Chalkbeat

Free school supplies, backpacks, and activities: 2026 back-to-school events in Philadelphia

2026-08-04T19:06:26+00:00

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The Philadelphia School District’s first day of school is rapidly approaching. Students return Monday, Aug. 24, and teachers will be back for professional development between Aug. 17 and 21.

This academic year, school communities will be battling the heat, dealing with a transition year before some school closures, and continuing to think about ways to keep young people safe and engaged in their learning.

If you’re looking for free school supplies, backpacks, health screenings, and community block parties, here’s where to go in Philly this summer.

Know of other events that aren’t on our list? Email us at philadelphia.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Ongoing

The School District of Philadelphia’s back-to-school bus tour offers free backpacks, snacks, activities, school registration help, and more. All events are from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

On Friday, Aug. 7, the bus will be at Penrose School, 2515 S. 78th St.

On Tuesday, Aug. 11, the bus will be at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium, also known as Gratz Supersite, 1627 W. Hunting Park Ave.

On Thursday, Aug. 13 the bus will be at MLK High School, 6100 Stenton Ave.

On Saturday, Aug. 15, the bus will be at Roosevelt Mall, 2329 Cottman Ave.

Saturday, Aug. 8

Episcopal Community Services and the St. Barnabas Community Resource Center’s Gear Up for School event with free school supplies and activities

Where: 6006 W. Girard Ave

When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Entrepreneurs of the Future and Men of Courage Philadelphia’s back-to-school drive

Where: 4821 Germantown Ave.

When: Noon to 3 p.m.

Wednesday, Aug. 12

Congreso block party featuring a backpack giveaway and petting zoo

Where: 2800 N. American St.

When: Noon to 3 p.m.

Thursday, Aug. 13

Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent Hughes’ office is hosting a backpack giveaway and barbecue

Where: 2401 N. 54th Street

When: 3 to 6 p.m.

Friday, Aug. 14

The Salvation Army Kroc Center’s Back-to-School Backpack Event with free school supplies, carnival games, and a live DJ

Where: 4200 Wissahickon Ave.

When: 4 to 7 p.m.

Saturday, Aug. 15

The Southeast Asian Market’s annual school supply giveaway

Where: FDR Park, 1500 Pattison Ave. and South Broad Street

When: 10 a.m.

United Missionary Baptist Church’s “Back 2 School” giveaway

Where: Athletic Recreation Center, 1400 N. 26th St.

When: 1 to 4 p.m.

House of Faith Ministries PA’s back-to-school giveaway

Where: 6624 Haverford Ave.

When: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

House Of Glory Philadelphia’s annual community block party in Germantown with free produce, school supplies, and community resources

Where: 5245 Germantown Ave.

When: Noon to 3 p.m.

New World Leaders’ back-to-school event

Where: 5700 Haverford Ave.

When: 2 to 5 p.m.

Bright Little Scholars’ Back-to-School Giveaway

Where: 4500-02 Westminster Ave.

When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

It Takes A Village Foundation’s Back-to-School Community Day with a backpack giveaway and health screenings for kids and adults

Where: 126 Leverington Ave.

When: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Sunday, Aug. 16

Maison Mane Hair Company’s school supply giveaway and block party

Where: 1633 W. Oxford St.

When: 3 to 6 p.m.

Wednesday, Aug. 19

ACHIEVEability’s backpack drive with 1,000 backpacks filled with essential school supplies

Where: 5901 Market St.

When: 4 to 6 p.m.

Friday, Aug. 21

Cecil B. Moore Library’s back-to-school bookbag drive featuring family activities, snacks, music, and a school supply and backpack giveaway for the first 100 attendees

Where: 2320 Cecil B. Moore Ave., at 23rd Street

When: Noon

Mansion Youth Coalition Inc.’s giveaway featuring North Philly Allstars Majorette Team

Where: James G. Blaine Elementary School, 3001 W. Berks St.

When: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Sunday, Aug. 23

Back to School Cuts and Curls event featuring free haircuts, light braiding, school supply giveaways, and more

Where: Canaan Baptist Church, 5430 Pulaski Ave.

When: Noon to 3 p.m.

The Greater Philadelphia YMCA and Barbers Who Care are offering free back-to-school haircuts, school supplies, and health screening.

Where: West Philadelphia YMCA, 5120 Chestnut St.

When: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 5

Elegance Xtreme and other organizations’ back-to-school supply giveaway and community fun day

Where: Carroll Park, 58th and 59th streets and Girard Avenue and Thompson Street

When: Noon to 8 p.m.

Where to donate school supplies

The Young Chances Foundation in Grays Ferry is accepting donations of backpacks, notebooks, pencils, pen, crayons, glue, and other supplies from now until August 30th.

Cradles to Crayons Philadelphia is accepting donations. Find a local drop-off point here.

It Takes A Village Foundation is collecting supplies for a Classroom Support Box Program to provide classroom materials and educational resources to teachers. Reach out to info@itavf.org for more information, or call 215-512-6465.

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

Half of Philadelphia’s high school graduates opt out of college. Can pre-apprenticeships help them find jobs?

2026-06-25T19:04:29+00:00

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In a rehabbed shipping container in West Philadelphia, Nakiah Walker leaned over her friend’s Chromebook to take a peek at logo ideas.

Walker, 20, was among a group of high school students and recent graduates trying to apply the tips and tricks they’d learned during a semester-long digital marketing program.

She joined the program because she was interested in learning more about marketing. But more than anything, she said she’s glad to have the opportunity to explore different career options.

“They don’t really offer that in school,” said Walker. “In school, they just tell you to get your work done, graduate, then go to college. They don’t really tell you there are other things to pursue, and you can have a career doing things that you actually want.”

The program, launched in 2023 by the Philadelphia nonprofit We Love Philly, is part of a recent statewide effort to expand what’s known as pre-apprenticeships, which provide job training to high school students and recent graduates in a variety of fields. Pre-apprenticeships must be connected to apprenticeships, which are often connected with employers. The idea is that that pipeline can help ensure programs actually connect young people to jobs. But there isn’t comprehensive data yet to show whether that’s working.

Last year in Pennsylvania, there were nearly 150 pre-apprenticeship programs with around 3,200 active participants, according to state data. That’s three times the number of participants compared with two years prior, and a large portion are concentrated in the Philadelphia area. Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed doubling the state’s investment in pre-apprenticeships and other career training programs for students to $7 million next fiscal year.

The investment comes as the number of students in Philly and statewide who opt out of going to college directly after high school has grown. In Philadelphia, around half of high school graduates in the Class of 2025 did not matriculate, according to district data. The rate was slightly higher for Black students like Walker. State officials are backing pre-apprenticeships as a way to help fill high-demand jobs and connect students to career pathways that don’t require a college degree. Still, those pathways remain rare, and college is still the surest bet for expanding economic opportunity. Experts and educators say students need more support for pre-apprenticeships to ultimately lead to real jobs.

“We talk a big game about, ‘You don’t have to go to college,’” said Taylor White, director of the Postsecondary Pathways for Youth program at New America, a think tank. “But there are very, very few other ways, and they’re really inaccessible and hard to find.”

Several other states have worked to expand apprenticeship opportunities for young people in recent years. And studies of some programs show they can help connect youth to careers, especially if students also take coursework in the same area. But the field is still fairly new in most states, said White.

Pennsylvania doesn’t publish any data on pre-apprenticeship participants’ outcomes. A spokesperson for the Department of Labor and Industry said in an email that the department has only recently begun collecting data on pre-apprenticeships “so the information we have at this stage is still somewhat incomplete and is not yet ready to share with confidence.”

Patricia Blumenauer, deputy secretary for workforce development at the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry, said the pre-apprenticeships goal is broad: connect more young people with industries looking to fill jobs and help them get relevant skills. Even if a student doesn’t continue in their pre-apprenticeship field, she said she still sees it as a win if the experience gives a young person a better sense of what they want to do.

“Really getting that experience and making a decision either way for us feels like a success,” Blumenauer said. That’s partly why the state wants to keep expanding pre-apprenticeship opportunities and get more employers on board to work with young people, she said.

Officials push pre-apprenticeships as a college alternative

When Walker graduated high school in 2024, she felt stumped about what to do next.

She thought about going to college, but didn’t want to pay for it before she knew what she wanted to study. But coming up with another long-term plan for her future felt impossible, she said.

After graduation, she spent a year working a mix of jobs. Then she got a call from someone she considered to be a mentor, telling her about the pre-apprenticeship. She was skeptical at first, and felt that it was risky to leave her job to start the short-term program. But she agreed to check it out.

Soon, Walker was showing up four days a week and earning a stipend of $12 per hour. She built a portfolio and earned a certification from Google in digital marketing. The team at We Love Philly also helped her format a resume and update her LinkedIn profile.

“I was at a point in time when I was stuck, until I got recommended here,” said Walker.

Walker was one of thousands of Philly students in her year who did not go to college the following fall. Of those who matriculated, around one-quarter dropped out after a year.

Research shows going to college remains the surest way for young people to access economic opportunities and move out of poverty.

At the same time, members of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration have repeated that alternatives to college — like military training, apprenticeships, and trade school — are valuable options for Pennsylvania’s young people.

“We need to respect each and every pathway the same,” Shapiro said at a rally earlier this year as part of his reelection campaign.

Blumenauer said many Pennsylvania students are looking for options other than college, even if they understand the relative value of higher education. She hopes pre-apprenticeships will help those students and help fill jobs in the state.

“We are constantly hearing from businesses that they are concerned about the future and where their pipeline of workers going forward is going to come from,” said Blumenauer.

Participants in the cybersecurity pre-apprenticeship program at We Love Philly learn coding skills that could lead to a job after the program.

Still, it’s unclear if the approach is working. Many states, including Pennsylvania, have set their own definitions of what an apprenticeship for young people should look like and standards for what it should accomplish. Data on outcomes of students after they leave the programs is also hard to come by.

The tension between college and careers comes up frequently in Philadelphia. Even groups working on helping students access college say they see lots of value in expanding career-oriented opportunities.

But some worry the push for career-related opportunities has eclipsed support for kids looking to go to college. Farah Jimenez, CEO of the Philadelphia Education Fund, which works with Philly high schoolers to access college and career training, said it’s useful to expose young people to different careers. But she worries the emphasis on career-related paths perpetuates the belief that college is expensive, likely to result in debt, and out of reach for many.

The question kids hear all the time now, she said, is: “Why would you go to college?”

Pre-apprenticeships provide job training, but no job guarantee

After Walker finished her pre-apprenticeship in digital marketing, she said she was hopeful and excited about what might come next for her professionally. She felt her resume, experience, and credentials would help her get noticed by employers, and she’s been able to find work since the program ended.

But that work isn’t in digital marketing. These days, she’s working at a hospital and considering applying for college in a year or two. She still isn’t sure if she wants to go into marketing, but in her free time, she enjoys using some of the skills she learned to help friends design websites and is preparing to launch her own jewelry business.

“It’s not just like we’re learning a skill — it’s also like we’re learning other things that goes into being an adult, being a good worker and just having and maintaining a career,” she said.

Josiah Miller, another recent pre-apprentice at We Love Philly, participated in the organization’s cybersecurity training program. He learned about and got into a paid two-year program to train recent graduates for tech-related jobs. He now plans to go into tech, and he attributes that to his time in the pre-apprenticeship.

His pre-apprenticeship motivated him “to learn new skills, put myself out there more,” Miller said.

At We Love Philly, directing students to jobs isn’t the only goal. The organization dedicates a portion of each day to social-emotional learning to help students build trust and prepare for the professional world.

“We have to create an environment where they want to be and are comfortable enough to take risks without feeling embarrassed or angry because, you know, they messed up or didn’t do something right,” said Cory Zoblin, who runs the cybersecurity pre-apprenticeship.

As with schools, workforce training programs can’t provide all the answers, Zoblin said. “But they can make learning and curiosity more integral, so that kids want to keep going.”

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.

Teenagers took over Philadelphia city government for a day. Here’s how it went.

2026-06-18T16:14:06+00:00

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Kailey Reinboth has won and lost many elections. In fact, her political resume is stacked — and she hasn’t even gone to college yet.

Through the Greater Philadelphia YMCA’s Youth and Government program, she served as a two-time committee chair in a student version of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, as well as chief of staff to a teenage governor. And she recently added still more to her budding government resume.

Reinboth and nearly 100 of her fellow high school students and recent graduates spent a hot summer Wednesday in the historic chambers of City Hall to participate in the Philadelphia City Government Youth Summit. The program is a full-day “civic immersion experience” hosted by the YMCA in partnership with the Mayor’s office and City Council.

Mayor-for-the-day Jada Fagan delivered an impassioned speech before her peers began to debate the legislation on their desks.

The students elected their own mayor — Cristo Rey High School graduate Jada Fagan — and assumed roles in the mayor’s cabinet, the City Council, press corps, and community advocacy groups. Their tasks were to debate, negotiate, amend, and vote on proposed legislation.

The program is a response to findings from experts like those at Tufts University that young people, especially youth of color, don’t feel qualified enough to participate in politics. It aims to build students’ civic awareness and foster skills like public speaking and critical thinking. Although Pennsylvania students are required to pass a civics test in order to graduate high school, the state has never required school districts to offer a civics course.

This was the first year the summit came to Philly. In previous years, Reinboth and other high schoolers have experimented with governing at the state level in Harrisburg.

Throughout the day, Lindsay Doyle Director of Youth Civic Engagement at the YMCA urged students to remember respect and decorum. “We are debating the ideas, not the people,” she said.

In their council session Wednesday, the students debated legislation they’d drafted about the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Reinboth, who will start her freshman year at Gettysburg College this fall, said her biggest takeaway from the experience was being able to communicate and talk to her peers in a respectful manner even when they disagree.

“Being able to have not just a conversation, but a civil, productive conversation, so that you can both benefit, is one of the biggest and most important things I’ve learned from this,” she said.

The Philly-area students received advice from real-life Mayor Cherelle Parker, and adult City Council President Kenyatta Johnson.

Fagan, the mayor for the day, said the summit taught her that writing sound policy and passing legislation is not a one-person job.

“No one person could get blamed for the decisions being made. It’s a full team,” she said.

This was the first year the Philadelphia City Government Youth Summit took over City Hall. In previous years students have experimented with governing at the state level in Harrisburg.

Nyjera Choice, 15, a ninth grader at the Philadelphia High School for Girls and a member of the youth government press corps, also came away from the summit with a more empathetic view of her elected officials.

Having to write the legislation, consider amendments, and weigh everyone’s different interests “gives you a broader perspective of what they have to handle,” Choice said.

In their session Wednesday, the students debated legislation they’d drafted about the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Students had to consider public transit, stadium projects, policing, trash pickup, cultural beautification efforts — and budget constraints. The result was a proposed $72 million bill that would fund various priorities.

In a lively City Council session, they expressed concerns about SEPTA’s “fiscal nightmare” and debated how to keep the beleaguered transit agency solvent while allowing for city residents and tourists to easily and affordably move around. They found errors in the legislation and asked for clearer definitions of abstract concepts.

Student Ja'kiyah Wright acted as City Council President. She said even though her legislation failed to pass, “it just showcased how determined we are and how engaged we are."

Ja’kiyah Wright, a rising senior at Universal Audenried Charter School and Youth City Council President, presided over the session. She wielded her gavel to keep councilmembers within their time restrictions and worked to ensure everyone was heard.

Ultimately, the council rejected the bill. Members agreed it needed more work in committee — and a spelling and grammar check.

Wright said even though the legislation, which she sponsored, was rejected, “It just showcased how determined we are and how engaged we are, because we can have these conversations and understand the problems with the legislation.”

Wright said she would love to be a part of Philadelphia’s local government in the future.

Actual Council President Kenyatta Johnson gave the students a passing grade on Wednesday. He said seeing them in action made him feel like the city’s future will be in great hands.

As for failing to pass their bill, Johnson said: “That’s the democratic process.”

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.

No more diapers or sweeping punishments: How Philly parents helped guarantee student bathroom breaks

2026-03-27T17:23:20+00:00

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On an unseasonably hot March day outside of Bluford Elementary School, Philadelphia mom Cat LaTorre hustled from car to car handing out flyers.

The bold purple lettering spelled out the school district’s new wellness policy guaranteeing kids daily recess, regular bathroom breaks, and more. But to LaTorre, they represented something on top of that: victory.

“These are the things we won for you, mama,” she said to a parent and her daughter driving off at dismissal time. “We’re trying to do bigger and better things for you.”

LaTorre is one of dozens of parent volunteers with the grassroots advocacy group Lift Every Voice Philly. They’d spent the better part of two years confronting district officials and city leaders with stories of students wearing diapers to school because of insufficient bathroom breaks. They sent letters and testified in meetings about entire classrooms of students being punished for a single kid’s bad behavior. They showed up to Philadelphia City Council meetings demanding joy for their children, and said they didn’t think that was too much to ask.

Cat LaTorre, a member of Lift Every Voice Philly, shares a flyer about the district's new wellness policy with a parent at Bluford Elementary School.

Lift Every Voice’s work shows how hard it can be for parents in the city to affect change, but also how it can be done. It took a lot of advocacy, false dawns, and more than one tearful school board meeting to do what at one point felt impossible to the group. These parents, most of whom had little formal history or background in activism, ultimately had a major influence on policy in the big bureaucratic system that is the Philly school district.

And other parents are starting to take notice. The district’s proposal to close 18 schools has spurred hundreds of Philly families who’ve never considered themselves education activists to look for an advocacy playbook that gets results.

Following a Board of Education vote last month, it’s now official district policy that all students will get daily recess, regular movement breaks to stretch, as well as access to water and bathrooms that can’t be restricted as punishment. In addition, teachers can no longer collectively punish groups of students for the actions of a few, and students can’t be forced to have “silent lunches” where speaking is prohibited.

“We navigated something that is so significant, that is life-changing for our kids and for our families,” LaTi Spence, a member of Lift Every Voice, told Chalkbeat.

Councilmember praises Lift Every Voice’s ‘community power’

Just days after the school board’s vote, in a blur of metallic purple pom-poms, members of Lift Every Voice celebrated the landmark policy change at the district’s headquarters. Superintendent Tony Watlington and other local dignitaries stood arm-in-arm with the LEV parents.

“‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will,’” Watlington said, quoting the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. “I wish we had done this much sooner. But I’m pleased that we’re doing it today.”

Of course, “power” over Philly public schools resides with district leaders like Watlington and the school board.

Superintendent Tony Watlington celebrated the Philadelphia school board's vote to approve the wellness policy at the school district headquarters in March.

The board’s Feb. 27 vote to adopt the policy was perfunctory and took place without debate. But for months before that, it appeared and then disappeared from school board meeting agendas.

The Lift Every Voice parents discovered there was always another survey to fill out, another person they should meet with, or another time for public comment.

The process was exhausting and at times, demoralizing, they said. But it wasn’t unfamiliar.

The wellness policy was not Lift Every Voice’s first demand from those in power in Philly schools.

The group began in 2022 as a grassroots gathering of Black parents who said they felt ignored and shut out of important conversations about public education in the city. Lift Every Voice’s 2023 campaign to expose the school nurse staffing shortage forced a public reckoning and gave the advocates their first taste of success.

Since then, moms and grandmas in their signature purple shirts have canvassed neighborhoods, visited with members of the City Council, and roamed City Hall.

Carrera Wilson, center, said Lift Every Voice Philly helped her build confidence and get more involved in her children's education.

“They testify, they build power,” Councilmember Kendra Brooks said at the celebration of the board’s wellness policy vote. “That’s what community power looks like.”

And their success comes as community organizing around public education is seeing a resurgence in the wake of the district’s closure proposals.

At several community engagement meetings and rallies across the city protesting the closures, many parents and public school advocates have accused the bureaucracy of Philadelphia schools of creating a wall between families and the district.

But it’s not insurmountable, parents said.

“We don’t win all the battles. But this one’s really significant,” Spence said. “I think it’s giving people and parents hope to know that, especially with the news around the school closures, that there’s a piece of joy that we did get and we can hold on to.”

Cat LaTorre spread the word about the new wellness policy by talking to parents at dismissal at Bluford Elementary School.

Changing policy in Philly public schools isn’t easy

Lift Every Voice Executive Director Shanée Garner said changing how the district works can be messy because “our systems are not built to respond to people.” She said the school district has been historically underfunded and has cycled through different leaders, board members, and various amounts of state oversight.

The core of LEV’s work has been about fostering relationships, Garner said. “If we want to build a future where everyone is looking out for each other,” she said, it requires elected officials, school leaders, and parents to take the time to get to know each other.

Julie Krug, another parent in LEV, said she thinks the group was able to move hearts and minds by choosing policy priorities drawn from stories rooted in their personal experiences with their kids and their schools. “What I’ve learned is how powerful that really is,” she said. “It’s irrefutable.”

Members of Lift Every Voice say their advocacy work's goal is to create better school environments and more joy for Philly students.

Building sustained parent power also requires educating families about the levers of control and the city’s political hierarchies, and how to navigate them.

At meetings, volunteers run through scenarios about issues like bullying, vaping, and advocating for resources for students with disabilities. They discuss how to find the right person to reach out to whether that’s a teacher, counselor, assistant superintendent, or administrator. They practice writing an email or note that will best convey their concerns.

The goal is to demystify the system and arm parents with the knowledge and skills to advocate for what their children are owed.

Carrera Wilson, another founding Lift Every Voice member and mother of five, said prior to joining the group, she was an activist in her heart and in her mind, “but actually making moves, making changes, connecting with people that actually can do things? That have some pull? No.” she said.

Wilson said LEV helped her build her confidence, learn how to organize, speak in public, and grow her skills as a community leader.

“We had to fight. It took a lot to get here,” Wilson said. “I just was a parent that cared and didn’t like what was going on in my kids’ school. And now I can actually go home and tell my kids, look on the news, Mommy did this. We won this.”

Lift Every Voice's members say they want their numbers to grow. They're also working with the district to ensure Philadelphia schools have the resources to implement the new wellness policy.

In many ways, LEV’s work is just beginning. The group is now working with the district to help develop a plan to ensure the wellness policy is followed, and that schools have the resources they need to follow it.

The parents’ goal is “bigger numbers, more power, more success,” said Wilson. They want parents to start expecting better of their schools and holding their district accountable.

Wilson said there was a time where she and the other parents felt like “we can’t do anything, we can’t bust through that wall.” But Wilson said that to be standing outside Bluford with a list of guarantees they fought for made what she and others in Lift Every Voice did all worth it.

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

Philadelphia has universal free school meals, but many students who could benefit still don’t participate

2026-02-25T17:40:19+00:00

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The research is clear: Universal free school meal programs help more families access food. They also may be beneficial for student learning and health outcomes.

But many Philly students who could benefit from the meals still opt out, according to a new Temple University study.

Universal meal programs, funded by millions in federal and state dollars, are meant to ensure that every student can access food during the school day, regardless of their families’ incomes. But the findings show the programs don’t completely eliminate barriers to food access in schools.

Even some students who have grown up with universal meal access still say free meals are perceived as worse quality than an alternative they could buy.

That kind of stigma, along with staffing pressures, the perception of low-quality food, and school kitchen limitations, drive students away from participating in school meal programs, according to the study’s analysis of interviews with nearly 200 students, staff, and parents connected with eight Philadelphia schools.

By analyzing meal participation and helping schools usher in some changes, the team found that small tweaks to school meal programs could encourage participation, said lead researcher Gabriella Maria McLoughlin, assistant professor at Temple’s College of Public Health.

Now her team is helping to implement some of those changes at four district schools through a pilot program. That could be key for the district, where more families have reported going hungry in recent years, according to a recent district report.

Stigma and few choices drive students away from school meals

McLoughlin said several students told her team they didn’t participate in free school meals because they didn’t like the options. Some said the food didn’t represent their cultural backgrounds or what they would eat at home, and that it wasn’t tasty.

Schools are limited in what they can serve due to federal regulations, which require federally-funded food served in schools to meet specific nutrition requirements. That means students must be served beans and whole grains — a hard sell for kids who often prefer candy and Takis, McLoughlin said.

But a small change of helping schools add herb and spice racks in their cafeterias can help address that problem.

“We constantly hear from students, ‘It’s not salty enough, it’s not palatable,’” said McLoughlin. “As a way to compromise, how can we still meet the [federal] guidelines while also giving students a bit more flavor, a bit more spice, more seasoning, and just a chance to have control over what they eat?”

School staff also deal with the problem of trying to operate school meal programs with limited resources. Many district schools don’t have on-site kitchens or robust cafeterias. That makes it difficult to make pre-packaged meals look enticing for students. Some staff also said managing meal times is difficult, with limited time and space for students to eat.

At a few schools, McLoughlin and her team have designed menus that schools share with families ahead of time so they can know what will be served and whether their kid may want a different option. At one school, teachers also serve as “meal ambassadors,” eating with students to get feedback and promote the meals.

Ultimately, McLoughlin said the research shows there are ways to improve participation in school meal programs. But the answer is often school-specific, and requires giving schools resources and support to come up with their own creative solutions.

“One of the biggest takeaways we want to share with the world is that schools should have more autonomy in how they operate, and how they operate their own school meals,” said McLoughlin. “And we can do this in a way that also meets regulations federally.”

‘We can be anyone we want’: Meet the team making a new name for Philly high school basketball

2026-02-20T21:47:57+00:00

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This story originally appeared in Kensington Voice.

The Kensington Tigers play “trench.”

Scrappy, some trash talking, putting their all on the line. That’s how starting point guard Rob Smith describes their style.

“We want to make sure we don’t go out like some punks,” Smith said.

And this season, they didn’t. The Tigers went undefeated for six weeks from the jump — winning 13 games in a row. It’s the best the team has performed in a regular season since at least 2005, according to a database that tracks Philadelphia high school team stats, marked by wins against tough opponents like Olney Charter High School — which went on to win the division — Thomas A. Edison High School, and East High School of West Chester Area School District. They built a new reputation for Kensington basketball and, in the meantime, boosted school morale.

The Tigers are made up of four Kensington public high schools — Kensington High School, Kensington Creative and Performing Arts High School, Kensington Health and Sciences Academy, or KHSA, and the U School. Most of the players live within walking distance from KHSA.

Heading into the season, they might’ve been a recipe for low expectations. Some players had been overlooked by other high schools, about half of the starting lineup is considered undersized for the sport, and they represent Kensington, a neighborhood that comes with a reputation. But that served as motivation, and they turned low expectations into fuel.

Kensington High School's Reid Smith, center, in action during a game against Northeast High School.

“We looked at ourselves as the underdogs,” said co-captain Alejandro Paulino. “Nobody ever heard of Kensington for basketball. We came in here to change that ... We came in with the mindset that we can be anyone we want. We just gotta put the work in.”

They expect the best from each other. When one player is down, another is by their side helping them shake it off. At their best, they move well for each other. They spread the ball around. They strive to create a well-rounded system.

“It’s not one person above the team,” said Ryan Smith, father of twins Rob and Reid Smith. “Everybody plays for each other, plays hard for each other.”

Kensington Tigers have a coach with high standards

The team made a name this year with new coach Ethan Feuer at the helm. Feuer, who’s also a beloved ninth-grade English teacher at Kensington Health Sciences Academy, started coaching the Tigers’ JV team in 2023. Now he’s the varsity coach, and brought most of the starting players up with him. The core of the team (Paulino, Reid and Rob Smith, and Frankie Ramirez) have also been playing with each other on club teams since middle school, at least. There’s team synergy.

Feuer began his coaching career at Benjamin Franklin High School under mentor Ron Sizer. He credits the Tigers’ success to its culture — partly his tight relationships with the players.

“There’s a love that we share that is really important when it comes to winning games,” Feuer said. “When you’re facing adversity, you rely on the relationships that you’ve built.”

The team also has an unyielding work ethic. “I’ve never seen such strong commitment from a team to improve as individuals and as a unit,” Feuer said. Every varsity player shows up consistently on time for practice. In previous seasons, attendance would have dwindled.

In addition to preparing plays, conditioning, and practicing skills, the team watches recordings of competitors’ games before they face them. “Know thy enemy,” Feuer said.

Feuer maintains high standards on and off the court. Each player signs a contract agreeing to maintain grades of C or above in every class. If he spots a C, he’ll check in on them. If the explanation is just that they’ve been slacking, they sit out, he said. If there’s a challenge they need support with, he’s there. He’ll help them through whatever assignment they’re missing and connect with teachers, if needed.

Ethan Feuer, head coach of Kensington High School boys basketball, speaks with the team.

On a weekday in late January, towards the end of the season, the team had practice after their second unexpected loss — a one-possession game. In the Kensington Creative and Performing Arts High School, or KCAPA, gymnasium, the team sat in folding chairs and focused on a screen. They were rewatching the second half of the game to learn from mistakes.

Feuer stood at the front, gesturing enthusiastically or pointing to open players. He noted low energy, drooping heads, missed free throws. They were off their game. Players asked for rewinds.

“The only thing in life that’s free gentleman, that’s free throws. Nothing standing in our way,” he said. They had missed 23 free throws in the last two games, according to Feuer, and lost by a collective 20 points. Those games were in their grasp.

They needed more confidence, to stay calm when the odds were stacked against them, Feuer said. “There can’t be any excuses.”

Players respect the agreement to prioritize school over basketball. It lends to a more serious team culture. But most of all, they appreciate how Feuer treats them. Exceeding competitors’ expectations is great, though for them, it’s more important to live up to Feuer’s and each other’s.

He’s “like my school father,” Reid Smith said. For Rob, Feuer keeps him intact. “That’s one guy I can go and talk to when I’m mad,” Rob said. ”He’ll tell me what’s right and what’s wrong, because I’m still learning. I just take heed of what he’s saying.”

Paulino considers Feuer handing him the captain title as a sign of trust. “When I let him down, I feel like I let myself down.”

Ethan Feuer, head coach of Kensington High School boys basketball, speaks with the team at half time of a game. Feuer stresses academics and accountability with his players.

‘A strong brotherhood’ drives team’s success

The players describe their teammates as brothers. Their friendships work in the game and in the hallways. They hang out after school and help each other with homework. They remind each other to show up on time to practice. Their camaraderie translates to the court.

“We built a strong brotherhood slash team, and that’s what led us to win 13 games in a row,” Reid Smith said.

Rob, Paulino, and Feuer gave a rundown of the team: Reid, starting shooting guard, is known as “the sniper” because he “can knock it down anytime,” Rob said. He’s like “agent zero,” a guy who handles business and gets out. He’s “going in there with his business bag.”

Reid trusts Rob, also known as “RB3,” with his life. Rob is the team’s top scorer and plays with ferocity and speed. While the twins aren’t exactly telepathic, they know what the other is going to do before they do it. If one is on a fast break, the other is trailing.

Kensington High School's Alejandro Paulino dribbles down the court during a game.

Then there’s Paulino, a starting combo forward and a high-impact player who does everything on the court with hustle. He’s an influence. He wears responsibility for more than just himself. Fellow co-captain and team role model is Nyree Ellis, a forward and well-rounded player. “He can’t be knocked down,” Rob said.

Trenton Blackwell, though he suffered from a hip fracture in the sixth game, has a natural gift — he’s a high-flyer and can dunk off the dribble. Nasir Davis, an honor-roll Kensington High School student, was a “blacktop ball player,” Feuer said. The dream was to “convert him to hardwood ... Now he’s one of our better defenders. He can jump out of the gym.”

Freshman Qayaan Scott is a high-impact player who gets crucial rebounds. Scott was encouraged to attend KHSA and join the Tigers by friend Frankie Ramirez. Ramirez, a first-year at KHSA, was the team’s sixth man. But after Ellis’ injury, he joined the starting lineup. As the only starting freshman, he knocks out three-pointers like it’s his job.

Daryne Ligon, 6 feet, 5 inches tall, brings height, works hard on defense, and collects key rebounds. He’s also a straight-A student, according to Feuer. Dereon Dews, or “Ddews,” plays hard every minute he gets in the game. “He’s the hardest worker on the team,” Feuer said. “He sets the standard.”

Kensington High School's Nyree Ellis, left, tries to control a rebound.

Jesse Wise, starting forward, is strong and agile. He plays with intensity, like the stakes are on his shoulders. Wise transferred to KHSA as a junior just for basketball.

Wise was a walk-on as a freshman at Saints John Neumann and Maria Goretti Catholic High School, a private school with a powerhouse basketball program in South Philadelphia. But by his third year, he was on the bench. When he was on the brink of quitting the sport, dampened by low confidence, he reached for Feuer.

Feuer coached him on a summer team and recognized his raw talent. He couldn’t let Wise quit the game, mostly because of the impact it would have on his quality of life. “He’s a great student, a great kid, and someone who impressed me on the court right away,” Feuer said. “It would be a shame to lose him from the sport.”

He and Ryan Smith, also a KHSA school safety officer, contacted Jesse’s grandmother and caretaker, Judith Williams-Wise, to pitch the idea of Jesse transferring.

It wasn’t an easy decision for Williams-Wise, 77, of South Philly. Neumann and Goretti was like a family tradition. Her oldest son and other family members attended. But sitting on the bench was affecting her grandson’s sense of self.

She saw this as a chance for Wise to be happy, to redeem himself.

“I always tell him, ‘You’re like the last of me. I’m just trying to make sure you’re okay. I want to help you make your dreams.’”

Kensington High School's Jesse Wise shoots during a game against Northeast High School.

Wise joined for the second semester of his junior year and quickly became an integral part of the team. He’s the kind of player who does everything — rebounds, steals, assists.

“You need guys who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. He’s number one on that list,” said coach Dan McDowell. “You can’t win without players like that.”

Since the change, Wise is more confident. “I don’t feel like I have to prove myself all the time,” he said. He also has the top grades of the entire junior class.

At a game in early January, grandmother Williams-Wise was sitting proudly in attendance, as she usually is for home games. Wise ran over for a hug.

Off the court, Wise is soft-spoken, sensitive. He credits his grandmother for everything. “She’s the reason why I’m still around ... she shaped me to be the man I am today,” he said.

Of the team, “Nobody loses their cool when we play,” Wise said. “We’re all just trying to help each other get better.”

Kensington High School boys basketball fans react during a game.

After dealing with a few late-season injuries, the Tigers landed third in their division, with a 15-4 overall record including non-league games.

As the season progressed, teachers and staff were buying team merchandise, Feuer said. More students and school community members attended games. Excitement grew.

In February, they made it to the playoffs. They planned a “blackout” in school — students and staff wore all black in support on game day. About 200 people attended the home game at KCAPA, according to Feuer.

“The whole community rallied around this team,” he said.

They lost in a heartbreaker — by just three points in overtime.

Qayaan Scott comforts Rob Smith after the Kensington Tigers' first loss of the season.

But the season was an overall success. They put Kensington basketball on the map.

“We built a culture of winning that the community can be proud of, both on and off the court,” Feuer said. “I am so proud of this team and I know the best is yet to come.”

They have high hopes for the future. With a younger team, they’ll have four of the same starters back next year — Paulino, the Smith twins, and Wise.

“Now every team wants to beat us, but we’re still the underdogs,” Paulino said. “We still didn’t get what we wanted yet, we want to go far.”

By the end of that practice in January, the team scrimmaged. One of the last plays signifies a slice of what makes the team special — the way they share the ball.

“Let’s see some confidence,” Feuer yelled.

They ran hand-offs — Scott handed off to another player, Ramirez ran a back door cut and made a lay up. It looked easy, smooth.

Watching from the sidelines, Smith narrated: “Everybody plays unselfishly. Everybody loves each other. So everybody carries the ball.”

New Philly nonprofit wants to end generational poverty, 1 child at a time

2025-12-22T18:38:00+00:00

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The secret to a perfect dirt bowl snack isn’t in the pudding, or the crushed Oreos, or even the gummy worms. It’s about patience, according to Kevin Kelley.

That’s something second graders Donte and Chris and first grader Derrick are working on one Wednesday after school with Kelley and Justin Agard, their mentors.

“Just a little bit, pour it slowly since it’s a liquid,” Kelley said, watching as the boys cautiously tipped a jug of milk into measuring cups and stirred in whipped topping.

“That tastes good!” exclaimed Donte. “Like, real good. But I need more Oreos.”

Kelley, a Philadelphia native, works with Donte and Chris and six other Philly youngsters through a new nonprofit program called Friends of the Children Philadelphia. (Chalkbeat is using pseudonyms for the kids to protect their identities.)

The program serves at-risk young kids, starting at ages 4 to 6, who have experienced trauma due to gun violence, poverty, family incarceration, abuse, or other adverse factors that can affect their mental health and academic performance.

Justin Agard plays foosball with three kids he mentors through Friends of the Children Philadelphia.

Friends of the Children isn’t a typical after-school program or mentorship — Kelley will be with his little ones and their families consistently for the next three years, at least. Friends of the Children offers families a commitment that the program will be there in a child’s life from kindergarten through high school graduation — “12+ no matter what,” they say.

Betty Handy, executive director of Friends of the Children Philadelphia, said the model is based on rigorous research that shows long-term, stable, positive relationships with a caring adult can make a meaningful difference in a child’s life. She said she believes the program can help lessen generational poverty in the city and keep young people out of the prison system.

While it’s new to Philly, the organization has branches in more than 30 locations nationwide. A five-year study of the program found “significant effects” in favor of the model, including students reporting less trouble in school and greater emotional strengths. In its first year in Philadelphia, the program served 24 children.

Each mentor, called a Friend, is required to sign a three- to five-year full-time paid contract and takes on a caseload of around eight kids from North Philly and Kensington who have been referred to the program by school staff, community organizations, or foster care workers. Those Friends become immersed in that child’s life starting at elementary school and a program mentor will stay with them through high school. In its first year, the program had three Friends on staff, but is looking to grow that number.

The Friends sit in on classes in school, they can attend report card meetings, offer homework help, take the kids on trips to the library or aquarium. Currently, the program is working with kids at William D. Kelley Elementary and Bayard Taylor Elementary schools, as well as the North 10 Lenfest community center.

The Friends also act as a lifeline for caregivers who are trying to find employment or get back to school themselves.

“We’re not prescribing what they need, but we are offering support in a way that keeps their dignity intact” Handy said.

Kelley may help a parent navigate a job-hiring process or point them to the right city contact person if their heat or electricity goes out. If one of his kids is struggling with behavioral challenges in the classroom, Kelley will speak with the teacher, the student, and the caregivers to come up with a comprehensive plan to work through any issues.

“The most important aspect is we start them young,” Handy, known by the kids in the program as “Mama Betty” said. “We do early intervention, and we are here to guide the child, one on one, for several years, staying in their lives, to see them succeed.”

Betty Handy, known by the young people she mentors as "Mama Betty," says the Friends of the Children program model is effective, research-backed, and will have a ripple effect over time.

For Justin Agard, another Friend in the program, caring for these kids is personal.

In 2007, while Agard was at Temple University, his younger brother was murdered in New York City for his rumored involvement with gangs and drugs. Years later, one of Agard’s son’s friends — whom he had coached — fell victim to gun violence.

After his brother’s death, Agard got involved in anti-violence work, coaching, substitute teaching, and working within the foster care system. He and his wife raised successful kids of their own and thought of fostering or adopting.

When he discovered Friends of the Children, he realized their model “is what I’ve always felt was missing” in the behavioral health field in the city he said.

“It just made me feel like I can really impact a kid’s life for the better over a long period of time” Agard said.

Kelley and Agard are both Black men and they say that representation is vital to relationship-building, trust-building, and the ability to make young Black kids like Donte, Chris, and Derrick feel supported, understood, and safe.

For young Black men, who make up the majority of the kids the program serves, asking for help can be really hard, Kelley said. The kids he works with are learning to become comfortable making mistakes in front of Kelley and asking for assistance with things like reading or spelling in a safe space. They work on confidence-building and emotional regulation in addition to academics.

Kelley said when he’s working with his eight kids through the program, he’s constantly thinking about a line his nana, a longtime Philadelphia school district teacher, used to say to him: “I love you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Three kids play together at Friends of the Children's North Philly clubhouse, where they also work on their academics.

The Friends program just wrapped its first operating year this past August, Handy said, but she’s already thinking about expanding to South Philly and other neighborhoods where young kids are at risk.

Handy said she’s aware of the good they can do for Philly’s youngest learners and their families. But it’s a duty and a responsibility she and Kelley and Agard don’t take lightly.

“Lives are in the balance,” Handy said. “Too many times there are adults who don’t show up for our youth. But our Friends at Friends of the Children, they show up.”

This story has been updated to clarify details about the length of the program.

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

Philadelphia’s tutoring program shows promise but faces familiar obstacle: expanding it effectively

2025-12-09T22:02:16+00:00

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In a third floor classroom at Russell Conwell Middle School in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, brightly colored math posters hang from the walls and a lengthy description of equivalent ratios covers the white board.

This is what Principal Erica Green calls the HIT classroom — short for high-impact tutoring — where students go for extra help multiple times a week. Around a quarter of the school’s sixth, seventh, and eighth graders participate, Green said.

“They’re getting what they need right here at school to boost their learning and math confidence,” said Green. “We’re seeing more student discourse in the classroom, conversations, them challenging and debating with one another.”

Building students’ math comfort and skills is a major aim of the district’s high-impact tutoring program, which provides support to select students integrated into the school day. The district has hired 65 part-time tutors and plans to spend $6.4 million on tutoring programs from two providers, Saga and Littera, over three years to make a real difference for Philadelphia students, who for decades have lagged far behind average statewide scores on annual tests.

At one point, high-impact tutoring, also known as high-dosage tutoring, looked like one of the most effective academic interventions. One analysis of nearly 100 studies on tutoring programs from 2020 found tutoring programs had “consistent and substantial positive impacts.” The Biden administration subsequently urged schools to invest in high-dosage tutoring, and many did.

But in recent months, confidence in tutoring’s promise has deflated somewhat. A recent University of Chicago study of large-scale tutoring programs found that on average, tutoring programs during the 2023-24 school year only resulted in one or two months of extra learning for students. The researchers found that at many schools, logistical hurdles led to students receiving far less tutoring than what they would need to reap the full benefits.

“We see actually in the data that tutoring is effective,” said John Wolf, associate director for the University of Chicago Education Lab, which conducted the recent study. “It’s just that you need enough time to get at it.”

These are the lessons Philadelphia is trying to heed as it invests more in tutoring and tries to overcome the barriers that other districts have confronted: scheduling, tutoring training, and aligning tutoring content with curriculum.

Philadelphia officials say they’re following the research, scheduling at least 90 minutes of tutoring per week, and tracking participation through its tutoring providers.

“We’re looking for results,” said Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, the district’s chief of curriculum and instruction. “We are really looking for this to make a significant impact on student achievement.”

Posters decorate the tutoring classroom at Russell Conwell Middle School.

So far, the district has seen some promising outcomes. Last school year, nearly half of students that received high-impact tutoring showed a faster rate of progress on district benchmark tests compared with the previous year. That aligns with Superintendent Tony Watlington’s goal of making the district the “fastest-improving large, urban school district in the country.”

But still, only around 600 students at 20 schools get high-impact tutoring — a drop in the bucket for the 120,000-student district. And at some schools with tutoring programs, like Conwell, state test scores continue to decline even though teachers and students say the program is useful.

Francis-Thompson said she wants the district to expand high-impact tutoring to more schools and students. But to do so, it’ll have to train up enough tutors, pay for larger contracts with tutoring program providers, and overcome other challenges.

“There’s a need for additional funding to support this type of work and any type of expansion,” said Francis-Thompson.

Teachers say tutoring boosts learning, but test scores lag

Conwell Middle School selects students for tutoring based largely on their teachers’ recommendations and test scores. It also considers whether a parent or a student displays interest in the program, said Green, the principal.

The school’s tutoring setup largely follows the research, scheduling kids for a total of around 120 minutes of math tutoring each week. Most days except Fridays, students go to tutoring for the last 30 minutes of their daily math block, after instructional time is over.

Tutors aren’t solely focused on helping kids with homework or redoing class assignments. Instead, in small groups of three or four students, they teach content that builds on what the students have already learned in class. They’re also in touch with the school’s math teachers to make sure the tutoring curriculum follows what’s happening in class.

Tutor Rebecca Resch said she has heard from tutors at other schools that communication between tutors, teachers, and administrators within some buildings can be tricky. But at Conwell, Resch said, “they want us here, they want us to help out.”

Conwell math teacher Audrey Golub has seen the positive impact in class. At times, students have told her they’re familiar with a concept she’s teaching because they’ve learned about it already in tutoring.

“That’s the most amazing thing,” she said. “Because if they’re recognizing the work we do in [class], because they’re being supported by tutoring, then we are working together, hand in hand, to make and reach that achievement.”

Teachers at Conwell Middle School say the school's high-impact tutoring program has made students more confident in math class.

Still, tutoring is no magic bullet. Data that Green shared from the school’s progress screeners that take place during the year, called Star Assessments, show that over the course of last school year, the first full year of the tutoring program, Conwell students’ math scores improved.

But over the last two years, the percentage of Conwell students scoring proficient on state tests has declined. Last year, only 8% of students achieved proficient scores on the state math test. Around a quarter of the district’s students in grades K-8 achieved proficient scores.

Beyond test scores, Conwell teachers said they’ve witnessed other benefits of the program.

“I’m seeing that they seem more enthusiastic, especially some of them that I could tell already had fears about math,” said math teacher Hytolia Branch. “They’re starting to become more comfortable.”

Where to find free food in Philadelphia as SNAP benefits remain in limbo

2025-11-07T20:15:11+00:00

President Donald Trump’s administration asked a federal appeals court on Friday to block an order requiring full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments to be paid to states today.

On Thursday, a federal judge ordered Trump’s administration to deliver November’s SNAP payments. More than 42 million Americans relied on federal food stamps January through August during fiscal year 2025, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture.

U.S. District Judge John McConnell, who issued Thursday’s order, was one of two federal judges who ruled last week that the Trump administration is required to fund SNAP through the government shutdown.

Nearly 2 million people in Pennsylvania rely on federal food stamps, including around 472,000 Philly residents.

This week, Mayor Cherelle Parker announced a citywide “One Philly SNAP Support Plan,” which she said is a $14 million “coordinated intergovernmental, public/private partnership response” to fund food distribution efforts as well as rent and utility assistance. Philly-based businesses such as Aramark and GIANT Company have also donated fresh produce to some Philly schools.

However, Parker acknowledged in a statement the city “cannot fully replace the SNAP funds in limbo,” and the ongoing budget impasses at both the state and federal level are “creating a significant cash management challenge” for the city.

Below is a map of food pantries and other places offering free food and meals to students and families in Philadelphia. Each location has a phone number listed if you would like to contact them about donations or volunteering.

If you can’t see the map, there is also a list of the locations offering free food below it.

Please call the locations beforehand to make sure they are open.

Where to get free food in Philadelphia

Mercy Neighborhood Ministries

1939 W. Venango St.

Philadelphia, PA 19140

215-222-4393

Food distribution program

Wednesdays at 7:30 a.m.

Saturdays at 10:00 a.m.

We Love To Give and Beloved St. John

4541 N. Broad St.

Philadelphia, PA 19140

267-433-2227

Grocery distribution

Saturday, Nov. 8

Noon–2 p.m.

Saturday, Nov. 22

Noon–2 p.m.

Saturday, Dec. 13

Noon–2 p.m.

Saturday, Dec. 27

Noon–2 p.m.

TCRC Community Healing Center food distribution sites

215-791-0645

First African Baptist Church

6700 Lansdowne Ave.

Philadelphia, PA 19151

Second and fourth Mondays of the month

9 a.m.–1 p.m.

Nazarene Baptist Church

3981 Nice St.

Philadelphia, PA 19140

Wednesdays

10 a.m.–1 p.m.

Community members can also get clothing, diapers, toys, and school supplies.

Northeast Baptist Church

4744 Tackawanna St.

Philadelphia, PA 19124

Wednesdays

Noon–3 p.m.

Faith Assemblies of God Church

1926 Margaret St.

Philadelphia, PA 19124

Thursdays

10.a.m–1 p.m.

Temple University Community Garden Field

Northeast corner of Broad and Diamond Streets

Philadelphia, PA 19122

First and third Fridays of the month

10.a.m–1 p.m.

Ujima Friends Peace Center

1701 Lehigh Ave.

Philadelphia, PA 19132

First and third Saturdays of the month

9 a.m.–noon

Germantown Friends Meeting

47 W. Coulter St.

Philadelphia, PA 19144

Every third Sunday of the month

Noon–3 p.m.

Community members can also get clothing and books.

People’s Emergency Center

325 N. 39th St.

Philadelphia, PA 19104

267-777-5880 (main office)

267-777-5477 (community resource hotline)

Food cupboard

Saturdays

10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

A photo ID is required to receive food. Food is distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Participants are asked to come just once a month.

Prevention Point Philadelphia

2913-2915 Kensington Ave. (corner of Kensington Avenue and Monmouth Street)

Philadelphia, PA 19134

215-634-5272

Snacks and sandwiches

Monday–Friday

Breakfast

Tuesdays

10 a.m.

Hot lunch

Wednesdays

Noon–2 p.m.

Community night

First Thursdays of the month

5–8 p.m.

First Redemption Evangelical Church

4400 N. Broad St.

Philadelphia, PA 19140

215-324-3775

Food pantry

Thursdays

10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

Food is distributed on a first-come, first-served basis as long as supplies last.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Free pop-up produce markets

Pediatric Primary Care, Cobbs Creek

225 Cobbs Creek Parkway

Philadelphia, PA 19139

215-476-2223

Wednesdays

9 a.m.–noon

Karabots Pediatric Primary Care Center, West Philadelphia

4865 Market St.

Philadelphia, PA 19139

267-425-9800

Thursdays

9 a.m.–noon

Mighty Writers food distribution

There may be longer lines at some locations. Some recipients may have to fill out registration forms and/or show identification. The organization does not require proof of U.S. citizenship.

Mighty Writers West

35th and Fairmount

Philadelphia, PA 19104

215-387-1066

Monday–Friday

11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

Mighty Writers El Futuro

1025 S. Ninth St.

Philadelphia, PA 19147

215-602-0236

Tuesday–Friday

Noon–1:30 p.m.

Mighty Writers North

23rd and Seybert

Philadelphia, PA 19121

610-263-5379

Tuesdays and Thursdays

Noon–1:30 p.m.

Lucien E. Blackwell Community Center

761 N. 47th St.

Philadelphia, PA 19139

Tuesdays

2–3 p.m.

First and third Wednesdays of the month

2–3 p.m.

John Street Community Center

1100 Poplar St.

Philadelphia, PA

Thursdays

1:45–2:45 p.m.

Broad Street Love

315 S. Broad St.

Philadelphia, PA 19107

215-735-4847

Lunch

Monday–Friday

11:30 a.m.–1:15 pm.

St. Francis Inn

2441 Kensington Ave.

Philadelphia, PA 19125

215-423-5845

Seated meals

Monday–Thursday

4:30–6 p.m.

Friday–Sunday

11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

Takeaway breakfast

Tuesday–Wednesday

10–11 a.m.

Can’t find what you need on this list? Find more food services in the Philadelphia area by visiting this list from ShelterBridge, this spreadsheet of resources supporting SNAP recipients in the Philly area, the City of Philadelphia’s food and meal finder, Philabundance’s food map, or the Share Food Program’s map.

Susan Gonzalez is Chalkbeat’s editor for social media and platforms. If you know of any food resources or news tips that might be helpful to students and families in Philadelphia, send her an email at sgonzalez@chalkbeat.org.

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

Philadelphia says SEPTA will restore some transit service for students

2025-08-28T22:29:03+00:00

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The city of Philadelphia and the regional public transit system SEPTA plan to restore certain bus lines that serve schools after they were eliminated as part of sweeping transit cuts implemented earlier this week.

In a press release Thursday, the city said that SEPTA agreed “in concept” to dedicate a portion of the $135 million transit subsidy the city pays the transit authority to restore priority bus lines for students by mid-September.

The city did not provide further details about the nature of the agreement.

The move comes after an outcry from transit advocates and educators across the city, who worried SEPTA’s 20% service cuts would make it impossible for students and teachers to get to school on time.

On the first day of school Monday, Superintendent Tony Watlington said he had heard from one principal that attendance was lower than expected following the transit cuts.

Watlington said in a Thursday statement he was “elated” about the deal between SEPTA and Mayor Cherelle Parker’s office. After looking at school attendance figures for the first three days back compared with last year, Watlington said he found that 63% of district schools showed an increase in late arrivals and 54% reported an increase in student absences.

“We’re optimistic that the restoration of priority routes will enable more students to attend school and accelerate academic achievement,” Watlington said.

“We are proud that our City teams moved quickly with SEPTA to find a way to restore transit services in the areas where students are most affected by the cutbacks that started on the first day of school this week,” Parker said in a statement. “Making sure that all of our city’s children and youth can get to school on time and safely is one of our top priorities.”

The restored services are:

Bus 84.
Bus 88.
Bus 452.
Bus 461.
Bus 462.
Bus 476.
Bus 478.
Bus 484.
Bus 31 – service will be restored from Overbrook Park to 63rd and Market St.

The city announced service will also be “augmented” on Sept. 2 on other routes that serve students, but did not elaborate. Those routes are:

Bus 14.
Bus 20.
Bus 23.
Bus 26.
Bus 47.
Bus 63.
Bus 67.
Bus 70.
Bus 82.
Trolley T2.
Trolley T5.

The city said schedules for the restored routes will be published “later in the month.”

This story has been updated to include attendance figures and comment from Superintendent Tony Watlington.

Correction: Aug. 29, 2025: Due to inaccurate information provided by Mayor Cherelle Parker’s office, an earlier version of this story misstated when some bus routes would be restored.

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

Philadelphia students can get free school supplies, vaccines, and more at these back-to-school events

2025-08-07T19:15:18+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city’s public school system.

It’s back-to-school season in Philadelphia and the school district and community organizations across the city are hosting free school supply giveaways and medical clinics to help students prepare to return to classrooms.

This year, advocates say access to free resources is vital for Philly families because of the federal government’s deep cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, coupled with delays in Pennsylvania’s state budget process.

“It’s really important this year because with the state of the government right now, a lot of people will be losing their health insurance,” said Portia Ackridge, who runs DentMed Inc., a nonprofit that’s partnering with Remote Area Medical to bring a free medical clinic to the School of the Future. The clinic will offer free dental care, eyeglasses made onsite, school vaccines, physicals, and other services for children and adults.

This is Ackridge’s third year organizing the clinic in Philly. But she said this year, the federal funding cuts and freezes have meant her organization has struggled to get medical providers to volunteer their services at the clinic and donations have slowed.

“Funding is down this year,” Ackridge said. “People are uncertain right now about the government.” She said that “makes a huge difference” in how many services they’re able to provide.

But Ackridge said the care that the clinic is able to offer will be crucial for Philly’s young people.

“Do you know how hard it is to concentrate, to try to learn something when your tooth is hurting and you have no relief?” she said. “It’s very important to make sure these kids are going to school healthy, where they’re not in any pain, where they can see the class board if they’re sitting in the back of the classroom.”

The free clinic will be held at School of the Future at 4021 Parkside Ave, on Aug. 16 and 17 starting at 6 a.m.

Philly’s first day of school is Aug. 25.

For more free services and school supplies, Chalkbeat’s partners at Germantown Info Hub compiled a list of events in their neighborhood, and Chalkbeat’s partners at Kensington Voice have a list for folks in Kensington as well. City Cast Philly also has a list of more citywide events.

If you have school supplies to donate, the Navy Yard is collecting items for Bregy Elementary School and D. Newlin Fell elementary in South Philly through Sept. 1 at various dropoff locations. Find more information here.

This is not an exhaustive list so if you know of another event that should be added, you can email philadelphia.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Where to find free school supplies in Philly

The School District of Philadelphia’s back-to-school bus tour offers free school supplies, snacks, activities, and assistance with enrollment.

On Saturday, Aug. 9 the bus will be at Citizens Bank Park, 1 Citizens Bank Way.

On Tuesday, Aug. 12 the bus will park at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium, 1627 W. Hunting Park Ave.

And on Friday, Aug. 15 the bus will come to Roosevelt Mall at 2329 Cottman Ave.

Friday, Aug. 8

In Fairhill, CASA de Consejeria y Salud Integral is hosting a school supply event at 3210 North American St. from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Also in Fairhill, St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children is throwing a back-to-school carnival at 160 E. Erie Ave. from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Saturday, Aug. 9

In West Oak Lane, The GRYC Center is giving away free backpacks from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 7700 Ogontz Ave.

In Northeast Philly, Catholic Community Services is cosponsoring a backpack giveaway outside of Max Myers recreation center 1601 Hellerman St. from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

In West Philly, St. Matthew AME Church is throwing a back-to-school block party from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. at 215 N. 57th St.

Wednesday, Aug. 13

In West Philly, ACHIEVEability is giving away school supplies from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at 5901 Market St.

Thursday, Aug. 14

In South Philly, Cradles to Crayons is bringing its Backpack-a-thon giveaway to Lincoln Financial Field, One Lincoln Financial Field Way from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Sunday, Aug. 17

In North Philly, MomCode and Kiddievents are offering free hair braiding, backpacks, and school supplies from 1 p.m. until supplies run out at the Club House Suite at 3525 I St. They are also collecting donations of backpacks, school supplies, and hair products.

In South Philly, the Southeast Asian Market is hosting its annual back-to-school giveaway in FDR Park from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. at 1500 Pattison Ave. and S. Broad St.

Thursday, Aug. 21

In Olney, the Olney Community Collaborative is having a giveaway at James R. Lowell Elementary School, 450 West Nedro Ave. from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Saturday, Aug. 23

In Point Breeze, City Council President Kenyatta Johnson’s office is hosting a Community Appreciation Day with free food and school supplies at Point Breeze Avenue and Tasker Street from 12 p.m. until 8 p.m.

In Cedar Park, Conquerors Community Development Corporation will have a back-to-school community day at the Victory Christian Center of Philadelphia, 5220 Whitby Ave. from 10 a.m. to 1pm.

Sunday Aug. 24

In West Philly, Barbers Who Care is offering free kids’ haircuts and school supplies at the YMCA at 5120 Chestnut St. from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 6

In West Philly, EleganceXtreme is giving away school supplies and horseback riding sessions from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the 1300 block of N 58th St.

Ongoing

For educators and families, the Philly Book Bank is giving away free books at MLK High School, 6100 Stenton Ave with priority given to district teachers. Find more information and how to sign up here.

Students can get free vaccines at Vaccines for Children sites across the city and discounted vaccines and physicals at various CityLife Health Clinic locations.

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

Students, parents express anxiety over potential ICE arrests in Kensington

2025-02-04T16:15:58+00:00

This story was written by Colin Evans. Reporting by Sydney Krider, Onalisa Mitchell, Stacy Landrum, Chris Shaddock, Tahera Rahmani, Sebastiana Lopez, Tazwar Shahnawaz, Caroline Keane, and Colette Kearney from Temple University’s Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting.

Editor’s Note: Due to the sensitivity of this subject, some names have been withheld to protect individuals’ safety.

Leer en español

The looming fear of mass deportations has fueled unease among Kensington parents and students who worry that schools in the predominantly Latino neighborhood could be targeted.

President Donald Trump’s reversal of a longstanding policy that treated schools as “protected” locations where immigration enforcement should rarely take place has stoked fear among students and educators. Since then, the School District of Philadelphia has refuted rumors that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were spotted near schools — including one in Kensington.

“I am a product of immigrants, I went to school here,” said Shawn Black, a parent at John H. Webster Elementary School. “Now I am 44 years old and I do not know what to say.””

So far, there are no confirmed incidents of ICE entering schools to conduct immigration enforcement since Trump’s inauguration. However, students said they have received no information from their school about what to do if ICE does show up. One student had a clear opinion about what schools should not do.

“Don’t open them doors, y’all. Don’t open them doors,” a ninth grader at Mastbaum High School told a reporter last month.

Children play outside while waiting to be let into Gloria Casarez Elementary School on Jan. 31, 2025.

About 12% of Kensington’s residents are foreign born, compared to nearly 15% of the city at large, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Ninety-three percent of residents are U.S. citizens. Approximately 72% are Latino. The vast majority of the Latino population in Kensington is Puerto Rican, and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.

Due to Philadelphia’s decision to be a sanctuary city, the Philadelphia Police Department does not collaborate with ICE by sharing information, arresting, or detaining undocumented immigrants.

But schools have not been immune from federal immigration enforcement. For example, ICE agents arrested a mother outside of Eliza B. Kirkbride Elementary in South Philadelphia in 2020 after she dropped her child off at school.

Should ICE come to a school, the district’s official policy instructs staff to immediately contact the district’s general counsel, obtain necessary documentation from agents, and “await further direction.”

“DO NOT Provide any information about students, families or staff unless directed by the Office of General Counsel,” district protocol states.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said the district has prepared school leaders to comply with the law while also protecting the rights of immigrant students.

“We are not going to gin up extra levels of anxiety. [We are going to approach the issue] in a very professional and strategic and appropriate manner,” Watlington said.

Fear about ICE arrests rises in Kensington

Reports of ICE raids across the country — including a false alarm at a Chicago public school — and the arrest of seven migrants at a car wash in nearby Juniata Park have added to fears in Kensington.

Theresa Heinsinger, a crossing guard at John H. Webster Elementary School, said that although she hasn’t seen ICE agents in the neighborhood, she still worries for the children.

People walk out of Jules E. Mastbaum High School on Jan. 31, 2025.

“Children have a tough struggle everyday,” she said. “It is a struggle for all the kids everyday. And for them to be subjected to this new policy — I really do think that children should be left out of it. Because they are innocent people here, and they need a voice.”

In a joint statement, Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, state Sen. Christine Tartaglione, and state Rep. Jose Giral, whose districts all include Juniata Park and Kensington, said their offices were not given advance notice of the Juniata Park raid and called it “an unwarranted and unnecessary disruption of our community.”

“As leaders and elected representatives of this community we are outraged by the abhorrent action taken by ICE and saddened to see these residents taken away from their families and the community they have been part of and have made valuable contributions to for years,” they wrote in the statement.

ICE can enter schools using certain warrants

Whether ICE can enter schools or obtain information about students depends on what kind of authorization agents have.

The two main types of warrants ICE uses for arrests are administrative warrants and judicial warrants. ICE typically relies on administrative warrants, which are signed by immigration officers.

The distinction is important since administrative warrants do not allow ICE agents to search or enter private property, according to the National Immigration Law Center.

Resources

The following resources are available for learning more about individual rights when interacting with immigration officials.

ACLU Know Your Rights general online information: English & Spanish
ACLU PA Know your Rights on the Street, in your Car, at your Home: English & Spanish
Know Your Rights/Red Cards in multiple languages available to print: All Languages
National Immigration Law Center Know Your Rights PDF Flyers: English & Spanish

These local organizations are also providing frequent updates.

ACLU Pennsylvania: https://www.aclupa.org/
Asian Americans United (AAU): https://www.aaunited.org/
Free Migration Project: https://freemigrationproject.org/
iHIAS Pennsylvania: https://www.hiaspa.org/
Juntos: https://www.vamosjuntos.org/
La Puerta Abierta: https://lpa-theopendoor.org/
Nationalities Service Center (NSC): https://nscphila.org/
New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia: https://www.sanctuaryphiladelphia.org/
Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition (PICC): https://paimmigrant.org/
SEAMAAC: https://www.seamaac.org/
The Welcoming Center: https://welcomingcenter.org/
VietLead: https://www.vietlead.org/

That means an agent must have either a judicial warrant or permission from school officials to enter areas not open to the general public. District policy states that school personnel cannot allow agents to enter nonpublic areas of the school or conduct searches unless there are “exigent circumstances,” such as an imminent risk of violence.

Principals and district staff must obtain copies of an agent’s subpoena or warrant and immediately send them to the district’s lawyers, according to the policy. The district “will not share information or provide access to our students unless required by law and will do everything in the District’s lawful power to protect the constitutional and legal rights of students and parents,” the policy says.

The district has an immigrant and refugee toolkit for staff and is providing professional development for teachers, administrators, and other school personnel about how to respond to ICE agents, Nathalie Nérée, the district’s chief of special education and diverse learners, told the City Council last week.

However, many educators and school leaders say they would welcome more training and preparation.

In 2022, a school principal allegedly threatened to have a student and his family deported. The district later settled a legal case regarding the incident and promised to provide more staff training. The principal, Charlotte Buonassisi, denied the allegations and resumed working for the district in another school.

Webster Elementary parent Cheyenne Duffy said the renewed emphasis on mass deportation is unfair.

“I’m sure it’s hard enough to get over here the right way and trying to get back into a country that doesn’t want you is even harder,” Duffy said. “I just think it’s kind of messed up. … If anything just try to give these people resources, help, and honestly just somewhere safe to stay.”

Pennsylvania Education Secretary Khalid Mumin is stepping down

2024-11-22T20:33:36+00:00

This story was originally published by The Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

Pennsylvania Education Secretary Khalid Mumin will resign from his position in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s cabinet next month, the governor’s office announced Friday afternoon.

Mumin was confirmed in June 2023 about six months after Shapiro took office and has presided over some of the administration’s early successes such as increasing funding for K-12 public schools by $1.5 billion over the last two budgets and providing free breakfast for 1.7 million public school students.

Mumin will resign Dec. 6 and Executive Deputy Secretary of Education Angela Fitterer will take over as interim secretary. A statement from Shapiro’s office did not say why Mumin is stepping down.

Shapiro said in a statement that Mumin has dedicated his life and career to ensuring that Pennsylvania children have a quality education that sets them up for success.

“He has led the Pennsylvania Department of Education with passion and integrity. I am grateful for his service to Pennsylvania’s students and educators and wish him great success in his future endeavors,” Shapiro said.

Mumin said it has been the honor of a lifetime to serve as education secretary.

“I began my career as a teacher in a classroom, and those early experiences watching students get excited about learning inspired me to become a principal, a superintendent, and ultimately Secretary of Education, so I could continue to fight for those students to get more support and more opportunities,” Mumin said. “I’m so grateful to Governor Shapiro for this opportunity to lead the Pennsylvania Department of Education and help build a bright future for Pennsylvania’s students and educators.”

State Sen. David Argall (R-Schuylkill), chairman of the Legislature’s education committee, said he wished Mumin the best and added, “I look forward to working with Acting Secretary Fitterer and the governor’s nominee to improve our education system, from Pre-K to graduate school.”

Before Shapiro tapped Mumin for his cabinet, he served as superintendent of the Lower Merion school district in Montgomery County. Mumin, who began his career as a classroom teacher in the Franklin County community of Scotland in 1997, also has served as superintendent of the Reading public schools.

Mumin’s tenure coincided with the resolution of a decade of litigation over the state’s public education funding formula, which a group of school districts, parents and advocates argued put students in less wealthy areas at a disadvantage because of its reliance on property taxes.

A Commonwealth Court judge ordered Shapiro and the General Assembly in February 2023 to correct the inequities and a interbranch commission found the state needed to invest $5.4 billion in underfunded schools to bring them up to par with the state’s most successful school districts.

This year’s budget includes about $526 million toward that goal, but lawmakers were unable to reach a compromise that would guarantee future installments to close the gap.

Shapiro also touted the education department’s success in strengthening career and technical education programs, investments in student mental health, repairs for schools and providing free menstrual products for students.

The governor’s office also credited Mumin with bringing together higher education leaders together to rethink higher education in Pennsylvania, establishing a state Board of Higher Education to provide more support for public universities and make college education more affordable.

Philadelphia school board vote clears way for city council action on 76ers arena plan

2024-11-22T02:02:12+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

The Philadelphia Board of Education took the city’s first step Thursday night in a controversial process to build a new $1.3 billion basketball arena for the Philadelphia 76ers.

By a vote of 7-2, the board voted to approve an agreement that would remove the plot of land proposed for the arena from an already existing tax incentive designation. This vote clears the first hurdle in the arena-building process, even as advocates and opponents continue to pack City Council hearings raising questions and concerns. The agreement now moves to the City Council for consideration.

The board went ahead with the vote despite member ChauWing Lam urging a delay so members could fully consider the implications. She and Board Vice President Wanda Novales opposed the resolution.

“I don’t believe the benefits presented sufficiently consider the needs of our students,” Novales said. “I feel that we need to advocate for a more comprehensive approach to the community investment and student support.”

After the vote, several people in the audience shouted out, calling the board members “cowards.”

“Shame on you,” members of the public cried.

The vote does not seal the arena’s fate. If the City Council ultimately votes down the proposal in the face of mounting opposition, the board’s action on Thursday would be moot.

According to state law, the school board is required to vote on the designation before the council holds a public hearing on the same resolution.

If the arena proposal moves forward as the 76ers and Mayor Cherelle Parker intend, the team would avoid paying property taxes on the new arena altogether. Instead, they’d make annual direct payments in lieu of taxes to the city and school district — in amounts far less than what they would have paid in property taxes.

This is what is done now for the owners of the other sports facilities in South Philadelphia, including Lincoln Financial Field (where the Eagles football team plays) and Citizens Bank Park (home field of the Phillies baseball team).

In addition, as part of a separate agreement, the 76ers say they will fund several community programs, including part of Parker’s year-round school initiative.

The 76ers have negotiated “a sweetheart proposal that guarantees them a state-of-the-art facility at the expense of Philadelphia’s children,” said Lisa Li of the advocacy group Asian Americans United, which opposes the arena plan.

School board members sought to make it clear Thursday that they were not voting to approve the arena, but to remove the proposed arena land from an existing Tax Increment Financing (or TIF) district designation. TIFs are commonly used by states and localities to incentivize local economic development programs.

“The decision about whether to approve the development of the arena is entirely City Council’s. It is not our decision,” board member Joan Stern said.

But several speakers felt differently, with one characterizing the resolution as “giving the green light” to what a few called the “destructive” arena and urging the board to vote it down.

In a presentation before the board, Sam Rhoads, executive vice president of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, said that the board’s action “is in no way a vote for or against the arena.” He and city finance director Rob Dubow explained that the district would receive $2.8 million in the first year of payments in lieu of taxes compared to $550,000 paid now in property taxes from businesses on the site.

The proposal to build a new 76ers basketball arena at 10th and Market Street in Center City has polarized the city. Proponents — including Parker, who appointed or reappointed every member of the school board — argue it will create thousands of union construction jobs and economically reinvigorate that section of downtown. It also would provide a place for student graduations, high school basketball games, and other events including theatrical productions and musical concerts.

But critics of the arena plan, including all major neighborhood groups that border the proposed site, claim the arena would devastate the vulnerable nearby Chinatown community and lead to dangerous traffic patterns, in addition to depriving the school district of much-needed tax revenue at a time when it is considering closing schools.

Arena proponents say the district will benefit from the deal, but critics say the math doesn’t add up

A key part of the arena proposal is the Community Benefits Agreement that, over three decades, will contribute $50 million for programs, including $7 million for extended-day, extended-year schooling, Parker’s signature education initiative; $1 million in internships; $1.5 million for youth basketball leagues; and $3 million in free game tickets allocated to the School District of Philadelphia.

Arena supporters say that activities in and around the facility will increase overall tax revenue to the district and city from the PILOTs and Use and Occupancy tax revenue, and the liquor-by-the-drink tax, which is allocated to the district. Over the 30 years of the agreement, the city is projecting the school district will receive $153 million in revenue from the arena.

But arena opponents argue that since schools are much more dependent on property taxes than the city, district leadership could have lobbied for more money.

City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, who opposes the arena plan, called the community benefits deal “a bad agreement,” in a statement to Chalkbeat.

Brooks said even as the district is preparing to close schools, “our city is being sold out by this proposal.”

Brooks called the arrangement a “$400 million tax break” over the next 30 years. This is also not the first controversial tax break program the board of education has approved that ultimately reduces the amount of tax money the district receives in an effort to spur development. The board has no taxing power of its own and must rely on City Council and the mayor for its share of city tax dollars.

According to calculations by tax experts and academics working with a coalition of advocacy groups who oppose the arena plan, the 76ers would have contributed $400 million to the school district over the next 30 years if they paid regular property taxes on the arena. Under the current arena proposal, they say the 76ers would instead pay $50 million to the district as a PILOT.

Some of those same tax experts told Chalkbeat the 76ers’ projections for the cost of construction and their projected revenues are hard to parse and could end up costing the city $1 billion.

“The numbers that the 76ers and their consultants have presented are just fiction,” said Domenic Vitiello, an associate professor of city and regional planning at The University of Pennsylvania. He said the city should seek “real numbers” before approving a plan that reduces the amount of taxes paid to the school district.

Some speakers agreed. “Tonight’s presentation from the city was opaque at best,” Philly teacher George Dougherty testified to the board Thursday. A vote for the measure “is for billionaires and against our students,” Dougherty said.

Community activists say the arena proposal would negatively impact the school district

A group of Philadelphia public school parents are also circulating a petition opposing the arena because of the impact they say it will have on families.

“At a time when several of our Philadelphia district schools are in danger of closure, and many are in need of significant repairs, such as electrical upgrades, air conditioning, and asbestos removal, it is irresponsible and immoral for our city government to consider what amounts to a $1 billion tax break to 3 billionaires who do not even live in Philadelphia,” the petition reads, referring to the 76ers owners.

City Council members are considering nearly a dozen pieces of legislation regarding the arena project in the coming weeks. Now that the board voted to approve the TIF agreement, Council will continue its public hearings through Dec. 3, with a final meeting scheduled for Dec. 12.

If the proposal is approved, demolition for the arena is projected to start in 2026 with construction slated to begin in 2028.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

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

Philly schools get state grant to plant more trees

2024-11-12T21:43:12+00:00

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Lauryn Lawson, 10, a fifth grader at Logan Elementary School in Northwest Philadelphia, likes trees and plants. So does her classmate Lawrence Butler, 11. They both take every opportunity they can to go outside and help tend the small raised bed vegetable garden on the school’s front lawn.

For one thing, planting and harvesting peppers and other vegetables “is more fun than being in the classroom,” Lawrence explained.

He also likes learning about what he eats and how they grow, like “broccoli, carrots, and lettuce,” he said.

On Tuesday, Lawrence, Lauryn, and other students were front and center with important city and state officials to highlight a half-million dollar grant to the Philadelphia school district for the planting and tending of trees on its property.

The $500,000 to the school district is part of $79.4 million in state grants to organizations and government entities that will help fund 307 environmental and recreational activities in 57 of the Commonwealth’s 67 counties. Philadelphia is receiving $5 million of that money for 17 projects.

The district’s grant will pay for the planting and upkeep of 600 trees on 30 school campuses, most of which are located in what is described as areas where it is important to focus on “environmental justice” due to poverty and other conditions that impact the quality of life. The money will also fund community engagement activities around the issue of conservation.

“We’re working to bring trails and parks close to people,” said Cindy Adams Dunn, the state secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, at the ceremony Tuesday to highlight the grant. “We try to make a difference in communities.”

The goal of her department and of the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro, she said, is a park within 10 minutes of every state resident.

Philadelphia has a 10-year strategy to protect its tree canopy called the Philly Tree Plan. As one of the largest landowners in the city, the district is a big part of that initiative. The grant also involves several partners, including the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the Trust for Public Land, and the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

Parks and Recreation commissioner Sue Slawson recalled how she grew up in a part of West Philadelphia where some streets had trees, and others did not. This grant will allow her department to “educate youth on the importance of natural land,” she said.

Logan Elementary School, named after its Northwest Philadelphia neighborhood, is in a mostly rowhouse, low-income community where trees are often few and far between. The school is across wide and busy Lindley Ave. from Wakefield Park, one of the smaller pockets in Philadelphia’s extensive Fairmount Park network, the largest urban park in the country.

“We’re prioritizing tree planting in areas that need it the most,” said Matt Rader, president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. State Sen. Art Haywood told the students that investing in trees at their school is testimony to their importance. “This investment of trees in your neighborhood shows that Black or white, rich or poor, we all have dignity,” he said.

Logan is also on the district’s list to get its asphalt playground updated and improved, a project in which the district is cooperating with outside partners, One is the Trust for Public Land, which is helping with Logan’s playground. Work will start in the spring and the new playground should be ready in two years, said the Trust’s Owen Franklin.

In her remarks, Dunn noted that the initiative will also help Philadelphia prepare for the country’s 250th anniversary celebration in 2026.

The Commonwealth and the country are divided, she said, not just by politics, but by access to green spaces, open sky and the great outdoors.

“The one place we can all come together is parks and trails,” she said. “Those are the places where we can reknit society and rebuild a united Pennsylvania. It gives me some hope.”

After the speeches, Lauryn and Lawrence and several other students helped officials plant a new tree on school grounds.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school district extends funding for students experiencing homelessness

2024-10-29T17:36:38+00:00

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Funding to provide services for Philadelphia students experiencing homelessness was set to run out with the expiration of federal pandemic relief aid. But school and city leaders say they’re using district funds to extend those services for another year.

The district will replace the sunsetting American Rescue Plan money with $2.3 million in district funds for youth homeless services through June 2025, Superintendent Tony Watlington and City Council Education Chair Isiah Thomas announced Tuesday.

Without this money, Thomas said many of the nonprofit community groups that had been providing resources to vulnerable young people in partnership with the district were preparing to shut down, even as the number of vulnerable young people struggling to find housing is increasing.

“Today what we’re doing is just taking a small victory lap because we were able to avoid a crisis,” Thomas said at a City Hall press conference. “The work continues.”

The money will come from the school district’s operating budget. The district will distribute it to three community groups dedicated to supporting young people experiencing housing insecurity: Valley Youth House, HopePHL, and Eddie’s House.

The most recent data shows that 6,217 students were considered homeless in the 2022-2023 school year — a nearly 46% increase from the 2018-2019 school year. That number appears to have risen sharply again: For the 2023-24 school year, Quadirah Locus, program supervisor at Valley Youth House, said community groups have identified more than 10,000 homeless students so far.

At the press conference, city officials and housing advocates discussed the rising number of children without a stable home while standing behind a couch. The announcement comes as part of a citywide “Couches Don’t Count” campaign that launched in 2015.

The slogan references young people who lack a stable and consistent home and often “couch surf” at the homes of friends and acquaintances.

The partnership Thomas and Watlington committed to on Tuesday came after members of City Council sharply questioned district representatives at a youth homelessness hearing in July.

Thomas said Tuesday he “commends the district for stepping up,” and said the $2.3 million is a start. But he also said he’d like to see more money going to these efforts and to the school district in general to help hire more climate staff and school counselors.

Under the federal McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act, every school district and charter school must appoint a local homeless education liaison to identify students experiencing homelessness and connect them to services.

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

Philadelphia’s young voters are tired of being ‘overlooked’

2024-10-18T14:32:13+00:00

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Philadelphia Youth Poet Laureate Malaya Ulan, a junior at Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, knows what it feels like to be young and overlooked in 2024.

With the upcoming election dominating conversations in Pennsylvania — a swing state that could play a pivotal role in deciding the presidential race — Ulan and her peers are being inundated with questions from adults about whether they’ll show up at the polls on Nov. 5 and why it’s so hard to get young people to turn out for elections.

“Who are we to them? Are we young minds to be cared for? Or statistics to be counted and ignored? ‘Cause they treat us like a chore,” Ulan intoned, sharing one of her poems with a room full of her peers gathered at City Hall on Wednesday for a “Vote That Jawn” event to talk about the importance of showing up to the polls.

“What about the students tossed into schools that make our minds bleed. What about the students who don’t get a good education?” asked Ulan, 16.

Indeed, young people in Philadelphia told Chalkbeat they do keep up with the news and care passionately about political issues like access to health care, raising the minimum wage, stopping the ongoing violence in the Middle East, and making Philadelphia a safer city.

With the Oct. 21 voter registration deadline days away, 54.6% of 18-year-olds are registered to vote in Pennsylvania. It’s roughly the same in Philly, where nearly 55% of the city’s more than 57,900 18-year-olds are registered to vote, according to data compiled by The Civics Center, a nonpartisan organization focused on increasing the number of high school students registered to vote.

By comparison, 78% of Pennsylvanians 45 and older are registered to vote.

Vivek Babu, former president of Drexel University’s undergraduate student government association, said the reason why so many young people may not engage with politics or voting is because they are overloaded with commitments.

“We are bombarded with exams, with homework, with student government associations, with clubs, with sports, with jobs. That is why we don’t vote,” Babu said.

Cecilia Schleinitz, 20, speaks about the importance of voting at the "Vote That Jawn" event.

Cecilia Schleinitz, 20, a junior at Temple University studying political science and economics, has been doing youth organizing work in Philly with PA Youth Vote as a student ambassador. Schleinitz said before Vice President Kamala Harris was named the Democratic nominee for president, young people in the city would tell her they didn’t feel connected to the political process.

“There was a lot of talk about, ‘we’re not going to participate in this election because these candidates don’t represent us,’” Schleinitz said.

But once Harris, who is 59, was chosen as the candidate over 81-year-old President Joe Biden, “there was a complete energy shift,” she said.

“Older people think because younger generations are not interacting in the same way with politicians as they are, that young people don’t care and they’re not educated. That’s not true,” she said.

Schleinitz said teenagers and college students are acutely aware of the local issues that affect their lives.

“Young people know that their schools are underfunded in Philadelphia. They experience it every day,” she said. “Young people are experiencing all the issues that we’re talking about in politics, but they’re talking about them in a different way. So I think they’re overlooked and labeled as miseducated.”

Rowan Arthur, 17, a student at Philadelphia High School for Girls and youth organizer in the city, said she’s working to get her peers to the polls this year.

The issues that she feels most passionate about in this election are health care — specifically maintaining access to abortion services — safe and clean streets, decriminalizing homelessness, and improving the lives of people with marginalized identities.

While she sees plenty of youth organizing being led by college students, Arthur said often those college students are from other states and may not share the same perspective of native Philadelphians.

“It can feel like a lot of people are being dismissive of the fact that they are living in a space where local politics is important,” Arthur said. That’s why, she said, it’s important for high schoolers to participate as well and for young people to learn more about down-ballot races that may have more of a direct impact on their lives, she said.

Oliver Jackson, 18, started to explore politics, political activism, and civic issues during the 2020 election cycle when he entered high school at William Penn Charter School. He joined his Black Student Union — which he now leads — and his school’s Young Democrats Club, searching for spaces where he could connect with other civic-minded peers and focus on economic and social issues that impact the Black community.

But he’s also demonstrating a bipartisan spirit. He’s been working with his school’s Young Republicans Club to host meetings to discuss policy and the importance of voting.

To Jackson, the act of voting is a culmination of generations of civil rights fights.

“Throughout American history, voting really became grounded in the fact that you were a person, you were an American, and to me, voting just makes me feel like I’m helping to shape the future of my country,” Jackson said.

Student drumline program, Mad Beatz Philly, energized a crowd outside of Philadelphia City Hall for the "Vote That Jawn" event.

Not all the work should be borne by the youngest voters. Angelique Hinton, executive director of PA Youth Vote, said knowing they have a lot on their plates, it’s important for politicians and voting advocates to make an effort to reach out to young people, listen to them, and meet them where they’re at.

It’s why her organization held a student voter field day this summer that included mock elections and voting resources, as well as tug-of-war and other outdoor games.

“As we engage with them and they’re really understanding the importance of this process, they become more and more excited about participating in every election,” Hinton said. “People continue to say they want to figure out how to engage youth, but they continue to invite youth into a space where they’re talking at youth and not really listening.”

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

Philadelphia’s ‘year-round school’ pilot increases access to programs schools already offered

2024-10-10T20:17:28+00:00

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Two months in, Philadelphia’s year-round school program is blossoming, officials say. But so far, the effort seems focused on giving more families access to programs that already existed, rather than revising the academic calendar.

Mayor Cherelle Parker continues to tout the program as a new vision for the city’s schools and the realization of her campaign promise. But she’s shifted her characterization of it from “year-round” school to “extended-day, extended-year” school. Across the 20 district schools and five charter schools piloting the free extended-day, extended-year program, the city and school district have doubled the number of after-school seats and created thousands of before-school seats at some schools for the first time.

Maritza Velez, a parent, grandparent, and foster caregiver of students at William Cramp Elementary School, said being part of the pilot program has allowed Cramp to open a before-care program for the first time this year.

“It’s great for parents that work,” Velez said.

But for most of the pilot schools, “year-round school” at this point mainly appears to be a new name for work that schools and nonprofit providers have been doing for years.

On Tuesday, Parker, Superintendent Tony Watlington, Chief Education Officer Debora Carrera, and other school officials toured Southwark Elementary School — one of the pilot schools. They answered kindergartners’ questions, watched fourth grade girls operate camera tripods, and chatted with other students flying drones and building with Legos.

But those programs are not new this year. They’re not even exclusive to the pilot program. The media lab is run by the public media organization WHYY, which has operated in several Philly schools for eight years. And the kindergarten class and robotics club are supported by Sunrise of Philadelphia, a nonprofit that’s been partnering with Southwark to deliver their after-school programming for more than 25 years.

Sunrise also provides free out-of-school programming to 13 other district schools — only one of which is in the pilot program.

That’s not to say educators don’t appreciate what’s going on this year. Southwark Principal Andrew Lukov said Tuesday that the pilot program has allowed the school to increase access to its after-school offerings to a larger number of families than before. Lukov called that a “big game changer.”

“Sometimes you have to tell families ‘no’ when we know that they really need these before-school services,” Lukov said. He emphasized that most of his students started their school journeys during the pandemic and are still adjusting to post-COVID education and socialization: “Our kids love being here.”

The year-round school pilot is funded by $24 million that comes from an increase in the school district’s share of property tax revenue.

A student in the after-school robotics club at Southwark Elementary School.

Parents want clearer information about extended-day programs

So far, the main function of the pilot this year appears to be expanding access.

This year, Carrera said schools have been able to nearly double the after-school seats from 1,435 last year to 2,555 this year, and add 1,400 before-school seats in 14 of the district pilot schools — the remaining six schools already open early when other schools are offering before-care.

The number of after-school seats at the five pilot charter schools has more than doubled from 228 last year to 514 this year.

The pilot schools will also be open during winter and spring break in December, January, and April, and for six weeks in the summer, but regular academic classes won’t be in session. Some 2,000 students are expected to participate in the winter and spring programming, according to the mayor’s office.

Still, that means the extended-day pilot is only serving a small fraction of the roughly 176,900 students enrolled in Philly district and charter schools.

Parents at the pilot schools told Chalkbeat they’re mostly happy with the services, but wish there was clearer communication about what exactly “year-round” school is.

“I’ve heard a little bit about it but I do feel like the communication can be improved,” Shayonna Brazelton, a Cramp parent, said. “What are the requirements? Do you have to fill out an application to sign the kids up? Is it going to be in every school, or just select schools, and then [what is] the duration? I know they’re extending the day but how many hours is it?”

Davida Smith, another Cramp parent, said she thinks year-round school is a good idea in theory, especially for older kids. Smith was in the first graduating class at Grover Washington Middle School, which tried out its own year-round school model starting in 2000 that ended after four years.

“They should start it maybe with high school because the way things are going on in the city right now, keeping high school kids in school during the summer” is a good idea, Smith said. “But for the younger ones, they’re not so much there yet. Don’t put so much on these ones yet.”

Elias Corbin, the community schools coordinator at Cramp, said parent feedback about the school’s new before-school program has been overwhelmingly positive. Participating in the pilot has also allowed Cramp to lift the cap on their preexisting after-school program from 36 seats to 60 seats. According to district data, Cramp enrolls nearly 350 students.

Corbin said the school’s biggest challenge is finding qualified people to staff the program.

Indeed, staffing has been an ongoing question since the pilot started. Watlington and Parker have been clear that no educators will be required to work outside of their contracted hours and no collective bargaining agreements will be changed without negotiations with the two relevant employee unions, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and Commonwealth Association of School Administrators.

Watlington said he’s meeting regularly with union leadership. “We’re talking about what this might look like in the future as we expand.”

Arthur Steinberg, president of the PFT, said how people refer to the concept— year-round school, extended-day school, community school — “matters far less” than ensuring that the programs themselves improve student achievement.

“As we proceed with negotiations for a new labor contract, we at the PFT expect to be heard and respected with regard to our members’ roles and responsibilities in expanding community schooling,” Steinberg said in an email.

But regardless of the name and the specifics, Brazelton said she welcomes the program’s intention.

“We are losing our recreational programs and things like that, so there is not as much for the children to do when they’re not in school,” she said. “I feel like anything that we can do in the city to give the kids more options so they don’t have to turn to the streets, the violence, YouTube — to put them in social environments, to be around other kids their age, and to be learning and growing together, that’s always a good idea.”

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

Philadelphia officials and advocates urge school district to do more to help homeless students

2024-08-08T21:35:09+00:00

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As Philadelphia prepares for the new school year, members of the City Council and others are putting serious pressure on the district to do more for students experiencing homelessness.

Advocates and local community groups stressed the urgent need for programming to better help youth who are experiencing or at risk of housing insecurity during a City Council public hearing last week at the Alan Horwitz “Sixth Man” Center. The discussion grew heated at times, such as when Councilmember Isaiah Thomas had an impassioned exchange with Rachel Holzman, a school district representative.

“We’re funding you blindly at this enormous level,” said Thomas, who chairs the City Council’s Education Committee and organized the July 31 meeting. “I’m wondering why no one has ever come to City Council, gone to Harrisburg [the state capital], and said, “‘Listen, this system we have doesnt work. We’re not able to properly identify young people who are homeless because we don’t have the proper staff.’”

Homelessness is far from a new issue in Philadelphia, but statistics indicate the problem is getting more acute for the district, which identified 6,217 students as homeless in the 2022-2023 school year. That’s a nearly 46% increase from the 2018-2019 school year. For the 2023-24 school year, district officials told council members at the hearing their initial counts show the number of homeless students increased by 20% over the prior year.

“If that’s not an emergency I don’t know what is,” Councilmember Jamie Gauthier said.

Although the district has taken steps to provide more support for homeless students, there are still gaps in what schools can provide or point students and their families to — the district does not have designated staff positions for homeless liaisons, for example. Philadelphia’s school counselors and teachers who are often already overworked frequently end up serving as de facto school liaisons for students experiencing housing insecurity.

Homelessness and housing insecurity can impact everything from students’ behavior and academic progress to nutrition. Currently, Philadelphia students who are identified as homeless are offered a number of services including transportation, enrollment support, emergency funds, and more.

“Many of the students I worked with who experienced homelessness struggled with their education because for many of them where they were going to sleep, their next meal, the well-being of their parents or siblings was their priority, not Algebra I or English 3,” said Debora Carrera, Philadelphia city government’s chief education officer, in her testimony before the council.

At the hearing, Oriana F. shared her own story about moving around often as a child. (Chalkbeat is withholding her last name due to concerns about privacy.) Because of the changes in schools and neighborhoods, she was put on medication for anxiety and behavior.

“When I was experiencing homelessness I wished I had more support than I had back then,” she said. “Someone I could talk to without [being] a necessary reporter and actually talking to me and programs for people my age would help a lot.”

Maura McInerney, legal director of the Education Law Center, offered a number of solutions at the hearing to combating the issue: expanding youth-focused housing for those who’ve aged out of foster care, providing school services for children in shelters, and creating centralized hubs in schools to track homeless students, and more.

Despite critiques from the city council, Rachel Holzman, deputy chief for the district’s Office of Students Rights and Responsibilities, maintained the district has made great strides in addressing the issue. Holzman mentioned additional teacher training, a podcast for adults to see warning signs of at-risk students, and the district’s creation of a teen program to give them a voice.

The district has also partnered with various homeless organizations to better track the number of homeless youth.

Yet the hearing highlighted ongoing frustrations with the current system.

Thomas told Chalkbeat in an interview after the hearing that “we have a lot of work to do” to see how the city can help schools address the issue.

And Councilmember Kendra Brooks also had strong words for the district on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, saying that school counselors “are already responsible for too much. We can’t ask them to be case managers for homeless youth as well. Who is responsible for connecting homeless students with needed resources?”

Holzman told Brooks at the hearing that every school counselor in the district “is considered a homeless liaison.”

In their comments at the hearing, some youth voiced a need for more resources to be offered to at-risk students.

“I am able to be my best self when I have a community in my corner and not just at a desk or on the phone,” said Kymirah B., a youth advisor and board member at Valley Youth House. (Chalkbeat is withholding her last name due to concerns about privacy.)

She highlighted the Synergy Project, an outreach program helping students who are homeless or facing similar challenges, and how it supported her during her time of need.

Under Philadelphia’s mandated reporter training, school staff are required to alert protection services if a student tells them of anything potentially concerning. This can lead to complicated situations, such as students losing trust in staff. But many of the women spoke of feeling like people only talked to them because it was their job to do so, not because they really cared.

“I needed a mentor and not just someone with a title,” Kymirah B. said.

Azia Ross is a summer intern for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. You can reach her at aziaross@chalkbeat.org.

New campaign to improve Philly children’s reading skills relies on time-tested song

2024-07-25T20:20:32+00:00

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Efforts to improve Philadelphia students’ reading skills aren’t confined to classrooms. One of the latest such campaigns to bolster literacy is Right2ReadPhilly — and it relies on a tool rooted in Black history.

The campaign began in early June and is run by Mighty Engine, a local creative agency. The group is building access to reading resources and sign language for children as young as six months old. It works hand in hand with many other groups — including the city’s “reading captains” — that are united in the pursuit of getting Philly kids to read as early and often as possible.

“We know families can play a crucial role in turning around our city’s early-learning crisis, furthering recent early literacy gains. But [if only] we could grab their attention with fun, free, proven things that they can do together with their children,” Heseung Song, CEO of Mighty Engine, said in a statement. “The campaign was designed to prove this is possible.”

The backdrop for this work is the school district’s shift to a new English language arts curriculum for the upcoming school year. It will use teaching techniques and materials based on the science of reading and world knowledge. Education officials and advocates hope this change will positively affect outcomes: While students’ scores on last year’s state tests in English language arts improved in some respects, just 34% of students in grades 3-8 achieved proficiency, and fewer than one-third of third graders reached this benchmark.

Although it officially started in June, Right2Read has been hosting small neighborhood events in the city for months, according to a spokesperson. Among other strategies, it has been teaching families the “Alphabet Song” that was taught in Freedom Schools, as well as “simple signs,” which are American Sign Language phrases for young learners.

Although the song’s tune comes from the widely known “I Don’t Know, But I’ve Been Told” melody, it encourages children to say the sound a letter will make — “ah” for A, “buh” for B, “kuhh” for C — instead of just its name. This phonics-centric method forces children to learn the sounds of letters rather than only memorizing the names and orders of letters.

The “Alphabet Song” originated from Freedom Schools, which became popular in the 1960s as a way to provide Black families not just an education, but social, political, and economic liberation as well. Those schools were part of a long line of efforts to educate Black children, including clandestine schools for enslaved Africans.

Sharif El-Mekki, CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development in Philadelphia, said the “Alphabet Song” is linked to reading techniques he remembers learning as a kid in West Philly and that people sang it on porches in his neighborhood.

The song “was a part of this comprehensive pedagogical framework to teach young black children how to read,” El-Mekki said. “Not only were we learning this alphabet song, we were learning: What does it mean to put these blends of sounds together?”

The song resonates with people doing similar literacy work in the city. Elaine Wells, who is a reading captain in Philadelphia and founder of Tiny Trekkers, a local trail and nature group for children, said her 7-year-old granddaughter struggled to learn to read.

“She could recognize ‘oh that’s an A or that’s a D’ but in trying to put the letters together to make a word, she definitely struggled,” Wells said.

But after she learned the song, according to Wells, “She has just been adamant about reading any and everything that she can and she’s been reading so much better.”

Building that kind of phonics-based foundation is crucial, said Marie Clarke, a third grade teacher at Philly’s Henry C. Lea Elementary, even though it’s not the only approach children can lean on to improve their reading skills.

“Context clues will help, that’s a strategy, but they still need the foundation of doing their sounds,” Clarke said.

Right2Read encourages people to put their own creative twists on the “Alphabet Song,” as long as such remixes still teach letter sounds (and are appropriate for all audiences). It even encourages doing double dutch while singing the song. And there are even prizes on offer.

The group takes a multi-faceted approach to helping children’s language skills as early as possible. Right2Read encourages teaching American Sign Language’s simple signs to young learners because doing so “can boost overall language capacity, including speech, and early learning,” according to its website.

“I think it’s important for children to feel both connection to their caregivers as well as confidence to express their wants and needs as early as possible,” said Sara Novic, author and consultant for Right2Read’s sign language component.

In addition, the organization’s website connects families to everything from ways to get free books, to how to incorporate “playful learning” in everyday urban settings.

The group’s impact is on track to stretch well beyond literacy and instructional circles.

Wells said she’s going to go over the “Alphabet Song” at every Tiny Trekker event. That way, she said, she can help instill it “as an easier way not just to recognize what the letter name is but what the sound is.”

Correction, July 26, 2024: This article has been corrected to reflect that Mighty Engine is a local creative agency. It has also been corrected to include the name of Right2ReadPhilly, the spelling of the name of Mighty Engine’s CEO, and the melodic basis for the “Alphabet Song.”

Azia Ross is a summer intern for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. You can reach her at aziaross@chalkbeat.org.

Philly students rally for more school funding at state capitol as budget debate grinds on

2024-07-01T22:57:48+00:00

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Students from 17 Philadelphia high schools rallied at the state capitol in Harrisburg last week to demand that lawmakers provide adequate support to their underfunded public schools.

The roughly 40 students who participated in the rally were part of a Youth Leadership Fellowship at PhillyBOLT — which stands for Building Our Lives Together — to learn how to create change in their communities through field trips and curriculum. They also went on a similar trip to the city in May to stress the importance of school funding.

“Schools all over the city don’t have adequate central air systems; they have worn down books and school supplies, and the buildings are literally collapsing at the seams,” said Mecca Patterson-Guridy, who spoke at the rally about her experiences as a coach with PhillyBOLT.

The rally on Thursday came as debates about the Pennsylvania budget for the next fiscal year focused in large part on funding for public schools. State legislators have struggled to decide how they will spend on public education — and how much to spend on schools.

One factor complicating the issue is a controversial new private school voucher proposal that most Republicans and some Democrats in the statehouse want to see enacted. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has previously backed vouchers.

Lawmakers have missed a June 30 deadline to approve the state budget.

The most recent budget proposal, approved by the Pennsylvania House and awaiting action in the state Senate, would increase public school spending by $5.1 billion. Philadelphia schools would get more than $242 million more in basic education aid next year and nearly $1.4 billion more over the next seven years, if the budget proposal is adopted as written. They could receive additional funding if lawmakers also adopt controversial changes to how cyber charter schools are funded.

But Republican lawmakers have balked at the proposed increase. They say the state should be cautious about how much of its $15 billion surplus it spends in one year.

The students with PhillyBOLT say if the state has that money, it should be spent on improving public education.

Students with the community group PhillyBOLT are calling on state lawmakers to ensure state education aid meets the needs of Philadelphia schools.

“We hope people do pay attention to the need for funding for public education. I mean actually take action on it,” said Hillary Do, founder and executive director of PhillyBOLT. “Because our schools are very underfunded. It’s a problem across the state, not just in Philadelphia and we want to make sure that our young people get the chance to thrive and that starts in many ways with our public schools.”

Some of the school improvements the students want to see include better school lunches, no asbestos, new sports equipment, and extracurricular activities available for all students.

The possibility of private school vouchers remains controversial amid the tense budget talks. Proponents of the proposed Pennsylvania Award for Student Success (or PASS) scholarships — including the philanthropic arm of rapper Jay-Z’s Roc Nation — say they would not impact public school funding and would help low-income families access schools with smaller class sizes and more resources.

Voucher opponents however say any taxpayer money going to private schools is money that could be going to help fulfill needs like those laid out by the students in PhillyBOLT. Critics also say private schools are not as open to students as public schools.

Azia Ross is a summer intern for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. You can reach her at aziaross@chalkbeat.org.

Philly school district combats summer slide with new summer camp

2024-06-26T20:51:03+00:00

Rows of Philadelphia students lined up in the Solis-Cohen elementary school backyard on Tuesday morning, ready to start their first day of summer camp. But this year, they’ll be getting much more than traditional camp activities through the school district’s new Summer Achievers program.

The district is offering 13 summer programs across the city for students of all grades with approximately 23,000 students taking part. The Summer Achievers program, in particular, provides students with academics as well as fun. The free program, open to all Philadelphia students in grades 1 - 8, will offer math and English classes in the mornings and enrichment activities in the afternoon, including field trips and sports.

Programs like the Summer Achievers are central to Mayor Parker’s push for year-round schooling. There’s a possibility programs like these could become the new normal with the city’s new budget featuring millions in new education funding Parker says will go toward expanded after school and year round programming in 2025.

“This is a great opportunity for our students to continue to learn and expand on that learning so that we can minimize … that summer slide,” said Deputy Superintendent of Academic Services Jermaine Dawson.

Summer slide refers to learning lost during the summer months. While many teachers and education advocates suggest that students continue to read over the summer, that’s often not enough. A 2020 study found that U.S students lost more than half of what they learned in school over the course of five summers. Concern about learning loss and maintaining students’ academic gains has only grown since the COVID 19 pandemic.

To close these gaps, students attending Summer Achievers will receive additional support in academics from their previous grade — often from educators they already know.

Malik Johnson, a counselor at Solis-Cohen School, is one such staff member. On Tuesday, he greeted a girl named Envy with a smile as she made her way to the orange cone where his group of students were lining up. He complimented another on their shoes.

“This is the first year we are truly expanding programming to touch more students and to make sure our programs are easily accessible to students and families since we know that was a barrier in previous years,” said Randi Davila, Assistant Superintendent in the district’s Office of Student Life.

Students raise their hands to show they're excited at the Summer Achievers program at Solomon Solis-Cohen School.

Summer Achievers along with Young Entrepreneurs, which is for high school students, are the only two new summer programs being offered by the district.

Summer Achievers “has been in the works for several years and is a model for what summer programming can look like in a full-day, year-round School,” said Ayana Williams, Deputy of Communications for Mayor Parker, in a written statement.

The district will roll out a year round school pilot program in 20 elementary schools starting this fall. These schools will provide families with before and after school care.

“This is what summer is all about. It’s about catching up on your academics, but it’s also about having fun,” said Jessica Shapiro with The Office of Children and Families.

Azia Ross is a summer intern for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. You can reach her at aziaross@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia high schools collect thousands in ‘senior dues’ with little transparency or oversight

2024-05-30T13:51:18+00:00

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When they’re asked to pay mandatory “senior dues” for students graduating from Philadelphia public schools, many families simply groan and write the check. But Michelle Brix had questions.

Brix’s child Elias attends Philly’s Creative and Performing Arts High School, known as CAPA. This year, she was asked to pay $375 in senior dues — or $390.25 counting processing fees if she paid using the suggested online portal. The amount shocked her. She tried to get CAPA to provide an itemized list of what those dues cover and records of what the costs were in prior years.

“No one could give me any answers for something as simple as how much it costs for a T-shirt or a yearbook,” Brix said. “It felt like they were making numbers up.”

She’s not alone in her confusion. Nearly every Philadelphia district high school charges these dues. No two schools’ fees cover the same items. Some say they charge for caps and gowns, even though the district has budgeted funding for these. Others cover luncheon cruises and decorations at the graduation ceremonies.

Schools sometimes indicate that students who don’t pay senior dues may suffer serious consequences, including missing out on milestones like walking at graduation. Yet there’s almost no district oversight of these fees, which can easily run into three figures and aren’t trivial to the city’s many families that are economically disadvantaged. Roughly 72% of the district’s traditional public school students come from low-income backgrounds, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

On average, Philadelphia schools ask families to pay $200 for these graduation and senior expenses, according to data from an annual survey the district sends out to all high school principals.

When Brix did finally get a rough breakdown of the costs, she was told it was a lump sum fee and she couldn’t opt out of some of the charges. So if her child didn’t want to attend the senior luncheon but wanted a yearbook, Brix would have to pay the total as if her child wanted both.

Eventually, after multiple parents started raising concerns, the school lowered the fees for all students to $300 each.

“You just feel completely powerless to do anything about it,” Brix said. “It doesn’t feel like you heard me, it feels like I annoyed you to death and you changed something.”

CAPA’s principal and senior class sponsor did not respond to Chalkbeat’s requests for comment.

What are senior dues charged by schools?

Senior dues, sometimes called class dues or senior fees, are determined by the principal and managed by a senior class sponsor at each school.

They range from an $85 charge at William L. Sayre High School that covers “class hoodies, cap and gowns, diploma covers” and more, to $380 at Roxborough High School for a yearbook, a luncheon cruise, programs and invitations, “memorabilia,” and other graduation expenses.

Some schools charge more for elaborate graduation ceremonies at venues like the Kimmel Center or The Met. Others keep costs low by holding their ceremonies in their auditorium but do charge for lighting, audio-visual needs, flowers, and decorations.

This year, CAPA is holding its graduation ceremony at the Miller Theater, a $25,000 venue that’s hosted performances by Katherine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier, and Sammy Davis Jr. That contract is paid for using senior dues, according to the survey.

At CAPA, 81% of families are “economically disadvantaged” and participate in state or federal public assistance programs, according to district data.

There’s also little oversight or transparency regarding these fees. Apart from the self-reported principal survey, the school district would not say whether it keeps detailed records of how much money is collected and spent on these fees each year.

Asked if the district has any requirements for collecting and spending this money, spokesperson Christina Clark pointed to a Financial Training Guide that principals receive that “outlines operational policies and procedures” for school spending. This training guide does not mention class dues, and dues information is not included in schools’ public budget documents.

The method of collecting the dues varies. Some schools allow personal checks, and others require payments to go through websites like SchoolCashOnline that can charge additional processing fees like what Brix encountered.

According to another district spokesperson, students may qualify to have these fees waived or receive additional support from the school — but the district did not explain how this would work or if it’s up to the school. Some school handbooks say students can begin paying off the total the year they enter high school paying in installments every year until they reach the total. Others do not include this wording.

And the consequences for not paying can be — or at least can appear to be — severe. Brix said the way the dues were portrayed to her and her student, she believed they were mandatory or her child wouldn’t be able to graduate.

Clark said in an email no student can be excluded from graduation because of their inability to contribute to class dues. According to the district’s high school graduation guidelines, “students who meet all graduation requirements may participate in the graduation exercises unless for reasons as determined at the school level with appropriate communication.”

However, parents say this hasn’t been clearly communicated to them, and the public information readily available sometimes contradicts what the district says. For example, William W. Bodine High School’s website says any Class of 2024 student who fails to pay their $200 won’t get their class transcripts, diploma, graduation tickets, prom tickets, or a yearbook.

Brix said it took months of research and repeated requests to her school principal to get any information about the dues.

Several school handbooks Chalkbeat reviewed also said the dues are “required” but do not detail consequences for failing to pay. Chalkbeat reached out to every principal who responded to the district’s survey, but only one replied, directing all requests back to the district’s communications office.

“I don’t think any Philly school district kid should feel like they can’t afford to graduate from their public school,” Brix said.

Multiple handbooks and senior contracts also say these dues will not be refunded, even if a family paid but later learned that their student would not graduate for academic or other reasons.

A letter in the 2024 handbook for Kensington High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (known as KCAPA) says, “by School District policy, participation in proms and commencement ceremonies are privileges that may be withheld by the principal per the Student Code of Conduct or attendance.”

When it comes to traditional graduation regalia, the district and some schools don’t always seem to be on the same page. A district spokesperson said that the district has set aside money to pay for caps and gowns for all graduates.

“No student should be charged for their cap and gown,” the spokesperson said in an email.

However, some schools included charges for caps and gowns in their dues calculation this year, according to the principals’ survey responses. Documents from prior years also reveal schools have previously included charges for caps and gowns in their dues.

Clark said “the principals who indicated that information on the survey were contacted to remind them of the funding that is provided.”

Class, prom fees swallow student job earnings

Jesse Abrams-Morley, an educator at KCAPA, said students and families often express frustration at having to pay so much money just to participate in a celebration of their academic success.

But in fact, the number one question Abrams-Morley gets this time of year is: “Do our fees cover prom?” At some schools they do, but at most, including KCAPA, they don’t. So between the ticket price, the outfits, transportation, and other prom-related costs, families can end up paying hundreds more for yet another significant rite of passage that most people assume is a “basic function of school,” he said.

For many of this year’s seniors who started their high school careers in the throes of the COVID pandemic, experiences like prom and graduation are not just decadent excuses to dress up, Brix said. They’re important milestones and rewards for students’ resilience during a turbulent time. They’re also chances to make their last meaningful in-person childhood memories before heading off to college or entering the workforce.

“Just going to your own graduation and going to your prom could cost $485,” Abrams-Morley said. “There are a lot of families for whom that is a huge burden. … A large number of students who work” end up having their job earnings eaten up by those fees.

Abrams-Morley said charging these dues raises questions about inequity and transparency.

Not all schools publicly post their dues so it’s hard to know how your school stacks up against their neighbors or if fees are rising every year, he said.

“That should be public information,” he said.

Brix too wants more transparency and rules around these fees. She said she’s had another child pass through the city’s public school system, and last year her family only had to pay $165 in senior dues at Franklin Learning Center.

“At this point it just seems like a circus, a free-for-all,” she said. “It made me feel like people need to shop around … and ask what senior dues are when they’re considering where to attend high school, which seems absolutely outrageous.”

Kristal Torpey, another CAPA parent, said she paid her daughter’s fees in installments because she doesn’t feel like she can pay all at once. But the idea of her daughter not walking at graduation pressured her into paying.

“Initially, the $390 shocked the hell outta me,” Torpey said. “But I do feel like we were told early enough on that you can save up.”

Still, without a breakdown of the costs, “I feel like I’m blindly sending money,” Torpey said.

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

How a visual arts program for Philly students helps them understand their world — and themselves

2024-05-24T19:49:05+00:00

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Art is a way for Shamaya McTillman to deal with her emotions.

“This is something I knew I wanted to do,” said Shamaya, who will graduate next month from Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School, explaining why she made sure to stay every day after school to work on a project with Mural Arts Philadelphia. It was a way, she said, “to escape problems in school and out of school, to ease stress.”

Mural Arts, founded in 1984, works with students between the ages of 10 and 18 in 17 Philadelphia schools and recreation centers. Each site has a collaborating visual artist, and once a year it sponsors a showcase of students’ work. Mural Arts’ mission is to “empower youth to be leaders through artmaking,” according to its mission statement.

Shamaya McTillman chose “Alice in Wonderland” as the inspiration for her art.

“Every young person in the city of Philadelphia should have access to art,” Mural Arts founder Jane Golden told the gathering of teachers, parents and students at this year’s showcase on May 13 at the Icebox Project Space, an art gallery on North American Street in the Fishtown neighborhood.

Some of the students’ work will in fact be made into murals on their school’s buildings, including a whimsical design featuring dragons and unicorns by students at Edmonds Elementary School.

The theme this year was “fairy tales and folklore.” So with the help of teaching artist Jamee Grigsby, Shamaya and five of her classmates came up with a mural sculpture — nine smaller pictures, each in a box, that together make a mural — to reflect that theme.

Shamaya chose “Alice in Wonderland” as the inspiration for her segment of the project, and her panel in the sculpture shows ice cream, mushrooms, flowers and other items that evoke a “wonderland.” But in the center is a vortex, symbolizing escape, indicating that just because it’s pretty, “it may not be what you want,” she said.

“I went through so much during my years in high school, this helped me to escape things that were pushing me down,” she said. “I didn’t want to be just another person in the streets, but somebody who knows how to pick herself up.”

Next year, she will attend Full Sail University in Florida that specializes in preparing its students for careers in graphic design and other artistic pursuits.

Jane Golden, left, founder of Mural Arts, speaks to teachers, parents, students, and others at the annual showcase in Philadelphia.

Grigsby, a muralist and graphic designer, said in a note accompanying the piece Shamaya worked on that through making art, students are learning about their cultural traditions, “researching stories that have shaped our generations.”

Ultimately, she said, “they focused on using different mediums to visualize a way to tell their own stories and … express their insights with imagination and flair.”

Chidiebere Ogbenna, whose family came to Philadelphia from Nigeria, wants to make a career in animation, so having access to arts programming is important to her. Now a sophomore, she chose Dobbins because it offers a program in graphic design and animation.

She remembers that growing up, her parents told stories in which “I was the sun and my sister the moon.” So for her mural, she drew two scenes with the same tree, one in sunlight and the other in moonlight.

The opportunity to participate in the Mural Arts program is important to her future plans, she said. She has ambitions after graduation to attend Gobelins Paris or Sheridan College in Canada, which are known around the world for their animation programs.

Students at Tilden Middle School designed this mural for their school that's displayed at the Mural Arts Philadelphia annual showcase.

Shamaya is part of a huge family in North Philadelphia, with seven sisters and two brothers. Through art, she said, she learned to “love yourself now in order to love who you will become in the future.” When she was feeling particularly down, she said, Mural Arts “helped me learn and grow.”

Expressing herself through art “is a lot about understanding what you want to do not just after graduation, but where you want to be in 15 years,” she said. In college, she looks forward to meeting new people, learning about their creative process, entering into collaborations, “and just having fun.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Why Pennsylvania’s efforts to regulate kids’ social media accounts have failed so far

2024-04-03T18:20:40+00:00

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HARRISBURG — Despite bipartisan interest in setting ground rules for social media companies, Pennsylvania lawmakers are struggling to reach a consensus amid privacy and other concerns that don’t neatly break down along party lines.

In recent months, the legislature has debated bills that would mandate disclosure of artificial intelligence-generated images, ban TikTok from state-owned phones, and require monitoring of minors’ social media. The debate around the latter most clearly demonstrates the balancing act legislators are trying to achieve.

Social media can help young people find community, but can also expose them to disinformation and hate speech, and encourage them to self-harm, according to the American Psychological Association.

From California to Ohio, red and blue states alike have passed laws that attempt to combat this by requiring age verification and parental consent to use apps.

NetChoice, a tech industry group whose members include Meta, TikTok, and X, has challenged many of these laws in federal court, sometimes with the backing of civil liberties groups like the ACLU. Several suits have succeeded.

In one, a federal judge last August issued an injunction blocking an Arkansas parental consent law from going into effect until the courts settled the matter.

In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks wrote that NetChoice was likely to succeed in its First Amendment challenge. He added there was no evidence that the law would “protect minors from materials or interactions that could harm them online.”

Regulating speech is tricky under the First Amendment, says Megan Iorio, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonpartisan advocacy group in Washington, D.C. In a March interview with Marketplace, she argued there is “no privacy-protective way” to verify a user’s age.

But placing the onus on parents to mitigate the harm of opaque social media algorithms is also “not how things should work,” she added.

“The government should be able to pass regulations to prevent harms to kids,” Iorio said.

Parents versus privacy

This session, legislative leaders in Pennsylvania have attempted to thread this needle with two bipartisan bills. But both efforts have stalled amid tech lobbying and a wide swath of concerns from both major parties.

In March, state House Democrats advanced a bill sponsored by state Rep. Brian Munroe, D-Bucks, who represents a suburban Philadelphia swing district.

Like other states’ proposals, the bill would require social media companies to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent before anyone 16 or younger opens an account. It would also allow parents to restrict how much their children use an app by allowing parents to view their kids’ privacy settings or set time limits on an account’s use.

Additionally, it would prohibit the collection or sale of a minor’s browsing history, require that such users opt in to algorithmic recommendations, and make it unlawful for a social media network to “intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or negligently cause or encourage a minor to access content which the social media company knows or should have known subjects one or more minors to harm.” The provisions would be enforced by the state attorney general.

Munroe told Spotlight PA the idea for his proposal came from a project by local high school students on social media’s mental health impacts.

Parents, Munroe said, do give a level of consent to tech companies when they provide a phone to a child. But “once I give that to you, it’s a jungle,” he said.

“We need to be able to offer tools that are going to make it more mainstream for parents to be able to have a say in what their children are involved in,” Munroe added.

Controversially, the bill accomplishes this in part by requiring social media companies to monitor any group chats on their platforms that involve two or more individuals aged 16 or younger. If the company finds any “chats, posts, videos and images that are deemed sensitive or graphic” under a platform’s terms of use, the company must report the content to the minor’s parent or legal guardian.

That provision drew the opposition of the Pennsylvania chapter of the ACLU, which argued in a memo to lawmakers that the bill would “invite parental surveillance,” define harm in “broad, subjective, and unenforceable ways,” and “likely have dire consequences for young people.”

One of tech’s biggest lobbies, TechNet, also opposed the language. In a statement, Margaret Durkin, the group’s mid-Atlantic executive director, told Spotlight PA that the bill will have “unintended consequences that could jeopardize Pennsylvanians’ privacy and data.”

Beyond allowing parents or legal guardians to access direct messages between users, social media platforms might “overregulate and remove accounts that could undermine the free speech rights of users” when attempting to comply with the law, Durkin wrote.

Despite these concerns, a state House committee advanced the proposal in March with bipartisan support.

State House Majority Leader Matt Bradford, D-Montgomery, planned to bring the bill up for a vote by the full chamber a week later, according to a schedule shared by his spokesperson at the time. But in a closed-door meeting, progressive Democrats raised concerns about the chat-monitoring provision, legislative sources told Spotlight PA.

In response, Bradford urged lawmakers to stick together despite their concerns, sources said.

But that evening, health care provider Planned Parenthood PA announced its opposition in an email to state House Democratic lawmakers, arguing that the proposal threatened youth’s free speech and access to information on their sexual and reproductive health.

That seemed to sink the bill. Bradford took it off the voting calendar the next day, and state House Democrats canceled a related news conference to tout the proposal scheduled for that week.

A spokesperson for Bradford did not reply to a request for comment.

Munroe told Spotlight PA that he has since convened a working group with Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and his progressive colleagues to find a compromise. He suggested lowering the age for chat monitoring to 13, or removing the provision altogether while leaving the data protections, parental controls, and age verification in place.

Both groups, he noted, are OK with the bill’s intent but disagree on the language. He plans to keep working on the issue.

“I don’t represent the ACLU. I don’t represent Planned Parenthood. I represent the parents and the citizens of 144th District in this commonwealth,” Munroe said. “And I can tell you, from all the conversations I’ve had, they want something done.”

A similar bill has also struggled in the state Senate.

A proposal nearly identical to Munroe’s, minus chat monitoring, advanced out of a state Senate committee with unanimous support last year. Republican leadership, however, has not brought the legislation up for a final vote.

“We were having difficulty crafting language that was going to get the support of the majority of our colleagues,” state Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill, R-York, a member of the GOP leadership team and the prime Republican sponsor of the bill, told Spotlight PA.

She added that members of both major parties have opposed it, with some arguing it goes too far and others arguing it doesn’t go far enough. Those positions don’t break down along party lines, she added.

“If you’re more of a libertarian … on the Republican side, you may express some of the similar concerns as we heard by some of our most progressive colleagues in the House,” Phillips-Hill told Spotlight PA.

The chat-monitoring provision is also opposed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, said his spokesperson Manuel Bonder.

Noting that nothing is close to reaching the governor’s desk, Bonder still said that there are “some pretty serious concerns with that bill.”

Overall, Bonder added, Shapiro “believes we have to take action to lean in on innovation and approach these technologies in a way that is responsible and ethical.”

The TikTok split

There appears to be more agreement in the General Assembly on another tech issue: banning TikTok from state devices. Shapiro has so far been opposed.

The popular app is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. Pennsylvania billionaire Jeffrey Yass, a major Republican donor, has a personal stake in the company, as does Susquehanna International Group, which he co-founded.

Some national security experts worry the Chinese government could demand the company turn over user data.

Under a bill sponsored by Phillips-Hill, any app owned by a “foreign adversary” would be banned from devices owned by public agencies, including school districts. The bill as originally drafted applied specifically to TikTok and passed the state Senate unanimously.

In a bipartisan vote, the state House agreed to amend the bill to expand its scope in late March. The proposal has not come up for a full, final vote in the chamber.

The bill would affect the Shapiro administration, which uses TikTok to tout the governor’s agenda to almost 43,000 followers. A February video in which Shapiro promised to protect abortion rights set to Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” had garnered 1.7 million views as of April 2.

“We try and balance the need to reach people where they are, but also take the necessary precautions that the IT department has advised us on,” Shapiro told PennLive in a March interview.

Those precautions, Bonder said, include having TikTok on a single device that does not connect to the state’s WiFi network or have any other apps or data on it. That phone is used only to create the governor’s official TikTok videos, Bonder added.

“The governor has talked many times about how he believes there should be no wrong door for accessing state government,” Bonder told Spotlight PA.

“For some people that’ll mean coming to the Capitol and having a meeting. For some that’s sending an email. And for some, that’s engaging on social media.”

In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson echoed that sentiment, arguing that “bans on state government devices and networks prevent state agencies from reaching a wider audience.”

“Bills like these are being pushed through without regard for the facts,” the spokesperson added.

The legislation is mostly redundant. The Office of Administration — effectively the commonwealth’s human resources and IT department for tens of thousands of state employees — currently blocks TikTok’s URL on its WiFi network, and the app cannot be downloaded from the state’s application portal, according to a Shapiro administration memo to lawmakers viewed by Spotlight PA.

However, the governor’s administration said it opposed the bill, citing a need for flexibility that it achieves through executive orders or management directives instead of waiting for legislation.

“Today the issue is TikTok. In three months, six months, or a year, it could be another app that needs to be addressed,” the memo said.

Shapiro isn’t the only skeptic. State Rep. Tarik Khan, D-Philadelphia, was one of two Democrats to vote no on the updated TikTok ban. He argued that the language set a precedent of guilt by association that “we should not be establishing in the commonwealth.”

But Khan, who has introduced bipartisan legislation that would ban the use of AI to misrepresent “the words, actions or beliefs of the current or former candidate,” also argued that inaction is not an option.

“We have to be nimble, and we have to be ready to set guardrails,” Khan told Spotlight PA. “And the worst thing we can do is just do nothing.”

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Philadelphia teachers say affinity groups are capable of ‘rewriting the structure of education’

2024-03-18T11:00:00+00:00

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Can affinity groups for teachers of color help give Philadelphia a stronger, more diverse, and more stable teaching workforce? One education group is putting time and energy behind its belief that they can.

Teach Plus Pennsylvania, the state affiliate of a national nonprofit that trains teachers to advocate for policy change, launched a Philadelphia affinity group network this year that they say will provide teachers with a sense of community, belonging, and understanding in an effort to “diversify and strengthen Philadelphia’s educator workforce.”

Philadelphia public school teachers of color from traditional public or charter schools can join one of 21 teacher-led groups meeting in classrooms, coffeeshops, and other locations across the city.

The goal is to create “safe, culturally affirming spaces where educators of color can develop personal and professional connections that ultimately support and empower them and encourage them to stay in the profession,” said Andrea Terrero Gabbadon, an expert on teacher retention and an education leadership coach with Teach Plus Pennsylvania.

Any effort to tackle systemic labor force issues in Philadelphia schools faces an uphill climb. In 2022, teacher attrition rates in the city reached their highest levels since 2018, with 13% of traditional public school teachers and 23% of charter school teachers leaving the classroom, according to research by Ed Fuller at Penn State’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy Analysis. Fuller found that the highest attrition rates were for early-career teachers with up to five years of experience.

Additionally, the share of teachers of color in Philadelphia is low compared to the student body makeup, and nationwide, they are leaving the profession at growing rates. Black students in Philly also say they want more teachers who look like them.

The extent to which affinity groups can help keep teachers on the job at scale is still unknown. Teachers leave the field for a variety of reasons, from low salaries to big workloads and a lack of support, that such groups might not be able to address. And affinity groups that are racially exclusive and officially backed by schools can be controversial and present legal issues, although the Philadelphia district is not involved in or sponsoring the effort by Teach Plus.

Laura Boyce, executive director of Teach Plus Pennsylvania, said affinity groups like these are showing early promise in other states such as Illinois. In a 2021 report on how Philadelphia could improve its recruitment and retention of teachers of color, Teach Plus and the Center for Black Educator Development recommended that they have “access to mentoring and affinity groups.”

“It’s an experiment to see, can we actually improve retention in a measurable way for the facilitators and participants in these groups and hopefully create an environment where they feel seen and valued, heard, affirmed, and supported to continue in this work?” Boyce said.

And Terrero Gabbadon said the new Philadelphia affinity groups are “part of a larger strategy” to tackle “systemic issues” that push teachers of color out of the profession.

The Philadelphia district already offers similar racial affinity groups, but they’re only for principals and assistant principals. Brandon Cummings, the district’s deputy chief of leadership development, said the district has been engaging in these group discussion sessions — which they call “think tanks” — for four years, in addition to other equity-centered initiatives.

Cummings said his office handles the logistics of finding locations, getting food, and organizing virtual meetings if needed, but that otherwise, the district doesn’t “intrude or in any way insert ourselves” into the groups’ activities. He said the district wants the people in the groups to direct their own conversations.

Morgan Craig-Williams, a kindergarten teacher at General George A. McCall School and a facilitator of the Black educators affinity group, said having a space that does not involve administrators or “anyone who will give any punitive action or higher ups in the school district” is crucial to their success.

Craig-Williams, who is in her ninth year of teaching, added that “teacher burnout is very real” in the city.

Creating community but also pushing for change

Stephanie Felder teaches African American History at Tacony Academy Charter High School and is the facilitator of the mid-career African American educator affinity group. She said the program has been “life giving.”

Though many of her peers are leaving the profession, Felder said she’s already made “a solid decision to stay.”

For her, the affinity group discussions have been “more about ‘how can we at this stage in our careers, help make it better for those coming up behind us. Help make it better for the students that we serve, and help make education across the board more than what we are seeing right now.’”

The event, "Convening of the Philadelphia Affinity Group Network for Public Classroom Teachers" on Thurs., Feb. 29, 2024 at. Cristo Rey High School in Philadelphia, PA.

Cristina Gutierrez, a bilingual educator at Lewis Elkin Elementary School in Kensington, facilitates a group of Latino and dual-language teachers of color. She said often, people get emotional in group settings when they talk about an experience in the classroom or the difficulty of advocating for bilingual education “and feeling like you’re the only one” going through it.

“We don’t have a cohesive system with bilingual education in Philadelphia,” she said.

Gutierrez said she wanted to create a space for multilingual educators to come together and discuss the challenges they face “and let our voices be heard.” But it’s about more than just talking about struggles, she said.

“It’s like the thing that you need, but you don’t know you need,” she said. “Yes, we create community, but we could also create a lot of change.”

Boyce said the aim is not to have gripe sessions or tell teachers of color to “go figure it out and solve it yourselves” but rather to develop “two-way communication and being able to elevate … some concerns and systemic solutions and really all learn from this work.”

Through her group, Craig-Williams connected with an educator who has been in the classroom for nearly 25 years. The two women text daily, she said, and swap tips about how to navigate school culture and deal with difficult days.

“She was a complete stranger before we set up these affinity groups,” Craig-Williams said. “Now, that’s a connection that I’ll probably keep forever.”

The moments she’s shared with her group members feels like the start of something bigger.

“These affinity groups are the beginning of us coming together and rewriting the structure of education,” she said.

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

How ‘reading captains’ are fueling Philadelphia’s push to improve early literacy

2024-01-16T12:00:00+00:00

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On an unseasonably warm day in Philadelphia, Tiye Thompson was investigating a mystery.

Thompson, 46, is one of more than a thousand city residents, mostly women of color, who spend their own time and money supporting Philadelphia’s youngest readers by serving as “reading captains.”

A few days earlier, as part of that work, Thompson and a group of neighborhood matriarchs papered South Philly with fliers for a big party they were throwing to celebrate “Reading Promise Week” and promote early literacy. She booked sponsors, volunteers, free food, and even an inflatable bouncy castle to boost the event.

She could have sworn she put one of her painstakingly laminated signs to promote the event on a sidewalk tree. But now, it’s gone. “What is going on?” Thompson asked. “Who is taking these signs and where did y’all put them?”

Thompson’s tenacity about finding that single sign mirrors her dedication to the reading captains program, a quintessentially Philly invention.

Armed with a crash course of expert training in the science of reading, phonics, and other early literacy techniques, reading captains help prepare parents and guardians to reinforce the lessons kids are learning in the classroom. They fan out into neighborhoods with one goal: Make sure the children on your block have the support they need to read on grade level. Because right now, many of those children cannot.

They are also plugged into a volunteer network that spans the city. They know prekindergarten application deadlines, how to spot students at risk of dropping out, and other aspects of the education ecosystem. And unlike other people involved in education and schools, they can knock on doors to provide children with direct support, like free books and other literacy resources.

Tiye Thompson, center, a reading captain in Philadelphia, posts signs about a block party to celebrate "Reading Promise Week."

“It’s very Philly, and it’s very in your face,” said Simone Partridge, director of communications at Read by 4th, a coalition of groups working to improve early literacy in Philadelphia. “It’s like, I’m going to show you and I’m going to bring you along, whether you like it or not, you are going to love literacy by the end of this five-minute conversation.”

Most Philadelphia district students in grades 3-8 can’t read on grade level according to the latest standardized test data. And over 30% of children in third grade, which is considered a critical year for literacy, are scoring at “below basic” on those exams — the lowest score level.

Adults aren’t doing much better. Recent federal data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows some 22%of Philadelphians aged 16 and older “lack the most basic literacy skills.” That same federal data, collected by advocacy group Achieve Now, shows 52% of Philadelphia’s adults are functionally illiterate.

All that means many Philadelphians may struggle to fill out job applications, apply for local and federal resources, and help their children become strong readers. In short, a lack of reading skills sustains the cycle of poverty, Partridge said.

Partridge works closely with the reading captains to champion their work.

“Reading captains are the heart and engine of Philly’s early literacy movement,” Partridge said. “When I say they make change happen quicker and faster than anybody else, I mean it.”

Black women are ‘mothering the community’ through literacy

The reading captains program launched in September 2017 as an extension of a collaboration between the Read By 4th campaign and Global Citizen, a civic engagement group in the city.

The program is modeled after the city’s block captain program — another initiative powered by volunteers who organize neighborhood clean-ups and beautification efforts.

At the Latinx Literacy Fest at Max Myers Playground in Northeast Philadelphia, reading captains handed out free books in multiple languages.

Reading captains organize block parties, group discussions, read-aloud events at laundromats and cafes, and they connect parents working with young readers to existing resources. They aren’t tasked with giving instruction or tutoring directly to students, but some come to the program with a background in education and can offer that kind of one-on-one support.

And many of the reading captains giving their time and energy to this effort are Black women and women of color, Partridge said.

“There’s a culture of Black women, particularly older Black women, giving back to their community … and extending their time,” she said. “With or without recognition that is happening. Whether you see it or not, whether they are funded, or not,” Black women are “mothering the community,” Partridge added.

For Thompson, the effort is personal and intergenerational.

Her family has been a mainstay on the block since 1941. Thompson’s grandmother (her “nana”) was a community fixture on 18th street and her house — which Thompson now owns and is raising her young daughter in — was a gathering place for neighbors of all ages.

“I refuse to allow the neighborhood to do anything but blossom,” Thompson said, “because I know how hard my grandmother worked … whatever it takes, whatever I have to do, I’m going to make sure it gets done. No excuses.”

Philadelphia's reading captains are working to make early literacy a part of every day life for kids in the city.

Diane Mills, a reading captain who helps run the program in West and Southwest Philly, said every volunteer approaches their job differently because each region and neighborhood has unique needs. But what connects them is their devotion to preparing the city’s children for a successful future.

“We want to see our children thrive by five, so they can read by fourth grade, so the street doesn’t take them and by seventh grade, they drop out,” Mills said. “If we don’t grasp them now, then we’re failing society and failing to help our future leaders to become powerful and take on the mantle that we have left.”

Mills said some of her family members struggled with their reading comprehension, which is part of what made the literacy issue so important for her.

Before the Reading Captain program existed, Mills, like many of her fellow reading captains, worked with several community volunteer and mentoring groups teaching reading, community health skills, HIV/AIDS awareness, and other issues that involve young people.

Then, in 2021, Mills had a health scare that almost took her life. She recovered, but said that experience was like God giving her a second chance.

“I’ve always had a passion for literacy, but after my illness, it was more like ‘this is my mission, to reach parents and their children.’ This is what I really have to do: Bring life to children through reading,” Mills said.

And their energy extends beyond academic concerns. As a reading captain, Mills organized an opera performance for students in a trendy hotel ballroom, complete with passed hors d’oeuvres. She said she wanted to give Philly students the chance to experience opulence and what it feels like to be waited on, something she said many young kids — especially Black kids or kids from low-income backgrounds — don’t get in the city.

For Eden Galan, a reading captain in Northeast Philadelphia, the pandemic spurred her to join the movement. Galan had already been volunteering as a bilingual reading coach in the city and mentoring students in the school district.

But watching her first grade son’s virtual classes, she noticed the wide array of abilities and challenges each student came to class with. In her neighborhood, many students are English language learners and speak Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and a host of other languages.

Galan said seeing those challenges made her “want to help and make a change in our city.”

Reading captains organize story-time activities and read-aloud events for Philadelphia's youngest learners.

“We’re a class of hard-working people, we have refugees, we have immigrants with different needs,” Galan said. “I love how on my block, you’ll just go a couple of doors down and you see so many different people, you’ll hear so many different languages.”

And that impacts how she approaches her job as a reading captain. Last October, Galan held a festival for kids in the Northeast which featured bilingual read-aloud events, dodgeball games, free food, and free books available in English, Spanish, and Arabic.

She recalled attending another reading captain event where immigrant families were encouraged to share their experiences raising children and attending school in the U.S. Those opportunities for families from all backgrounds to share their struggles and successes around education is central to the role reading captains play in their communities.

“If you create the opportunities for people to come together, they’re going to come together,” Galan said.

‘I think all neighborhoods should have reading captains’

Reading captains don’t work directly with the school district, but their efforts are coinciding with a districtwide plan to overhaul how students learn to read.

Starting next school year, the Philadelphia school district will be rolling out a new English language arts curriculum with a focus on the science of reading, as part of Superintendent Tony Watlington’s strategic plan.

But while district officials focus on the curriculum, test score data, and the demands of supporting teachers and students, Mills said reading captains can take a more personal approach and act as a trusted messenger to instill a love of reading beyond the classroom.

Adara Richardson, whose young daughter is classmates with Thompson’s daughter, called the program “amazing.”

“I think all neighborhoods should have reading captains,” Richardson said. “It gives children a different perspective on life. And it allows them to see that there’s other things to do besides just carelessly and misguidedly roaming the streets.”

Shannon Petty, a mom on the block, said her daughter Elia is “reading very well now because she had so many resources available to her at a young age,” most of those through connections to reading captains.

Elia said she loved the artwork, the books, and the moonbounce at the block party but said she especially loved the cotton candy.

Tiye Thompson, center, speaks to neighbors at the "Reading Promise Week" block party.

Reading captains are the Philly community

The reading captains understand something fundamental about Philly: History means something.

Gabrielle Saylor, Thompson’s childhood best friend and a former education advocate in the city, said organizing and gaining neighborhood trust in Philly takes time and, sometimes, generations.

“Philadelphia is a legacy place,” Saylor said.

It’s that collective history that the reading captains want to share with new residents.

But Thompson’s block has been slowly gentrifying, and that can mean more challenges to the relationship-building work reading captains do.

A new neighbor who moved into the rowhouse where Thompson’s poster went missing said she threw the sign away. She didn’t like that Thompson had stapled it to a tree and said she thought attaching a poster to it could harm the tree.

Thompson said she was hurt that her preparation for the “amazing block party” was treated with such disrespect.

Philadelphia's reading captains work to create moments of celebration and joy around literacy.

“I’m giving, and giving, and giving of my time,” Thompson said, “so to get slapped and kicked in the butt because of a poster on a tree, that’s when it gets heavy.”

But Thompson pushed on. She and neighborhood matriarch Betty Beaufort — an unceasing voice in the fight to fund libraries in Philadelphia — put their signs up on a telephone pole instead.

Word got around and the event was a success. Kids from the block filled tote bags with free books and gathered on colorful cushions to have stories read to them. Other volunteers set up tables recruiting for after-school activities including Scrabble competitions.

The neighbor who removed the sign did not attend.

“I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing this for my community,” Thompson said. “It’s okay for [someone] not to participate, because everybody else is going to get a benefit from it. And if I just see one more baby come up to me and say that they finished a chapter of a book, and they’re waiting for the next book well, I’m good. It’s worth it.”

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

Philadelphia teachers’ Outward Bound canoe expedition helps build them bonds and skills

2023-09-11T11:00:00+00:00

In the waning days of summer, a group of Philadelphia teachers gathered on the banks of the Delaware River for an exercise in teamwork — and geometry.

Their assignment: Determine the width of the river they would be canoeing on for a week.

The catch: They’d have no tools or instruments to measure it with.

“I gave them a few hints, because they’re not actually in 10th grade geometry class,” said Bridget Donegan, who teaches math and science at Swenson Arts and Technology High School in Northeast Philadelphia — nearly 90 miles away from their campsite in the Delaware Water Gap — and led the exercise.

Donegan and her fellow educators came from schools across the city, from traditional district classrooms to vocational technical high schools, to participate in a weeklong educator expedition program through Philadelphia’s Outward Bound School.

The days were for outdoor adventures, such as canoeing and rock climbing. In the evenings, they reflected, gathering around a campfire to share their insecurities and hopes for the coming school year.

The program is intended to foster teamwork and forge stronger community bonds among teachers working in the city, in addition to developing “experiential education skills” that they can take back to their classrooms, according to Philadelphia Outward Bound School spokesperson Chris Richter.

(Left) Jennifer Raymond, POBS scholarship and recruitment manager, helps build a fire.

On this trip, Donegan and her peers would be both students and teachers — following safety guidelines from their Outward Bound facilitators, but also leading small group lessons about topics they’re passionate about. They instructed each other in American sign language, deep breathing techniques, yoga, and education-specific lessons on classroom techniques like “mutual learning” and “consultancy protocol.”

And, in Donegan’s case, high school geometry.

POBS, as it’s known, also offers similar trips for students, district staff, and members of the public. Outward Bound’s programs have long been known for giving city dwellers the chance to camp, hike, and canoe and as a way to build practical skills like knot-tying.

But the programs have taken on a new weight after a series of difficult years for Philadelphia students and their teachers. Rising rates of gun violence, sudden school closures due to asbestos, lingering COVID traumas and environmental crises have exacted an emotional and academic toll on school communities.

And the school district is looking to POBS as a potential aid.

“In Philadelphia, our district is tremendously impacted by trauma,” said Abigail Gray, deputy chief of the district office of school climate and culture. “With the increase in gun violence that we’ve seen in the city in the last few years, we need ways to get away from that and take a break and have positive experiences and have fun, and that goes for certainly our students, but also for our staff. They are confronted with really difficult stuff, day in and day out, all day long.”

Cheers follow a tough climb

Gray said she has taken her team of 75 district staffers out to complete rope courses and participate in team building activities designed by POBS to merge professional development with practical skills.

No two POBS trips are identical. The educator expedition course is six nights and seven days of canoeing on the Delaware River. Some student trips are shorter, some are daylong experiences, and others are only a few hours.

The educator course is fully paid for by POBS, but teachers are expected to contribute a $250 application fee, according to Richter.

A staple activity of the expeditions is the “goal pole” where participants hold onto a series of ropes and support one usually nervous person at a time as they clamber up a 30-foot telephone pole. After reaching the very top, they are encouraged to jump away from the pole and grasp for a thick woven rope hanging above all of their teammates.

Once a teammate leaps, those holding the ropes gently lower them to the ground, cheering words of encouragement and whooping with pride when they touch down.

No one has to jump, and in fact, some feel the challenge without touching the top of the pole. No matter how far a teammate climbs, their colleagues are generous with their hugs and reassurances.

What’s important is not how far up the pole you made it, the educators explained. It’s the fact that you tried and trusted your colleagues to keep you from falling.

“We cannot do our work if we don’t have good relationships with one another and good communication with one another, and if we don’t have good communication and relationships with the schools that we support,” Gray said of her central office staff.

(From left) Educators Amelia Wisniewski-Barker, Alex Volin Avelin, and instructor Jennifer Raymond watch their teammate climb the “goal pole.”

Unexpected moments help build community

The educators first met their fellow participants at the Discovery Center in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park where they went through what POBS staff call a “duffle shuffle.” All of their clothes, backpacks, and camping gear were brought out for inspection, and anything lacking was provided from POBS’ store of water bottles, rain pants, sleeping bags, wool socks, and other camping necessities.

The crew then set off in a van for their expedition. They camped in the wilderness at different sites along the river bank each night, sleeping in tents together and operating as a “crew, not passengers,” as Richter put it. That meant distributing roles and responsibilities throughout the week, including “leader of the day,” navigator, chef, cleanup crew, medic, environmentalist, and journalist — in charge of the camp camera.

For Glennis Johnson, a social studies and learning support teacher at Swenson, the practice of teaching and learning in a group of interested peers was an important — and refreshing — experience.

She said she also learned a lot from the Outward Bound instructors guiding them, Kim Glodek and Jennifer Raymond, who are educators in their own right.

Johnson said the instructors’ willingness to leave them on the river bank during “critical moments to figure it out,” helped her get a better sense of what her students may be feeling during challenging lessons.

“That’s something that I need to work on as a teacher,” Johnson said. “Creative struggle is so important … meeting people where they are …. letting them show you their good positive sides.”

Jennel Johnson (no relation to Glennis) is the finance administrator for POBS and a Philly native who once taught undergraduate accounting. She went on her first big overnight trip with the classroom educators.

At one point early in the trip, their boat hit rocky waters and tipped over on the river. Luckily, Johnson said, it happened the day after their instructors told them just what to do in such a situation.

“Everyone jumped right in, and did what we practiced the day before,” Jennel Johnson said.

Sometimes, she said, it was not the planned team-building activities but rather the unexpected moments that brought them closer together.

“We bonded over wet clothes and Swedish Fish,” she said.

Raymond, one of the POBS instructors and the scholarship and recruitment manager for the organization, said it’s always a powerful experience watching a group of strangers learn to trust each other — essentially with their lives — over the course of an expedition.

She said listening to the educators in their downtime talk through their emotions and share resources and ideas for classroom support was inspiring. She hopes it will influence the way she works with students in the future.

But even as the teachers helped each other navigate social and emotional struggles, Raymond said part of the trip is also allowing them to act like kids again.

“Even though they were adults, they were like high school teenagers. You know, you have to say, ‘Hey, it’s time to go. It’s time to wake up,’” Raymond said. “Being out there took them back to that place.”

The group runs safety scenarios to make sure they are prepared if something goes wrong.

How the program works in Philly

The POBS network launched 30 years ago with the goal of giving Philadelphia students leadership skills and improving their conflict resolution abilities. It’s part of a national network of 10 Outward Bound schools in the U.S

Maurice West, a climate manager at W.D. Kelley School, said every year the school brings students to POBS in the hopes of shoring up their leadership abilities and socialization skills, and giving them an opportunity to ditch their phones and talk to one another.

“This is the best thing ever for our children,” West said. “They learn conflict resolution skills … It’s in the city but it’s out of the city.”

Nancy Goldenberg, who was POBS chairperson in 1993 when the first expedition set off, said at the time that the program was “meant to become integrated into each school’s basic curriculum and ultimately, become an integral part of school reform and improvement underway in the Philadelphia public school system.”

POBS leads 5-day canoe or backpacking expedition courses with middle school and high school students during the fall and spring seasons, similar to what the educators experienced. But its vision of incorporating these trips into each school’s curriculum hasn’t materialized.

In 2022, POBS served 40 district middle and high schools and 2,978 students at those schools. It also worked with four charter schools and their 1,104 students, according to Richter.

In 2023, Richter said, POBS has scheduled trips and outings through November and is expected to serve 42 district schools and around the same number of students as the previous year.

That’s a small fraction of the 177,941 district and charter school students in the city, but Richter and Glodek, the POBS director of education and partnerships, said they are looking to expand.

One impetus for that is what program leaders see as the potential to make a difference in students’ mental health.

To study the impact of their programs, POBS administered two versions of a survey to 347 participating students between January and November 2022. The survey asked students to rate their perception of themselves on 12 social-emotional skills, before and after they went on an expedition: assertiveness, emotion control, empathy, learning interest, perseverance, and teamwork, group relationships, physical confidence, responsibility, self-awareness, self-regulation, and staff and student relationships.

Preliminary results indicated that after a POBS trip, students reported statistically significant positive change in all but one of those areas: “emotion control.”

But some of the effects aren’t measurable by a survey.

Chalkbeat shadowed some of the students who took POBS trips with their schools in late May.

Mykina Simmons waited anxiously at the Discovery Center in Fairmount Park to hug her daughter Monae Simmons, an eighth grader at W.D. Kelley school who was returning from a POBS expedition with her classmates.

“I was living vicariously through her,” Simmons said. “The closest thing I’ve ever had to this trip was when my dad pitched us a tent in the backyard,” she said.

Simmons was also a student at W.D. Kelley, and she said she wants all four of her kids to have the outdoor experience she never had.

“S’mores, beans in the pot … stuff you see in the movies.” Simmons said.

Bringing the backwoods lessons to the classroom

While there’s no survey data on the educators’ experiences, many who went on the recent expedition said they’re excited to bring the lessons they learned to their classrooms.

Alex Volin Avelin, who taught in the Philadelphia school district for 22 years and now works for the district as a “consulting teacher” helping coach new educators said she did the educator course for the first time nine years ago. At that time, she said she was excited to hike and canoe and experience the outdoors. She said she didn’t realize how much emotional processing and team building would be involved.

“I was super impatient with it,” Volin Avelin said.

The educator expedition course is seven days of canoeing on the Delaware River through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

For this trip, she said, she was determined to open up to her fellow crew members, but also to take in the techniques Raymond and Glodek were employing to coach the educators and bring those to her work with first time classroom teachers.

Johnson, the finance administrator for POBS, said she’s eager to share what she learned with her teenage nieces and nephews in the city.

“They’re under so much pressure,” Johnson said, from the gun violence and the distractions of social media. She sees POBS as something that could “take them away from that every day, give them something to do that’s positive.”

“There’s so much more world to explore,” Johnson said. “Even if it’s just two to three hours away from your neighborhood.”

The width of the river: ‘They figured that out’

At the Delaware Water Gap, where the river carves through a densely forested ridge, Donegan’s geometry lesson was in session.

Ultimately, there are a couple of ways to solve the measurement problem, Donegan said. But the way the educators figured it out was to stand somewhere on the riverbank, look directly across the river and pick an object to focus on. Then they walked along the bank until that object looked like it was at a 45-degree angle from them.

“If you do that, then you have essentially a right triangle with two legs that are the same length,” Donegan said.

In other words, an isosceles right triangle, a concept she’s trying to teach to her 10th grade geometry students.

Without instruments to check their work, they relied on their calculations — and the guidance of their math teacher. They concluded the river was around 225 feet across.

“Collectively, they figured that out, and they taught each other, which is 100% what I want to happen in my classroom,” Donegan said. “Occasionally if I’m very, very lucky, it does happen.”

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

More school counselors would improve juvenile justice system for girls, Philadelphia DA says

2023-03-31T19:02:49+00:00

Philadelphia’s juvenile justice system needs an overhaul to more fairly treat girls who are arrested and provide them with effective services and prevention programs, according to a new report from District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office.

Far fewer girls in the city are arrested than boys, the report found, but they are more likely to be arrested for incidents that occur in school or at home — one in three, compared to one in five boys.

“Girls without question are in a unique position in the juvenile justice system,” Krasner said at a Thursday press conference releasing the report. “They are arrested in small numbers, and they are arrested for very different kinds of offenses.”

One of the main recommendations from Krasner’s office involving education is that there should be a ratio of one counselor per 250 students in city schools, down from the current ratio of one per 650. In March, the Philadelphia Board of Education passed a budget that provides additional counselors to the highest-needs schools, although it doesn’t go as far as what the report calls for. Doing so would require hiring 240 more counselors at a cost $17.4 million.

The report — “Overlooked or Overscrutinized: A Case Study of Girls’ Justice in Philadelphia and Implications for the Design of a Fairer System” — studied all juvenile arrests in 2019.

In addition, the report said that every school should have two counselors on staff, regardless of its size, “with at least one of these counselors identifying as a woman to ensure that girls have a safe space if they do not feel comfortable confiding in male-identifying counselors.”

The student-counselor ratio was decimated due to budget cuts a decade ago and has not been fully restored.

The study looked at all 2,242 youth arrests in 2019, and followed all the cases through their disposition as of the end of 2022, said Adam Serlin, one of the report’s authors.

He said that nationally, 69% of the juveniles arrested are boys, but in Philadelphia, 81% are boys. The data also shows a stark racial imbalance: While about half of the city’s population is Black and 23% Hispanic, 95% of the girls arrested are Black or brown.

Black girls in particular “are overpoliced,” said Philadelphia Public Defender Keisha Hudson. “They are perceived as more mature, more aggressive. They’re perceived as adults, in our schools in our justice system, and they’re treated that way. So I think this is an important first step.”

While boys make up the majority of youth in our system, “the number of girls is growing at a rate that should concern us all,” Hudson said.

“The most practical implication of this is … the existence of fewer programs and services for girls in the juvenile justice system,” he said. Most of the existing programs are for boys only.

The “gender skew” also leads to much less research on girls.

Students protest for change in the system

A group of about 50 students, male and female, rallied outside the building across from City Hall where the Krasner press conference was held. They demanded reforms to juvenile justice in the city.

“They are putting girls in jail for fights in school,” said Kendra Vandewater, executive director of the nonprofit YEAH Philly, which stands for Youth Empowerment for Advancement Hangout. It works with young people who have been impacted by violence to offer them services and reduce arrests. The group chanted “free our youth” and “stop judging kids as adults.”

Kassidy Tingle, 20, one of the protesters, said that she was arrested for drug possession at age 17 when she was a student at Camelot Academy, an alternative school for students who leave traditional high schools for disciplinary or attendance reasons. She said she was called racial slurs by the police and not given the help she needed.

“They take advantage of their authority and don’t respect us,” she said. “They don’t see us as humans.”

The data shows that more girls are arrested for assault than any other reason, 44%, said report co-author Ciara Sheerin. That’s nearly double the rate for boys. And a major reason so many girls are arrested is a provision in state law that labels as a felony any assault on a member of a “protected class.”

Under the law, Sheerin said, teachers and other school staff, including school resource officers, are considered a protected class. So a student who pushes a teacher or a school resource officer, even if there is no injury, has to be charged as a criminal assault, she said.

Marsha Levick, head of the Juvenile Law Center, noted that she wrote a law journal article 20 years ago on this topic. “It’s dismaying to note that ... things haven’t changed,” she said.

“It’s not enough to give everyone the same,” she said. “What we’ve learned over time … is that when we think about the involvement and interaction of girls with the justice system, they have very specific needs. And we can’t assume that what works for boys will work for girls.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly student’s documentary takes honorable mention in C-SPAN contest

2022-04-08T20:08:40+00:00

A Philadelphia student’s documentary about pollution in the Schuylkill River won her $250 and an honorable mention award from C-SPAN television network.

Hanna Roemer-Block’s piece, “Bridge Over Dirty Water,” was one of more than 1,400 videos from the U.S., Morocco, and South Korea to enter the network’s StudentCam contest, which asked students to explore a federal policy or program and report on its relevance to their lives and communities.

Roemer-Block, an 11th grade student at Science Leadership Academy, said she hadn’t expected to win. “It was a big surprise,” she told Chalkbeat.

“Bridge Over Dirty Water” makes the point that government policy, not individual action, is most important for the environment.

“A lot of people think it’s up to the community to do something about this,” she told Chalkbeat in an interview. “This is too big a problem for an individual to take on.”

Roemer-Block works with the Bartram’s Garden boating program, which teaches people to row and kayak on the Schuylkill. The river, she notes in the video, supplies drinking water for more than half of Philadelphia’s residents. Yet, as experts told her, it still bears marks of its industrial past. While water quality in the Schuylkill has improved since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, there’s still the problem of sewage overflow — something that may get worse as climate change brings more frequent and more severe storms.

Part of Roemer-Block’s job at Bartram’s Garden is testing the river water for E. coli bacteria — the boats don’t go out if the levels are too high — so she went into the project aware of how water pollution affects daily life. Once she had the idea of making a video about the Schuylkill, she said, “It came to life really quickly,” she said.

Roemer-Block interviewed Josef Kardos, an engineer from Toronto, who pointed out the difference between the European and American approaches to potential new toxins. He said that in Europe, new chemical substances are tested pre-manufacture to see if they’re harmful, while in the U.S., companies “just kind of dump the chemicals in the water and deal with the effects afterwards,” Roemer-Block said. “That cycle needs to be changed,” she said.

Roemer-Block made the video as part of Michael Clapper’s American history class. Clapper said the class looks at “big questions” about government policy and the individual’s role. “She took those big themes from the class and said, why do these things matter to me, and how do I make a film that answers these questions in a real-world fashion?” he said in an interview.

As if that wasn’t a challenging enough task, Clapper said, he tested positive for COVID partway through the project and had to conduct classes over Zoom. Still, many students “really embraced this project and created a number of terrific films,” he said.

“It definitely wasn’t easy,” Roemer-Block said. “There was a part toward the end of trying to edit down all my interviews, and I thought, ‘If I make it through these next two days, then I can make it through the rest of the school year,’” she said.

Videos about the environment and pollution accounted for 10 percent of the entries in this year’s contest, making it the most popular topic, C-SPAN said. “Environmental issues are becoming more drastic,” Roemer-Block said. “When people think of problems that need to be solved, they are thinking of environmental issues more and more.”

Clapper said he’s proud of the way Roemer-Block tracked down sources to interview and edited the footage to “get those perfect kernels that really move the piece along.”

“When an 11th grader can do that so well, during COVID, when their teacher’s at home, it’s a really terrific accomplishment,” he said.

Roemer-Block said she hasn’t firmed up plans for after high school, but will probably study English or some other “writing-based” subject in college. The subject of her video notwithstanding, “I’m not a very science-y person,” she said.

A panel of educators and C-SPAN representatives evaluated the videos for the competition, which is sponsored by the C-SPAN Education Foundation. Awards were based on “thoughtful examination of the competition’s theme, quality of expression, inclusion of varying sides of the documentary’s topic, and effective incorporation of C-SPAN programming,” C-SPAN said. In all, there were 150 winners.

Philadelphia schools honored for work in preserving green space

2021-11-04T22:49:05+00:00

Friends Uani Robinson and Jocelyn Martinez, both 9, bent over to peer at the grass and underbrush near a fence in the schoolyard of Southwark Elementary, where they are both fourth graders. They had helped plant seedlings in their school’s new combination playground and green space and wanted to show off the fruits of their labor.

The seedlings had not yet sprouted anything they could recognize, but another seed had been planted in them that educators and officials hope will grow as they get older: a mission to protect our natural world.

“We’re learning we can help our environment by taking care of our plants,” Uani explained. “It’s very important. It helps our nature and helps us have very good air and water.”

“Nature can do many things for us,” added Jocelyn. “It helps us with our food.”

The green area outside the school, in the heart of crowded South Philadelphia at Ninth and Mifflin streets, is meant to reduce stormwater runoff and reduce pollution in the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is part of a 25-year city and Philadelphia Water Department initiative called Green City, Clean Waters to expand green spaces in non-residential spaces around the city. As part of the initiative, which started in 2011, the district has committed to creating green spaces on school grounds while integrating environmental awareness into the K-12 curriculum.

“As one of the largest landowners in the city, we are committed to bringing more green spaces to our schools and raising awareness about green infrastructure,” said Superintendent William Hite. “We have a mission that every student will have access to outdoor learning environments like this one that integrates stormwater management, play areas, learning areas, passive and active recreation and community resources into green spaces.”

Hite said the district now has 38 schools with green stormwater infrastructure with five more being added each year.

Philadelphia Water Commissioner Randy Hayman presented Hite and Southwark Principal Andrew Lukov with plaques recognizing the district as a “stormwater pioneer,” with special honors to 13 of the 38 schools, including Southwark, for their “exceptional commitment” to the maintenance, education and community engagement around green stormwater infrastructure. “The district’s commitment to greening schools contributes a great deal to the sustainability of our city,” said Hayman

Many of the schools receive grants from the water department to do this work.

Hayman gave a shout out to Homeroom 207 — Uani and Jocelyn’s class — for being present.

“This is a great program for you to be a part of,” he said. “As children you often look at things on the news, and they talk about climate change and environmental sustainability, but you’re dealing with it right here. You are looking at it the same way as the adults and the scientists look at it...what you’re learning now is going to make you a better citizen going forward.”

The district has also been partnering with Fairmount Water Works, which is developing a K-12 curriculum on “understanding the urban watershed.”

It is important that students learn in school that they all have a role in preserving the environment, said Ellen Schultz, director of education partnerships at the Water Works. “We want this embedded in every classroom... this is something they should experience during the school day.”

Green schoolyards like Southwark’s “allow students to learn hands-on about their watershed and green infrastructure,” she said.

Uani and Jocelyn and the other students in Room 207 are among those piloting the Water Works’ fourth and fifth grade curriculum. “They are learning that it’s really important to have safeguards to keep our water clean,” said their teacher, Joseph Ulrich. And they’re learning that they need to do something about it themselves, if they want a livable environment “when they’re my age.”

Lukov, the principal, noted that Southwark has been around for 112 years — it was built in 1909.

“For 111 years, our students did not have a playground nor green space to call their own,” he said. With the added feature that it is environmentally friendly, Lukov said, “now they do.”

Teaching Black Lives Matter virtually? Some Philadelphia teachers say it can be done.

2020-10-28T11:52:34+00:00

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to credit blacklivesmatteratschool.com for information about the history of the Black Lives Matter at School movement.

After weeks of juggling between stalled contract talks and the district’s reopening plans, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) President Jerry Jordan made an unexpected and emotional declaration to the public late Monday night: “Black Lives Matter. Yesterday, today, and always.”

As most students in Philadelphia’s public schools could see their virtual classes extended to the spring, some educators and community activists argue Black Lives Matter, or BLM, curriculum should be a part of remote learning for the mostly Black and Latino school district. Their call was reinforced after two days of protests in West Philadelphia, which followed the fatal police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. in Cobbs Creek.

A crowd gathers at Malcolm X Park to protest the police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr.

Jordan said he was “heartsick, weary, and enraged” in his statement after Wallace’s death.

According to media reports, the shooting occurred around 3:50 p.m. on Monday along the 6100 block of Locust Street. Video footage shows officers shooting Wallace who was armed with a knife. Unrest ensued past midnight on Monday, with store break ins and cars set on fire along 52nd Street in West Philadelphia. And stores were looted on Aramingo Avenue in Port Richmond on Tuesday.

“It’s important our youth don’t fall for the illusion, the trap of thinking we must live all of our lives in hands up, don’t shoot,” said Sharif El-Mekki, founder and chief executive officer of The Center for Black Educator Development. “But rather our ancestors have always taught us to take our resistance to these unjust systems.”
El-Mekki mentioned Gerald Dessus, who designed a year round Social Justice course that highlighted youth activism in South Africa and the Americas. “We need more teachers to have this type of liberatory mindset year round,” he said.

A shopping center at 57th and Vine streets was looted Monday night after Philadelphia police shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr. in West Philadelphia.

According to blacklivesmatteratschool.com, the BLM in schools movement dates back to Oct. 19, 2016, when thousands of Seattle educators came to school clad in shirts printed with the slogan “Black Lives Matter: We Stand Together.” The Philadelphia effort initially started with a day of solidarity with the teachers in Seattle.

The following year, a group of teachers within the PFT pressed schools and teachers to commit one hour a day to teaching students about the BLM movement through lesson plans and events for students of all grades.

In 2017 officials created a BLM week in the last week of January and gave teachers the option to teach the material to students. The Racial Justice Organizing Committee, or RJOC, of the Caucus of Working Educators organized the first week. The educators that created the curriculum and connected the principles to BLM week at school are members of RJOC, which is now an independent organization of the caucus.

At first the school district and the now dissolved School Reform Commission didn’t do what the caucus wanted. It wasn’t until this August that the Board of Education passed a resolution in support.

Ismael Jimenez, is a teacher at Kensington Creative & Performing Arts High School and one of the early advocates for BLM curriculum in Philadelphia schools.

“The organizers of the Philadelphia movement always thought the amount of BLM curriculum that was taught pre-pandemic was not enough,” said Ismael Jimenez, a teacher at Kensington Creative & Performing Arts High School and one of the early advocates for BLM curriculum in Philadelphia schools. “BLM in education is a recognition of the kind of dehumanizing narrative that Black life represents in the world.”

Three years later, racial reckoning is sharing center stage with the coronavirus pandemic, which has distracted students’ classroom environment.

“Every human being of conscience should see that video and know in their core that this society is deeply broken,” Jordan said in his statement on Wallace. “Our system of policing is deeply broken.”

Christopher Paslay, an English teacher at Swenson Arts and Technology High School doesn’t completely disagree with implementing the BLM curriculum virtually.

Christopher Paslay is an English teacher at Swenson Arts and Technology High School.

But he worries about whether the curriculum can steer clear of politics.

“If you are talking about police reform and defunding the police and you have kids whose parents are police then it creates an uncomfortable environment for the students,” he said. “And the students ask why should my parents’ jobs be defunded?”

“The spirit behind the slogan, the values of equity, and equality and justice, I honestly believe you need to have that embedded in the skills,” Paslay said. “But when you bring in Black Lives Matter politics on issues, it depends on how you present it. I’m not sure if it would be totally appropriate in certain situations, especially when the district says not to bring politics into the classroom. Students should be taught how to think, not what to think.”

But the relationship between police and Black and Latino citizens has indeed become a political matter, with many calling for school districts here and across the country to eliminate campus police in response to the national uprising against police brutality. Earlier this year, Philadelphia district officials decided to rename school police “school safety officers.”

Christopher Rogers, program director at the Paul Robeson House and Museum, countered that Black and Latino youth often see themselves as agents of resistance rather than simply victims of racist violence.

“It’s hard to do that in a climate where most mainstream narratives focus more on the spectacle of violence and death than systemic oppression and institutional mechanisms which allow such violence [police brutality] to exist in our society,” he said.
To implement the curriculum virtually, teachers will have to do radical relationship building, said Tamara Anderson, co-organizer of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee and member of the Melanated Educators Collective.

Tamara Anderson, is co-organizer of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee and member of the Melanated Educators Collective.

“Some of these kids have not been able to sign on, they have internet issues, you can’t do the traditional drive-by, you have to actually call these families and homes,” she said.

Teaching BLM virtually you will see teachers come up with new and creative ways, Jimenez added.

“You can bring people into your classrooms via online,” he said. “I had a teacher colleague at my school who had an author come and talk about racism from the LatinX point of view and also talk about LGBTQ identity within that culture with her students. That would have been impossible without the virtual aspect.”

Caryn Davidson and Laleña Garcia, both experienced teachers and activists, are co-authors of a Black Lives Matter activity book, titled “What We Believe: A Black Lives Matter Principles Activity Book,” which focuses on the guiding principles of BLM at schools.

“What We Believe: A Black Lives Matter Principles Activity Book,” which focuses on the guiding principles of BLM at schools.

The two advise teachers to make their remote classrooms a safe learning space filled with empathy and understanding. The book is an outgrowth of their work as educators deeply involved in the BLM at schools movement. To note, their book is not required reading for Philadelphia district students.

Laleña Garcia

“The point of this book is to help everyone realize that BLM creates a vision of a world that everyone would want to live in and that would ensure liberation, justice, and joy for all identities.” Davidson said. “But even more importantly, I would say that it is so important to teach these BLM principles because too many non-Black people do not understand the direct connection that it has to their lives.”

Before her first meeting with Black Lives Matter At School, Garcia, a kindergarten teacher in New York City, didn’t even know there were 13 guiding principles in BLM. She and Davidson agreed that teachers could craft year-long lesson plans around the 13 principles.

Caryn Davidson

“I understood BLM as a response to the murder of Trayvon Martin, but didn’t fully understand its breadth and scope as an affirmation of the society we should live in, rather than just a response to police violence,” Garcia said. “In order to develop child-friendly language for the principles so that I could bring this work into my own classroom and support teachers who wanted to bring it into theirs, I drew upon my own experiences of 17 years in the classroom and talked to lots of early childhood educators, as well as trans educators and other queer educators, to get feedback about the language to make sure it was not only age-appropriate but sensitive.”

Though he didn’t mention BLM in schools specifically, Superintendent William Hite urged district employees on Tuesday to talk with one another about institutional racism and social injustice.

“Last night, this pain hit home when Walter Wallace Jr. was killed and acts of protest erupted,” he said. “The next few days may be difficult ones for all of us and the students we serve. For some, emotions may present themselves in sadness. Others may feel anger, rage, and frustration.”

“What’s also critically important is systemic and fundamental change in the policies and practices across our district and city that reinforce racism and inequities,” Hite said.

Jordan said the public should be disgusted and horrified that an encounter with the police can, and far too often does, turn deadly for Black and brown individuals.

“Every human being of conscience should see that video and know in their core that this society is deeply broken,” he said. “Our system of policing is deeply broken. It is hard, as a Black man, to have hope for tomorrow when our society is built on such deep seated racism that our very right to breathe is called into question by those in power.”

“Mr. Wallace, Jr. should be alive tonight,” Jordan said. “Instead, his family mourns a devastating loss that unfolded before their eyes.”

Resources

Multimedia

Video: I Know My People Are Strong: Black Lives Matter At School

Lesson Material

Creating the Space to Talk about Race in Your School (PDF)
National Education Association

Classroom Activities, Circle Scripts, and Promoting Positive School Climate
Rochester City School District

Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools – Schedule and Resources
Washington D.C.
Area Educators for Social Justice

Books

Black Lives Matter at School
By Jesse Hagopian and Denisha Jones
The book includes essays, interviews, poems, resolutions, and more from educators, students and parents across the country.

Teaching For Black Lives
Edited by Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, and Wayne Au
The book provides resources and demonstrates how teachers connect curriculum to young people’s lives and root their concerns and daily experiences.

Chalkbeat

Free school supplies, backpacks, and activities: 2026 back-to-school events in Philadelphia

Ongoing

Saturday, Aug. 8

Wednesday, Aug. 12

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Friday, Aug. 14

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Sunday, Aug. 16

Wednesday, Aug. 19

Friday, Aug. 21

Sunday, Aug. 23

Saturday, Sept. 5

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Where to find free school supplies in Philly

Friday, Aug. 8

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Sunday Aug. 24

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