation.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Fewer Philly children are being shot. Here’s how the city’s top cop wants to keep that trend going.

2026-03-24T17:51:16+00:00

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Kevin Bethel was in charge of Philadelphia school safety during what he called “a very difficult, dark time” for the city.

While serving as the School District of Philadelphia’s school safety chief from 2019 to 2023, Bethel watched the city’s fatal and nonfatal shooting tallies climb. About 200 children per year were injured or killed by firearms during that period, according to city data.

“I would see young people getting shot outside the schools — Roxborough, Lincoln, Bartram, just killed,” he said. “It was something I’d never seen in my lifetime.”

But now, the city is in “a far, far better place,” said Bethel, who became the city’s police commissioner in 2024. The number of shootings in the city has fallen dramatically: There were half as many fatal shootings last year as there were in 2022. The number of children who’ve been shot has also been steadily declining.

Bethel attributes the change to multiple collaborations between the police department and the city, including a violence reduction initiative at Bartram High School that he helped design and a Safe Path program that places trained adults on school perimeters.

Bethel continues to pitch in on school safety, alongside the Philadelphia Police Department’s Director of Gang Reduction and Youth Development David Irizarry. The two tout the success of in-school restorative justice programs and a trauma-focused initiative called Handle With Care.

But Bethel said he is especially proud of the school diversion program, which connects students who would otherwise be arrested for certain offenses to preventative programs instead. He also highlighted the city’s Town Watch Integrated Services team, which trains neighborhood groups on how to protect children walking to and from school.

However, there were multiple large-scale fights in the fall that worried neighbors and garnered social media attention.

Many community members fear even more conflicts will arise if the school district moves forward with its plan to close 18 facilities and merge or co-locate certain schools.

Chalkbeat asked Bethel to lay out some of what he feels is improving school safety, and what’s needed for the future.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are some of the ways that the school district and police department work together?

Our school diversion program, that is one of our marquee programs. We started in 2014 when the [police were] locking up 1,600 children a year [in schools] … kids as young as 10 years of age, for a whole series of things. I was here as a deputy commissioner running operations at that point. I was very frustrated with the number of young people being arrested.

I had been part of a national program asking law enforcement leaders across America, “how are you going to address the disparities?” Because many of the kids being locked up were African American or Latino. That would also open the doors to understanding trauma, adolescent development, brain science, all of that. And so we started that program in 2014 and today we’re at over a 90% reduction. Last year we had 72 kids arrested for a system that used to lock up 1,600.

We continue to support the school district as it relates to dismissal times, and we have around 60 officers assigned to the schools across the city to support the dismissals. Most of the high schools have specific coverage, and then we have rolling patrols for our lower grade schools to support that.

And then there’s certain corridors that we try to increase our activity. After the unfortunate homicide of the student at Imhotep Institute Charter High School, where he got killed on Ogontz Avenue, we started to increase some of our activity around our main corridors as well.

Just since this fall, there have been some pretty large-scale fights on high school campuses. What have you found to be effective for handling those?

There’s so much that can ignite young people to engage in that activity. If there’s intelligence or information [that police or a school] received prior that there’s going to be something, then the expectation is that folks are going to get into that and intercept that.

It’s very rare with our young people that we have to use high levels of force. Most times they’re not really trying to attack the police officers, they’re just fighting each other.

But our expectation is this is not just a policing issue. And in particular in our larger schools, we’re expecting the safety team at the school district, which is not just the school safety office, but everyone in that school, to bring it under control, and then we’re here. Our goal is coming to support that. Especially when it’s occurring inside the school, they know the students, they know the players, they know what the discipline should be like.

With school closures on the horizon, how will PPD be involved with children potentially having new walking routes to school?

These are not immediate changes. There’s going to be this transition that will happen as more things start to unfold. It’s not just me. It’s obviously the Safe Corridors program working out of Town Watch Integrated Services. It may require some of that activity to come into play.

But what we clearly should know, that we should understand, is what the pathway is. In the earlier closings, there were some adjustments of the school crossing guards. So that expectation will be something that will be a part of those plans, to make sure that those intersections that a child may have to walk are properly covered.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

‘I try to build them up’: How a dean with corrections experience tries to keep North Philly students safe

2026-03-16T20:59:34+00:00

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When Art Green was working for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections a few years ago, he noticed the inmates getting younger and younger — and it ate at him.

“I would talk to the young people, I would try to get the young people on track,” he said. “But moving forward, I thought about maybe catching these young people within high school settings, maybe having the same conversations with them without them being incarcerated.”

Now Green, a Philly native and self-proclaimed former troublemaker, is rounding out his first year as dean of students at the YESPhilly Accelerated High School. It’s a credit recovery school within the School District of Philadelphia, serving students ages 16-23 who were unable to complete their education at their original school.

The campus is in a part of the city experiencing elevated levels of poverty and crime. That means Green does a lot more than desk work.

Green coordinates with school security, local law enforcement, transit officials, and other agencies to make sure that the school building — and all the vital services it provides — remain available and accessible to kids.

Chalkbeat talked with Green about keeping students safe, and giving them the tools they need to move forward.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does a typical day look like for you?

I come in in the mornings. I make sure that the outside of the school, the perimeter is safe. Once I enter the building, I open up, I make sure that every room is inspected. My main purpose is working in the front, making sure that I speak with every student entering the building. I make sure that I greet them.

What I’m actually doing is temperature-checking to make sure that they’re ready to get to learning. I want to make sure that no one bothered them in their transportation to or from school. I may need to refer you over to our counselor. I may need to refer you over to the principal, someone that can help you. Or maybe it’s something I could help you with.

At lunch time, it’s crowd control, controlling the traffic within the hallways, making sure there’s no loitering in the bathroom. After lunch, I pretty much slow the day down a little bit and prepare for the release of the students.

How does the environment surrounding YESPhilly affect what happens inside the school?

The challenge that our students face, of course, is crime. Everyday movement, bums, different people saying things to them and they may get a little intimidated. I try to make sure I look out the window, stay within the perimeter, or make sure I can see them when they get here, but also let them know when you get here you’re here in a safe environment. I walk all the way around a one-block radius to show my face.

I want to talk to everyone, even the people that may be on drugs and stuff like that, I let them know: “This is a school. You can’t be around this area. You can go over here. Is there something I can do for you? How can I support you?” I want everyone to know that this is a safe place.

I have to stay active and involved with every aspect of that student, whether that student is with the Department of Health Services or that student is with a guardian, whether that student is in a homeless shelter. It does not matter. We have a purpose that we need to serve. The young people [are] the client[s], and they are our future.

How do you talk to students about violence they might see on the news or in their communities?

It’s a very scary time that we’re living in. I let them know that the answer is the young people. When I give you these teachings, I need you guys to go home, have these conversations with your parents about the stuff that you’re learning. Have these conversations with your peers, the ones that’s involved in gang violence. Because in school, we talk it out and we walk away and no one gets hurt.

As far as the gun violence side, I let them know the values that I’m teaching, use them. If you see danger, separate yourself. If someone tries to introduce you to having a weapon or joining a gang, XYZ, seek help. I try to build them up, to give them that strength.

I can’t be with them every walk of the way. I wish I could. But I try to give them enough tools that when that decision comes to separate yourself, where you see danger, to go the other way.

How do you take care of yourself when you’re not at work?

I bowl heavy. I’m really into bowling. I’m into landscaping and it’s about that time I start putting my seeds down and getting the mulch out and flowers and taking care of a plant and just seeing how you can make the garden look. I play basketball, I run track. And other than that, I take care of my students. Whatever they have to do on their free time when they’re off. We have a lot of programs making sure they get to and from the programs. If they text me, I’m here.

Everything’s good because I committed my life to trying to save our young people.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Students fear Philly school closures could spark bullying and violence. Here are possible solutions.

2026-03-13T16:15:00+00:00

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Philadelphia students and community members want to know how schools will prevent fights, bullying, and other conflicts that could stem from the district’s proposal to close 18 schools.

Experts say there are ways to prevent such violence — if planning begins now.

People have brought up safety at many of the roughly 40 community meetings the school district has hosted at schools that would close beginning in 2027. Usually it’s parents and students at smaller, specialized schools who would be moved into bigger neighborhood high schools with violent reputations.

April Anderson voiced concern at a February community meeting about plans to close Parkway Northwest High School, which her child attends, and move those students to Martin Luther King High School, which is about a half-mile away and happens to be Anderson’s own alma mater.

“There are fights at King,” she said. “If you put kids from Parkway in King you don’t think that’s going to start issues?”

Several Parkway Northwest students who attended the meeting echoed that sentiment, including freshman Dane McFarland, who runs on MLK’s track and said he gets bullied there.

Dane McFarland, holding up a megaphone, was among the students who walked out Parkway Northwest High School on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026 to protest the Philadelphia school district's plan to close the school.

A rough reputation can stick with a school, even when data about student conflicts doesn’t tell a simple story. MLK High School does have a higher rate of group assaults than Parkway or Building 21, another school that would also merge into MLK under the district’s closure plan.

But Parkway has higher rates of fights between students, according to the district’s data on serious incidents from 2021 to 2025.

At a City Council hearing about the closures on Feb. 17, Council President Kenyatta Johnson asked district Superintendent Tony Watlington to ensure “that we have a game plan to make sure our young people are safe.”

Watlington answered by pointing to Safe Path, which stations trained adults around the perimeters of campuses to break up dismissal-time fighting and escort children home as needed. But that program was delayed at some schools this year, and moreover doesn’t directly address the climate inside buildings.

At a recent school board meeting, the president of the School Police Association of Philadelphia, Bernadette Ambrose-Smith, requested that the district do a safety analysis of the closure plan, due to concerns about students losing “safe havens.”

Officials said every school receiving new students would have a “transition team” but have not specified how those teams would help defuse tensions and prevent violence stemming from closures and displacement.

Asked about the issue, district spokesperson Monique Braxton contended that the district already has adequate resources in place, writing in an email: “We don’t anticipate violence between existing students and incoming students at receiving schools.”

But combining student groups and their social hierarchies means the first few months of mergers and co-locations would be an adjustment for kids, and that schools should “plan ahead for the social aspects of the transition,” said Tracy Waasdorp, director of research, school-based bullying, and social-emotional learning at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Center for Violence Prevention.

Waasdorp said that before schools merge or co-locate, one initial step could include gathering school staff, parents, and community members to discuss existing dynamics and tensions.

She also recommends starting with adult-led and supervised summer activities that require kids from different schools to interact, a strategy that she calls a “no-brainer.”

And once the school year starts, administrations should point out to students which adults they can talk to if they are experiencing bullying, conflict, or other stressors, Waasdorp said.

“Some of these children already have been struggling, and they may continue to struggle once they get to this new setting,” she said. “Make sure that whoever that one person is is available and known to the kids, like, ‘I’m the social-emotional person. I’m here for you.’”

Prioritizing the role of trusted adults is also one of several strategies being used by Bartram High School, which until recently was a hot spot for violence, including an average of five students who were shot each school year from 2017 to 2022.

Since implementing a pilot of the Youth Violence Reduction Initiative about three years ago, shootings are down 80% and fights not involving guns are down 31%. It could serve as a strong model for schools confronting mergers under the closure plan to consider, in part because of its focus on gangs.

Students worry about crowded hallways making fights worse

The pilot at Bartram could have been seriously tested by the district’s initial school closure plan.

The district’s original plan, which it released in January, would have closed Motivation High School and relocated its students to Bartram. When he heard the news, Bartram ninth grader Hanaij Fulton was concerned that hallways would become hot spots. He doubted school safety officers would be able to control crowds if more students packed in.

“It’s like nothing they can really do when they fight, because the whole hallway is just full of people,” Fulton said. “They’d have to push past people. People wouldn’t be moving.”

After criticism about the plans for Motivation High, the district scrapped the proposal to merge students there into Bartram. It also nixed plans to close Paul Robeson High School and merge students there into William L. Sayre High School. But other schools will still have to deal with increased student traffic and related concerns if the Board of Education approves the closure plan.

Before the district backtracked, Tenneh Conteh had similar concerns about Sayre High School, where she is a senior.

She said school safety officers there already struggle to maintain order at the metal detectors, where kids try to sneak in vapes and sometimes guns.

“If they can barely handle the students who do come to school, they can’t handle new kids,” she said.

She feels funding related to the closures should be spent on extra security guards and additional training at the receiving schools.

But Waasdorp said neighborhood volunteers, not just extra security staff, can play a helpful role in and around buildings in such situations.

“It’ll be really important for schools to increase adult supervision in unstructured areas as the school year begins,” she said. “It’s showing all of your adults around you care about how you guys get along, and we intend to make sure everyone feels connected.”

How violence plummeted at a Philadelphia high school

The district believes the Youth Violence Reduction Initiative — or YVRI — contributed to an 80% decrease in firearm assaults by students at Bartram. In addition, there have been no shooting deaths and far fewer fights at the school since it began using the initiative in 2023. Shootings also went down citywide at that time.

“Most of the people that was really starting stuff with a lot of people, either they calmed down or they not here no more,” said Jamer Heard, a Bartram senior.

The initiative is designed for students who are part of, or are at risk of being part of, group-on-group violence. In addition to building relationships with trusted adults, it relies on a combination of conflict deescalation strategies and cross-agency collaboration.

Since the program started, there’s been a 67% drop in student-on-staff assaults, a 62% decrease in incidents involving police, and a 92% decrease in gang-involved group assaults at Bartram High.

A quote displayed in the office of Youth Violence Intervention Program Coordinator Kevin Rosa at Bartram High School on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024 in Philadelphia.

Such declines were “much larger than we expected,” said Dr. Brandy Blasko, a senior research associate in the Office of School Safety. “We’re seeing that the model we chose is actually working.”

Caterina Roman, a criminologist at Temple University who helped design the initiative, said the program could “be perfect for” mitigating violence at high schools that are receiving new students after the closures.

“Because YVRI was designed on the principles of the Comprehensive Anti-Gang Model, prevention gets built right in,” she said in an e-mail.

The district recently expanded the program to Olney High School.

The Bartram program is currently funded by a $1 million grant from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention that will expire this year. When that funding is up, administrators plan to ask Pennsylvania for additional support.

“I think given the success of the program, we’ll figure it out,” Blasko said.

Carly Sitrin and Rebecca Redelmeier contributed reporting.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

These student podcasters are calling for resources to address gun violence in Philly

2026-03-09T15:13:42+00:00

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In the hectic two minutes before the cameras started rolling, a producer told high schoolers Jayden Alston and David Torres to keep their sweatshirt hoods away from their eyes.

Next, she reminded Cyniah Goodwin to sit straight and hold the mic up to her mouth. Then, they were ready.

The trio of teen hosts recorded their first-ever episode of the Peacemakers Podcast last month. During a recording session last month, they dug into how Philadelphia students process anger, depression, insecurity, and other challenges that they feel contribute to gun violence across the city. They released a condensed version of that conversation on YouTube this week.

There were 450 to 500 fatal shootings in Philadelphia each year between 2020 and 2022, according to city data. The numbers have dropped significantly since then, with 206 fatal shootings last year, but thousands of kids are still grappling with firsthand loss or the ongoing risk of gun violence in their communities.

Goodwin, Torres, and Alston attend Vaux Big Picture High School in North Philadelphia. They’re producing the podcast as part of a school-based internship with gun violence prevention organization Frontline Dads.

The goal is to show other young people it’s okay to share your feelings with your friends, said Alston, who is 16 and lost a classmate to gun violence in middle school. He said it’s hard to find an adult to talk to at school.

“The adults, they’re not going to really hear us out,” he said. “But students talking to students, that’s real life conversation. … Nobody’s gonna admit that they really going through something. So by hearing other students admit it, they feel comfortable enough to where they can admit it, too.”

The first episode features the students interviewing a special guest from the Philadelphia Anti-Drug Anti-Violence Network. Their next episode will feature a roundtable discussion about the reasons for gun violence in Philadelphia.

“I think gun violence is more so where a person is mentally at,” Alston said during the recording session. “If everything’s not okay at home, your mom’s on drugs, your pops don’t care about you, that’s all gonna be taken out on the world.”

“What I think gun violence come from is not knowing yourself,” said Goodwin, who like Alston is 16. “It’s about love all around, loving yourself as a person, and not even wanting to put yourself in that predicament.”

“I feel like people want to be something, so they look up to the next person, like follow the next leader,” said David Torres, 17.

That missing sense of self-love, combined with pressure from peers or social media and trauma at home, can propel someone toward gun violence if they don’t have a place to process those feelings, the hosts explained.

It’s why they and other students in their internship program are also pushing for solutions on their school campus. They recently submitted a proposal to their administration for a “deescalation room” where students who are feeling overwhelmed can go to take a breather.

During the recording session the teens discussed their ideas for the space, which would be called the “Cougar’s Den” after their school mascot.

“A space where it’s calming, the aroma is right, the music is nice, you got all your necessities in there,” Goodwin said.

She encouraged her fellow students to visit the room when they feel angry “instead of just lashing out on the next person.”

Several Philadelphia elementary schools have deescalation rooms as part of a Temple University-supported program.

The students are planning future podcast episodes on violence and other topics. They record at PSTV, the educational channel for the School District of Philadelphia. The fully staffed, multi-room recording studio in the basement of district headquarters is available for free to all K-12 students in the city. The Vaux students received in-studio coaching from journalist P.O.C at Revive Radio.

Goodwin said it’s important to keep talking about gun violence because it’s become “normalized” in Philly.

“Everybody just goes on to the next day after somebody dies,” she said. “Like it’s just something we are all supposed to experience one day in our life.”

Even with shootings in Philadelphia on the decline, young people still need support as they grieve, as well as guidance on how to not get caught up in conflict, the Vaux students said. They hope both the podcast and the deescalation room can prevent future shootings.

“If everybody just decided what they wanted to do in life and took the time out to think about theirselves, then there wouldn’t be no violence, or maybe no going to jail, stuff like that,” said Alston.

“You have to get vulnerable with yourself to know yourself, so that you can find yourself and you won’t be in dumb situations because you want to be like the next person,” said Goodwin.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

‘The hallways are quiet’: Trauma-informed school model uses calm to prevent conflict in Philly

2026-02-11T12:00:00+00:00

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On a regular day in the “reflection room” at North Philadelphia’s W.D. Kelley School, trauma specialist Meah Carruth might facilitate a mediation between students in conflict, a naptime for a group of tired teachers, or a lunch break round of musical chairs.

The dimly lit space contains sofas, interactive playmats, and other items intended to help calm students and staff. It’s part of the Philadelphia Healthy and Safe Schools program, a “trauma-informed schools” initiative facilitated and partially funded by Temple University on five School District of Philadelphia campuses.

The idea behind the program, known by the shorthand “PHASeS,” is to create places where all students and teachers can take a “brain break” when they feel overly stressed. Most classrooms in PHASeS schools have a “calming corner,” and each building has a PHASeS room where students can visit with an adult’s permission. Most of those rooms are staffed by a trauma specialist like Carruth, who is trained to help people understand and regulate their emotions.

“Maybe you need to pick up a beanbag and throw it at a target and let out some steam, maybe you do need to scream,” Carruth said, rolling a blue rubber fidget toy in one hand. “Let’s assess what you need, and if we can offer it and provide it, and you’re safe, let’s do it.”

The PHASeS team from Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine also provides regular staff training. It helps teachers better understand the chronic trauma students see at home and in the neighborhood, often related to housing insecurity, gun violence, and domestic abuse.

“When you think about some of the things that they have experienced, you kind of handle them better,” said Sherese Knights, an English language arts educator at W.D. Kelley who has received the training. “We are more inclined now to focus on their most basic needs before providing learning.”

A soon-to-be-released evaluation by Temple’s College of Education and Human Development surveyed educators in PHASeS schools. More than three-quarters said the program improved classroom learning, and 85% said the training improved their own well-being.

The data also showed that PHASeS has reduced fights, harassment, and disorderly conduct on two of the three campuses where it was studied.

Kelley Principal Crystal Edwards said teaching kids to take a breath makes it less likely that they’ll act out. She also credits the program with the fact that 98% of the student body has never been suspended, a substantial improvement from a decade ago.

“Learning how to regulate and learning how to calm has a natural effect, to shut down anything that comes behind it,” she said. “So that’s why we don’t have those fights. That’s why we don’t have that verbal assault, and that’s why the hallways are quiet.”

The "reflection room" at W.D. Kelley School on Wednesday, February 4, 2026. It's a space where students or staff can come to take a break and speak with a trauma specialist.

‘The conversations weren’t happening’

A growing body of research supports programs like this as a way to improve academic achievement in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and violence. More than one-fifth of Philadelphia residents live below the federal poverty line, according to the latest Census data. While gun violence is down from a record-high number of shootings in 2022, the problem persists. There were 979 shootings citywide, 206 of them fatal, in 2025.

Tyrique Glasgow, director of an after-school mentorship program called the Young Chances Foundation in Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry neighborhood, said the environment has a profound effect on how children behave at school.

“If at night you look out your window and there’s still the blur of police lights and sirens, are you having a good night’s sleep?” he said. “When they get into the school and someone says, ‘Sit down,’ or ‘Why you not paying attention?’, do you think the child could articulate, ‘Hey, you know, it was a shooting on my block last night?’

He noted a lot of kids he serves also get to school late and often skip breakfast because of stressors at home. The elementary schools in Glasgow’s neighborhood do not have the PHASeS program.

As a result of the PHASeS curriculum, Kelley staff extended breakfast service by about two hours, so students arriving late wouldn’t be hungry and irritable during their morning classes.

Knights, the English teacher, said after the training she started having lunch with students she suspected were struggling. It was during those breaks that heavy topics started to come up.

“The conversations weren’t happening,” she said. “It literally just changed everything. You went from not being able to connect to developing deep connections.”

Making trauma approaches sustainable

Exposure to trauma, and particularly violence, “has an impact on everything from memory to the ability of children to concentrate,” said Pedro Noguera, dean of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. “When it’s not addressed, it manifests itself as disruptive behavior.”

Noguera has been watching the movement for trauma-informed schools slowly gain momentum across the country in recent years. He’s also seen opposition from people who want more discipline and fewer wellness resources. And he’s noticed school districts spending funds on lockdown drills rather than counselors.

“We have schools that are preparing for school shootings, which can itself traumatize children,” he said. “We’re preparing ourselves for violence, rather than finding ways to reduce the likelihood of violence, which is kind of crazy.”

PHASeS is funded by Temple, the school district, the state, and the federal Department of Justice. Currently all five PHASeS schools have a trauma specialist or another PHASeS staffer on site regularly. There is also a mindfulness coach in two of the schools.

The level of staffing, and how often schools can order new furniture and fidget toys, fluctuates based on availability of district and state funds, program staff said.

“Funding is challenging right now,” said Mary Beth Hays, an assistant professor in Temple’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine and director of the program. “In some ways, what we’re doing is really getting to a place of health and strength within each of these buildings. But it really takes time. We’re in the middle of a conversation that shouldn’t be interrupted by resources or lack of funds.”

The School District of Philadelphia started providing trauma training to teachers in 2017. That same year they launched the STEP program in 21 schools, which connects students to therapists, case managers, and family peer specialists. And some public schools have built “calming rooms” over the years.

But a comprehensive program like PHASeS can change the culture of an entire building, said Hays.

“We’re hoping to create a relational safety that then begets classroom safety, hallway safety, playground safety, cafeteria safety,” she said. “And so when I think about the ways that we are interfacing with gun violence, it is in both prevention and in response”

Edwards, the principal, says it comes down to a simple idea — students having someone to talk to.

“There’s an expectation that someone is listening to how they feel,” she said. “There’s an expectation that they are cared for and concerned for in this building. And that we, all together, have learned and continuously learn about how to work through trauma.”

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia families at small schools like Parkway Northwest fight school closure plan

2026-02-09T23:21:26+00:00

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Philadelphia students and families have packed community meetings over the past week, urging district officials not to close their schools.

At Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice, parents and students said they valued the school’s small community. At Lankenau Environmental High School, educators said the campus had a unique location near a nature center. And at Paul Robeson High School, families worried the school’s land has been targeted for redevelopment.

But district officials have remained steadfast in their pitch: They want to close 20 schools beginning in 2027 in an effort to address declining enrollment and deteriorating buildings.

“It feels like we are grieving,” said Logan, a sophomore at Parkway Northwest, at one of the more than a dozen community meetings the district has hosted since the start of the month at schools it plans to close. He declined to give his last name.

The district’s proposal, which also includes upgrading nearly 160 school facilities, would result in nearly 5,000 students having their schools closed. Superintendent Tony Watlington has said the closures are necessary to address declining enrollment and deteriorating buildings, and will lead to more opportunities for all students.

But families and educators at the community meetings Chalkbeat attended said they worried the plan would harm students at closing schools. Many were concerned about safety issues combining students from different areas, and urged the district not to take school resources away from their neighborhoods.

Students at the meetings made an urgent case to keep their schools open, highlighting principals and teachers they loved and opportunities that made their schools special and helped them thrive. A journalism club. An agriculture internship. A sense of community and connectedness that, they said, they worried the district had not taken into consideration.

Whether their advocacy will lead to any change is yet to be seen. Key members of City Council, including President Kenyatta Johnson and Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas have said they are concerned about parts of the plan.

But so far, Mayor Cherelle Parker is standing alongside Watlington in her support of the closures. Watlington plans to present the proposal to the Board of Education on Feb. 26. The board will ultimately decide which schools close.

The district will host dozens more meetings in the coming weeks. As they face angry parents and spirited staff and students, district leaders have repeated that the plan is meant to benefit all students.

“If we accept the status quo, we will get what we’ve always gotten,” Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill told families during a virtual meeting about the proposed closure of Conwell Middle School last week. “What this plan proposes to do is to raise the bar — to raise the educational experience across the board for every student, regardless of ZIP code or neighborhood.”

Parkway Northwest students say they want to preserve small school environment

Tensions flared between community members and district staff at Parkway Northwest as district officials explained their plan to merge the school into Martin Luther King High School during a community meeting last week. Parkway Northwest would become an honors program housed on that campus.

Many of the more than 200 students and family members who showed up to defend Parkway Northwest said they intentionally chose the school for its special, small environment. The two buildings are just around the corner from each other, but Martin Luther King is more than double the size of Parkway Northwest, which has fewer than 250 students.

“If you take away this environment, you aren’t just changing everything,” said sophomore Melody Jenkins. “You’re disrupting my ability to succeed.”

Parkway Northwest High School enrolls around 250 students.

The proposal is part of the district’s promise to reinvest in neighborhood high schools, like Martin Luther King. But students pushing back against the district’s proposal said the plan felt like it didn’t consider the value of a small school.

“Parkway is more than just a school,” said sophomore Jorvan Kelley. “I feel safe coming here.”

Lankenau’s campus is essential, students and teachers say

District officials also want to close Lankenau Environmental Science High School as part of their effort to funnel more resources to neighborhood high schools. Lankenau would merge into Roxborough High School and become an honors program within the school.

Philadelphia Schools Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill, center, tells families at Lankenau Environmental Science High School that the district's closure plan is meant to benefit all students.

But that proposal “diminishes the program,” said agriculture teacher Tiffany Turrentine. She said Lankenau’s location across the street from a nature center and next to a community farm provides countless educational opportunities that students wouldn’t be able to access at Roxborough.

So many Lankenau students showed up to defend their school last week that they had to filter into the school’s auditorium in shifts. Some had to leave before they had a chance to speak because their parents had come to pick them up. Those who did address the district officials said the school’s environmental programs and staff were invaluable. Many were distraught that it could be closed.

“I’ve got to start thinking about the worst case scenario, but I feel like a lot of people are backing the school,” said freshman Aidan Frishman. “So I’m just kind of hoping that the school doesn’t get shut down.”

Conwell Middle School families say district has disinvested in Kensington

District officials have started each community meeting by explaining the closure plan and the motivation behind it to improve opportunities for all students. But at Conwell Middle School last week, families shouted down Hill, the deputy superintendent, as he presented the plan to merge Conwell students into AMY at James Martin.

Families said they were frustrated to hear the same information repeated and wanted district officials to listen to the dozens of students and parents who had gathered.

“Parents need to speak,” Principal Erica Green told Hill and other officials.

Conwell Middle School sits in a 100-year-old building just a few blocks from the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, which is a hotspot for drug use. Many families and community members said they worried closing the school would be akin to the district deserting the neighborhood.

“Our children and our families come through all the craziness that is happening outside to get here,” said Councilmember Quetcy Lozada. She said she is urging district officials not to close the school.

Tilden Middle School principal says she is hopeful students will thrive after closure

Just a dozen or so Tilden Middle School employees and area residents attended the district’s community meeting at the school Saturday. Some attendees blamed the small turnout on the weekend timing and the frigid weather.

Tilden itself is a small community, just 266 students in a building meant for 2,000, said Principal Timeka Ford-Smith. Under the new proposal the school will stop inducting new classes in 2027. Once current students have graduated, the district plans to turn Tilden into a sports complex for neighboring Bartram High School.

On Saturday, Ford-Smith struggled to impart a sense of hope to the room. She shared her faith in the principals of the other three middle schools where neighborhood children would be placed in the future.

“I believe in my heart … that our students will be in a very, very good position to learn, to grow, and to be prepared for high school,” Ford-Smith said.

Claire Landau and Donna Ragsdale with the School District of Philadelphia take questions about proposed school closures from community members at Tilden Middle School on Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026.

Still, community members were frustrated with the choice to invest in Bartram High but not Tilden, especially given that the district ranks the Tilden community as highly vulnerable due to social factors and past school closures in the area. They brought up community resources anchored at the school, such as a food pantry and a suite of housing, transportation, and health services offered by partner Methodist Services.

“It’s almost like somebody is dying and life support is their last option, and you’re choosing to withhold it or take them off,” said Najmah Ryans, the school secretary.

District representatives said they would spend the time before the closure considering how to continue offering those resources without disruption.

Robeson families worry school has been targeted because it sits on valuable land

District officials have said closed school buildings would be repurposed for district use, conveyed to the city, or sold. They have promised none will sit empty. But it’s unclear whether the city or other developers will want to take over all the buildings the district doesn’t repurpose.

Families and community members connected to the Paul Robeson High School said during a community meeting Saturday that they worried their building was targeted for closure because it’s in an area of the city where real estate is increasingly valuable. The neighborhood, which sits between the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University campuses, is full of new rental housing buildings and university developments.

The nearby University City High School, which closed in 2013, is now a parking garage connected to Drexel.

“How many more buildings do Penn and Drexel need in this community?” asked Antoine Mapp, director of the community group West Powelton Steppers, which has run programs with Robeson students since the 1990s.

Families and students at the meeting said that they did not want to send their students to William L. Sayre High School, which the district plans to merge Robeson into as an honors program. Sayre is nearly two miles away.

“The education of Black and brown students such as myself are not being taken seriously,” said ninth grader Ahrianna Deloach. “We’re watching buildings around our school get torn down and rebuilt in every direction. And somehow, our education keeps getting pushed to the side.”

Paul Robeson High School students and families said during a community meeting on Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026, that the school's small size and tight-knit community make it special.

Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

These Philadelphia schools avoided closure in 2013. Now they’re on the chopping block again.

2026-02-04T17:17:39+00:00

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When Danielle Edwards, 19, heard her alma mater, Paul Robeson High School, is on the list of schools the School District of Philadelphia wants to close, she messaged former classmates she’s still in touch with.

“That was my first school that I actually loved,” she said.

The district released plans last month to close 20 schools, including Robeson, as part of an effort to address problems with school facilities and declining enrollment. It wants to move students from Robeson into William L. Sayre High School as an honors program.

It’s a familiar and painful challenge for Robeson.

In 2013, a state-appointed board closed 24 schools in a contentious decision that drew months of protests. Robeson was initially on the list of schools to be closed, but it narrowly escaped that fate after intense pushback from the community.

Back in 2013, the fight to keep schools open was fierce. Teachers, students, advocates, and political leaders formed human chains, phone banked, shut down Broad Street, and swamped public meetings demanding their schools be left alone. Mayor Cherelle Parker, then a state representative, called on the City Council to keep one school in her district from closing.

The outside of West Philadelphia University City High School in 2013.

For some schools, it worked. More than a dozen schools originally on the closure list ended up staying open and continued educating students for more than a decade.

But now, four schools or buildings that the district initially planned to close 13 years ago are back on the closure list: Robeson, Robert Morris School, Overbrook Elementary, and Lankenau High School. Mayor Parker has come out in support of the plan.

Without the same level of community pushback so far, advocates say they’re worried they may not be able to muster the support to save them again. And this time around, they have to convince members of a school board who have different aims and political influences from the several state-appointed board members of 2013.

District officials say they’ve learned key lessons from the 2013 closures when it comes to tradeoffs and consequences, and that the plan will ultimately benefit students when it comes to learning and early learning.

The outside of West Philadelphia University City High School in 2013.

The district plans to present its plan to the board, which will determine which schools to close, on Feb. 26. A vote will come sometime afterwards.

Longtime Robeson teacher Andrew Saltz, who protested the last round of school closures, said he plans to try to save Robeson once again.

A lot in his life has changed since the last protests. He’s older, and has children. Still, he said, he’s finding the energy to fight the closure plan again; he’s said he’s heard from freshmen who are scared about where they’ll go to school if Robeson closes.

“This is the right thing to do,” said Saltz. “So, OK, let’s get it going.”

School leaders say different forces are driving school closures

Just like for Saltz, a lot has changed for the city and its schools since 2013.

The mayor and city council now determine who sits on the school board, rather than some members being appointed by the state. Superintendent Tony Watlington, who joined the district in 2022, has stressed that the perspectives of teachers, families, and community members will help shape a new facilities plan.

Still, there’s an expensive and persistent challenge: repairing old school buildings and operating schools with fewer students. District enrollment has declined, leaving some schools — including two of the four on the closure list for the second time — more than half empty. Old buildings have further deteriorated. During this winter’s cold snap, the heat in several classrooms did not work properly.

A view of the demolition zone of University City High School in 2013.

In 2013, the School Reform Commission that controlled the city’s schools cared largely about saving money. The district was cash-strapped and laid off nearly 4,000 employees before the first day of school.

District enrollment was also rapidly declining at the time — though for different reasons than it is today. In the years before the closures, the School Reform Commission had ceded district schools to charter organizers and approved other charter schools to open in the city.

But since control of Philly schools returned to the city at the end of 2017, district enrollment has declined largely because of falling birth rates. More Philadelphia students also now attend cyber charters.

Researchers found that some students’ academic performance took a hit after the 2013 closures, and absences increased for students who were displaced. Several school buildings were also left empty and deteriorating. And communities’ trust with school leaders was fractured for years.

“It was not worth the cost,” Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill told families in late 2024.

School leaders say the new proposal to close 20 schools and co-locate and relocate others is meant to provide more opportunities for students and families, like increased access to pre-kindergarten and AP classes. It also would result in students no longer attending school in buildings the district deems unsatisfactory.

But many say they’re worried the same harms stemming from the 2013 closures could happen again. The plan would move hundreds of students to lower-performing schools and disproportionately affect Black students.

Protests against some of the proposals have already begun. Some members of the City Council have spoken out against the plan, calling on the district to change which schools it plans to close.

Viery Ricketts-Thomas, a block captain in Overbrook, said she feels shocked the neighborhood’s elementary school could be closed.

Since 2013, the school has gotten a new principal, Kenneth Glover, who has launched initiatives to partner with community groups to build a new schoolyard and attract more Black teachers who reflect the student body.

Though Overbook’s building is rated as poor, the school is enrolled at nearly 80% capacity, according to district data. Its students’ math and reading scores on state tests have also improved over the past three years.

“Right now the school is thriving,” said Ricketts-Thomas. “These are kids you’re displacing.”

Teachers, students and advocates with Stand Up Philly Schools protest planned facilities closures on Thurs., Jan. 29, 2026 outside the School District of Philadelphia headquarters.

Why fighting school closures might be harder now

Philadelphia teacher Jon Hoffmeier has fond memories of his two years teaching at University City High School. It was his first full teaching job in the city, and he loved how students had space for soccer practice and football practice.

The school closed in 2013. When Hoffmeier drives by the school’s old address, he now sees a parking garage. “It’s an absolute shame,” he said.

Hoffmeier was one of hundreds of teachers who had to move schools after the last round of closure. Now at Lankenau High School, he and other teachers are already fighting to keep the school open. They’ve launched a petition, made posters, and organized a rally at their school.

But not all schools are mounting the same response. Julia McWilliams, co-director of the urban studies program at the University of Pennsylvania, said the energy ahead of the 2013 closures felt different.

Advocates had been rallying for years against the School Reform Commission, and some were already organized across neighborhoods, she said. Schools bussed dozens of students to commission meetings and some groups threatened lawsuits.

Civil action intensified. Students at the now-closed Carroll High School in Port Richmond formed a “human chain” around their school in protest. The night the School Reform Commission read the final list of closing schools, a group of protestors blocked the entrance to the meeting and 19 were arrested.

Lankenau High School juniors Tyrone Ware (right) and Niyasia Bounds say they don't know what they would do if their school closes, as the district has proposed.

Today, McWilliams said she worries there are fewer groups ready to call for changes, and many people may not have time or energy to put toward the cause. Some are busy with other issues, like organizing for immigrants’ rights. And many people may feel less passionate about protecting public education.

“What I’m seeing is just people don’t have a lot of confidence in public schools, because of what algorithms are telling them, because of what happened during COVID, because of the ways the teachers unions didn’t want to go back in-person,” said McWilliams. “People pulled their kids out and just never sent them back.”

Still, for some who plan to fight the closures, the new environment could fuel their motivation. With the city in control of its own schools, they say it’s vital for school leaders to keep many of the schools proposed for closure open to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2013.

Saltz, the Robeson teacher, remembers that ahead of the 2013 closures, it felt like “everyone already hated” the state-controlled School Reform Commission that oversaw city schools.

This time, he said it feels like the city is turning on its own schools.

“I think that made it more depressing,” said Saltz of the current closure plan. “Because you thought this school board would be different.”

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Some Kensington students see open-air drug use every day. They’re making it to graduation anyway.

2026-02-03T11:00:01+00:00

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Jeán Ruiz remembers their high school years in Kensington as a period of stress and survival — both at home and at school.

They lived in affordable housing with their single mom. The time they might have used for homework or tutoring was often spent doing odd jobs to help pay the rent.

Those worries made it tough to prioritize school, they said.

They recalled trying to focus on 12th grade calculus: “I was so lost and confused.”

Ruiz wasn’t alone. Family and financial stress, on top of daily exposure to poverty and drug use, make it harder for many Kensington students to make it to graduation, according to experts and educators.

Kensington’s median income is among the lowest of all Philadelphia neighborhoods, and it has twice the number of adults without diplomas as the city on average, according to a 2025 report from Pew Research.

“It’s not like we don’t want to get diplomas,” said Ruiz, who is now 24. “It’s just that it’s inaccessible for us.”

Experts say a high school diploma is a crucial foundation for stable employment later in life. Research shows people with diplomas earn bigger salaries, are qualified for a wider variety of jobs, and even have stronger health outcomes. That’s why high schools are building up support for students like Ruiz through strategies like embedding college prep organizations, mentorship, and career counseling. And graduation rates are trending upward for some schools in the neighborhood, creating a new wave of Kensington kids who make it past the finish line.

“Graduating from high school is a life or death issue,” School District of Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington said in his State of the Schools address this month. “When children graduate college and career ready, it has a major impact on the economy of any city.”

Amiyah Acosta-Peterson, a 10th grader at Kensington Creative and Performing Arts High School, known as KCAPA, said her family and extra school support have helped keep her on the path toward college.

“My family, they motivate me to get good grades,” she said. “They tell me the benefits of it. The teachers also do it. So that’s what makes me want to keep going.”

She holds tight to her dream of becoming a doctor, despite the hopelessness she says many students feel when they walk past open-air drug use on the way to school each day. That kind of environment leads them not to take school as seriously as they could, she said.

For Ruiz, the key to graduating high school was supportive teachers as well as mentors at Taller Puertoriqueño, a Puerto Rican cultural center in Kensington. They now lead an after-school STEAM program there for neighborhood kids.

“Everyone is trying their best to become their dream,” Ruiz said. “And sustain not only themselves but their village as well.”

Showing Kensington kids their potential

Graduation rates at several high schools in Kensington are on the rise.

According to district data, the share of students who graduated from Kensington High School, or KHS, within four years rose from 63% in 2017 to 72% in 2023. Kensington Health Sciences Academy, or KHSA, had a four-year graduation rate of 83% in 2023, up from 71% in 2017, although KCAPA’s graduation rate has declined from 76% in 2017 to 72% in 2023.

Rising graduation rates haven’t taken place in a vacuum. There have also been major statewide changes to graduation criteria recently that aim to create more options for all Pennsylvania students to earn diplomas.

But getting diplomas into student hands largely comes down to staff supporting students on the ground, said Kensington High School Principal Jose Lebron. Some of the work is handled by non-profit organizations like 12+, a program that stations advisers inside schools to help keep students on track to graduation and postsecondary opportunities. The non-profit launched at KHSA in 2012.

The group has an open door policy: KHS seniors averaged 32 check-ins with their 12+ advisers in 2024 — far beyond the capacity of the school’s regular guidance counselors, each of whom is assigned over 200 students.

KHS guidance counselor Liz Winter helps students figure out what they need to graduate. But when they deviate from the plan and start missing too much school, Winter may connect them to 12+. Many of those students aren’t considering higher education and say they want a job, but don’t know what kind.

Once students understand what a high school degree unlocks, “going to school all of a sudden becomes way more incentivized,” said Frank Wang, the chief of staff for 12+. Across all the schools that 12+ works in, he added, “We’re seeing convincingly that our students want to be in school more, and attendance is a strong correlation to graduation rates.”

Advisers with 12+ show students what is available to them beyond graduation, whether it’s college, a trade apprenticeship, a workforce development certificate, and help them with incremental steps towards those options, like completing the FAFSA, working on resumes, or helping them get a merit scholarship.

“12+ is the missing link,” Winter said.

Advisers meeting with students inside the 12+ space at Kensington High School. Every senior has their photo on the wall, and can place stickers alongside to celebrate their accomplishments.

Another program, Heights Philadelphia, pairs students with career counselors or college advisers who can support them with interview preparation, class selection and financial aid. Chief program officer Annie Soler said 100% of students in the Heights program graduate high school and 90% enroll in college.

“We’re seeking out students who might not be on the trajectory for college or for entering into the workforce,” she said. “We’re recruiting 10th graders and supporting them through 12th.”

That kind of one-on-one help is especially important for students who come from communities where knowledge about getting a college education is limited, said Laura Perna with the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

“Students in Kensington may have strong family support and be able to persist through adversity, and at the same time they may not have networks and sources for how to navigate through these systems — college applications, financial support, which middle and high school courses to take,” she said.

Making these efforts successful requires forming trust and relationships, said Joyce Li, a supervisor with 12+. Advisers ask students about their lives and find out what immediate concerns are hurting their attendance. Sometimes it’s relationship drama, or it’s fear of a teacher after a low grade. It’s a holistic approach to mentorship, troubleshooting whatever obstacles are in students’ way, strategizing steps forward.

Often they’ll start talking about the future after the stressful situation has passed.

“They need to know there’s life after high school,” Li said. “That there’s hope, that there are good things in store for them.”

Trusted adults can be key to motivating students

While 12+ and other groups focus more on career-readiness, school staff might deal with more personal and academic issues.

Lebron said KHS throws out a safety net for students by ensuring teachers accommodate them, providing check-ins at report-card periods, and offering informational town halls about graduation requirements. They also offer credit recovery and summer school, if all else fails.

Lebron referenced lack of support at home as a contributing factor for a student not making it across the finish line. When they don’t have parents’ encouragement, the onus falls on the school.

That’s all the more reason to have pipelines to alternative workforce programs and mentorship, said Kensington Health Sciences Academy Principal Dr. Nemet Eren.

“Sometimes it feels like we are squeezing blood from a stone, because there’s just so much that needs to happen, and we need support from outside programs,” Eren said.

The students at risk of not graduating are often identified early, most likely because of low attendance. Winter said combatting absenteeism starts with parents.

“We need parent involvement,” she said. “We have a lot of kids right now facing mental health [challenges] … because their parents are checked out,” she said.

Much of her job is dedicated to meeting with parents, to better understand what’s going on behind the scenes and help coach them on how to motivate their kids.

For Nasir Davis, a Kensington High School junior, the support of his family, teachers, and basketball team — the Kensington Tigers, a team made up of KHS, KCAPA, and KHSA students — keeps him on track.

“I could go to different people if I got problems with the work,” Davis said.

Ethan Feuer, head coach of Kensington Tigers boys basketball, speaks with the team at half time during a game against Northeast High School on Jan. 19, 2026.

To be on the Tigers, who had a successful season and landed third in their division, the players have to sign a contract agreeing to maintain average grades of C or above, a standard set by coach Ethan Feuer.

If they can’t keep their grades up, they’re benched. It means “they don’t have time for basketball,” said Feuer, who teaches ninth grade English at KHSA. Players on the team look up to Feuer, have built tight relationships with the coach, and appreciate his high standards.

After a victory over Philadelphia Academy Charter in early January, Feuer said everyone on the team will graduate: “I’ll have kids during practice sitting on the sideline doing their homework and working together before they can step foot onto the court.”

Whether it’s a coach, a parent, a teacher or an adviser, it all comes down to having at least one caring adult, said Li, the supervisor with 12+.

“There are all these opportunities and resources,” she said. “But if you don’t feel like the person who’s telling you this stuff cares about you and genuinely follows up with you consistently, then they’re not going to do it.”

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school safety officers to get bulletproof vests, handcuffs, and new uniforms next fall

2026-02-02T11:00:00+00:00

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School safety officers on School District of Philadelphia campuses will be issued “personal ballistic protection,” including bulletproof vests and handcuffs, by the beginning of next school year.

The Board of Education voted Thursday to approve a $600,000 contract with police supply store Atlantic Tactical. The funding will come out of the school safety operating budget.

The decision to outfit safety officers with protective equipment comes out of the most recent agreement between the district and the School Police Association of Philadelphia, the union representing school police.

“Our officers are the first line of defense for the safety of our students and our staff,” said Bernadette Ambrose-Smith, the association’s president and a former school safety officer. “They have to not be fearful.”

Philadelphia’s 350 school safety officers are not sworn law enforcement officers and they do not carry firearms.

In addition to vests, the officers will get handcuffs and new uniforms, Ambrose-Smith said. Since 2020, these employees have worn polos and slacks rather than police-style uniforms. The bulletproof vest will be worn under the shirt. Certain school safety officers who are assigned patrol duty will be issued pepper spray and batons.

The decision represents the latest change for school safety officers, whose presence on campuses has been controversial in Philadelphia recently. In 2020, after George Floyd’s murder, members of the Philadelphia Student Union called to eliminate all school police and replace them with community members trained in deescalation.

Later that year, the district moved from calling these employees “school police” to using the term “school safety officers.”

Multiple studies have found that school resource officers do not reduce gun-related incidents at schools, but do intensify the use of suspension, expulsion and police referral, especially for Black and Brown students.

And the changes will likely have negative psychological impacts on some children, said Monic Behnken, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Iowa State University.

“When you have someone coming into your school space in tactical gear, there is no message of calming,” she said. “An officer in full uniform is already anxiety-provoking. The more you arm them up, the more anxiety a student would naturally feel.”

Naftali Rosso-Cohen, a 10th grader at Science Leadership Academy Center City, echoed that sentiment.

“I feel like bulletproof vests have a militant feel to them,” he said. “It feels like there’s this person who feels like they could be shot at.”

Rosso-Cohen said he understands the need for safety officers to have protection. He still feels shaken about a shooting just outside his school last year.

But he also thinks the $600,000 could be spent on more urgent needs across the district, such as classrooms that are in poor condition and aren’t safe learning environments.

“We should be tackling that first, probably before the bulletproof vests. And also tackling that will help students generally just feel better,” he said. “And I think that’ll help with everyone’s safety.”

The fiscal year 2026 school safety budget is roughly $40 million, a 2% increase from the year prior. It’s about the same as what the district spends on school nurses.

Between 2020 and 2024, the school district recorded an average of 96 “weapons offenses” per year, which include “possession of a gun, knife, sharp object, or any instrument capable of causing serious bodily harm.”

But Behnken said school resource officers can still escalate situations that could be handled in other ways.

“50 years ago, [behavior] that would result in a call to mom or dad now results in a referral and police involvement that could really change the course of a student’s life,” said Behnken, of Iowa State University.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia teachers, students call for changes to school closure proposal

2026-01-30T00:53:42+00:00

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Protestors rallied outside of the Philadelphia school district’s main office in the bitter cold Thursday afternoon, calling on members of the Board of Education to put a stop to the district’s proposal to close 20 schools in the coming years.

The plan, which district officials announced last week, would impact 1 in 3 district schools and result in nearly 5,000 students affected by school closures beginning in 2027. Students would be moved out of deteriorating old buildings to fill empty seats in many underenrolled schools. But it would also relocate hundreds of students to lower performing schools and close schools in neighborhoods the district’s own data shows are vulnerable because of social factors and past school closures.

Superintendent Tony Watlington has said closing schools and shuffling enrollment would lead to more opportunities for all students.

But inside the school district’s main building, board members — who have final say on the closures — gave no indication on how they will respond to the district’s sweeping proposal. They said they would share those thoughts at their board meeting on Feb. 28, when district leaders plan to formally present the plan.

Board president Reginald Streater said it would be “inappropriate” for him to speak about the plan’s merits ahead of the presentation. But he thanked Superintendent Tony Watlington for creating a plan for the district’s aging facilities. Streater said the board will review the proposal during its February meeting but not vote on it.

School leaders, teachers, and parents urged the board to prevent closures and to come up with a better plan that keeps schools open. During a spirited public comment session, several said the proposal would destroy tight-knit school communities and leave students with longer commutes and more crowded classrooms. Some worried the data the district used to make its decision was flawed. And others said they feared the plan reflected a disinvestment in schools where the majority of students are Black and brown.

More than a dozen students and staff from Lankenau High School rallied in front of the district’s main building ahead of the meeting.

“Our voice should be heard,” said Krysten Fanis, a sophomore at Lankenau Environmental Science High School, which the district wants to close and turn into an honors program at Roxborough High School. “How they’re trying to recommend to shut down our school is not OK.”

Board members encourage people to weigh in

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that district leaders have already said they may shift parts of the plan before they formally present it to the board at next month’s board meeting.

That may be a response to the swift pushback. Some City Council members have called for specific changes. And many teachers, students, and families have said they will fight for their schools to stay open.

Streater and other board members encouraged teachers, students, and families to attend the community engagement sessions the district plans to host in the coming weeks at each school it proposes closing. Two board members said they would make an effort to attend the meetings.

Board Vice President Sarah Ashley-Andrews stressed the importance of community input at the meetings. “We want to hear your voice, your comments and concerns,” she said.

Several educators and community members connected to Conwell Middle School, which the district wants to close, held signs during the meeting urging school leaders to keep the school open. Longtime Conwell Principal Erica Green stressed the school’s history, tight alumni network, and recent investments, some of which were funded by settlement money from lawsuits against opioid manufacturers.

“Do not let the almighty dollar drive a choice to remove a beautifully designated historic school and beautifully gifted young people,” Green said.

Representatives of other schools said that the whole district will be impacted by the proposed closures.

“This is a collective effort,” said Paul Brown, a psychologist at Roxborough High School who attended the protest. “Rather than singling out individual schools to fend for themselves, we should be all working together to ensure every student can go to their neighborhood school instead of traveling across the city.”

Board members also appointed two non-voting student board representatives: Brianni Carter, an 11th grader at Philadelphia High School for Girls; Ramisha Karim, an 11th grader at Northeast High School; and Semira Reyes, an 11th grader at The Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts.

Carter and Karim said they aimed to attend the community engagement meetings to hear what their peers and adults are saying.

Board members also voted to approve several contracts and grants, including:

$15 million for mechanical, plumbing, fire protection, and electrical engineering design services.
$3.7 million for purchasing facilities supplies, tools, and building materials
$610,000 to replace the fire alarm system at James G. Blaine School.
An agreement with the Community College of Philadelphia to use space at Ben Franklin High School.

Three of nine board members were absent from the meeting, and four called in remotely.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Checkmate Violence tournament aims to prevent Philadelphia gun violence through school chess

2026-01-27T19:42:23+00:00

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“Say good luck and shake hands at the beginning of the game, and say good game at the end.”

The tournament director gave this parting advice to 150 student chess players on a recent Saturday morning at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

The participants, all in grades K-12, were silent and attentive as they prepared to compete.

That level of concentration is what organizers of the 19th annual PECO-ASAP Checkmate Violence tournament aim to instill in Philadelphia youth. The idea driving the event, which is hosted by the After School Activities Partnerships, or ASAP, is to protect kids from gun violence by keeping them busy, and teaching them critical thinking.

“Think before you do something, think before you act,” said Gil Motley, the event’s founder.

It’s what he used to tell the kids he coached in 2008, when he launched the chess tournament in response to concerns about shootings. He says it’s just as needed today.

Gil Motley, founder of Philadelphia's Checkmate Violence chess tournament, receives an honor from After School Activities Partnerships executive director Beth Tomlinson on Jan. 24.

There were 206 fatal shootings in Philadelphia last year, and about 10% of victims were 18 or younger according to data from the City of Philadelphia.

Arguments are the motive behind half of all shootings in Philadelphia, according to a 2022 multi-agency report.

Montgomery Brown, an 11th grader at the George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science in North Philly, said gun violence happens “because there’s just a lot of kids on the street who don’t really have anywhere to go.”

Montgomery Brown poses at the annual Checkmate Violence chess tournament on Jan. 24. He competes with his team from George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science.

He’s been able to avoid dangerous situations by keeping his head down, and spending time in the ASAP chess club at Carver.

“The thing about chess is it’s honestly the perfect way to just get kids to sit inside, sit down, and think about what they’re doing,” he said.

About 1,000 students across the city play chess with ASAP. The nonprofit supports chess, drama, Scrabble, and debate clubs at K-12 schools as well as libraries and recreation centers.

Most clubs meet twice a week after school, though some meet every day. Students learn from a club leader, who may be a teacher or other school staffer, and trained volunteers. ASAP provides supplies, curriculum, and support from a site director. Individual clubs may put on their own tournaments throughout the year.

Checkmate Violence is ASAP’s free annual citywide chess tournament, which draws about 200 to 250 players every year, organizers said.

Chess has been used to reduce violence between incarcerated people, and substantial research supports the use of after-school programs more broadly as violence prevention. Chess has been shown to improve math skills and “overall cognitive ability” in middle school students, though it has not been studied explicitly as a violence intervention for youth.

After-school hours are an especially dangerous time for children: The risk of child firearm injuries around New York City public schools was 45% higher between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. on school days, according to researchers at Boston University.

In Philadelphia, where many young people have lost friends to shootings or live in places that feel unsafe, chess clubs serve as a haven.

At Northeast High School, teacher and chess coach Saul Machles said his club was a space for students to heal after several of their classmates were shot at a SEPTA bus stop near Northeast High School in 2024.

One of their fellow chess team members was injured, and eventually came back to the team.

Other students in the club “were definitely traumatized,” he said. “It was something we had to really struggle with.”

Trophies for the annual Checkmate Violence chess tournament on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026 in Philadelphia.

Lemuel Rosa, a site director with ASAP, helps run the chess club at Esperanza Academy Charter School in Kensington, a Philadelphia neighborhood hit hard by the opioid crisis. He said his chess club offers a break for students who grapple with stress both at home and in their communities.

“We’re just a club, but it kind of becomes an extended family,” he said. “I really enjoy that they have that escape. Because people find negative escapes, but this is a positive.”

This story has been updated to include the full name of the chess tournament.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Tips about violent threats to schools are up in Philly. Experts say that might be a good thing.

2026-01-27T16:01:58+00:00

The number of threats to Philadelphia schools reported via a state-run anonymous tip line has more than doubled in the past two years, according to data from the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General.

The office launched the Safe2Say Something tip line in 2018 to comply with a statewide mandate that all schools establish a phone, texting, or app system for kids to report bullying, suicide, drug use, and other issues.

The number of tips about “Threats Against Schools” increased 82% across Pennsylvania and 164% in Philadelphia from the 2023-24 to the 2024-25 school years. That’s a larger jump than any other category during that period.

And that might be a good thing, according to experts, because it means students are using the tool as soon as they become aware of a potential threat. Both the state attorney general’s office and the School District of Philadelphia say staff have been spreading the word about the program, and school communities are becoming more familiar with it.

“It’s kind of what we expected, and kind of what we want to see,” said Dr. Jack Rozel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.

There’s been a rise in tips about threats to schools across the nation, according to Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit organization that developed the model that PA’s program is based on.

Prior studies on school shootings have found that there’s often “leakage” that happens ahead of time — for example, a student telling a friend they have a plan to bring a gun to school.

“We’re just starting to talk about this now, in the broader field of threat management,” said Rozel, who co-directs the threat assessment team at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “We need to sort of build out this network of credible receivers and tip lines like Safe2Say.”

In Pennsylvania, all tips go through the state attorney general’s crisis center. Their team conducts an anonymous dialogue with tipsters to weed out illegitimate tips, and categorize each tip as life-threatening or not. Analysts deliver the information to the impacted school and, when needed, local law enforcement. Schools then conduct their own investigations and report back to the state.

There’s a risk that students abuse the system, said multiple experts, due to internet trends such as swatting and the potential to submit tips as a form of retaliation during an interpersonal conflict.

Statewide, 3% of all submissions last year and 4% the year before were prank tips or abuses of the system, according to the annual Safe2Say Something report produced by the office.

After the state identifies some tips as immediately false, the school district investigates whether the remaining tips pose a viable danger to the school. The Philadelphia district said the number of verified “serious threat incidents” went down 16% between the 2022-2023 school year and the 2024-2025 school year.

For verified threats, the school district notifies the Threat Assessment Team, which includes the principal, a counselor, a safety officer, a school safety investigator, and the police department when necessary. Others including school nurses and special education staff may also be called in, according to the district.

Tips about violent threats do tend to spike after a nationally publicized school shooting, experts said. This happened in September 2024 when a student at Apalachee High School in Georgia killed two schoolmates and two teachers and injured nine others.

And a similar spike occurred after the 2022 Oxford High School shooting in Michigan.

Children are hyper-aware of these events, even though mass shootings made up just 1% of all gun violence in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

“Here we are in 2026, every kid in a K-12 school setting was born post- Columbine, was raised on active shooter drills,” Rozel said, referring to the 1999 school shooting in Colorado. “It’s Generation Lockdown.”

Without further study it’s impossible to know all of the drivers behind the spikes, said Elyse Thulin, a research assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention.

“Is it just that students are using the tip lines more, or is it that these behaviors are actually changing?” she said. “There’s almost no research on anonymous reporting systems. We’re still trying to dig into it.”

In Philadelphia, “Threats Against Schools” was the second-most common tip at the end of last school year, and the ninth-most-common the year prior. Bullying has consistently been the most frequently submitted tip since 2018, with the exception of 2020 when suicide surpassed it for that year only.

Tip lines play a vital role in preventing multiple kinds of gun violence, Thulin said. Her team looked at four years of data from an anonymous tip line in North Carolina schools, and found that 10% of tips involved firearm threats.

Of those, 40% of tips were about a potential school shooting. The rest alerted schools to a weapon on or near campus, a bullying situation or argument, or a suicide attempt involving a gun.

A total of 151 guns have been confiscated throughout Pennsylvania as a result of the tip line since 2018, according to the attorney general’s office.

Programs like Safe2Say Something are “shifting the narrative from inevitable to preventable,” said Sandy Hook Promise spokesperson Aimee Thunberg.

“There are proven things we can put in place, and we can intervene earlier,” she said. “So they feel comfortable telling someone when they see something. Because they’re the eyes and ears of their school.”

In a 2025 report, the Pennsylvania Budget and Finance Committee said it was unable to review “the timeliness and specificity by which school entities resolved tips” due to confidentiality laws.

The report recommended periodic performance audits to ensure compliance, more advanced training for call-takers, and a requirement that school entities report back to the Attorney General’s Office within 48 hours for a life-threatening Safe2Say report and within 30 days for all other tips.

Last year a bipartisan group of legislators passed a bill that makes those changes.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

‘I pray it doesn’t happen’: Philadelphia reacts to plan to close 20 schools

2026-01-22T22:55:38+00:00

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The head of the Philadelphia City Council Education Committee says he disagrees with parts of the school district’s plan to close 20 schools, kicking off what may become a fraught conflict over which schools are ultimately shuttered.

The district said Thursday that nearly 5,000 students will have their schools closed in the coming years. Along with closures, the plan includes co-locating and relocating several schools and modernizing some school buildings, shuffling where many students go to school across the city.

But Councilmember Isaiah Thomas said he would “never support” closing one of the schools on the district’s list — Conwell Middle School — and has major questions about the district’s plan for several others.

Other officials urged the district to be transparent with schools and make sure students and families are supported. A spokesperson for Mayor Cherelle Parker said she was not available to comment. And union leaders said they needed more time and more information to determine whether or not they support it.

The reactions that began to trickle out Thursday will set the stage for what will likely become months of tense discussions and negotiations over what could be a jarring transformation for Philadelphia schools. District leaders say the plan would improve academics and use resources more efficiently as enrollment has declined and buildings have fallen into disrepair.

Members of the Board of Education, who were nominated by Parker, will review the plan at next month’s board meeting. The plan must be approved by the board, although Thomas and other city officials could use their political influence to complicate the plan’s path forward, or change it.

Though school leaders have said for months that closures were coming, the timing of the news still shocked many educators and families. Whispers of a list of schools the district plans to close began to spread Tuesday and Wednesday. Meetings and protests about the plan are likely to happen early and often.

Outside of Motivation High School in West Philadelphia Thursday afternoon, students said they had learned their school was closing during a meeting in the school’s auditorium earlier in the day.

“I pray it doesn’t happen,” said Journee Tucker, 16.

The district wants Motivation to merge into Bartram High School as an honors program beginning in the 2027-28 school year. The Motivation building is slated to be repurposed as district swing space.

But Tucker said she worried that Bartram is “too chaotic.” This year, it has nearly 600 students enrolled — four times the size of Motivation.

If the plan goes through, she said her mom has already said she would attend a different high school than Bartram.

“It’s going to be a mess,” Tucker said. “I just don’t see the point.”

Councilmember wants to protect Conwell Middle School from closure

Thomas’ reaction stood out Thursday, in part because several elected officials did not say if they were for or against the plan, or comment on specifics. Others weren’t available for comment.

Thomas is an influential voice in the city’s education system, and has been a proponent of several charter schools.

Thomas said he immediately disagreed with parts of the plan — especially the district’s plan to close Russell Conwell Middle School, which he attended.

“If you’re a Philly person, you understand,” he said, adding that the school’s strong alumni network and culture is a huge benefit to the community.

The school, which is in a 100-year-old building in the city’s Kensington neighborhood, is one of several middle schools the district plans to close.

Thomas said he also disagreed with the district’s plan to merge students from Parkway Northwest High School into Martin Luther King High School, and turn Parkway Northwest into an honors program in the school.

Thomas said he also did not understand how the district expects to expand Ellwood from a K-5 school to a K-8 school while the school is already nearing capacity.

“I’m not looking to completely blow anything up or anything like that,” Thomas said of the plan. “There are some things that I agree with, there are some things I have a few more questions about, and then there are a few things that I disagree with.”

Union leadership says school closures would be ‘devastating’

District leadership has said no teachers will lose their jobs as a result of the closures, and teachers at schools that close will help fill vacancies elsewhere.

Still, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg said Thursday the news has been “devastating and disheartening” for staff.

Steinberg said he could not comment on whether he supported the plan until the district shares more information on how they arrived at their decision. During community engagement events last year, the district shared the information it was factoring into the plan. But it did not explain how those factors would influence decisions.

“It’s like they took all these ingredients, threw them into a blender, and came out with a finished product,” Steinberg said.

Ultimately, Steinberg said he is never an advocate for closing a school. But he said he understood that the district has had years of “chronic disinvestment” and needs to address its aging buildings.

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators which represents principals and other school staff, said she appreciated the district’s efforts to survey staff and families for feedback about facilities before announcing the plan.

But she said she still worries closures will be problematic for school communities and create uncertainty for many school staff.

“I understand the superintendent has a job to do, and I don’t think that he did it lightly,” Cooper said. “I just think it’s a no-good situation all the way around.”

Families, teachers worry school closures will be damaging

In West Philadelphia, Rhemar Pouncey is worried about what will happen to her grandson if Overbrook Elementary School closes.

In the district’s proposal, Overbrook students will be reassigned to four other neighborhood schools, and the building will be repurposed as district network offices.

Pouncey called the school “a family and a community in itself,” referencing staff who know students by name, as well as food and gift drives organized by the neighbors.

“I do not concern myself with sending my grandson to Overbrook Elementary, because I know he’ll be safe,” Pouncey said. “I know when he gets dropped off that he has an extended group of aunties and uncles.”

The district has said it will create a transportation plan for students whose schools change, but has not released more details.

Pouncey said she worries about her son walking through “danger zones” in the neighborhood to get to another school.

About two dozen schools have a Safe Path program that hires adults to patrol school perimeters and sometimes walk children home after school. Separately the City of Philadelphia runs a Safe Corridors program to escort students before and after the school day.

“What’s going to happen if one of our kids gets shot or gets killed because you close down the closest school to them, for them to have to go all the way to John Barry, or all the way to Bluford?” Pouncey said.

Several teachers said the district had forbidden them from talking to the press about the plan.

One teacher at Lankenau Environmental Science High School, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said the entire school was taken aback to hear the school would be closed and turned into a magnet program at Roxborough High School.

Much of the school’s programming, she said, relies on its location. It organizes a beekeeping and honey collection event with a community partner, for example, that can only happen at the site. And it has other programming connected to a neighboring environmental education center.

“If you’re just talking about buildings, and you’re looking at children as numbers, then, yeah, this is what you do,” the teacher said. “But when you look at the actual educational programming and closing a site like Lankenau, it doesn’t work. You won’t be able to pick the program up and put it into Roxborough.”

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

This holiday season, Philadelphia’s children grieving people lost to gun violence are getting help

2025-12-19T19:06:15+00:00

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“Do you ever feel stuck? Like you can’t find the words? Or a heaviness that doesn’t go away? We do. And we’re trying to understand it and name it.”

The dialogue played from Craig Terry Jr.’s computer a few days ago, as he edited a video about grief during the holiday season.

He and a cohort of young adults who are part of the Wealth + Work Futures Lab fellowship at Drexel University created the video. They showed the finished piece to students at YESPhilly Accelerated High School in North Philadelphia on Thursday. Their goal was to spark dialogue among young people who are grieving loved ones lost to fatal shootings and other causes.

The issue is personal for Terry Jr., who lost his cousin to gun violence in 2020.

“It is cold, we are with family, and there’s going to be a lot that will come up,” said Terry Jr., 26. “We need to build a space where people go into the holidays feeling prepared and aware of what’s impacting them.”

The alarming levels of homicide that plagued certain Philadelphia neighborhoods in recent years has left thousands of children grieving. While schools and nonprofit organizations offer support groups and art therapy, teens and those who serve them say children need more encouragement to find safe spaces to share their feelings.

Terry Jr. knows how hard it can be for kids to open up about grief, because he struggled to do so after his cousin’s death.

“I didn’t know how to engage with other people. It was just like, ‘this happens, and it’s been happening since I was a kid,’” he said. “So it wasn’t something that I found to be strange or something that I thought was going to impact me.”

That kind of desensitization is common among Philly kids impacted by gun violence, said Michelle Kerr-Spry with Mothers in Charge. It’s a violence prevention nonprofit created by Philly moms who’ve lost children to homicide.

“They accept this as just life,” she said. “They don’t realize this is not normal. It’s abnormal in the cruelest way possible.”

Kerr-Spry calls these children “the forgotten mourners.”

“They don’t always get the attention they need,” she said.

Grief support available in Philadelphia schools

In the School District of Philadelphia, grief support is provided by multiple outside organizations including the Uplift Center for Grieving Children, which runs groups in close to 100 schools, according to the organization’s spokesperson. Those groups can be tailored specifically to homicide depending on students’ needs.

In about eight other schools, similar services are offered by E.M.I.R. Healing Center, which has also provided crisis response in close to 20 schools in the immediate aftermath of a shooting, said the center’s clinical director Deshawnda Williams.

Around holiday time, they make a point of distributing flyers in person and posting resources and events on social media.

“The young people need to know how to navigate the system,” Williams said. “If you feel like you’re depressed, here’s some resources you can reach out to. You’re never alone. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

A few years ago, as Kameenah Bronzell was hearing about fatal shootings in Philadelphia, she decided to start an Instagram account memorializing those lost to gun violence and other deaths. It now has close to 48,000 followers.

“I feel like memories are really important,” she said. “And that’s all I do, is capture memories.”

Then in 2023, her own brother was shot and killed. She says she didn’t want to talk to anyone in the aftermath and felt “nothing but anger.”

Now 19, Bronzell said people in her life offered help after her brother’s death, but she didn’t accept it. Now she wants to help other school-age kids find support. Earlier this month, she spoke on a panel of people who’ve lost a sibling to gun violence.

“I feel like we have a lot of grief support and nonprofits that do stuff like that, It’s really just the kids that don’t want the help,” she said.

Parents also play a role in helping children in the wake of loss, said Williams.

“How do you show up when you lost one but you still have three? How do you show up as a parent?” she said. “We have services … that can support that adult so they can continue to be a first responder for a child that’s still here.”

Mothers in Charge, a Philadelphia nonprofit organization that serves families impacted by gun violence, hosts a holiday toy giveaway on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025.

In the fall of 2024, Mothers in Charge set up shop in a Dobbins High School classroom, where students could come during the school day to have a conversation with a trusted adult or fill out a workbook about their emotions.

“Young men who’ve been socialized their whole lives not to show emotion, they’re harder to reach,” Kerr-Spry said. “Then when they’re given the space … many do have a lot to say.”

The Philadelphia Board of Education approved new funding for the Dobbins program earlier this month.

How support can stop the cycle of violence

Grief services double as violence prevention, said youth mentor Kyron Ryals, whether or not they occur in schools. He helps oversee the Wealth + Work Futures Lab that Terry Jr. participates in.

“I’ve run into young people and it shows up as anger or destruction,” he said. “Sometimes they need time, and tools. When you ignore it, it’s still gonna show up.”

Terry Jr. said joining the fellowship helped him understand how losing his cousin was affecting him. He was withdrawn, anxious, and always looking over his shoulder, he said.

He eventually realized that suppressing his grief “has ripple effects on my overall emotional well being.’”

He and his cohort spent the beginning of this year interviewing 30 people in their age group about grief. They shared their findings at community events and published them in a zine.

Now they’re focused on getting the word out during the holidays through efforts like the video they showed to North Philadelphia high schoolers.

Terry Jr. wants to give children “a place where you’re not hurting other people, you’re not hurting yourself, but you have the safe space to grieve,” he said. “To be angry, to be happy, to be sad, to be able to wallow, to go through all the range of emotions and not feel like a burden.”

If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.”

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia’s program to shield students from violence was clicking. Then it hit a snag.

2025-11-26T16:16:45+00:00

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The noise outside Marc Rentas’s Kensington home was typical for 2:30 p.m.

It always gets loud during dismissal time at nearby Jules E. Mastbaum High School, Rentas said. But one afternoon this fall, the energy was different.

“There was a group of kids on the sidewalk, they were throwing trash,” he said. “A huge fight broke out. … People were scared.”

He said one student threw a flower pot at another student, and a different student bumped Rentas’s elderly father. That’s when he called the school district. Meanwhile, nearby neighbors called the police. It took 30 minutes for officers to break up the fight, Rentas said.

Prior to the start of this school year, Mastbaum High was one of 24 campuses that had the Safe Path program. Safe Path aims to both quell schoolyard fights and protect children from shootings by hiring attentive adults from the community, known as “monitors.” These adults — recognizable by their blue vests — patrol campus perimeters and stand watch on school property, regularly greeting students and sometimes walking them home or to a transit stop.

But this fall, the school district ended a partnership with the largest provider of Safe Path services. The district hired new contractors, but those organizations haven’t gotten underway at the majority of schools that used to have the program. And a few other schools didn’t see Safe Path return — or saw it return late — due to dwindling funds and holdups with training and recruitment.

That means for the last three months, the cadre of watchful neighborhood monitors has been missing from some of the schoolyards and street corners that need the most protection.

The week of the big fight at Mastbaum, Principal David Lon said the Safe Path monitors haven’t come back so far this year. He said he appreciated the service when it was in place.

Since piloting the program in 2022 and expanding it in 2023, the district has touted Safe Path as crucial to its wider gun violence prevention plan. Data from the program’s first year suggests it successfully reduced incidents of violence in the schools where it operated. And studies indicate similar programs in other U.S. cities have improved student safety.

“It’s unfortunate there was this gap in safety for our youth because the city took so long to make decisions,” said Jackie Bonner of the Institute for the Development of African American Youth, Inc., or IDAAY, a former contractor for Safe Path.

IDAAY got an email from the district at the end of September — roughly a month after the first day of school — notifying the group its contract wouldn’t be renewed.

Two other nonprofit organizations, Eddie’s House and Educators 4 Education, will provide Safe Path services for the district. But the school district has not said when Safe Path will return to the 17 schools where IDAAY used to provide monitors.

“There’s still a lot of stuff being worked out,” said Marion Campbell, executive director of Eddie’s House, in late November. “I know everyone is trying to get it done as soon as possible.”

Educators 4 Education recently put up a job posting for Safe Path monitors. President Anthony Singleton said his organization has already received 400 applications, including from monitors formerly employed by IDAAY, and are working to onboard those people.

“Of course we would have liked to start at the beginning of the school year, but it’s not always a perfect fit,” Singleton said. “We are hoping to get everyone up and running.”

Safe Path works with schools on student safety

Not all Safe Path schools were missing their monitors this fall. At Dr. Tanner G. Duckrey Public School in North Philly, the adults in blue vests are hired by Eddie’s House, which has provided the service there since 2023.

At the end of each school day, Safe Path monitor Saleem Gilliard takes his place near the schoolyard. He stands between the back doors of the K-8 school and the corner of 16th Street and Susquehanna Avenue and waits for the students to pour out.

“I’m looking for crowds or groups of kids,” he said. “When it’s rowdy, we break it up and send them home.”

Saleem Gilliard stands at the light with a student and a crossing guard as they help kids cross during dismissal on Nov. 20, 2025.

Gilliard is 74. He applied because he wanted a part-time job that would allow him to steer children toward brighter futures, he said. The program employs and trains adults, with an emphasis on hiring from the nearby community.

Like many young people in major cities, Philadelphia students risk getting involved in fights on campus and on nearby streets, and being shot on their commutes to school.

The likelihood of a child being injured by firearms increases 45% between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., according to a new Boston University study comparing shooting data in New York City to public school calendars. The study notes that most of these shootings are committed by adults in the surrounding community, and that Safe Path programs are a key solution.

Dismissal time is also a prime window for large fights — such as one in early November at Frankford High School that went viral on social media and prompted a school assembly. Frankford has never had the Safe Path program.

And back-to-school season is an especially chaotic time because some kids haven’t seen each other all summer, according to Reuben Jones with the violence prevention group Frontline Dads, also a former Safe Path contractor.

“If there’s no presence there, it sets the tone for the rest of the year,” he said. It leads students to believe that “‘Nobody’s around to hold me accountable.’ It becomes a free for all. It’s dangerous actually.”

Until this fall, Frontline Dads provided Safe Path services through the Penn Injury Science Center at the University of Pennsylvania. In a partnership with the district that began in 2023, the center began overseeing Safe Path in nine schools, including two of the 17 schools where IDAAY was operating.

But Bernadette Hohl, a senior research investigator at the Penn center, said they ended their partnership with both IDAAY and Frontline Dads due to funding changes and only brought the program back to seven schools.

Not all of the Penn-contracted monitors started on the first day of school due to recruitment and training, but they are all staffed now, according to Hohl.

The lapse in Safe Path coverage could undermine a program that was working, school district data indicates. In the year before Safe Path launched, the district recorded 166 “serious incidents” at the selected schools between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., according to school board documents.

In the first year of Safe Path implementation there were 125, reflecting a 26% decrease.

The decline occurred while Philadelphia on the whole experienced a significant drop in fatal and nonfatal shootings.

Philly’s program replicates a more-established model in Chicago, which reduced violent crime around selected schools by 14%, according to a study of 15 years of data across 140 schools. That study did not look specifically at fights as a metric. The Safe Passage program in Pittsburgh that began in 2021 achieved similar results.

Safe Path monitors can pick up on patterns of bullying, or hear about conflicts between students, and report those to school administrators so they can take preventive action, Bonner said.

And in rare cases, they can respond to serious threats.

When an adult showed up with a gun during a dismissal hour fight near Overbrook High School this May, Safe Path monitors kept students away while officers confronted the gunman, Bonner said.

And last June, when a group of students from one high school said they were taking guns over to a middle school, Safe Path monitors overheard and told Bonner. She contacted the police and warned the middle school principal.

“We’re the eyes and ears outside,” Bonner said. “So to not have that layer in place, it can have some very negative consequences.”

A contract change for Safe Path worries observers

The school district confirmed it is no longer partnering with IDAAY, and said the delay in restarting the program was due to changes in its “procurement process.” The district paid IDAAY about $2.1 million for Safe Path services last year, the group said.

The district declined to provide more details about the months-long lag at many schools, but said the program “is currently ramping back up to full capacity.”

Bonner said she’s more frustrated about the district’s lack of communication at the start of the school year than she is about its choice to use another vendor: “I don’t like how quiet it is.”

Jones, of Frontline Dads, echoed Bonner’s concerns.

“It speaks to the lack of 100% commitment to preserving the safety of those students,” he said. “If that were the goal, you’d make sure those things were in place before school started.”

Saleem Gilliard in the blue vest worn by Safe Path monitors in North Philadelphia on Nov. 20, 2025.

And by next summer, there could be more changes to Safe Path because a grant the Penn Injury Science Center used to support the program is ending.

Hohl, of the center, said staff there will continue to look for funding.

“Students want to feel like they can go home and get there safely,” Hohl said. “Most of those kids aren’t looking for trouble. And when trouble happens, they want to know where the adult will be.”

Bonner said in addition to keeping schools and surrounding communities calm, the Safe Path program also improved economic stability in neighborhoods by hiring residents. Safe Path is also designed to provide assurance to businesses around a school.

Once the kids have left the Tanner Duckrey school, Gilliard patrols the neighborhood and touches base with electronics stores, Chinese take-out restaurants, bookshops, and other businesses. If everything has been peaceful, they give him a thumbs-up.

If there was any ruckus involving Duckrey kids, Gilliard reports it to the school.

And the next day, he has a talk with the kids, the same way a parent would, said Gilliard, who is a great-grandfather himself.

“Not a bad parent, a parent that’s concerned about their welfare and their well being. I don’t get hostile or nothing,” Gilliard said. “At the end of the day, you just try to give them another direction.”

This story was also produced in collaboration with Kensington Voice.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

These teachers survived school shootings. Now they’re offering support to others.

2025-11-12T12:00:00+00:00

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Gathered in a circle in a Philadelphia hotel conference room, 11 teachers brought out a “grounding” item — something that calms them when they feel frightened or sad.

Robin Walker brought a hand-sewn tissue pouch that another Sandy Hook Elementary School teacher made for her and their colleagues after they all survived a mass shooting there in 2012.

Amy Taylor, also a former Sandy Hook teacher, brought a rock a student had painted for her.

Ivy Schamis, who taught in a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School classroom that was ambushed by a gunman in 2018, brought a picture of the desk in the school office where she works now. It’s protected by bulletproof glass and by her service dog, Waffles.

These are three of the nine teachers who’ve survived school shootings and are now using those experiences to support other educators. A national crisis intervention team they launched this week plans to visit campuses after mass shootings and provide one-on-one phone and email support to teachers in need.

“They don’t have to be alone with those thoughts or those fears in the aftermath of gun violence,” said Kiki Leyba, who ushered his students to safety during the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, at the team’s training on Saturday. “There are others out there who they can connect with.”

The crisis team is a project of a larger gun violence advocacy organization called Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence.

Kiki Leyba, left, and Amy Taylor pose for a portrait during a meeting for teachers who have survived school shootings on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025 at the Homewood Suites hotel in Philadelphia.

School shootings often physically injure dozens, and leave many more grappling with the events of that day. Yet the needs of educators can go overlooked by school administrations, members of the group said, and teachers often don’t know where to seek help.

Close to 400,000 students have been exposed to gun violence during school hours, according to a data analysis from The Washington Post. There is no similar count for teachers who have witnessed or been injured by a school shooting.

Leyba said he went right back to the classroom after the tragedy.

“I was not equipped to deal with the trauma,” he said. “I was just really blindsided.”

But after years of working on his own healing and speaking with fellow survivors, he feels he is ready to support others.

The inaugural cohort of teachers has been meeting with a trauma-focused psychologist and another clinician since June to learn how to offer peer support, and handle their own feelings and responses that may arise while helping others. They also received training on a five-step approach to group facilitation around difficult topics.

Educators who call the crisis line can sign up for conversations with members of the new intervention team as well as sessions with mental health professionals.

Teachers’ needs often fall by the wayside after these incidents, said Abbey Clements, cofounder of Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence and a Sandy Hook survivor.

“Often teachers don’t feel like they have what they need,” she said. “Not enough days given for grieving, not enough support to come in and help you in the classroom … You can’t concentrate. You’re not sleeping, you’re not eating. So all these things are very common.”

Following a shooting, administrators are primarily focused on student well-being, the logistics of how to get kids back to class, and incoming lawsuits from victims’ families, said Jaclyn Schildkraut, who studies mass shootings at the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the State University of New York.

“With all of the balls that are being juggled in the aftermath, supporting teachers might be one of the lowest things on that priority list,” she said.

Peer support can help fill that gap.

“It’s the people that you don’t have to explain ‘this is why I feel the way I do’ … they just get it,” she said. “And so sometimes you can just sit there with these folks and not have to say a word, and still feel more supported than going to therapy.”

Teachers who have survived school shootings meet on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025 at the Homewood Suites hotel in Philadelphia.

Schildkraut isn’t aware of any other existing support networks specifically for teachers after school shootings, though there is one in place for principals.

Members of the crisis team hope to work with school administrators to help them better support teachers after these kinds of tragedies. They also hope to train more teachers in the future, pending funding. The group says they’re open to helping teachers at schools where neighborhood gun violence is common, as well as those who experience shootings inside the building.

Clements said teachers especially need help with how to answer questions from students who’ve lost their classmates.

“What do you say when they say the things that they say?” she said. “Why did this happen? … Why is there a desk removed? Why aren’t we stopping at somebody’s bus stop on a bus route?”

Amy Taylor, who protected her second grade class during the Sandy Hook shooting, said going back to teach was a difficult decision.

“It was messy. I did not want to teach anymore,” she said. “I had a really hard time for a few years. It took me a while to love my job again.”

She relied on exercise and meditation to get through the anxiety and fear she felt. Now she wants to counsel others on self-care strategies.

“If it doesn’t work for you, that’s OK, but we’ll find something,” she said.

She is looking forward to the opportunity “just to listen and be there.”

Correction: Nov. 11, 2025: A previous version of this story misspelled the first name of Abbey Clements.

Any teacher or school, public or private, can reach a member of the crisis intervention team by calling 203-296-3689 or emailing response@teachersunify.org.

The National Center for School Mental Health has also created a resource list for teachers, students, and parents impacted by violence.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia kids are still dying from gun violence. I’m still hunting for solutions.

2025-11-06T20:49:50+00:00

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There were 873 pieces of paper in the box.

Eight hundred seventy-three death records for 873 children who had died in Sacramento County, California, between 2010 and 2015.

I spent several weeks reading every paper in that box during the summer of 2016.

I entered each name and cause of death into a spreadsheet. I was 23 years old and working on my first front page story at my first real newsroom job.

Black children made up a quarter of the box’s records, even though Black kids represented just 11% of the county’s under-18 population at the time.

Roughly a fifth of those children died in their sleep, and more than a third right before or after birth, according to our newsroom’s analysis. A little under 10% died by homicide, most of them shootings.

I spent a lot of that summer telling the stories of those children. I spoke to their parents, mostly mothers, and the church ladies and basketball coaches and neighbors who were trying to make sure no more children ended up in a coffin.

But I focused more on the sleep-related and perinatal deaths than I did on the fatal shootings. Maybe because the kids who were shot were a smaller part of the pool. Maybe because I was a health reporter, not a crime reporter. Or maybe because I found it too overwhelming to think about why children in my city were so often in the line of gunfire.

Sammy Caiola interviews a teen "play captain" in Kensington in August 2022. These teens are hired to help supervise children during summer activities.

Still, questions about that box stayed with me for the next 10 years, across multiple jobs in multiple cities. Why these children? Why these neighborhoods? Why does it keep happening?

Those pieces of paper came to mind every time I covered a teen football player shot in broad daylight, an exchange of gunfire at a recreation center, or a child gunned down while riding his bike. The grief of the parents I talked to back in 2016 echoed in the interviews I conducted while covering gun violence prevention at WHYY in Philly, and in my ongoing coverage of young, unarmed Black men killed by police.

Nearly 10 years after opening that box, I’m starting my second full-time job as a gun violence reporter. It’s a position that remains heartbreakingly relevant in Philadelphia and other cities as the economic, racial, and health disparities driving the firearms crisis in America remain largely uncovered and unaddressed.

My goal is to remind people of something we lose track of in the deluge of numbers and newsclips about gun violence: that it’s a problem with a solution.

Lots of solutions, actually. Shootings are down dramatically since the height of Philadelphia’s gun homicide crisis in 2021.

That might be because of some things I witnessed when I started covering gun violence in 2022. An influx of city funding to grassroots nonprofits that provide safe spaces for kids after school. A group of teens learning to resolve conflict among their peers. A team of neighbors building a community garden after a 3-year-old was shot and killed while getting her hair braided on the block.

People are coming together to keep their children safe.

Still, 14% of fatal and nonfatal shooting victims in the past year were under 18, according to data from Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office. That percentage has remained fairly consistent since 2021, even as the number of overall shooting victims declines.

Kids are not supposed to get shot.

Kids are supposed to be able to walk to the library, or the rec center, or their school without being afraid for their lives. Kids are supposed to be able to learn, and dream, and plan for the future without passing through metal detectors or practicing active shooter drills.

So that’s why I’m staying on this beat, and looking specifically at our city’s youngest residents in a space where they spend a great deal of their lives — school.

What are schools doing to keep kids safe on their way to and from campus? How are school administrators keeping weapons out of school buildings? What are the tools and processes for identifying risks, and are they working?

Beyond that, how are schools helping students’ families address trauma, poverty, and other factors that lead to violent behavior and victimization outside the home?

And as firearm homicides decline in Philadelphia, how can children heal from the losses that have rippled through their communities over the last five years?

Reporter Sammy Caiola.

These are questions I hope to spend the next year exploring at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. I want to do it as I always have — by listening to the people directly affected by the gun violence crisis, including the children who grapple with it before, during, and after the school day.

I want to envision a Philadelphia where children never become part of the city’s death count.

Schools play a role in keeping kids safe, and so does each and everyone one of us. Stay part of the conversation, and learn what solutions are underway where you live.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.