Chalkbeat

5 things to watch for Philadelphia’s 2026-27 school year

2026-08-21T16:47:13+00:00

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Philadelphia schools will open their doors to students next week as educators and families brace for what could be a tumultuous year.

The upcoming school year will be the last for nine district schools as Superintendent Tony Watlington moves forward with his plan to close schools beginning in 2027.

Meanwhile, school leaders say they’re also focused on improving student attendance and boosting academic performance.

“We are going to get our reading scores up,” Brenda Elliott, the district’s deputy superintendent of academics, told Chalkbeat. “We are committed to ensuring every one of our students are reading on grade level.”

That could be difficult. Test scores released last school year showed that third grade reading scores declined, with fewer than 1 in 3 able to read proficiently. Amid low test scores and looming school closures, some members of the City Council say they want more control over education issues.

Janis Butler has been an educator for 53 years. But this will be her first year as interim principal at Fanny Jackson Coppin Elementary School. Her goal is to make sure “not only that the staff feels supported, but the students feel supported as well.” If she’s able to do that, “they will all rise to the occasion,” she said.

What’s Butler — who used to be a district student herself — most looking forward to on the first day back? “To give some hugs,” she said.

Here are five things we’re watching as the school year gets underway:

Philadelphia gears up to begin closing schools

With the Board of Education’s approval in April, the Philadelphia school district is implementing a sweeping facilities plan that includes closing 17 schools over the next decade.

Schools slated for closure at the end of this year include Lankenau Environmental Science High School, Paul Robeson High School, and Overbrook Elementary, which have mounted fierce resistance with the backing of members of City Council.

The plan also includes colocating several schools and upgrading nearly 170 others. This year, we’ll see whether the district is able to get any closer to scraping together the additional $2 billion it needs to pay for the upgrades — or whether it will scale back some of what it’s promised.

Lankenau High School students Tyrone Ware, right, and Niyasia Bounds say they don't know what they would do if their school closes. The district plans to close Lankenau at the end of the 2026-27 school year.

The district has pledged to help families affected by the closures. We’re keeping our eye on what services are available, and how families at closing schools decide what school to attend next.

Political fights over schools could escalate

Members of Philadelphia’s City Council are not conceding defeat on school closures.

Led by Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas, a group of councilmembers has demanded that the district and school board “return to the negotiating table” and consider removing some schools from the closure list. They’ve threatened lawsuits, called for board members’ resignations, and have even gone as far as to explore shifting to an elected school board.

There’s been no signal from the district that it’s reconsidering, but the political debate will no doubt continue into the school year.

Mayor Cherelle Parker has been conspicuously absent from public debates about school closures recently. In 2024, Parker declared that her administration would form a committee to review the district’s facilities plan. But that committee never materialized.

Shortly before the closure vote, Parker stood in lockstep with Superintendent Tony Watlington. Once a majority of her appointed board approved the plan and councilmembers began to raise objections, Parker receded from the conversation.

The mayor “supports the plan” and will work with the district, City Council, and state lawmakers “to identify the funds necessary to move forward with (building) improvements,” Debora Carrera, chief education officer for the Parker administration, said in a Friday email.

What will happen with any buildings designated for closure that could be conveyed to the city? Carrera said “no concrete plans have yet been identified.”

Will Philly’s new curriculum decisions pay off?

The district is about four years into a major, multimillion-dollar curriculum overhaul. Math came first in 2023-24, followed by English in 2024-25, and science this past school year. Some educators have welcomed the new materials, but many have told Chalkbeat they dislike the new curriculum and remain skeptical of its usefulness for students.

Math scores have improved and reading scores have fallen, but the Philly school district has opted not to release school-level data from last school year’s tests to educators and principals. While the state reviews some of the PSSA and Keystone exam data, district spokespeople say the data can’t be used to compare student performance or for selective admissions this school year. That makes it difficult to determine how students are faring.

Philadelphia district officials say their plan this year is to get reading scores up. Test scores released last school year showed that third grade reading performance declined.

The district has also said by next school year, they’ll offer an algebra course to all eighth graders. That means this year, they’ll have to expand access to more than 50 schools that don’t currently offer the class.

The district will overhaul charter school evaluations

The school board’s charter school office is expected to release a new way to evaluate charters, called Project RISE, this fall. If schools don’t meet certain standards, the board could choose not to renew their charters, kicking off a process that can lead to closing the school.

Recent charter nonrenewals have led to tensions between charter leaders and the school board. Charter leaders have alleged the process is biased. A handful of charters have sued the district over its decisions.

School board members have also called for an examination of enrollment in some charter schools. Separately, they’ve approved the first new charter school in nearly a decade, which will open this fall.

National debates over tech, vouchers come into focus

In Philadelphia, individual schools are largely on their own to determine how to manage students’ scream time and cellphone use. This year, we’ll keep our eye on whether that changes as Gov. Josh Shapiro calls for a bell-to-bell cellphone ban and more regulations on minors’ artificial intelligence use.

Shapiro has also yet to say whether he will opt into the Trump administration’s school tax credit program, which could funnel money to private schools. We’ll be following what he and other Democratic governors ultimately decide.

Are there other stories you think we should be covering? Reach us at philly.tips@chalkbeat.org to let us know your questions and ideas.

This story has been updated to include comment from Mayor Cherelle Parker’s office.

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.

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

As Philadelphia plans to close schools, board members call for more scrutiny of charter enrollment

2026-07-24T18:54:56+00:00

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As Philadelphia moves to close 17 district schools, some Board of Education members say it’s time to put additional scrutiny on charter schools as well.

During a Thursday meeting, Joyce Wilkerson called on the board to analyze the 16 charter schools that operate as part of the city’s Renaissance Initiative. The program turned district schools over to charter operators in an effort to improve them, but largely has not succeeded.

“The time has come for us to get a handle on what’s going on,” Wilkerson said. “We’ve just finished closing district neighborhood schools. I think that we ought to do a similar kind of analysis as we approach the future of the Renaissance charter school program.”

When district leaders launched the Renaissance Initiative in 2010, the schools were meant to operate like neighborhood schools, serving “the students in the surrounding neighborhood or catchment area,” according to district policy. At the time, the district was run by a state-appointed board that favored charter expansion. But as student enrollment shrinks citywide, many Renaissance schools rely on filling their seats with students from outside their neighborhood. That means enrolling kids who might otherwise attend their own neighborhood district-run school, increasing competition for students.

In fact, at half the city’s Renaissance schools, the majority of students came from outside the schools’ catchment, a Chalkbeat analysis of district data for last school year found. The schools must give priority access to students within their catchments, but can open up remaining seats to students anywhere in the city, just like at district neighborhood schools.

Out-of-catchment enrollment is highest at Universal Audenried Charter High School, whose charter the board voted to renew Thursday. Only 20% of students reside in the school’s catchment neighborhood.

“That’s not the reason this school was created,” said Wilkerson. “It’s not the parameters within which it’s supposed to operate.”

Board President Reginald Streater commended Universal Audenried for its improved academic scores in recent years. But he agreed with Wilkerson “that the Renaissance question is a question that the board needs to wrestle with,” adding that members must look into whether the initiative is accomplishing what it set out to do.

Penny Nixon, CEO of Universal Charter Schools, which operates Universal Audenried, said in a statement that the board’s discussion “presents an opportunity for meaningful dialogue about how we, together, can continue strengthening neighborhood enrollment.”

“While we cannot determine where families choose to enroll their children, we remain steadfast in ensuring that neighborhood families have access to our school and that every available seat is used to serve Philadelphia students when neighborhood demand does not fill our capacity,” Nixon said.

The board has tried to limit out-of-catchment enrollment at Renaissance charters by including conditions in their charter agreements that require the schools to enroll mostly students from within their catchments. But schools that don’t meet requirements continue to operate.

Universal Audendried’s previous charter agreement required the school to limit new students for the 2025-26 school year to those coming from its catchment area, or those who were siblings of current students. Though the school failed to meet that condition, the board still renewed it Thursday.

Renaissance charters are largely subject to the same accountability standards as other charters, which focus on schools’ academic and operational performance. The board can move not to renew a Renaissance charter if it does not meet some of those standards, which kicks off a process that can lead to closure. But it cannot close one of those schools unilaterally.

District’s school closure plan left out charter schools

Philadelphia’s district enrollment has shrunk by 13% from a decade ago, largely due to declining birth rates. Fewer kids means district, charter, and private schools are all competing for fewer students.

The district’s sweeping facilities plan, including closing 17 schools beginning next year, is largely meant to help the district adapt to its enrollment decline.

The board voted to approve that plan earlier this year, after months of protest from school communities. But though one-third of Philadelphia students attend charter schools, and the district owns the facilities of Renaissance charters, the district didn’t include an analysis of charter school enrollment or potential plans for Renaissance buildings in its facilities planning process.

District and board officials did not respond to questions about why charter schools were not included.

The district’s website states that “While the District and renaissance charter schools are an interconnected system, the primary recommendations in this plan will focus on District-operated school programs.”

Montessori Charter fights school board over nonrenewal decision

Separately on Thursday, the school board kicked off the process that could lead to closing Philadelphia Montessori Charter School, which is not a Renaissance charter.

The school, which enrolled around 250 students last year, had fewer than 20% of its students score proficient in the state math and reading test last year, both below the district average.

The “student academic growth has not kept pace with state expectations,” said Board of Education Vice President Sarah-Ashley Andrews Thursday. Seven of the nine board members voted in favor of issuing a notice of nonrenewal to the school.

The school appears ready to fight the decision. It filed a lawsuit in May in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court against the district alleging its charter renewal process is unlawful. On Tuesday, the school’s president and two families filed a separate lawsuit against the district in federal court, alleging the district “administered the renewal process in a discriminatory and arbitrary manner” against the school.

Before the vote, Philadelphia Montessori Executive Director Amanda Wilson urged the board to pause their decision as the court cases play out.

“When decisions affect the future of a public school and hundreds of children, the process should inspire confidence that these decisions are being made thoughtfully,” said Wilson.

Philadelphia Montessori is one of several charter schools and charter advocacy groups fighting the district in court over its renewal process.

Pennsylvania’s largest cyber charter school expands real estate footprint in Philadelphia

2026-07-22T21:48:51+00:00

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Pennsylvania’s largest cyber charter school, Commonwealth Charter Academy, is expanding its real estate footprint into Philadelphia with a 32,000-square-foot site at the city’s Navy Yard.

Cyber charter students log onto class from home and complete assignments online, without ever having to attend class in-person. But officials with Commonwealth Charter Academy say the site will have offices for staff, as well as a service center for the school’s growing number of Philadelphia students.

The school’s enrollment has nearly doubled over the past five years, to 35,000 students. Last year, around 5,000 lived in Philadelphia, according to state data.

Philadelphia families have increasingly chosen to enroll kids in cyber schools, often as a way to keep kids safe from gun violence and bullying. But as cyber charter enrollment has grown, some officials and advocates have raised concerns about their academic outcomes and spending.

“With the number of families and students we have down there, we are eager to get back into Philadelphia so those students and families have a connection to their school,” said Timothy Eller, Commonwealth Charter Academy’s chief branding and government relations officer. Though the school previously leased office space in Philadelphia, it closed it a few years ago and had been looking for space to buy ever since, Eller said.

The Navy Yard building cost $6 million, according to documents from the school’s May board meeting obtained by the advocacy group Education Voters of Pennsylvania and shared with Chalkbeat.

Since 2022, the school has spent nearly $50 million purchasing real estate statewide that is currently under development, the documents show.

The Navy Yard building will enable students and parents to connect with teachers, complete state testing, attend tutoring, meet with counselors, and participate in field trips, Eller said. It’s part of the school’s goal to expand from 21 to 27 “family service centers” statewide in the next few years.

But to Susan Spicka, executive director of Education Voters of Pennsylvania, the real estate holdings “symbolize the excess funding that exists in the cyber charter sector that is not being used to actually educate kids.”

Students at cyber charter schools, including Commonwealth Charter Academy, graduate at a lower rate than the state average. Last year, around 16% of the school’s elementary and middle school students scored proficient on the state math test, lower than the averages for both the state and Philadelphia.

“How do these buildings and the investment in them really further the mission of the cyber charters to provide an online education?” said Spicka.

An audit from the Pennsylvania Auditor General released last year found that Commonwealth Charter Academy’s rapid real estate expansion “is unusual and outside the normal operating model of a cyber charter school.”

“Those dollars could be allocated to improving online educational opportunities and technological advancements rather than increased overhead and costs associated with physical facilities,” the audit stated.

In last year’s state budget, which followed that audit, state lawmakers lowered the amount each district pays cyber charters per student, saving Philadelphia nearly $50 million. This year’s state budget, which Gov. Josh Shapiro signed earlier this month, holds cyber charter funding steady.

Commonwealth Charter Academy’s real estate expansion comes as Philadelphia’s school district plans to close 17 schools beginning next year and works to eliminate a $300 million budget deficit.

Eller said the school does not aim to attract more families through expanding its family service centers, but rather to serve the students already enrolled.

Only 8% of Philly voters say public education is headed in the right direction

2026-06-23T19:35:35+00:00

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Only 8% of Philadelphia voters think that public education is headed in the right direction according to a new poll released this week.

The data shared with Chalkbeat on Tuesday of 1,029 registered Philly voters found that more than half of the respondents think the state of public education is worsening. Voters said they are unhappy with the condition of buildings, want to see more advocates pushing to improve the city’s schools, and want Mayor Cherelle Parker to be more engaged in education issues.

The online survey was commissioned by Philly for Great Public Schools, and conducted by Change Research. Philly for Great Public Schools is a new coalition led by Tamir D. Harper, a longtime education proponent and former district teacher, that advocates for traditional public, charter, and magnet schools in the city. The poll went out to voters via a series of Facebook and Instagram ads and text messages between May 27 and June 3, 2026.

The results show Philadelphians’ opinions about their public schools have soured over the last year. In a similar survey conducted by the same company in May 2025, 44% of voters said they were “very concerned” about the state of public education in the city, according to a statement from Philly for Great Public Schools. This year, 57% said the same. Overall, 81% of respondents said they are at least somewhat concerned about the state of public education, up 4 percentage points from a year prior.

The poll’s timing came during a particularly tense period for Philadelphia schools. The mayor-appointed Board of Education had just voted to close 17 schools at an explosive April meeting that drove City Council members to call for board members’ resignations and a switch to an elected board. The district had adopted a budget with millions in cuts and hundreds of teachers were being transferred to other positions — in some cases leaving the district altogether.

Harper said the poll results weren’t surprising after the year the district has had, but he said decisionmakers should take the data as a sign that they need to engage more meaningfully with parents and city residents.

“People feel like they don’t have a voice in how their children are being educated,” Harper said in an interview. “Families are scared. They wake up one day and their school may be on the list to close or it may be on the list one day and not on the list the next day.”

The poll found support for charter schools is high in the city. Among parents who responded to the survey, 63% said they support allowing new charter schools to open. Support for opening new charters was especially high among Black and Latino poll respondents (61% and 54% respectively) and those without a college degree (61%).

In the wake of the city’s budget fight about school funding, the survey found strong support for an audit of the school district at 86% of voters.

A slight majority of voters (52%) also said they opposed school closures, with 30% in support of the board’s vote to close some schools and modernize nearly 170 others.

“We have a city that is prepared to work together to address the issues. We have a city that is invested in public education, and now we need our leaders to listen,” Harper said.

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

School leaders say Philly’s charter school oversight is flawed. But fixing it is hard.

2026-06-11T16:24:24+00:00

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Pennsylvania has a vision for charter schools: Improve student learning, provide families with choices, and explore innovative approaches to teaching — all while being held to high standards by the local district.

But in Philly, where one-third of the city’s public school students attend charters, some education leaders say tensions between charter and district leaders have made that vision increasingly difficult to execute.

Many charter schools have operated successfully for decades, with students doing well academically and school communities thriving. But over the past five years, around two dozen have had academic, operational, or financial problems that could be grounds for closure, based on the district’s evaluation framework. Some have suspended students at high rates, struggled to boost low academic scores, or failed to meet state laws about school operations.

Yet only one of those charters will close as of next school year due to the Board of Education’s actions. A few other charters have closed on their own accord.

Still, charter leaders say Philly’s approach to charter oversight has caused other problems. At least five have sued the district and board in expensive and lengthy lawsuits to prevent closures. Charter leaders have alleged the board’s charter evaluations are inconsistent, biased, and political. Many say they don’t get enough support from district leaders. And several point to what an independent investigation in 2023 called a “conflict of interest” within the system, where the district funds and regulates charters and traditional public schools, which all “compete” for the same students.

The resulting discord has created frustration, left families in limbo, and sucked up money and resources for schools. To some, it also shows that Philly has strayed far from the promise that charter schools and the district could collaborate to improve all students’ experiences.

Charter and district leaders seem to agree on one thing: The charter renewal process isn’t working the way it’s supposed to, with an accountability system everyone agrees on and efficient ways to resolve conflicts.

“It’s sad,” said Natalie Wiltshire, CEO of KIPP Philadelphia Public Schools, which is part of a lawsuit against the board. “Because now I feel like we have this adversarial relationship that just does not need to exist.”

Peng Chao, who leads the school board’s Charter Schools Office, said his team has worked to create a communicative and transparent accountability system. But, he said, “ultimately, what I think might be happening here is this basic perspective that accountability is inherently difficult.”

Over 5 years, Philly’s school board closed 1 charter

The board evaluates charters every few years on whether they meet academic, operational, and financial standards it sets.

If a school doesn’t meet standards, the board can decide not to renew its charter, kicking off a process that can lead to the school closing.

Over the past five years, all of the city’s roughly 80 charter schools have gone through the renewal process. The majority received scores of meeting or approaching the required standards, according to the Charter Schools Office’s evaluations.

But the evaluations also show more than 20 others received scores of not meeting requirements, which can be grounds for nonrenewal. They include schools where all teachers don’t get background checks, students’ grades are worsening, or absenteeism and suspension rates are much higher than the district average.

Still, the board has started the nonrenewal process for just six charters since 2022, including two in May. For two other schools, it’s moved to revoke charters outside renewals.

Of all those cases, only one has resulted in a charter operator losing its school. Memphis Street Academy, which sued the board in 2022 to prevent its closure, recently lost its appeal. Though the school operator will lose its charter, the school itself will transition to become district-operated for next school year.

Philadelphia's Memphis Street Academy charter school will transition to become district-operated for next school year. It's the only charter school the Board of Education has closed in the last five years.

For two of the schools not renewed, the board later reversed its decision. Others have remained open as they battle the decision in court, or wait for hearings and appeals to play out.

Philadelphia Montessori Charter School recently sued the board after it started the nonrenewal process for the school. Executive Director Amanda Wilson said the school felt turning to the courts was their only option because “there is no room for conversation or negotiation” in the board’s renewal procedures.

Chao said the state’s charter law requires districts to hold hearings over nonrenewals, and schools can appeal decisions to the state’s Charter Appeal Board. That board’s members are appointed by the governor, and they have largely sided with districts.

“There is a process for schools to put forth evidence and their side of the story,” said Chao. Lawsuits, he said, delay that.

Charter school accountability has long been fraught

Charter nonrenewal decisions are controversial across the country. But the number and frequency of lawsuits over the process in Philly sets it apart, said David Greenberg, vice president of authorizer learning and development at the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.

When authorizers and charter schools work together well, schools often do better, said Greenberg. When that’s not happening, students may pay the price.

“This kind of acrimony takes the focus away from teaching and learning,” said Greenberg.

Charter school leaders have a variety of problems with the renewal process, from how it compares schools to what some have called an “inconsistent” reaction to schools that don’t meet standards.

Some allege the board oversteps the law by requiring schools to agree to conditions, like raising students’ test scores by a certain amount. Others have alleged the entire process is discriminatory against schools that serve a disproportionate number of Black and brown students.

Philadelphia Charter Schools Office Director Peng Chao says charter lawsuits interrupt the Board of Education's process of holding charter schools accountable.

Chao said he could not comment on specific allegations. But he and the board are working to revise the renewal process.

Two years ago, the board launched a process called Project RiSE, meant to improve how it evaluates charter schools. It is expected to release the new framework in September, after delaying it from an initial release planned for this month.

“We know that accountability metrics must evolve over time,” said Board President Reginald Streater in a statement last year about the effort.

But Chao said he could not share details about how the new framework may differ from the current one.

Cassandra St. Vil, CEO of Philadelphia Charters for Excellence, a charter school advocacy organization, said she was initially hopeful the new framework could address concerns that evaluations are inconsistent and unfair. But as the district has pushed back its release date and failed to share any details about it, she no longer trusts that will happen.

Philadelphia Charters for Excellence recently sued the board to limit the requirements it can impose on schools in the renewal process.

“We are not trying to skirt accountability at all,” said St. Vil. “We’re actually trying to bring it to light and make sure that it’s mutual, across the authorizer as well as the (charter school) sector.”

Students across Pennsylvania step up on Election Day to keep democracy working

2026-06-05T18:52:21+00:00

This story was originally published by Votebeat. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

If you’ve voted in person in Pennsylvania recently, you may have noticed that one of the poll workers checking you in was a high school student. And if you ask one of them why they wanted to be a poll worker, most will give a similar answer.

“My school was offering it, and I thought it would be a good piece of money,” explained Aiden Martinez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School in Philadelphia.

Aiden Martinez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

But, once the allure of a paycheck and a day off school has faded away, they’ll tell you something else as well: They enjoy getting to see the voting process up close.

“I kept going back afterward because it was interesting to see everyone in my community … and how seriously they took voting,” Martinez said. “It kind of inspired me to come back, and for my last year that I worked there, I voted too.”

In Pennsylvania, 17-year-olds are eligible to be poll workers, and each year high school students staff voting sites across the state. And they’re not just stuck in corners or being sent to fetch coffee, either; they are meaningfully involved in running the polls.

Advocates of the practice say it both helps counties fill a staffing gap and gives students valuable life experience.

In Lebanon County, student poll workers have become an integral part of the county’s Election Day workforce. During the May 2026 primary, students made up 13% of all poll workers, and Jamie Shoemaker, the county’s poll worker coordinator, said she’s trying to increase that number.

Shoemaker had hands-on experience with the program before taking it over full time. Shoemaker was a pollworker in her mother’s precinct before joining the county elections office, and one year her own high school aged daughter helped out as well. Her daughter, she said, ended up enjoying the experience.

That was in 2019, when Lebanon County was mainly working with Lebanon High School to find students to work the polls. But after Shoemaker began working at the county elections department full time, she expanded the program to other high schools in the area. The county now averages about 50 to 55 student poll workers each election.

Kayla Marshall, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School, stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Jeannetta Dormil, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Andrew Abreu, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Aiden Martinez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Tanicha Cadesca, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School walks throug a hallway during a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards in Harrisburg.

Rebecca Torres, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School sits for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Rubiel Gutierrez, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School sits for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Shane Hannigan, a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School stands for a portrait at the state capitol after winning one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards.

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt stands alongside students from Franklin Towne Charter High School after they received the Governor’s Civic Engagement Award.

The students do all types of jobs in the polling place, from checking voters in to keeping track of turnout and helping voters feed their ballots into tabulation machines.

Many non-student poll workers in Lebanon — and nationally — skew older. And as elections become more technologically integrated with devices such as electronic pollbooks, older poll workers sometimes struggle to adapt.

“Having the student there helps bridge that tech gap,” she said. “They can just look at it and know [what the issue is].”

Keith Rolon is the cooperative education teacher at Lebanon High School and manages the school’s student poll worker program. His goal is to have two students at each of the city’s polling sites, including at least one who is bilingual to help translate for the city’s large Spanish-speaking population.

“For me as a civics teacher, it was important for me to show them voting is important and elections are safe and here’s what goes into them,” he said.

It’s also an opportunity for students to learn valuable life skills like self-advocacy that Rolon said can’t be learned in the classroom. During the primary, as he does every Election Day, he traveled around to all the polling places in the city to check on his students.

At the Lebanon County Senior Center in the city’s 10th ward, he stopped in to see senior Ella Whalen and junior Emely Liriano. Whalen was recording which voters came in on a numbered list, and Liriano was seated next to her checking them in on the polling place’s e-pollbook.

The judge of elections gave Rolon a positive review of their performance so far, and Rolon reminded them it was their responsibility to speak up for themselves when it was time for them to take a break or get lunch.

Whalen and Liriano agreed the money they got from working the polls was nice, but the act of being civically engaged was appealing too. Their parents are politically active, and Whalen said it was good to help out.

It was both Whalen’s and Liriano’s first time working an election, and although turnout was rather low (as usual for a primary), they said they still learned about the voting process.

“It surprised me how quick it was,” Liriano said. “You just go in, you check off the boxes, you put [the ballot] in the thing, and then you leave. I didn’t even know there was a machine that you just put your ballots in.”

Students from Franklin Towne Charter High School walk out before receiving the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

Diane Gordian, the civic engagement and language access engagement coordinator for the Pennsylvania Department of State, helps organize student poll worker programs across Pennsylvania. She said a benefit of the programs is that they help students, and importantly also their families, build habits of democratic engagement.

“Those students come home and say, ‘Hey Mom and Dad, I want to do this,’ and that gets those parents motivated, not only to register to vote, but they sign up to be poll workers,” she said.

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt hands one of the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards, to a student from Franklin Towne Charter High School at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

The state is still tallying numbers from the primary, but Gordian said she expects this year to have the highest-ever rate of students serving as poll workers.

Each year, the state honors certain students and their schools with the Governor’s Civic Engagement Award for registering eligible student voters and for working as poll workers.

Martinez, from Franklin Towne Charter High School, was one of the 633 students who received that award this year, and he and eight of his peers recently spoke about their experiences at a press conference with Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt.

Kayla Marshall, another student at Franklin Towne Charter, said the poll worker programs give students a chance to actually experience civic engagement rather than just hearing about it “in a PowerPoint at 8 in the morning while trying not to fall asleep.” Marshall worked the polls in three elections starting in November 2024.

Kayla Marshall delivers remarks on the Governor’s Civic Engagement Awards, alongside fellow students from Franklin Towne Charter High School at the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. on May 27, 2026.

“Working the polls taught me more than just how elections work,” she said. “It taught me responsibility, teamwork, patience, and the importance of giving back. It also showed me that young people don’t have to wait until ‘someday’ to make a difference.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Philadelphia charter school group sues district over renewal process

2026-05-14T17:03:54+00:00

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A group that represents 70 Philadelphia charter schools alleges the Board of Education and district’s approach to charter renewals is “coercive and exploitative” and is asking the court to limit the district’s power over charters.

The lawsuit that Philadelphia Charters for Excellence filed Thursday demands that the district end its practice of including enrollment caps and legal waivers, known as surrender clauses, in charter agreements. Surrender clauses require schools to give up their charter if they don’t meet certain conditions.

The lawsuit asks the Court of Common Pleas to rule that any board decision to not renew a school based on its surrender clause is invalid.

It also asks the court to rule that schools do not need to sign new charter agreements as a condition of renewal. Some Philly charter schools have continued to operate on out-of-date charter agreements for years.

“Charter schools in Philadelphia have spent years navigating a renewal process that treats legal compliance like a negotiating chip,” said Cassandra St. Vil, CEO of Philadelphia Charters for Excellence, in a statement. “Schools are told to sign agreements they never agreed to, under conditions the law does not permit, or risk losing the authorization that tens of thousands of students and families depend on.”

In response to the lawsuit, board members said in a joint statement Thursday that they have “tried to use the tools that are available to us under the charter school law to authorize, evaluate, and hold charter schools accountable.”

“We have a duty to hold every charter school accountable for academic success, sound operations, and fiscal integrity in exchange for the high level of autonomy they have in operating schools,” they added.

A state audit of the district’s renewal process released in 2024 found it was in compliance with all relevant state laws.

The lawsuit comes just hours before the district’s Charter School Office is expected to present charter school renewal recommendations to the Board of Education. Of the 11 schools up for renewal this year, district documents show the office will recommend two for non-renewals, eight for five-year renewals with conditions, and one for a one-year renewal with conditions.

Not renewing a charter school kicks off a legal process that can lead to closing the school.

The renewal process has been tense in past years, with charter school students crowding into board meetings to protest recommendations of non-renewal. Last year, the board voted to move forward with not renewing charters for two schools. The schools, People for People Charter School and KIPP North Philadelphia Academy, then sued the board over the non-renewal decisions. A judge granted them an injunction prohibiting the board from moving forward with closures.

One of the schools recommended for non-renewal this year, Global Leadership Academy Charter School Southwest at Huey, did not meet several academic and financial standards set by the district. Over the past four years, fewer than 10% of students at the schools achieved proficient scores on state math tests, and fewer than 20% scored proficient on reading tests — both lower rates than the district average.

At the other school recommended for non renewal, Philadelphia Montessori Charter School, students have shown little to no growth on state math and reading tests over the past two years.

This story has been updated to include a statement from Board of Education members.

Philadelphia district schools will have a snow day Monday

2026-01-23T20:54:18+00:00

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Philadelphia’s district schools and many charter schools will have a snow day Monday in anticipation of a major snowstorm hitting the city, school officials announced Friday.

If weather requires schools to remain closed after Monday, district students will participate in remote learning and employees will work remotely, officials said in a statement.

The district’s early childhood centers and central office will also be closed Monday. Some charter schools have also announced they will close, including all Mastery network schools and YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School.

All parochial schools under the Archdiocese of Philadelphia will be closed and will use “flexible instruction” on Monday.

The district allotted one extra day in the 2025-26 school year calendar beyond the state’s requirement for 180 instructional days, which is why the district is able to give students the day off, district officials said.

“While we work to the greatest extent possible to keep schools open for in-person learning to accelerate student achievement, we also consider the staff members who are commuting from across the region and keep the safety of students and staff as our top priority,” Superintendent Tony Watlington said in a statement. “We encourage our families and staff members to safely enjoy this day off.”

The National Weather Service is predicting the area will get eight to 12 inches of snow from Saturday night through Monday morning.

Find updates about snow-related closures at the district’s website and on the district’s Facebook page.

Judge’s ruling in charter case casts doubt on Philadelphia school board member’s legal standing

2025-12-10T23:09:38+00:00

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A Philadelphia judge has stated that a longtime member of the city Board of Education is not actually a “de facto” member.

On Monday, Judge Christopher Hall of the Court of Common Pleas granted an injunction to two charter schools that prohibits the school board from moving forward with a process that could lead those schools to close.

The two charter schools, People for People Charter School and KIPP North Philadelphia, have gone to court to stop that nonrenewal process. In the initial September lawsuit, People for People alleged that Joyce Wilkerson is an “illegally and unlawfully seated” board member, because she was not confirmed by the City Council in January before taking her seat on the board. The school also claims Wilkerson “corrupted” the board’s vote to start the nonrenewal process.

In the footnotes of his ruling granting the injunction, Hall wrote that Wilkerson “was not a de facto member of the Board of Education” when the board voted to start the nonrenewal process for the two schools. He also wrote that Wilkerson’s participation in several board meetings without being properly confirmed, along with her decision to be the first board member to make a motion to vote on commencing nonrenewal for the charters, likely “tainted” the board’s August vote. Seven board members voted for nonrenewal.

Hall’s comments have the potential to destabilize the city school board and could raise questions about Wilkerson’s votes since the board’s term began in 2024. They also breathe new life into a fight from Mayor Cherelle Parker’s first months in office, when some City Council members opposed Parker’s nomination of Wilkerson to serve on the board again, due to concerns that she was unfairly critical of charter schools.

In a show of political force, Parker asked Wilkerson to continue to serve on the board — without a vote by the City Council to approve Wilkerson’s appointment.

A fixture in Philadelphia education for many years and a former president of the school board, Wilkerson was appointed to the board by former mayor Jim Kenney in 2018 and confirmed by the City Council in 2020. She also served on the School Reform Commission that previously governed city public schools.

In footnotes accompanying Monday’s preliminary injunction, Hall characterized Wilkerson as the “ringleader” of the vote to start the nonrenewal process for the two charters — though multiple board members asserted she played no role in influencing their votes, according to court transcripts.

During one court hearing on Nov. 12, Hall acknowledged that “there’s a lot of political haze in the case.” But ultimately, he said the key issue is whether Wilkerson was authorized to sit as a board member and, if she wasn’t, whether her participation had any impact on other board members’ votes to issue notices of nonrenewal.

Hall’s injunction does not state how or whether he will ultimately rule on Wilkerson’s position on the board. The order does state the injunction “does not bar the board from independently acting.”

People for People’s lawyer, Mark Seiberling, said in a statement that the school was pleased with Hall’s ruling. “We look forward to Ms. Wilkerson’s replacement being nominated and confirmed,” he said.

Parker’s office did not respond to a request for comment about Hall’s Monday injunction. In the case before the Court of Common Pleas, the city submitted a brief saying that Wilkerson is a “legally proper” seated board member. It argues that Wilkerson’s position is valid because of legal precedent that has allowed officials to remain as holdovers in their positions after their term has expired until a successor replaces them.

Board of Education President Reginald Streater said in a statement Wednesday that the board’s vote to begin the process of nonrenewal for the two charters was based “on the merits of each Board Member’s independent assessment of the schools’ outcomes.”

He signaled in his statement that the judge’s focus on Wilkerson’s status on the board makes it appear that “the underlying issues” with the schools’ academic performance are “being overshadowed” by politics.

Streater also said any delay in the process for deciding whether People for People and KIPP North Philadelphia will close would impede the board’s ability to conduct public hearings and address ongoing concerns.

“Our schools, families, and children deserve resolution,” said Streater. “We remain committed to transparency and to continuing this work in the best interest of the community.”

The school district can appeal Hall’s Monday decision. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 8.

Dispute over board member’s standing highlights charter controversies

The district and board’s process for overseeing and evaluating charters has been a point of contention for years and is currently under review. For example, the board has dealt with allegations it has been systematically unfair to charters with Black leaders. An investigation by an outside firm found the board had not shown intentional bias against Black-led charters, but did recommend that the district review its policies and pursue a more transparent process.

People for People launched the case against Wilkerson and the Board of Education in September, shortly after the board’s decision to move forward with non-renewing the school’s charter. KIPP North Philadelphia joined the case in October.

People for People’s annual charter evaluation report shows the school — which has operated for over 20 years — did not meet the district’s academic standards for student proficiency across multiple subject areas for several years.

The evaluation of KIPP North Philadelphia, which opened in 2018, shows it also had poor academic performance along with a high suspension rate.

Despite these concerns, the district’s Charter School office recommended five-year renewals, with conditions, for both schools. But board members were not convinced.

“After more than two decades in question and operation, there’s still no evidence of sustained academic success,” Streater said of People for People at its June board meeting.

Meanwhile, KIPP North Philadelphia’s high student suspension rate worried Board Vice President Sarah-Ashley Andrews: “When this many students are being removed from their classroom, something deeper is happening.”

In a Nov. 12 court hearing on the case brought by the two charter schools, lawyers for the charters questioned board members about how the non-renewal process works and whether Wilkerson had influence over their decisions.

But all of the three board members who testified — Streater, Wilkerson, and Whitney Jones — said they had not spoken to each other privately about the nonrenewal outside of public board meetings or executive sessions. “There’s no trying to compel anybody to do anything,” Streater said.

KIPP Philadelphia CEO Natalie Wiltshire told Chalkbeat on Wednesday that as the former board president, Wilkerson’s “voice carries outsize weight on that board.”

Wiltshire said board members did not reach out to her for clarifying information or to ask any questions about the school prior to their vote.

“None of these board members have stepped foot in my school,” Wiltshire said.

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

Philadelphia councilmember ‘supportive’ of selling vacant Ada Lewis building to a charter school

2025-11-14T19:56:04+00:00

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A member of the Philadelphia City Council and leaders of West Oak Lane Charter School have quietly discussed a plan for the charter school to acquire the vacant Ada H. H. Lewis Middle School building.

“I have had conversations with leadership from West Oak Lane Charter School, who have expressed their interest in acquiring the property,” Councilmember Cindy Bass — whose district includes Germantown, where the school is located — told Chalkbeat in a statement Thursday. “Many community members have voiced support for returning the site to educational use. While the final decision rests with the School District, I am supportive of that direction.”

But any sale of the Lewis building to a charter school would need the school district’s approval — as Bass acknowledged — and a school board vote. There’s no sign that board members would approve any such sale.

The district is undergoing a long-term planning process to take stock of its buildings and consider school closures, co-locations, and renovations. It intends to submit recommendations to the school board this winter.

“The Board of Education has not been involved in any discussions about the potential sale of the Ada Lewis building, nor have we received any recent proposals regarding a sale or transfer,” said Imahni Moise, a spokesperson for the school board, in a statement. “All decisions about District-owned facilities will be made through our ongoing comprehensive facilities planning process, which is still underway.”

The crumbling building that once housed the school has gained renewed attention in recent weeks after police found 23-year-old Mount Airy woman Kada Scott’s body buried in the woods behind the building. Lewis closed in 2008 but the district still owns the building and is tasked with inspecting it. Neighbors and Germantown community members say the building and surrounding grounds have attracted graffiti, squatting, and other criminal activity.

Bass has publicly called for the school district to demolish the building, saying “the risks posed by this abandoned building are no longer hypothetical. They are real and they are unfolding in front of us.”

In 2020, developer Ken Weinstein proposed clearing the Lewis campus to build homes and negotiated a letter of intent with the school district to do so. Despite his proposal receiving “near unanimous consent from the community,” according to Weinstein, the proposal was quietly tabled at a May 2021 school board meeting and hasn’t been taken up again.

Some community members claim Bass stood in the way of that sale, but the councilwoman has repeatedly denied doing so. She wrote an op-ed for the Chestnut Hill Local this month appearing to connect Weinstein’s plan with gentrification efforts in the Germantown community.

Debbera Peoples-Lee, chief executive officer of West Oak Lane Charter School, told Chalkbeat in an email that the school has “expressed interest” in acquiring the Ada Lewis building.

“The Ada Lewis site represents an unparalleled opportunity for WOLCS to expand its mission and meet both student and community needs,” Lee wrote in an email.

As the school district considers closing more buildings — it already has 20 vacant properties in its portfolio — Weinstein said in an interview this week that he hopes the Lewis sale goes through. But he said he’s skeptical that a charter school would be able to raise the more than $87 million he estimates it would take to renovate the building.

“I don’t care who redevelops or reinvests in that blighted site, it just needs to be done,” Weinstein said.

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

Philly families say they have enough school choice. What they want is help navigating the system.

2025-10-02T19:33:55+00:00

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Shonique Hennigan attended Philadelphia district schools as a young person. There weren’t many other choices at the time, she said.

But her kids — like other Philadelphia students — have hundreds of possible options, one advocate estimates.

The challenge now, says Hennigan, is figuring out what school to choose: Which is the right fit? The right location? Which will offer her kids the safest, best chance of succeeding academically?

Those are the questions facing not just Hennigan, but families across the city as school selection season gets underway. Parents and experts say Philly families are often overwhelmed by their choices and the complicated systems necessary to choose a school — and they want more help navigating the process.

That means stress and anxiety for parents and students, and the potential to miss out on opportunities because the system can favor those with the resources, time, and means to fully engage with it.

At this year’s K-12 School Fair at the Philadelphia Convention Center on Sept. 20, Chalkbeat spoke to more than two dozen families about school choice in the city and what it feels like to go through the school selection process. The district’s application process — which allows pre-K through 11th grade families to choose a school outside their designated neighborhood catchment school for the 2026-27 school year — closes on Thursday, Oct. 23 at 11:59 pm.

“The reality of it is we have lots of options,” said Stacy Holland, executive director of Elevate 215, a nonprofit education advocacy group in the city. Between traditional neighborhood schools, charter schools, magnet schools, citywide schools, cyber schools, and private schools, Philly has “over 400 options for kids,” she said.

And for scholarships and tuition assistance at private schools, Pennsylvania already has two tax credit scholarship programs. Still, lawmakers in Harrisburg remain deadlocked over the state budget, driven in part by a lack of agreement over school choice policies. State Senate Republicans have repeatedly pushed for a new taxpayer-funded voucher program for private and parochial schools.

“This choice conversation has almost just gotten totally commandeered by the politics of vouchers,” Holland said.

Holland said it’s time for officials and experts to stop looking at choice as a “political issue and more about just a user issue.”

“We need to build a system where parents have an ease of access,” she said.

This month, Elevate 215 launched a new tool called Philly Schools Compass designed to simplify the selection process by allowing families to compare schools and search by grade level, neighborhood, and school type — district, charter, private, and virtual.

The school district also launched its own new Explore tool this summer that allows families to see each district school’s academic and extracurricular offerings.

But even with the tools available, many families told Chalkbeat they’d like the process to be simpler and more straightforward.

Ninth grader Cherish Davis said the school selection process has been “kinda stressful” to go through so far, even with her dad Damon Davis doing his best to support her through the process.

She said she feels like she “partly” has an understanding of what factors would make a good school for her, but she knows there are a lot of options and schools she has never heard of or considered.

School choice process is demanding and complicated

From start to finish, Holland said, the existing school choice process asks a lot of families.

First, parents have to explore “what are the questions you should be asking” to determine what type of school environment would help their children thrive. Are they interested in environmental science? Do they prefer a big school or a small school? Do they want to be close to home or use SEPTA public transit to travel? Do they want to play basketball, join a bowling league, or take up robotics?

Once parents figure out “what I think my kid needs,” Holland said the next step is to determine “how do I go about educating myself” as a parent. That can mean connecting with an organization like Elevate 215, contacting the school district with questions, building a detailed spreadsheet, talking to fellow parents, or visiting different schools in-person. But all of that takes significant time and energy — for working parents and those with fewer resources, those barriers can be prohibitive.

After a family has a list of schools they like and fit their needs, they can apply through the district’s school selection application where they rank their top five choices of district schools. For charter schools, families can use the Apply Philly Charter application system and apply to up to 15 schools through that process. Both applications rely on a lottery system but have different deadlines.

Most private schools have their own, separate application process and may require a parent interview. Neighborhood catchment schools do not require any application and families can simply go to that school to enroll.

Once the application process is concluded, accepting a seat can be an additional challenge. Students can be waitlisted or receive multiple offers from various types of schools and tight deadlines to accept.

At the school fair, parents Stacey and Brock Marshall said Philly offered a good variety of choices for their two sons in the ninth and fifth grade, but they wanted help navigating the system.

One thing that could be useful, they said, is more “bullet-pointed information” in an easy-to-digest format.

Nicole Marion, who has a ninth grader, said she definitely feels overwhelmed by all of the options. She said the pressure to make the right choice for her child led to her feeling “a lot of anxiety” this year.

Parents also told Chalkbeat they worry about school safety, low reading and math scores, and crumbling facilities — all of which adds to the stress and pressure to choose a “good” school.

Philly families are looking for more clear-cut information

Some of that anxiety has been ramped up by conservative messaging from local groups and the Trump administration.

The conservative Commonwealth Foundation has lobbied aggressively for expanding Pennsylvania’s school choice policies in recent years, saying in several press releases that students are “trapped in failing schools” across the state.

Last year, the Commonwealth Foundation debuted digital billboards over major highway routes in Philly urging Pennsylvanians to support a proposed state-backed scholarship that eligible students could use to pay for tuition and fees for attendance at participating private schools.

Philly families already have access to the Children’s Scholarship Fund of Philadelphia, a privately funded program that gives scholarships to low-income families to attend tuition-based schools via another lottery process.

But the families Chalkbeat spoke to say they’re not looking for an escape from the current school system — they’re looking for help navigating it.

Holland said to help relieve some of the stress and uncertainty from parents’ shoulders, the city’s number one priority should be improving the quality of schools currently available to families, as well as making the system more user-friendly.

“We have work to do,” Holland said. “But it doesn’t mean there’s not options for families to choose from.”

Parents Jessica and David McDermott said the school choice process can be overwhelming. They want to give their daughter agency in the decision-making but they said they’d appreciate more clear-cut information.

The McDermotts said they’re “still confused” about the district’s ranking process. They feel like there is “plenty of choice” but not enough transparent information about all of the offerings.

“No one can say which school is going to be good,” Jessica said. “You have to think about your core values and what’s important to you.”

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

From housing aid to help after ICE raids: How a Philly charter school became a neighborhood lifeline

2025-09-23T14:23:47+00:00

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Colorful star-shaped balloons hung on a kindergarten classroom’s walls at Philadelphia’s Esperanza Academy Charter School on a recent September morning. They marked something special.

“What are the stars for?” Esperanza Academy CEO Evelyn Nuñez asked the excited kindergarteners.

The class had just finished their Star Assessments, a screening tool the city school district uses to monitor student performance. That meant Esperanza broke out the appropriately shaped decorations.

One small child raised his hand to answer, and Nuñez called on him. But the child stayed silent. Beside him, a classmate whispered, “He speaks Spanish.”

Nuñez translated the question, but the child remained quiet. His young classmate added: “Well, he speaks Spanish and English actually.” But on this day, it seemed, the youngster was too nervous to talk.

Making kids comfortable in whatever language they speak, and whatever culture they come from, is key to Esperanza Academy’s approach. On the walls of this kindergarten classroom, the teacher has hung the flags of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic to represent the students with connections to those places. Staff spend time exploring the surrounding community as part of teacher training.

For decades, Esperanza Academy has served Philadelphia’s majority-Latino Hunting Park neighborhood. It’s grown from a small charter high school to a K-12 institution that serves more than 2,000 kids across three nearby buildings. Though any family in Philadelphia can apply to attend, the majority of students live within three miles of the school and around 90% of students are Hispanic or Latino, according to Nuñez and district data.

As Philadelphia’s Latino population grows and many Latino families say they feel left out of the district, Esperanza Academy has been in an unusually advantageous position to support those communities. Though it manages its own finances and operations, it’s part of the larger Esperanza organization, a 40-year-old faith-based organization that provides housing assistance, workforce development programming, legal services, and more in Hunting Park.

That approach, according to school officials, has made it much easier for the school to build trust and respond quickly to students’ and community needs.

Star-shaped balloons hang on the wall of a kindergarten classroom at Esperanza Academy Charter School in Philadelphia’s Hunting Park neighborhood.

When families need help with housing, Esperanza has resources for them. When a parent loses a job, Esperanza can help them train for a new one.

And in January, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided a car wash a few blocks away from the school right at dismissal time, arresting several workers, Esperanza made legal resources quickly available.

“It’s a full service situation,” said Jeana Davis, the school’s elementary school principal. “Families, community — you’re all in.”’

As the district grapples with how to serve immigrant families and Spanish-speaking students, Esperanza’s model is one example of how schools can support a community in difficult moments as well as celebratory ones.

Esperanza aims to build an ‘opportunity community’

The area around Esperanza Academy includes the second-poorest ZIP code in Philadelphia, with more than 40% of families there living in poverty, according to census data.

The aim of Esperanza, the school’s Evangelical parent organization, is to build an “opportunity community,” according to the organization’s founder, Rev. Luis Cortés Jr. That means showing residents that “you don’t have to be wealthy to have a good life,” he said.

Its academic programs are integrated into its network of resources, said Cortés. Along with Esperanza Academy, the organization runs a cyber charter school and a Christian college program.

There are other schools in the city attempting to provide similar wraparound support for families. The city’s community schools initiative, begun under former Mayor Jim Kenney, has some similarities. But at Esperanza, this approach has been crucial to the school since its founding in 2000.

“We’re far ahead, because we’ve been able to figure out how to integrate and still keep the walls,” Cortés said.

The other branches of Esperanza table at back-to-school nights and sometimes give presentations at the school’s regular family engagement nights. The school also trains neighborhood residents to work in the cafeteria and manage operations at its campuses.

Esperanza officials say these community connections contribute to strong student achievement. During the 2023-2024 school year, the most recent year of available data, 92% of Esperanza Academy’s high school seniors graduated, and nearly half attended college — significantly higher rates than at the traditional public school just a block away, Thomas A. Edison High School. Student achievement on state tests was fairly similar for both schools.

Researchers have examined similar models in studies on community schools, a broad term that typically refers to schools that partner with families and community organizations to provide resources beyond the classroom.

Anna Maier, a researcher at the Learning Policy Institute, said those studies show the approach is linked to better attendance and higher test scores, and could help improve achievement for students who might need it the most.

“We’re seeing that historically underserved student groups are benefiting the most,” said Maier.

As Esperanza has expanded, it’s unclear whether that growth has directly affected enrollment at nearby schools.

This year, as part of the opening of its new elementary school building, it enrolled 750 more students, as approved by its charter agreement with the district, said Nuñez. Meanwhile, Edison operates in a half-empty building, and enrollment at the nearby Alexander K. McClure Elementary has declined 20% in the past three years.

But there are still 4,000 families on Esperanza’s waitlist, Nuñez added.

Esperanza Academy Charter School's new elementary school building opened in August, enabling the school to enroll 750 more students.

For those families who send their children to Esperanza, the ICE raid at the start of 2025 tested the school and the people who work there.

“Families were calling, so we had to respond very quickly,” said Nuñez.

The school’s reaction was swift. School officials contacted their counterparts at Esperanza Immigration Legal Services and created resources for families to know their rights and to do if ICE agents came to the door.

Esperanza also printed thousands of special editions of Impacto, the newspaper it runs, to distribute with information about immigrant rights.

The raid shook many families and staff at the school, said Davis, the elementary school principal. Administrators referred families to Esperanza Immigration Legal Services, where they could get more help. The school also hosted training for teachers and spoke to students about what their rights are as well.

“The goal is to always keep the barriers away from the teacher so that you can just do the job,” said Davis, the elementary school principal. “That was really important to communicate: that we would carry that stress for them, that they did not need to carry that.”

To Nuñez, who spent decades working at the Philadelphia school district before joining Esperanza last year, the longstanding partnership the school has with Esperanza’s other programs has been invaluable.

But she said she also understands why it may not work for other schools to adopt a similar model. In many ways, the decades Esperanza has spent in Hunting Park building trust and community connection have equipped the organization — and through it the school — to meet this moment, she said.

“Principals in other traditional schools and charters that I’ve worked with, they have to be extra intentional to go out and develop these partnerships,” said Nuñez. “But we don’t have to do that here — it already exists.”

Correction: Sept. 23, 2025: A previous version of this story misstated which group runs the cyber charter school and college program. Esperanza runs those programs separately from Esperanza Academy.

Amid legal battle to stay open, Memphis Street Academy charter school welcomes back students

2025-08-26T21:29:12+00:00

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The leaders of Memphis Street Academy at J.P. Jones, the Philadelphia charter school that a federal judge ordered to close last month, want one thing to be clear: The school is open.

The school formally appealed a court ruling last week that the school must surrender its charter for failing to meet certain academic standards. Days later, it welcomed students and families back to campus to hand out backpacks before the first day of school.

“We keep on surviving, because that’s what we do,” said Memphis Street Principal Steven Bilski as students lined up for free pizza and water ice at last week’s back-to-school event. “Our kids need it.”

Bilski and other leaders at the American Paradigm School charter network, which runs the school, have been fighting to keep it open since 2022, when district leaders kicked off a process to close the school.

In court, district lawyers have argued the school must close because it failed to meet certain academic standards, even after it had pledged to do so. Those conditions included requiring the school’s state test results to exceed those from similar schools in some subjects, and to raise its math proficiency rate to above 10% — a score it still has not achieved.

But the school alleges the framework the district used to evaluate its performance discriminates against schools that educate a high proportion of Black and Hispanic students.

The school’s appeal in its federal case likely means there will be no answer soon about what happens to the future of Memphis Street Academy.

In the meantime, school leaders and supporters say that the drawn out legal process has created challenges of its own — like trying to retain staff and reminding families that the school is open, even though they may have seen reports that a judge ordered the school to close.

“It starts a whole myriad of other problems,” said Councilmember Jim Harrity, who lives close to the Port Richmond neighborhood where Memphis Street Academy is based and has been a vocal supporter of the school. “And we don’t need any other problems for these kids.”

Memphis Street Academy was meant to excel academically

The school’s building was built in the 1920s and used to be home to John Paul Jones Junior High School. But the district turned it over to American Paradigm Schools in 2012 as part of its “Renaissance” initiative, which was meant to turn around failing schools.

“Nobody else wanted Memphis Street at that time,” said Ashley Redfearn, the charter network’s CEO. “It’s not like everyone was like knocking each other down to come here.”

That may have been because of the building’s dilapidated state. Annette Thomas, who runs a janitorial and maintenance company that contracted with Memphis Street Academy, said it took three months of “constant hard work” to clean up the building from the condition the district had left it in. She remembers there were rat droppings on window sills and urine on the bathroom floors.

Now, the school appears clean and well-maintained. It enrolls nearly 500 middle school students in grades 5-8, 90% of whom come from the surrounding neighborhoods.

But academically, the school has struggled. During the most recent round of state tests from this spring, 15% of students achieved proficiency in English language arts and 4% did so in math, Bilski said during a recent board meeting.

Those scores are significantly lower than the district’s most recent numbers, and lower than Memphis Street Academy’s results when the district moved to close it in 2022. The school’s test scores are also lower than nearby Richmond Elementary School, which funnels many students to Memphis Street Academy.

Bilski and other school leaders said the test results don’t capture students’ full experiences or the value the school provides outside of the classroom, including health and wellness services and a recently opened food pantry for the surrounding community.

Though Bilski said he is focused on improving the school’s academic performance, he said he is also conscious that many students have difficult home lives and need more than just academic support to thrive.

“They come through a pretty rough neighborhood, they come across a lot of trauma,” Bilski said. “They take that stuff into school, and it makes learning that much more difficult, so we do have to meet those needs.”

Memphis Street leaders want ‘stable’ environment for students

In court, the school alleges the framework the district’s Charter School Office uses to evaluate charter school performance is biased because it is “heavily weighted” by academic performance measures “for which Hispanic and African American students materially underperform other student groups.”

But last month, U.S. District Judge Chad Kenney of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania opposed that claim.

“Instead of uplifting its students, MSA blames their demographic backgrounds for its own shortcomings,” Kenney wrote in his decision ordering the school to close. “These excuses deprive MSA’s students of the education they deserve.”

By appealing that ruling, the school aims to continue to be “a stable force” for the neighborhood, said Redfearn.

Redfearn said she was not expecting the ruling in the case to come down last month, just as school leaders were preparing for the new school year and finalizing hiring new staff. The court order complicated that process.

“We went into mode of just, let’s get things ready for the kids,” said Redfearn. “Because at the end of the day, they’re going to come here.”

Last week, just days before school started, a large sign declaring “MSA is Growing!” hung on the sidewalk fence outside the school. Pop music blasted as kids danced around. A gym teacher dressed up in a wildcat costume waved to new and old students.

Some parents at the back-to-school event said they hadn’t heard of the legal case. But others said the reports they had seen that the school was ordered to close had been unsettling.

“Is it really closing though?” asked Tanya Griffin, who lives down the street from Memphis Street Academy and takes care of her niece and nephew, who both attended the school. Her niece graduated, and her nephew is entering eighth grade.

She said her nephew likes his teachers and his classes. The food is good, she said, and the health services it provides are useful. She added that Memphis Street Academy has been a resource for the entire neighborhood, many of whom were students in the same building before it became a charter school.

“I don’t want it to close,” said Griffin. “A lot of neighborhood kids go here, a lot of parents enjoy it.”

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.

Judge orders Philadelphia’s Memphis Street Academy charter school to close

2025-07-14T23:10:10+00:00

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A federal judge ruled Monday that a Philadelphia charter school that sued the school district to allow it to stay open despite poor academic performance must shut down.

However, officials representing Memphis Street Academy Charter School at J.P. Jones, operated by the American Paradigm Schools charter network, say the school plans to continue to operate in the coming school year.

The school has operated on an expired charter agreement since 2022, when the Philadelphia school board first moved not to renew the school after years of low standardized test scores and climbing absenteeism rates.

In June 2022, the school board found the school did not meet academic standards and invoked its charter’s surrender clause, which requires the school to surrender its charter if certain conditions are not met.

Less than a month later, Memphis Street Academy sued the district to prevent it from revoking the school’s charter.

“The conditions MSA agreed to be held to—and failed to meet—were guardrails to provide adequate education for its students,” Judge Chad Kenney of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania wrote in his Monday decision. “MSA must surrender its charter and close.”

However, American Paradigm Schools CEO Ashley Redfearn told Chalkbeat Monday the school plans to continue to operate.

“I do believe that we will be in operation in the fall, and if there is transition, that it will be done responsibly and ethically in the best interest of the kids and the students and the teachers of Memphis street Academy,” said Redfearn.

Redfearn said the judge’s decision deemed the surrender clause enforceable, but does not mean that the school has to immediately surrender its charter.

“Today is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an order that the school close,” said Redfearn.

Redfearn said she and other American Paradigm Schools officials are reviewing the judge’s decision.

Philadelphia school district officials did not respond to questions about what will happen to students enrolled at Memphis Street Academy in the upcoming school year. Last school year, nearly 500 students in grades 5-8 attended the school.

In its lawsuit, Memphis Street Academy charged the district with subjecting the school to “unfair and unrealistic” charter conditions. The school also alleged that the district’s framework of measuring charter schools was racially discriminatory because it disproportionately harmed schools that served higher than average rates of Black and Hispanic students.

In his decision, Kenney wrote that the school board had held the school accountable by revoking its charter.

He pointed out that for a school that began as part of the city’s “Renaissance” initiative, which was meant to turn around failing schools and improve student achievement, its performance had been “bleak.”

During the 2018-2019 school year, the last one with standardized testing before the non-renewal order, only 5% of Memphis Street Academy students achieved proficient scores in math, well below the district average.

For several years before the non-renewal, more than a third of the school’s students were chronically absent, meaning they missed more than 10 days of school.

“Instead of uplifting its students, MSA blames their demographic backgrounds for its own shortcomings,” wrote Kenney in the decision. “These excuses deprive MSA’s students of the education they deserve.”

Cyber school facing wrongful death suit says it’s ‘unreasonable’ for teachers to see students weekly

2025-07-03T17:30:58+00:00

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HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s largest cyber charter school says it is “unreasonable” to expect its staff to see and hear from all students weekly, despite the contention of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration that it must do so to comply with state law.

Now, state lawmakers are pushing to update the law’s language to ensure these wellness checks happen.

The statute, passed as part of last year’s budget, says cyber charter schools must weekly “ensure that each enrolled student is able to be visibly seen and communicated with in real time.”

The language had been inspired in part by a prominent case in which a 12-year-old cyber charter student died in May 2024 following alleged torture and starvation by her guardians, according to Democratic state Rep. Joe Ciresi, the lawmaker who sponsored the original bill. The girl had been attending Commonwealth Charter Academy, or CCA, which now faces a wrongful death suit.

It’s also the school that is now resisting performing weekly wellness checks.

When the Pennsylvania Department of Education, or PDE, requested documentation of the newly required checks from CCA, an attorney for the school said it had a different interpretation of the law and would not be performing them, according to October 2024 letters viewed by Spotlight PA.

“In a school with over 30,000 students and over 2,300 faculty, administrators, and support staff, and several opportunities for a student to be visibly seen each day, PDE’s mandate that all 30,000 students actually be seen and heard each week is unreasonable and impossible of execution,” the CCA lawyer wrote. “The General Assembly did not in fact mandate that.”

A spokesperson for CCA said the school received another letter the following month and requested a meeting to discuss the issue, but never heard back from the state — something they said “has been an unfortunate but constant theme from them for several years.”

A PDE spokesperson told Spotlight PA it sent letters to all 14 of Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools in October about the new law, and that it is confident that most “have made changes to policies and procedures in order to meet the wellness check requirement and ensure the well-being of each student on a weekly basis.”

Only one school, CCA, “has challenged PDE’s interpretation of Act 55,” the spokesperson said, adding that the agency plans to publish public data on cyber charter wellness checks in August.

State Rep. Pete Schweyer, a Democrat, heads his chamber’s Education Committee and has lately been focused on passing legislation that would update the decades-old law governing cyber charter schools. He told Spotlight PA he only recently became aware of CCA’s stance on student wellness checks.

The school’s October letter “was shocking to me,” he said.

“I’ll speak for myself. I didn’t have a full grasp on how brazen and how willing at least some cyber schools were to just disregard the health and well-being of their kids,” he told Spotlight PA. “In what world would anybody look at that as an exploitable loophole? Like, it’s obnoxious.”

Democratic State Sen. Lindsey Williams, who has also been focused on cyber charter regulation, said she felt the original law “was clear: Cyber charter schools need to put eyes on kids at least once a week.”

“It’s absurd that we have to go through this exercise of changing the school code,” she said. “If CCA is unwilling to do the bare minimum to protect their students, then we should.”

Schweyer is now working on a bill that would create stricter reporting rules for cyber charters, as is a Republican member of the state Senate.

Malinda Hoagland’s half sisters are currently suing CCA, along with a public school district and a number of other Pennsylvania institutions, for wrongful death. During Hoagland’s time at the cyber charter school, their suit claims, she was actively being abused — including at least one incident in which her father forced her to abruptly end a Zoom session and proceeded to hit her.

CCA staff, the suit says, “observed obvious signs of abuse” including blackened and swollen eyes, a range of other bruises and abrasions, and mood changes.

CCA spokesperson Timothy Eller, whose title is chief branding and government relations officer, said Hoagland’s death “was tragic and heartbreaking for the CCA school community.” He added that while the school can’t give specifics about pending litigation, the Chester County district attorney said in a news release last summer that there was “no indication that either [of the schools that Hoagland attended] failed to meet legal requirements to report abuse.”

Eller said Hoagland had been regularly visible on camera and actively participated as a CCA student, and that her previous school and county officials had not alerted CCA about their concerns.

Another shot at a legislative update

CCA’s argument about the 2024 student wellness check law centers on the statute’s phrasing.

The attorney for CCA, Philip Murren of Cumberland County firm Ball, Murren & Connell, wrote in his October letter that the phrase “able to be seen” seemed to mean only that employees must have “an opportunity” to do a real-time visual and verbal wellness check on a child, not that they “actually” see and hear their students.

Murren added that the state’s Child Protective Services Law already requires school employees to report suspected child abuse, and that it is CCA’s experience that Children and Youth departments would not accept reports of students simply not being seen or heard weekly in their “fully asynchronous online school programs” as possible evidence of abuse.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “CCA continues to file these reports when warranted.”

This year, the state House is trying two different approaches to tighten the law, at least one of which could be included in this year’s delayed state budget.

In June, the chamber passed a sweeping bill that would make changes to the cyber charter law, among them an update to the wellness check language.

It would also add a section on penalties, saying that failure to comply will be grounds for nonrenewal or revocation of a school’s charter. The chamber’s goal is to have the measure be part of ongoing state budget talks.

Late last month, Schweyer also circulated a memo proposing a standardized process for cyber charter schools to conduct wellness checks and establish a “crisis escalation process” for checks that reveal serious concerns.

Schweyer hasn’t introduced official language yet, and conceded it might not be ready in time to be included in the budget. But he said his goal is to lay out crisis triggers that mandate escalation, set schedules for communication with families and authorities, train staff, and create additional penalties for cyber charters that don’t follow these rules.

“We’re trying to make this as comprehensive as possible,” he said. “It’s going to take a little while to get this done.”

The broad cyber charter bill that passed the state House hasn’t moved in the GOP-controlled state Senate, but the upper chamber is also on board with updating the wellness check law.

State Sen. Tracy Pennycuick, a Republican, is circulating her own memo that explicitly references the conflict between the state and CCA, writing that her goal is to update last year’s law to “ensure that cyber charter school wellness checks are conducted as originally intended.”

“This is a simple fix to help ensure that students learning remotely are accounted for, supported, and safe,” she wrote.

In a statement, GOP state Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman said the original wellness check language was a priority of many in his chamber, and that “Senator Pennycuick’s language seeking to offer greater clarity to the issue has my support and would take another meaningful step forward.”

Eller, of CCA, said the school was “not consulted or invited to provide input during the legislative process that led to the 2024 changes.”

Asked about the newly proposed updates to cyber charter law, Eller said the school also had not been invited to weigh in, but would be “more than willing to collaborate.”

Asynchronous education

CCA maintains that it does everything it can to make sure students are safe.

Eller told Spotlight PA in an email that the school’s internal wellness check policy requires that if a teacher or administrator is concerned about a student’s safety, they reach out to the family directly. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, they then “may request the involvement of the local authorities.”

Eller said the school also employs staff members whose primary job includes conducting home visits if there are concerns about a student’s attendance or engagement with school.

He said these staffers, known internally as attendance, communication, and engagement specialists, conducted more than 1,500 home visits in the 2024-25 school year and made more than 1,670 referrals to Children and Youth agencies across the state.

CCA gets particular attention from lawmakers and other elected officials because of its size and the number of students it educates. It has grown rapidly since the pandemic prompted many families to try cyber education.

Like most cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania, CCA has the ability to take on an unlimited number of students. However, the state Department of Education recently began requiring cyber charters to agree to new enrollment caps as a condition of their charter renewals if they are classified as comprehensive support and improvement schools, or CSI schools — a federal designation for a state’s lowest-performing tier.

All but one of the state’s established cyber charters, including CCA, are CSI schools. (One of the cyber charters was only approved for operation last year and isn’t yet ranked). CCA’s charter is expired, and it doesn’t currently have an enrollment cap in place.

CCA says it had more than 35,000 students enrolled by the end of the most recent school year. That makes it by far the largest cyber charter in the state, and also bigger than every Pennsylvania school district but Philadelphia.

Asked what makes it so difficult for CCA teachers and administrators to make sure they see and hear all students weekly, Eller told Spotlight PA that the school aims to make sure kids and families have “flexibility in how they engage in their education.” In practice, this means not all students participate in live Zoom “classrooms.”

While real-time instruction is available, he said, there is also an “asynchronous” option that offers “self-paced, student-led instruction, where students and families set their own schedule and complete schoolwork at their own pace.”

Students can also blend the two approaches, he said.

Aside from concerns about students’ well-being, pressure has been growing on cyber charter schools to show that their educational approaches are working and to account for the ways they spend the significant taxpayer dollars that they accrue.

During an April hearing on cyber charters’ educational outcomes, state House lawmakers heard testimony from the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators that these schools are performing poorly when it comes to test scores, attendance rates, and graduation rates.

Cyber charter proponents, meanwhile, said the children who are enrolled in these schools often are struggling in these areas anyway, and argued cyber charters play a crucial role by offering nontraditional education options.

And in a review of cyber charters’ finances released early this year, Auditor General Tim DeFoor, a Republican, reported that the schools were accruing big surpluses from taxpayer dollars and also spending that money in questionable ways, including on gift cards, staff bonuses, and vehicle payments.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are increasingly open to updating the commonwealth’s cyber charter law, though it’s unclear if the divided legislature will come to a consensus as part of this year’s budget deal.

Cyber charters and their advocates, which spend hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying state officials, argue the schools should be just as well-funded as traditional public schools, and say efforts to cut the state funding that flows to them will put schools out of business.

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Philly mayor adds schools to extended-day initiative, says it’s year-round school ‘in my mind’

2025-06-27T19:22:24+00:00

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Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s signature “extended day, extended year” school initiative is expanding to 15 new schools next year, even as it remains a far cry from the “year-round school” she promised on the campaign trail.

At a City Hall press conference Friday, Parker said the 15 new schools will offer free before- and after-school programs, “camp experiences” during winter and spring breaks, and will participate in the city’s existing six-week Summer Achievers summer camp starting with the 2025-26 school year.

Friday’s announcement brings the total number of schools participating in the extended day, extended year initiative to 40 — 30 district schools and 10 charter schools. It’s jointly funded by the city and school district with a budget of $26.1 million for last year and the expansion.

Parker said Friday parents — especially those with busy work schedules — have told her they are “relieved and inspired by what this program has meant for them.” Superintendent Tony Watlington said there’s been some limited evidence that many of the students who have participated in the program have improved their regular classroom attendance rates.

But Parker said she’s also heard from parents who were confused or upset about her campaign-trail promise of “year-round school” and interpreted it as students sitting at a desk doing strictly academic work for 365 days a year.

“That’s not it,” Parker said.

In its first year, “extended day, extended year” schooling appeared to mostly expand access to enrichment opportunities that schools already had in place.

But Parker on Friday characterized before- and after-school care available throughout the year, as well as programming available during holiday breaks, as “access to year-round education.”

Asked if she intends for the initiative to move more towards a truly “year-round” schedule, Parker demurred.

“In my mind, this is year-round,” she said.

So far, some 3,000 students have participated in the various before and after-school programs offered at the participating schools, Chief Education Officer Debora Carrera said. Officials expect the initiative’s expansion will add 5,000 seats.

Alison Barnes, principal at Vare-Washington Elementary School in South Philadelphia that participates in the program, said it has been “nothing short of game-changing for our families.”

Jazmine Rodriguez, a Vare-Washington parent, said the after-care program her fourth-grade daughter participates in through EDEY has been a “lifeline.”

“It’s nice knowing that when I get home, homework is completed, she received the help that she needed,” Rodriguez said. “It just gives more time for family time.”

The new district schools in the program will be:

Anne Frank Elementary School.
Tanner G. Duckrey School .
Lewis Cassidy Academics Plus.
Roberto Clemente Middle School.
James R. Lowell School.
Edwin Forrest School.
Delaplaine McDaniel School.
James Rhoads Elementary School.
Edward Steel Elementary School.
Frances E. Willard Elementary School.

The new charter schools will be:

Universal Alcorn.
General David B. Birney.
Esperanza Academy.
Harambee Institute of Science and Technology.
Wissahickon.

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

Philadelphia Board of Education indicates it will not renew 2 charter schools

2025-06-27T02:00:41+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education directed the Charter School Office at its Thursday meeting to draft charter renewal agreements with four charter schools, indicating they will likely vote to renew those schools’ charters.

But for two schools, KIPP North Philadelphia Academy and People for People Charter School, the board directed the Charter School Office to draft a notice of non-renewal, which kicks off a process that can ultimately lead to closing a charter.

Board members said they were concerned about the academic performance of both schools, which have test scores far below the district average and have not shown significant improvement in recent years.

The decision to pursue non-renewals came as a blow to parents, educators, and officials connected with both schools who attended Thursday’s meeting.

“As a turnaround principal, I knew the path wouldn’t be easy,” said Susanna Tagoe, who became principal of KIPP North Philadelphia last year. “I also know that this requires deep courage, deep resilience, and deep commitment to our students, our families and our staff.”

The school, which serves around 680 students in kindergarten through seventh grade, has shown poor academic performance, with only 6% of its students scoring proficiently in the state math test last year. It also suspended more students than the district average, with nearly 1 in 3 students suspended last year, including nearly a third of all second and third graders and half of its sixth grade class.

“When this many students are being removed from their classroom, something deeper is happening,” said board member Sarah-Ashley Andrews. “These numbers tell us that this school community is in distress.”

Meanwhile, Anthony Fratanduono, principal of People for People Charter School, urged the board to renew the school based on the growth it has shown in recent years in math, science, and language arts test scores. He said the school would continue to work to improve its academics.

The school “is more than just a place of learning,” Fratanduono said. “It is a second home for our students and our families. It is a space where children are seen and supported.”

But board members said the school’s slight gains recently in some subjects did not make up for years of low test scores across the board.

“After more than two decades in question and operation, there’s still no evidence of sustained academic success,” said board President Reginald Streater.

The board is considering a total of 18 charter schools for renewal this year, meaning that it must decide whether to allow those charters to continue operating or begin a process that could result in closure.

The board had already directed the Charter School Office to draft and negotiate renewal charters with 12 of those schools before Thursday’s meeting.

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, Teamsters Local 502, spoke against the charter renewals. She requested an “investigation” into how charter school supporters have been able to fill public speaking slots while district school supporters allegedly “can’t get on the list.” Her union represents school principals and other school officials.

Streater said the board “will be looking into” how the public speakers list is compiled in response to Cooper’s testimony.

District allocates $190 million to pay parents for school transport

The board also voted to approve millions in spending for transportation, school safety, students experiencing housing insecurity and more.

The full list of contracts can be found on the board’s website. Among the approved items on the consent agenda were:

$191 million over five years for the district’s ongoing “parent flat rate” program which pays parents up to $3,000 a year per household, for students who opt out of bus, van, or cab service to and from school. According to the district, 15,000 families and 18,000 students are currently participating in the program.
$34 million for SEPTA student fare cards for some 63,000 eligible students at public, charter, and non-public schools who use public transit to get to class. SEPTA adopted a budget on Thursday that plans for major cuts to its transit services, which the district said will impact the ability of 21,000 students to get to school reliably and consistently and limit students’ access to after-school programs.
Nearly $12 million in equipment costs for the district’s buses and other transportation vehicles, and another $8.4 million for yellow bus repairs.
$2.7 million to extend contracts with outside groups that provide services to students experiencing homelessness.
Roughly $366,000 for various school safety costs including contracts with the Philadelphia Police Department for increased police presence outside of schools in the Safety Zone program, security cameras near Olney High School athletic fields, and emergency lights in school safety vehicles.

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

Philadelphia charter school announces it will stop operating next year

2025-06-18T22:28:27+00:00

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The Universal Vare Promise Neighborhood Partnership Charter School, which enrolled more than 120 students in grades 5-8 this year, will not pursue renewing its charter after next school year, effectively ending its operations.

The announcement marks the third school that the Universal Charter Schools network plans to cease operating, leaving the campus’s future uncertain. It’s unclear whether the district will step in and take over the school — as it did with one previous Universal charter — or if it will close entirely after the 2025-26 school year.

School board and district officials did not respond to questions about whether the district plans to take over the school after the charter ends.

The school’s CEO, Penny Nixon, said in a statement Wednesday that the decision was the result of declining enrollment. The school is authorized to enroll 425 students but has enrolled fewer than half that number for the past three years.

“The challenges we face at Universal Vare reflect broader citywide experiences,” said Nixon. “Gentrification and declining birth rates have significantly impacted school enrollment.”

The announcement comes as the school district pursues its own facilities planning process that’s partially meant to address declining enrollment in several district-operated schools. School board officials said the process will likely result in school closures, as well as co-locations and the repurposing of some school buildings.

The district’s process to determine whether and how to close schools has been nearly a year in the making and includes regular community engagement sessions. District officials have stressed the process will be transparent and informed by community feedback.

Like other charter schools that have recently closed, Universal Vare’s decision to stop operating the school came unexpectedly.

Soon after the announcement, the board of education issued its own statement supporting the decision.

“While change can be challenging, the Board respects and supports the school’s decision, which we believe is grounded in what is best for children,” said school board President Reginald Streater. “We commend the school leadership for taking a proactive and student-first approach, even when the path forward is hard.”

Universal Vare’s history riddled with challenges

Universal Vare launched in 2011 as part of the city’s Renaissance Initiative, which gave 22 district-operated schools over to charter networks.

Renaissance schools were meant to “transform historically failing schools,” then-Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said at the time. But more than a decade later, many of its promises haven’t materialized.

The school board has documented ongoing problems at Universal Vare for years.

In 2016, the Charter Schools Office recommended the school for non-renewal because it had failed to meet certain standards, including academic performance and financial sustainability. Under Universal’s management, the school’s math proficiency scores severely declined, and its reading proficiency scores only slightly increased. The school also struggled with persistent low attendance rates and insufficient funding.

The non-renewal would have meant the school would be forced to close. But it campaigned to continue operating, and in 2018 the School Reform Commission, which oversaw the district at the time, voted to allow it to renew its charter with certain conditions.

At its next renewal in 2020, Universal Vare’s test scores showed that students were doing worse than the district average across all subjects. But its scores reflected academic growth across the board.

Financially, the school still was struggling, with less than a month of cash on hand.

In 2023, the school suddenly shut its building’s doors partway through the school year after asbestos was discovered inside. Students ended the year learning virtually. The following school year, the school relocated to a nearby building.

Academically, the school continued to have problems. Last year, only 2% of students received proficient scores on the state math test. Though students did better on language arts and science tests, they still scored below the district average.

Peng Chao, the chief of the city’s Charter Schools Office, said the office supports the school’s decision not to renew its charter.

“This decision reflects a deep commitment to ensuring that all students have access to robust, high-quality educational experiences,” said Chao. “We appreciate the school’s thoughtful approach and continued focus on doing what is best for students.”

Cyber charter reform that could save public schools $616M advances with unclear future in Pa. Senate

2025-06-05T18:30:06+00:00

HARRISBURG — Public school districts in Pennsylvania could save more than $600 million annually under a bill that the state House passed Wednesday to cap the tuition they pay to cyber charters.

The bill is part of a several year effort to boost oversight and cut spending on cyber charter schools. At least some of its concepts have support in both chambers, but the issue has always been complicated by the commonwealth’s tricky education politics.

Democrats, who control the state House, have championed increased spending for poor public schools, while Republicans, who control the state Senate, favor funding alternatives including charter schools, though the issue doesn’t break neatly down party lines.

Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) reflected that dynamic in a statement Wednesday, saying “certain aspects” of the bill advanced by the state House “could be beneficial.” That includes the measure’s requirements that cyber schools do wellness checks on students and that public districts get proof of residency for students for whom they pay tuition.

But, Pittman added, there needs to be recognition that the proposal would save school districts money, which he believes should count as the legislature giving public schools increased support as required by a 2022 court ruling.

Democrats, meanwhile, are casting this issue as an administrative necessity.

“This bill is the result of repeated and urgent calls to update our commonwealth’s outdated charter school law,” state Rep. Mary Isaacson (D-Philadelphia), the bill sponsor, said on the House floor Wednesday. “This proposal is about fiscal responsibilities and aligning tuition to the actual cost.”

The measure made it through the lower chamber 104-98, with two moderate Republicans voting in favor. It now goes to the state Senate Education Committee. Its chair, Sen. Lynda Schlegel Culver (R-Columbia), said in a statement, “We will thoroughly review the legislation as we do for all bills given to the committee.”

Pennsylvania school districts must pay tuition for any students who live within their borders and opt to attend a charter school. These tuition rates are calculated based on the district’s per-student spending using a formula that has changed little over the past several decades.

Currently, the state uses nearly the same formula to fund online-only cyber charter schools as it does for brick-and-mortar charters, despite the former’s relatively lower overhead costs.

That would change under this bill.

It would instead set a base tuition rate of $8,000 per student. That rate would be increased for students who have extra needs, such as disabilities. This mirrors a proposal that Gov. Josh Shapiro has made in his last two budgets and of which Democrats have long been supportive.

The measure would also make several other changes. A number focus on transparency, such as the wellness checks and residency requirements Pittman cited.

Other provisions include requirements that cyber charters post annual performance assessments online and inform students if they are found to be low performing, as well as an enrollment cap on cyber charters found to be low performing. Cyber charters would also be required to disclose any “entities” helping to finance their capital projects.

Along with the flat tuition rate, there are also other financial components.

By the end of this year, cyber charters would have to pay back a significant portion of their unspent surplus dollars from the 2024-25 fiscal year to the state. That money would go into a state fund for public schools facility improvement projects, and would newly make charter schools eligible for those funds.

The bill would additionally bar cyber charters from accumulating large surpluses in the future. Starting at the end of the next fiscal year — June 2026 — any surplus dollars in excess of 12% of the school’s total expenditures that aren’t earmarked would have to be sent back to public districts.

Plus, it would require that any revenue cyber charters generate via property be paid back to the school districts they receive money from.

According to the bill’s fiscal note, lower cyber charter tuition payments would save districts an aggregate of $616 million, half of what they currently spend. Each district’s specific savings would vary based on how many students they have enrolled in cyber charters.

The shaky bipartisan agreement that Pennsylvania’s cyber charter law needs to be updated didn’t come out of nowhere.

Cyber charter enrollment has risen significantly in recent years — by nearly 57% across the state since 2020, when the pandemic began pushing more families to explore the option. Nearly 60,000 Pennsylvania students now attend cyber charters, which means a growing number of school districts and lawmakers are affected.

A review earlier this year from Republican Auditor General Tim DeFoor solidified members’ opinion that something had to change.

DeFoor audited five of the commonwealth’s 14 cyber charters and found that the revenue they were taking in nearly doubled from 2020 to 2023, from $473 million to $898 million, and also that the schools’ financial reserves had increased by nearly 150% in that period. In addition, he found cyber charters had been spending funds on “unusual” things like gift cards and vehicle payments.

Still, division remains. During the floor debate Wednesday, several Republicans slammed the bill as unfair to cyber charter schools.

“We still have some more work to do for our school districts complaining about equal funding. All they ask is to be treated the same, and I’m here to advocate for them,” said state Rep. Craig Williams (R-Chester). “House Bill 1500 doesn’t do that. House Bill 1500 puts us on a path to end cyber charters.”

Cyber charter administrators and advocates are also uniformly against the measure.

Marcus Hite, who heads the Pennsylvania Association of Public Cyber Charter Schools, called the $8,000 tuition cap “arbitrary and unrealistic,” saying in a news release it “doesn’t reflect the real cost of educating students, especially those with disabilities or unique learning needs.”

“Cyber charters are already subject to some of the highest levels of oversight in the education system — audits, performance reviews, and public transparency,” he added. “HB 1500 piles on duplicative and punitive rules.”

In a joint statement, a group of administrators from five cyber charter schools said the bill would lead to closures. Jon Marsh of Philadelphia’s Esperanza Cyber Charter School called it “an attack on some of the most chronically disenfranchised and disadvantaged students in our Commonwealth.”

Public education advocates support the measure. Susan Spicka of Education Voters of PA said it “will save hundreds of millions of tax dollars annually and bring long-overdue accountability and transparency to Pennsylvania’s billion dollar cyber charter industry.”

The issue is heavily lobbied. Last year alone, Commonwealth Charter Academy, the state’s biggest cyber charter, spent $202,500 on education-related lobbying. Other cyber charters typically spend at least tens of thousands of dollars annually. That doesn’t touch the significant dollars that traditional brick-and-mortar charters and their advocates spend on lobbying.

Public schools have their own lobbying presence, too. The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the union that represents teachers, spent nearly $178,000 on lobbying last year.

Philadelphia Board of Education approves city’s first new charter school since 2018

2025-05-29T21:39:42+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education voted Thursday to approve the city’s first new charter school in nearly a decade.

At a tense board meeting in a packed room, board members said they were “obligated” to approve the Early College Charter School of Philadelphia — since the application met all of the standards set by the state charter school law. Still, several members expressed serious reservations about the new school’s impact on the district’s budget.

The board approved the school in an 8-1 vote. Early College Charter is the first new charter school the board has approved since it regained local control in 2018. The vote represents a turning point for education in Philadelphia and a big win for the city’s charter school community and its supporters, who have criticized the board’s resistance to new charters and other ways it’s approached the charter sector. Charter critics counter that the publicly funded and privately run schools have fallen far short of their promises to students.

The board previously rejected Early College Charter’s application in February. That decision drew the attention of elected officials and others who questioned the move. The group behind Early College Charter subsequently submitted a revised application before Thursday’s vote.

Board President Reginald Streater remained unsure about his vote until the last moment.

He ultimately voted to approve the application, but cautioned the school’s founders that he hoped this vote would be the “beginning of a constructive relationship” between the school and the district.

“You spoke of excellence,” Streater said to those in the room who applied to open Early College Charter. “Please prove it.”

Before casting his vote, Streater also said Pennsylvania’s charter school law does not address the complexities that the Philly school district is facing, including historic underfunding and a persistent teacher shortage.

More than a dozen charter advocates, parents, politicians, and community activists told board members the school is highly desired and would provide new opportunities for students in need.

“We know what we have submitted meets the intent of the law, and we’ve gone above and beyond what the application asks for,” said Keshema Davidson, who’s on tap to be Early College Charter’s CEO.

Board member Joyce Wilkerson was the lone no vote on Thursday. She said there are empty charter and district seats across the city, and that many schools lack certified special education teachers.

“It is inconceivable to me” that the board would vote to approve a new school amid the district’s “already stressed resources,” Wilkerson said.

The applicants behind Early College Charter say it would be Pennsylvania’s first open-enrollment middle and high school to focus on early college attainment. Students would graduate with a high school diploma, as well as some college credits or an industry-recognized certificate or both, according to the application.

The founders also say their proposed school is built on successful models in other states but has been meticulously tailored to Philly. They say the school would focus on educating underserved students, and that their vision adheres closely to the intended values of Pennsylvania’s charter school law.

But charter critics remained unconvinced on Thursday.

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, Teamsters Local 502, which represents school principals and other school officials, warned that the district has heard promises from charter school leaders before that “seemed too good to be true,” but that resulted in “carnage” for the district.

And LeShawna Coleman, chief of staff for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, also pointed to looming district school closures and teacher shortages, telling the board: “It is irresponsible and outrageous that this board would even contemplate authorizing any new charter.”

Early College Charter is now scheduled to open in the fall of 2026.

Critics say Philly’s charter sector rife with broken promises

In the leadup to Thursday’s meeting, one question loomed: If a charter school application meets all of the technical requirements of state law, are board members obligated to approve it, even if they have concerns about the impact on the district?

Thursday’s vote may have answered that question.

At their February meeting, board members said there was a lot to admire about the school’s application, only to reject it.

Before Thursday’s vote, Davidson and Anna Winter, who was also involved in Early College Charter’s application, told Chalkbeat that vote to reject the school’s application galvanized families, as well as political players from both sides of the aisle.

The district’s charter school office told board members Thursday that the school’s revised application addressed all of the concerns that had been raised with the original application.

Although Philly’s school board has not approved a new charter school since 2018 when it regained local control from the state, it has voted to renew charters and expand the number of seats at schools that were already operating.

In the intervening years, the charter sector has experienced scandals, poor academic performance reports, and broken promises. The aspirational Renaissance Charter turnaround program did not result in significant progress. And on the whole, student performance in charter schools is on par with student performance in traditional district schools.

District payments to charters also limit the district’s “ability to manage its expenses,” Fitch Ratings, a credit ratings agency, reported recently.

Since the district can’t raise tax revenue on its own, it has limited power to control its budget. One lever of local control that board members have exercised over the years is denying several charter school applications.

“In this time of uncertainty,” creating new charter schools would be “an imprudent risk for us to take,” Wilkerson said in February when she voted to reject Early College Charter’s application.

But some charters have stood out as models for citywide programs beloved by families and students. And thousands of Philadelphia families continue to enroll their children in charter schools.

Of the district’s roughly 198,300 total students, roughly 64,000 are enrolled in 81 brick-and-mortar charters, and another 14,250 are in cyber charters, according to the latest available district data.

Mayor Cherelle Parker hasn’t explicitly encouraged charter growth, but she has stated she wants to see an end to the “competition” between the school district and charters.

The school board is also revising its process for authorizing charter schools, through an initiative dubbed Project RiSE. The board approved a $300,000 contract with the National Charter Schools Institute on Thursday to “research charter authorizing best practices,” Streater said. But critics have claimed this process has largely taken place behind closed doors.

Some say innovation is crucial for Philadelphia education

Davidson and Winter cast themselves as atypical charter school founders.

They both served in administrative roles at Cristo Rey High School, a well-respected private Catholic school in the city, and don’t have extensive experience in the charter school world.

“We’re brand new, we have no baggage in this game,” Winter said in an interview.

Davidson said she and Winter felt “very strongly” that the school should operate as an open-enrollment public school with no selective criteria.

Philly already has a district school dedicated to programs in which students can earn associates degrees and professional certifications: Parkway Center City. But as a selective admissions school, not everyone gets in.

Early College Charter plans to use the city’s lottery application process for charter schools. But its backers say it will “focus its outreach, recruitment, and marketing” on reaching middle and high school students who live in 17 ZIP codes in which the average income for one adult with no children is below $46,363 before taxes, according to the application.

Davidson said for her and Winter, their intention is not to create a network of charter schools akin to Universal, ASPIRA, or KIPP, which have all been frequent targets of charter critics in Philadelphia.

“Our goal is to bring forth this one, high-quality school” that could serve as a blueprint for any traditional district schools, Davidson said.

Winter and Davidson said they empathize with the board’s position: they’re contemplating school closures while also being asked to approve a new school, but they still believe there is room for a collaborative relationship between Early College and both entities.

“We believe the bar should be very high, and that we should be held accountable to fulfilling the commitment we’re making to families,” Winter said.

Early College Charter’s application also shines a light on bigger questions for Philadelphia education, Winter said.

“Are we open for collaboration? Are we open for innovation? Are we ready to be at the table to talk about how we can improve and offer high-quality schools in our public district?” she said.

At one time, Philly had its own Innovation Network that produced district schools like SLA Beeber, Building 21, and The U School.

But that network no longer exists, district spokesperson Monique Braxton said.

That left Davidson and Winter with one option to open a new public school, they said: start a charter school.

Davidson said concerns about school closures and other budget worries are precisely why new public school models like Early College are needed to help families. She said Philadelphia parents and students should not simply be forced to wait for officials to improve the current system.

“Waiting while we fix things will mean that we have an entire generation of children that have not gotten access to a high-quality education,” Davidson said.

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

Philadelphia adopts preliminary schools budget as it eyes long-term deficits, Trump uncertainty

2025-03-27T23:18:02+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education has adopted a preliminary $4.6 billion budget for the school district in the upcoming fiscal year — but financial pressures on city schools are intensifying.

The budget approved unanimously by the board Thursday is roughly the same size as this year’s budget. But the district is staring down a growing annual deficit that is slated to reach $466 million in 2027 and $774 million in 2030.

The district will adjust the preliminary budget as state lawmakers and city officials finalize their own budgets this summer. The district is planning to use 40% of its “rainy day” fund to cover a $306 million budget deficit, which officials say is the result of decades of unconstitutional underfunding by the state.

“We’ll get through this year just fine,” Superintendent Tony Watlington told reporters earlier on Thursday. But he added that going forward, if state and local lawmakers don’t increase funding for Philadelphia’s public schools, cuts will have to be made.

“If we did not use the fund balance, quite simply we would have to make people and program cuts,” Watlington said.

Watlington is adamant that the district is making incremental but sustained progress under his leadership, and that he’s been a “good steward” of state and city funding. He says that’s a crucial message for state lawmakers as they draft Pennsylvania’s budget, and amid a federal government intent on eradicating what it calls waste, fraud, and abuse. That focus by the Trump administration has led to — among other things — the gutting of the federal Office for Civil Rights in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia is the only school district in the state that cannot raise its own revenue, meaning 99% of its operating budget is in the hands of state and city officials.

During the COVID pandemic, the district used federal relief funds to plug prior budget holes, allowing it to accrue some money in its reserve fund. Because those COVID dollars expired at the end of 2024, the district is now dipping into that reserve fund to support the same programs and continue progress on Watlington’s ambitious five-year strategic plan.

Importantly, the preliminary budget does not account for labor union contract negotiations, or the district’s ongoing facilities planning process that will likely result in school closures and infrastructure changes. It also doesn’t factor in an estimated $50 million the district would get if Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed reforms to the way cyber charter schools are funded.

The majority of district spending goes towards employee salary and benefits. The district is negotiating a new contract with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers — the union’s current contract expires in August 2025. It will also negotiate new contracts with several other unions over the next two years. Mayor Cherelle Parker, who enjoys the support of many labor unions in the city, has indicated she would like to see the district increase teacher salaries in the near future.

The district would receive some $160 million more funding from the state this year under Shapiro’s budget proposal. But even in that scenario, when the loss of federal COVID relief funding is also accounted for, the district’s overall revenue would rise just 1%, while spending on items like charter school payments is outpacing that.

As the Trump administration looks to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and reshape the federal government’s K-12 priorities, Watlington said there’s corresponding uncertainty about the district’s federal funding. The district receives some $500 million annually from the federal government that supports students with disabilities, English learners, prekindergarten programs, reimbursements for student meals, and other programs.

Overall, Watlington said the district is heading in a positive direction but that progress is precarious.

Among the encouraging signs Watlington highlighted: District enrollment is up by 1,800 students, the number of students attending school regularly has increased, third graders are improving their reading and math scores, the graduation rate is up, and the number of students dropping out is down by 1,400.

Board members Joyce Wilkerson and Wanda Novalés said the looming deficits and uncertainty at the federal level are “stomach turning” and will demand increased advocacy from district and board leadership.

“I think it’s time for us to make some noise, for our babies and our students,” board Vice President Sarah-Ashley Andrews said. “These may be scary times, but it’s not the time to back down.”

The board must adopt a final budget by May.

The board also approved a $26.8M “donation” to the district from Mastery charter schools that represents an estimated value of building improvements that Mastery intends to pay for.

These building upgrades will take place between April 2025 and December 2026.

Because Mastery charters occupy district-owned buildings, improvements to these buildings will together be considered a donation — an unusual arrangement, as one public speaker said.

Board President Reginald Streater said the vote to approve the donation is not a “signal” about any future board decisions regarding those building improvements.

Construction and renovation projects at charter schools must be voted on by the board.

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

Philadelphia school board rejects 2 charter applications

2025-02-28T03:08:21+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education voted to deny applications to create two charter schools Thursday — despite board members’ positive comments about one of them.

The board adjourned to go into executive session and deliberate in private before voting no on the applications to establish Early College High School and Pan American Academy High School.

The votes dashed charter supporters’ hopes, at least for now, that the board appointed by Mayor Cherelle Parker would finally be ready to expand the charter sector. The school board hasn’t approved a new charter since it regained control of the district from the state in 2018.

The proposed Early College Charter School went down by a vote of 6-3. The vote against the proposed Pan American Academy — Pathways High School, was 8-0, with one abstention.

Board members said the primary reason they voted to deny Early College’s application was financial uncertainty caused by the Trump administration’s threats to withhold federal funding, although they did not spell out those concerns.

“This was a very strong application. I am very close to wanting to approve it, but I don’t feel comfortable based on the funding piece,” said Board Vice President Sarah-Ashley Andrews. “I can’t gamble with our babies on that.”

On Pan American, the members said they objected to the applicant’s decision to apply for a new school rather than for an expansion of their existing K-8 school. They were also concerned about its funding and its high suspension rates of students, especially Black students.

The denials came as the district is engaged in a facilities planning process that is likely to result in several school closures. And in 2023 one charter school closed unexpectedly, and another one, West Philadelphia Achievement Charter Elementary, is now in a protracted fight with the district over $30 million the state says it owes the district for overenrolling students.

The application for Pan American Pathways High School was affiliated with K-8 Pan American Academy. The applicants sought to offer a bilingual International Baccalaureate program for grades 9-12 and focus on four pathways: health sciences, technology, business and human services.

The other denial was for Early College High School. Keshema Davidson, one of several founding Early College board members who are associated with Cristo Rey, a Catholic high school in the city, told board members in advance of the vote that a school was needed that would give students “the opportunity to succeed no matter their pathway” for either college prep or career and technical education.

After the vote, the Early College founders issued a statement saying they were “disappointed in the outcome of tonight’s vote” but said there is a “long road ahead.”

The city’s deputy chief education officer Sharon Ward was present for the votes. She told Chalkbeat after the meeting that Parker is “concerned about all students” regardless of where they go to school. During her 2023 campaign for mayor, while not explicitly calling for the charter sector to expand, Parker repeatedly said she wanted to see an end to the “competition” between the school district and charters.

Ward emphasized that the board, though appointed by Parker, is an independent body that “has to be guided by state law,” on this front.

Charter schools office flags enrollment, suspension stats

Peng Chao, the director of the district’s charter schools office, offered evaluations of the applications but no recommendations, as is the district’s policy.

He said Pan American’s K-8 school has a high student suspension rate, especially for Black students. Chao said that 17% of all students — and 34% of Black students — were suspended at least once, compared to 5% in other schools.

Chao shared data showing that third through eighth graders at Pan American scored far behind students in comparable schools and the district as a whole in standardized tests.

Meanwhile, Chao raised concerns about Early College’s planned reliance on foundation support, and noted that it had not yet identified its future principal and other leaders. He also raised concerns about whether it could meet its projected enrollment targets.

The last new charter, Hebrew Public in East Falls, was established in 2018 under the School Reform Commission, which governed the district when it was under state oversight for 17 years starting in 2001.

Over the past seven years the board has approved multiple charter renewals, adding some 2,600 seats to existing charter schools.

During that time the board has also denied several charter applications. Last year, it voted four times to deny the application of Global Leadership Academy, a K-8 school in West Philadelphia, to add a high school.

More than a dozen speakers, including several students, spoke in favor of the new charters. “It’s hard to watch friends from higher grades leave,” said Pan American student Yediel Huertas, supporting the addition of a high school.

Board member Wanda Novales was the founding principal of Pan American’s K-8 school and led the school from 2008 to 2018. Before that, she was a teacher and principal in the district. She abstained from the vote.

Brick-and-mortar charters in Philadelphia now educate about 64,000 students, compared to 118,000 in district-run schools.

Around 25 charters are now operating with expired agreements. Yet under state law, they can stay open even without a new signed charter. Pan American, citing concerns about accountability, failed to sign their charter renewals in 2018 and 2023.

The board is revising its process for authorizing charter schools, through an initiative called Project RiSE, in an effort to “reimagine charter school excellence by refining the performance framework.” But it has done so largely out of the public eye.

Earlier Thursday afternoon, several hundred people from Philly for Great Public Schools and the African American Charter Schools Coalition rallied in front of school board headquarters to support the charter applications.

Participants said that they want more choice for parents, especially of schools focused on the Black experience, but they also think that city schools should get more funding from the city and state.

“We need both public and charter schools,” said Stephanie Roberts, an artist who works with students.

Bureau Chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

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.

Pennsylvania Auditor General proposes major cyber charter school funding reform

2025-02-20T22:26:18+00:00

Pennsylvania Auditor General Timothy L. DeFoor released an audit Thursday calling for a major overhaul of cyber charter schools funding, finding that between 2020 and 2023 they increased their revenues by $425 million and reserves by 141%.

He said the funding formula for cyber schools should be revised to reflect their actual costs, rather than be based on the per-pupil expenditures of the districts that send them students.

But the performance audit of five of the state’s 13 cyber schools did not find any illegalities.

“I am now the third auditor general to look at this issue and the third to come to the same conclusion: the cyber charter funding formula needs to change to reflect what is actually being spent to educate students and set reasonable limits to the amount of money these schools can keep in reserve,” DeFoor said in a statement. He called for the formation of a task force to study the issue.

In 2023-24, Pennsylvania cyber charters educated nearly 60,000 students, more than any other state.

The recommendation follows what was suggested by Gov. Josh Shapiro. In his budget address earlier this month. Shapiro asked the legislature to change the law so that all school districts pay a flat $8,000 tuition rate for each student. School districts currently pay cyber charters their own per-pupil costs, which vary widely.

Between 2019-20 and 2022-23, according to DeFoor, the five audited schools increased their revenue from $473 million to $898 million, some of which was used to pay for “staff bonuses, gift cards, vehicle payments and fuel stipends,” noting that these are all permitted under the law. Cyber school enrollment surged during and after the covid pandemic.

Still, he added, “Commonwealth Charter Academy spent $196 million to purchase and/or renovate 21 buildings, which to us seems a bit out of the ordinary for a public school that is based in online instruction.”

Susan Spicka, the executive director of Education Voters of PA and a leading cyber charter critic, called DeFoor’s audit “a clarion call for reform.” But she disagreed about forming a task force, which she said “would simply kick the can down the road” on needed reform.

Insight PA Cyber Charter School, one of those audited, issued a statement signaling that they would be open to changes to the charter law and willing to participate in a task force. But they would oppose a flat tuition rate, as proposed by Shapiro.

Rachel Langan of the Commonwealth Foundation, a proponent of cyber charters, said the audit proved that the schools made efficient use of their money.

“Cyber charters have unique financial needs, given their inability to collect taxes and reliance on public school districts to transfer tuition dollars, which often proves unstable,” Langan said in a statement. “These schools need their reserves to ensure they can continue to serve their students despite funding fluctuations.”

Prior efforts at cyber funding reform have deadlocked in the politically divided General Assembly.

The five audited cyber schools are Commonwealth Academy Charter School, Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School, Insight PA Cyber Charter School, Pennsylvania Cyber CharterSchool, and Reach Cyber Charter School.

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.

Pennsylvania denies AI cyber charter school application

2025-01-29T20:42:40+00:00

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Pennsylvania’s Department of Education issued a scathing denial on Wednesday for a controversial cyber charter school built around artificial intelligence.

The department determined the application for Unbound Academy “provided no evidence of sustainable support” for the school and said it “lacks the capability, in terms of both support and planning, to provide comprehensive learning experiences to students” and “fails to substantiate that it will serve as a model for other public schools,” among other concerns.

“There is no compelling evidence that Unbound Academic’s proposed programs will enable students to meet academic standards,” the denial reads. The application “failed to provide even a list of courses that would be offered to students.”

The founders behind Unbound Academy promised the school would educate students twice as fast by giving them two hours of individually crafted lesson plans and academic work designed by AI tutoring software. In their model, teachers would shift from their traditional roles to instead become guides tasked with motivating and supporting students rather than doing the instructional work of teaching.

Founder MacKenzie Price told Chalkbeat she believes the model will revolutionize education.

Pennsylvania’s Interim Acting Secretary of Education Angela Fitterer determined this week that Unbound’s promises were largely without sufficient proof and did not provide adequate plans to serve students with disabilities or other vulnerable student populations.

“The artificial intelligence instructional model being proposed by this school is untested and fails to demonstrate how the tools, methods, and providers would ensure alignment to Pennsylvania academic standards,” the denial letter reads.

The denial letter further assails Unbound Academy’s application as failing to “reflect an understanding of cyber charter school finances.”

The state also said the school demonstrated little interest from Pennsylvania families and submitted no petitions or letters of support from parents, students, or educators.

Pennsylvania teachers’ unions celebrated the denial on Wednesday.

“There is no way that two hours of AI-guided learning in core subjects could replace direct instruction from a certified teacher or meet state academic standards,” Pennsylvania State Education Association President Aaron Chapin said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Price, Unbound Academy, and its affiliated private schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Unbound can appeal the state’s decision within 30 days.

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

Two AI-powered charter schools could soon open in Pennsylvania

2025-01-24T18:44:53+00:00

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Student lesson plans built and personalized by artificial intelligence. Just two hours of classes daily. Frog dissections, defusing bombs, and ascents of Mount Everest — all in virtual reality. And teachers who transform from traditional instructors into “guides.”

That’s the vision MacKenzie Price has for a new cyber charter school in Pennsylvania. In Price’s telling, her AI-powered model turbo-charges students’ academic performance so much that they — and their guides — are free to spurn traditional classes for several hours of the school day and pursue other enriching activities instead. The tech entrepreneur says her program will revolutionize education, and she says she has the numbers to back it up.

But several other states have reviewed her pitch and rejected it. She’s already had to clarify perhaps her most startling claim about whether her schools really employ traditional teachers; in Pennsylvania at least, they would. Critics say what she’s selling is based on selective data from expensive private schools. And they’re deeply skeptical that the core teaching method holds up to scrutiny.

While schools nationwide are trying to incorporate AI-powered instruction into the classic teacher-in-front-of-the-classroom format, Price wants to blow that format up and put AI in the lesson-planning driver’s seat. It’s perhaps no surprise she’s zeroed in on Pennsylvania — it’s become the cyber charter capital of the nation, with 60,000 students enrolled full time in cyber charters in 2023-24. Yet the schools’ often lackluster academic track record and other concerns have led to calls for more accountability and pressure on Gov. Josh Shapiro to place a moratorium on new cybers.

Price told Chalkbeat she’s determined to expand, and she thinks Pennsylvania could be the key. “I want this to impact millions of students,” she said.

The backbone of Price’s schools is 2 Hour Learning — a model she co-founded that relies on a mix of proprietary AI tutoring software and third-party apps like Khan Academy, IXL, and Amplify. She also co-founded the Alpha School in 2014, a group of affiliated private schools which are built around 2 Hour Learning. The platform is also used at several other specialized schools Price is associated with that serve gifted and talented students, students pursuing sports, and refugees.

In fact, Price has sought to start not one but two charter schools in Pennsylvania. By the end of the month, the Pennsylvania Department of Education is slated to decide on whether to give Price’s plan for a cyber charter, Unbound Academy, the green light.

Recent news might not augur well for that application: On Tuesday evening, the Lancaster school district administration advised their school board to reject a proposal to open a brick-and-mortar charter school called Valenta Academy that would use 2 Hour Learning.

The school board is scheduled to vote on the school’s application “at a later date” according to a spokesperson. (Valenta Academy is also operating as a private microschool in Bastrop, Texas.)

Can AI-powered learning ‘help everybody’?

Both Unbound and Valenta would run on the 2 Hour Learning model, although it’s Price’s cyber charter school that’s drawing a lot of the attention.

According to the school’s Pennsylvania application, Unbound Academy would launch in the fall of 2025 with 500 students in grades 4-8 and only four teachers. By its fifth year, Unbound plans to enroll 2,500 students and 76 teachers. And the application projects a 90% student retention rate each year — much higher than other cyber charters have projected in their applications.

In year two, Unbound Academy projects it’ll be ranked in the top half of all Pennsylvania schools, according to the application.

Price said with AI driving each student’s learning, all lessons will fit individual needs. A fifth grader who struggles with reading but excels in math may receive AI instruction for reading at a fourth grade level but 25 minutes later may be doing pre-algebra work. That’s something traditional grade-level schools aren’t set up to do for every student, she said.

“I really believe that this method of educating people is something that can help everybody,” Price said.

As her model has drawn national attention, Price has changed her tune when it comes to perhaps her most dramatic claim.

“We have removed the teacher from the front of the classroom. No one has ever dared to do this before,” reads a promotional booklet on 2 Hour Learning. “Imagine starting a school and declaring, ‘We won’t have any academic teachers.’ We did exactly that!”

But Price acknowledged that what the school does is not quite “exactly that.”

“We have teachers. Teachers are critical to any education system,” Price said. “What we are doing is transforming that role of teachers so that we can allow them to focus on doing what they really do best, which is being able to positively impact students and build connections with them and provide motivation.”

Indeed, the application for Unbound Academy says candidates for the “guide” role must have a bachelor’s degree and hold a valid Pennsylvania teaching certificate to adhere to state teacher certification requirements.

Nevertheless, Price’s model is getting an icy reception in some quarters.

“Just as we do not accept students using AI software to write their essays or complete homework assignments for them, we will not accept districts using AI to supplant the critical role of teachers, specialists, and support staff in the classroom,” said Arthur Steinberg, who’s president of both the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers’ Pennsylvania affiliate. “There are far too many examples of AI products failing badly for states to do anything less than exercise extreme prudence when considering new AI-based models and schemes.”

AI-powered school makes big test score claims

Unbound’s application repeatedly cites results from the Alpha private schools showing their students not only learn content “twice as fast” as their peers, but can also rapidly learn any grade-level content they may be behind on.

To support this claim, Price points to scores from MAP, a suite of standardized assessments from NWEA. She said that on average, students in the 2 Hour Learning model “experience 2.4 times the academic growth compared to their peers in traditional education settings.”

Alpha schools also promote remarkable numbers, saying for example that its students rank in the 99th percentile of academic performance. Alpha’s website notes that it relies on the Pomodoro technique for time management, a reference to using a kitchen timer to increase productivity.

“The results that I’ve been able to get from our schools have been absolutely phenomenal,” Price said.

Her work doesn’t stop with American students. The 2 Hour Learning Model has been used in a virtual setting by Ukrainian refugees, Price said, and those students are also demonstrating accelerated learning. But those results are not public.

Reactions by other states to Price’s educational model have been mixed.

Late last year, Arizona — where the policy landscape is very receptive to disparate schooling models — approved an application from Unbound Academy. But Arkansas, North Carolina, and Utah have rejected it. Price said she also has an Unbound application pending in South Carolina.

Officials from the North Carolina Charter School Review Board shared several questions and concerns about the school, according to the meeting minutes from their review of Unbound’s application last September.

One official, Alex Quigley, said that Price had made a “compelling” case, and that Unbound’s model could be piloted in schools before scaling up. Yet he also noted that at least one of the Alpha Schools charges $40,000 a year for tuition. While Alpha schools in Texas and Miami do charge thousands for tuition, Price said many of the students at Alpha’s Brownsville, Texas location come from challenging socioeconomic backgrounds and attend on scholarship.

Another North Carolina official, Bruce Friend, said he “wasn’t clear about the role of the teacher compared to the role of AI and the parent.” Board officials also expressed worries about whether the school could meet the mandated academic calendar, student accessibility, and whether it was appropriate for young students to do a “massive” amount of learning online.

Then there’s skepticism about using in-person private school test results to project success with a cyber charter school.

Cyber charter operators in Pennsylvania have told Chalkbeat their students’ test scores “can’t and shouldn’t be compared to brick-and-mortar school scores.” Cyber charter students frequently move in and out of virtual learning environments. Many may be dealing with bullying, mental health issues, family instability, or physical health constraints. In short: They’re different from typical tuition-paying private school students.

Yet Price said she’s undaunted by the differences between students at Alpha schools and those who may enroll in a cyber charter school in Pennsylvania. She believes her 2 Hour Learning technique can work for anyone and can work in traditional public schools too.

“The great news about public charters is we’ve got to report our results. We’ve got to be able to show how we do on standardized tests compared to other students in Pennsylvania,” Price said. “So the proof is going to be in the pudding.”

Many cyber charter teachers ‘struggle to help students’

But supporters of traditional public schools say there’s too much uncertainty embedded in Price’s proposals.

Unbound’s cyber model is unproven and “does not have a track record,” said Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, a group that is critical of charter schools.

Burris also said she was struck by the large number of Unbound cyber charter applications despite the group only having experience with brick-and-mortar private schools.

“I have never seen this phenomenon before,” Burris said of a group pursuing so many different types of schools at the same time.

Susan Spicka, executive director of the Education Voters PA advocacy group, said she rejected Price’s idea that the day-to-day work of being a classroom teacher is something that can be minimized by or subordinated to AI.

“There are a lot of very highly qualified, excellent teachers in Pennsylvania who teach at cyber charter schools, and they struggle to help students succeed when they are sitting at home on a computer in the online environment,” Spicka said. “It’s hard for kids to learn at home. The level of frustration my kids felt with stuff like that when they were forced to do it [during COVID] was off the charts. They hated it.”

Spicka also questioned how Price’s model serves students with disabilities if there’s no classroom teacher assigned to monitor them while they learn.

Unbound’s application says the school will adhere to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and “will offer a variety of special education programs and related services, delivered both directly by specialized staff and through contracts with external providers” via “in-person visits” or online teletherapy sessions.

For English language learners, “adaptive online programs like Duolingo” will be incorporated into their lessons and parents will have access to translated documents and “real-time interpretations during virtual sessions.”

Regardless, Spicka and others are lobbying for more scrutiny on cyber charters.

For example, they’re looking for lawmakers and Shapiro to add more funding and staff to the state education department so it can increase Pennsylvania’s monitoring of cyber charter schools.

State Sen. Lindsey Williams, a Democrat, has promised to introduce legislation for a moratorium on all new cyber charters until the state is better able to monitor the ones currently in operation.

In a December memo to her colleagues in the state Senate, Williams pointed to research showing the schools “consistently under-perform both brick and mortar charters and district schools,” and “every one of Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools has been identified as needing some level of support and improvement under the state’s accountability system.”

Williams wrote that it’s not surprising that private operators like Price “perceive our state as ripe for profiteering off of Pennsylvania’s children and taxpayers and apply to open new cyber charter schools.”

As for Price, she’s already thinking bigger than Pennsylvania.

She said if the Trump administration “called me up and said, ‘what would you do if you were in charge of K-12 education’?” she’d tell them to embrace “personalized learning technology” — like 2 Hour Learning.

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

Report finds alarming level of teacher attrition in Philly, suggests solutions

2024-10-23T10:00:00+00:00

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A new report by a coalition of local education-focused groups has found an alarming level of teacher attrition in Philadelphia district and charter schools, a trend especially true for teachers who are nonwhite and have fewer than three years experience.

Describing an “urgent need to to accelerate efforts to retain newer teachers and teachers of color,” the report, compiled by the Philadelphia Talent Coalition and led by Elevate 215, lays out several strategies for improvement. They include higher starting salaries, helping new employees pay off their student loans, more mentoring and coaching of new teachers, and building “welcoming and supportive” school cultures.

“The reason why this is so important is that research shows most of the time teacher attrition has a negative impact on student learning,” said Ed Fuller, the Penn State professor whose research contributed to the report’s conclusions. “It’s harder to build strong, safe and welcoming communities when you turn over people quickly.”

Schools rely on building relationships of trust between students and teachers and students “need to know there is somebody in school who cares about them, and that is hard to establish when you lose teachers all the time,” he said.

Turnover also results in high levels of emergency certified teachers – those who have not completed all the coursework and requirements to become fully qualified in their field. In the Philadelphia school district, one in five teachers are not fully qualified; in charter schools, the percentage is closer to one in four.

The release of the report comes as the district and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers are negotiating a new contract. In August, the two sides decided to extend the current contract for one year.

In a statement, PFT president Art Steinberg called recruitment and retention of teachers “a long-standing problem for the district, which shouldn’t need another report to know that improving pay, work environment and professional support are the solutions. It’s not yet Halloween and we’re already seeing teachers and staff quitting out of frustration with their working conditions, which tragically comes at the expense of students deserving of stability and consistency throughout the school year.”

He added he was “heartened” that key district leadership “appear to understand that stronger compensation as well professional development and support must be a priority in our members’ new labor contract.”

The PFT is not an official member of the talent coalition.

Among the report’s findings:

– Of teachers hired in 2017, just 55% were still working in 2022-23 in district schools, while more than half of those working in charter schools left by then.

– The percentage and number of teachers of color in Philadelphia public schools are increasing, but they leave at greater rates than white teachers.

– While two-thirds of the teachers employed in Philadelphia work for the school district, as opposed to in charter schools, charter schools employ a higher proportion of teachers who have just one to three years of experience. Nearly 1,800 of the 3,200 people in their first three years of teaching in Philadelphia during the 2023-24 school year worked in charter schools.

– Charter schools have a slightly higher percentage of teachers of color than district schools.

– The pandemic had a big effect on teacher retention in Philadelphia. While teachers for the most part stayed during the virtual year in 2020-21, attrition spiked the year after that, especially among new teachers, those teaching in charter schools, and nonwhite teachers.

The data also dispel the myth that teachers who leave Philadelphia do so for better-paying jobs in better-paying suburban districts. By contrast, most of the teachers who left their jobs in 2022-23 left education altogether.

“We hear that teachers leaving are going to the suburbs, but that’s not true to what the data says,” said Scott Gaiber, Elevate 215’s deputy chief of talent initiatives,

in an interview. “It’s important to debunk that notion. The main issue is people leaving the teaching profession entirely.”

Teachers of color also make up a shrinking percentage of people enrolled in teacher preparation programs, and they leave these programs at higher rates than white enrollees do, the researchers found.

“There are a lot of things [the district and charter schools] could do immediately,” Gaiber said, including determining “how to allocate resources and funding” more specifically to teacher retention strategies.

The report includes descriptions of some initiatives already in place. The Mastery Charter network gives stipends to teacher leaders, for instance, and the school district’s latest contract provides retention bonuses of $1,200 to teachers who returned this year, and $2,500 over two years to those who stay in particularly hard-to-staff schools. It noted that the district does reimburse teachers $600 for school costs and that Esperanza Charter School offers $8,000 to those earning their certification.

Michael Farrell, the district’s chief learning officer, was not available for an interview, but said in a statement that the report provides “practical tools and data-backed strategies that will … accelerate our efforts in creating a stable and diverse workforce.”

Fuller analyzed attrition data, while Research for Action parsed trends by race and emergency permits. The next step is to analyze the data by school to track the movement of teachers within Philadelphia. That study will help determine which schools generally retain teachers and which see lots of staff instability.

Elevate 215, formerly known as the Philadelphia School Partnership, was founded in 2011 with a mission to expand “high-quality seats” in city schools. PSP raised money and gave grants to schools, mostly but not exclusively to charters. It courted controversy; critics felt it was mostly interested in charter expansion and support of private schools at the expense of the district. It was rebranded as Elevate 215 in 2022.

The Philadelphia Talent Coalition includes the district, several charter schools and charter networks, including Mastery and KIPP, as well as the William Penn Foundation, LaSalle, Temple, and St. Joseph’s universities, Community College of Philadelphia, Teach Plus, Children First, United Way, and the City of Philadelphia.

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 thousands of Philly families are switching to cyber charter school

2024-10-01T13:13:47+00:00

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Sameerah Abdullah sends her three school-aged kids to a cyber charter school for some of the same familiar reasons that other families across the nation do, including the flexibility and personalization. For financial literacy class, they go to the bank to open an account. For science class, they head to a museum. On nice days, they try to get out of the city and into the woods.

But her motivations are also deeply personal, cultural, and, in some ways, unique to Philadelphia. Abdullah was an intern for a school guidance counselor in West Philly before having children and was struck by the exhausted teachers, the unappetizing cafeteria food, and the students’ cursing and bad behavior.

The city’s gun violence epidemic has only strengthened her resolve. Her nine-year-old son, Musa, was separated from his father during a mass shooting in a West Philly park during an Eid al-Fitr celebration in April and has struggled with loud sounds ever since.

Another reason, Abdullah thought, to keep her kids home.

“The shooter actually brushed through him when he was running,” said Abdullah, whose children attend Reach Cyber and Commonwealth Charter Academy. “At that moment, it made me realize, I had to teach my kids what to do in a crisis situation.”

Dawud (left) and his brother Musa listen to their Muslim studies instructor. The ability to incorporate religious and cultural practices into their education was a major reason why their mom enrolled them in cyber charter school.

Abdullah is part of a growing number of Black, brown, and low-income Philadelphians turning to cyber charters because they see them as a safe and flexible educational option for their families. Nearly 15,000 of Philadelphia’s more than 197,000 students attended a virtual cyber charter school last year — a 55% increase since the 2020-21 school year.

In fact, Pennsylvania has quietly become the “cyber charter capital of the nation,” according to a report from the education advocacy group Children First PA. Nearly 60,000 students statewide were enrolled full time in cyber charters in 2023-24, according data from the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Children First researchers found Pennsylvania enrolled more full-time cyber students than any other state — including ones like California, Texas, and Florida with much larger K-12 student populations.

Like traditional charter schools, cyber charters are publicly funded but independently run schools approved by the state Department of Education. There are 13 cyber charter schools operating in Pennsylvania, as well as a smaller virtual academy run by the Philadelphia school district for the past decade. School districts across Pennsylvania collectively send those 13 schools an estimated $1 billion a year, including almost $270 million from the Philadelphia school district last fiscal year.

Philadelphia families like Abdullah’s told Chalkbeat they are increasingly choosing virtual schools for the schedule flexibility, smaller class sizes, and safety and bullying concerns at their childrens’ traditional schools. Gun violence fears in particular have driven some of the demand for online options, according to families who spoke with Chalkbeat.

While gun violence overall is down in Philadelphia, 40% of gun violence victims this year were younger than 18, according to city data. Though the majority of Philadelphia’s gun violence does not take place on school property, as the Trace recently reported, five Philadelphia schools were among the top 10 nationwide in experiencing shootings near their buildings in the last decade.

But as more families in Philadelphia withdraw from the traditional district in favor of these cyber charter schools, the charter operators have come under fire from public education advocates for failing to improve student performance. The state has acknowledged in its decision letters renewing several cyber schools’ charters that some of the organizations are not performing up to their standards, but has stopped short of revoking their charters.

With cyber charter enrollment rising as traditional district enrollment shrinks, education advocates say the state should be taking a more hands-on approach to ensuring the operators are delivering a quality education — and holding accountable those that don’t.

“These schools are failing to ensure that the kids they bring in are learning and will be able to graduate, ready for a productive career or higher education,” said Susan Spicka, executive director of the public education advocacy group Education Voters PA. “That is a huge problem.”

Asiyah Jones, 6, works on her laptop at her home in Philadelphia. Asiyah likes to draw, and her mom Sameerah said she can incorporate artistic opportunities into Asiyah’s English and math lessons.

Parents on remote learning: ‘I felt it was safer’

Remote learning was thrust into the public eye during the pandemic, when school closures shuttered buildings and students across the country learned online. But parents like Shawna Hinnant enrolled their children in cyber charter schools long before COVID.

A resident of the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia — a community that has grappled with a thriving open-air drug market and concentrated gun violence — Hinnant said she didn’t feel comfortable having her kids walk to school on sidewalks littered with discarded needles and other drug paraphernalia.

Additionally, her two sons had experienced bullying at both traditional public schools as well as brick and mortar charter schools.

“That’s why I decided to go with the online school because I felt like it was safer,” said Hinnant.

Hinnant said she was also drawn in by the resources the cyber charter schools offered: Free printers, gift cards to Target for school supplies, and computers.

Many Spanish-speaking Philadelphians are also choosing cyber charters run by Latino-led organizations because of gaps they say persist in the traditional district’s language and cultural services. And Muslim families like Abdullah’s likewise are moving online to incorporate more spiritual, cultural, and religious teachings alongside the traditional curriculum.

Musa and Dawud look at their schoolbooks.

“Now that the whole COVID thing has dwindled down a little bit, it’s kind of like, ‘hey, you know what my kids did really well,’ or ‘I liked having my student at home’ … or ‘I’m not home and I don’t want my child to walk to school.’ It’s a safety issue,” said Lisette Agosto Cintrón, principal at the district-run online school, the Philadelphia Virtual Academy, and a former principal at ASPIRA bilingual cyber charter school in the city.

Agosto Cintrón said she has also worked with families of students with chronic illnesses or are homebound. Her students also come from households that have been disrupted due to domestic violence, refugee situations, or threats of gun violence against families stemming from “neighborhood beefs.”

“Transiency doesn’t matter in my world,” Agosto Cintrón said. “The school travels with the child.”

Some cyber charter schools struggle to perform

Though families told Chalkbeat they’re mostly happy with the education their children are getting online, cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania have reported lower standardized test scores and graduation rates than all schools statewide.

According to a Chalkbeat analysis of 2023 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test score data, 36.8% of cyber charter school students scored proficient or better in English language arts, compared to 53.5% of students statewide, and 13.7% scored proficient or above in math, compared to 33.4% statewide. (Their results are mixed when compared to the Philadelphia school district’s scores — 34.2% proficient or better in English and 20.4% proficient or better in math.)

Sarah Cordes, an associate professor and education researcher at Temple University, has researched cyber charter high school students and found that they tend to have worse test scores and higher rates of chronic absenteeism than traditional public school students, even when controlling for the differences in student population. Students who enroll in a cyber charter school are 9.5 percentage points less likely to graduate in four years, Cordes found, and are 16.8 percentage points less likely to enroll in a postsecondary institution.

“What really stood out is just how consistently negative the results were, and that it was across populations,” Cordes said. “It didn’t seem to matter if you came from an urban district or a rural district or a suburban district, it seemed pretty equally bad.” Cordes said her results were consistent across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, “which is unusual in education research.”

The state has considered cyber charters’ lagging test scores when authorizing or renewing the schools, but, in most cases, has stopped short of revoking their charters.

Take Reach Cyber, the school that Musa and his brother Dawud attend. In July, Pennsylvania Education Secretary Khalid Mumin wrote in a letter to the school that for the past few years “students in all grade levels and all subjects have significantly underperformed on the PSSA and Keystone Exams, specifically when compared with traditional public schools.”

Still, despite these concerns, the education department granted Reach a five-year charter renewal.

The state education department included identical language in the renewal decision letters for PA Distance Learning Charter School and Insight PA Cyber Charter School.

To be sure, test score data comes with complexities. Unstable home situations don’t often create ideal test taking environments, cyber charter operators have said. What’s more, many families who choose cyber charter schools because of their nontraditional outlook on education are more likely to opt-out of standardized testing.

And cyber charter operators argue that students perform better on state tests the longer that they attend the schools, but their student populations tend to move in and out of virtual learning. (Cordes’ analysis, though, didn’t back up that assertion at the high school level.)

Jane Swan, CEO of Reach Cyber, said in an email that “cyber charter school student scores can’t and shouldn’t be compared to brick-and-mortar school scores.” Swan said the school conveys the importance of state tests to families but “many families invoke their right to refuse testing due to philosophical, health, or logistical reasons.” She also noted that students arrive at the school “significantly below grade-level proficiency.”

Parents like Abdullah said they look beyond test scores and overall school performance when choosing cyber charters.

“I think that with my children, the testing is important, but at the end of the day, character building is important, being responsible is important, being a good neighbor. Community work, that’s important as well,” she said. Abdullah is also an experienced educator herself and is pursuing her doctorate in education online with a focus on student safety and mental health.

Beyond performance, critics of cyber charters accuse them of drawing vital funding away from struggling traditional public schools, since district schools send cyber charters the same per-student tuition it would spend educating a child in one of its classrooms, minus some costs for transportation and facilities. Districts must send this tuition payment for every student who lives in the city but is enrolled in a cyber charter, regardless of whether that child was ever educated by the district.

Advocates have called foul on the state’s four largest cyber charter schools for using those funds to amass nearly $500 million in real estate, such as office space and parking lots, and more than $20 million on advertising and gift cards. Cyber charter leaders have defended their spending, saying their schools retain physical assets to protect their finances from instability. Furthermore, the operators say they need buildings to house technology infrastructure like servers, office space for school staff, and “family service centers” where parents can get in-person assistance.

Dawud spends some time on his laptop for class, but his family also makes sure to build in time for recess and playing outside.

Pennsylvania lawmakers seek education reforms

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Harrisburg has put forth efforts to reform the way cyber schools are funded and monitored, but the boldest changes haven’t gained much traction.

The most recent state budget Gov. Josh Shapiro signed in July included $100 million to reimburse school districts for payments they make to cyber charter schools and some alterations to the way special education students are counted and funded. But the wholesale reforms some lawmakers had proposed did not make it into the final budget.

Calls by local school boards for more oversight cross party lines, according to Lawrence Feinberg, director of the Keystone Center for Charter Change, who has been following the growth of cyber charter schools.

“I know public education is far from perfect, but theoretically, there’s accountability built into it. It seems to me that for 20 some years, accountability has been missing from the cyber charter arena, both fiscally and performance-wise,” Feinberg said.

Despite the drawbacks, parents are still seeking online learning

While advocates fight for more oversight of cyber charters, some families in Philadelphia say they’re not happy with their traditional neighborhood schools and don’t have time to wait for the district to improve.

Still, for some students, the adjustment to online learning can be hard.

Starlynne Santiago, 18 and an engineering technology student at Drexel University, said making the switch to a cyber charter was “scary” at first for herself and her brother, Skyler Rodriguez, 12. But she forged close bonds, even over the computer screen.

“Overall, I think the education was the same, and I feel like the connections I had with the teachers were way closer than what I had in-person school,” she said.

Ultimately, Santiago was able to graduate a year early from Reach Cyber by taking summer classes and working with career coordinators to focus her studies on engineering.

Her brother said it’s been harder for him to make friends in online school, and while he wants to finish middle school virtually, he’s not sure it’s the right fit for him long term.

Sameerah Abdullah is an experienced educator herself and has been supporting her kids through their online classes.

Musa, active and gregarious, and his mom have different philosophies about his future as well.

Though he loves going to school with his siblings, “once I get to middle school, I would like to go to a real school,” Musa said. “I don’t want to be in middle school and have my whole life be on a laptop. … I like to talk and help others.”

Abdullah said she recognizes her children are outgoing and need friends, socialization, and time outdoors. She said she works hard to tailor their online school experience so that they can travel, meet up with other online families, take field trips, and play with their friends in the neighborhood.

Her goal, she said, is to one day create a space where families like hers can join up, and do online homeschooling together.

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

Philadelphia school board renews charters, funds tutoring and a new science curriculum

2024-08-22T23:14:40+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education voted Thursday to renew several charter schools and approved nearly $76 million for tutoring, a new science curriculum, and year-round school at its first meeting of the new school year.

The board also voted to approve a controversial new memorandum of understanding between Drexel University and the district regarding the campus partnership between Drexel, Powel Elementary School, and Science Leadership Academy Middle School.

Superintendent Tony Watlington gave a presentation about his priorities for the school year and shared some updated data about student participation in summer programs this year: More than 17,000 students took part.

This iteration of the board is still relatively new, and with the first day of school just a few days away, residents are watching closely to see where board members stand on contentious topics like whether to expand the charter school sector. Though the board hasn’t approved a new charter school since 2018, it has added more than 2,000 charter seats over the same period of time.

In one recent but rare about-face, board members voted in January to reverse their own decision last year not to renew Southwest Leadership Academy’s charter.

On Thursday, the board voted to renew the charters of KIPP West Philadelphia Charter School, Philadelphia Hebrew Public Charter School, and Global Leadership Academy for five years. However, the board has repeatedly denied GLA’s applications to open a new school.

Members also voted to approve a location change for Maritime Academy Charter School due to potential health and safety hazards.

All of the proposed charter renewals passed with six members in favor and one member — Whitney Jones — abstaining “for personal reasons.” (Jones used to work for the KIPP charter school network.) The Maritime location change passed with all seven present members voting in favor.

Tutoring, science curriculum, year-round school get funding

Board members also voted to approve more than $76 million for high-dosage tutoring, Mayor Cherelle Parker’s year-round school initiative, a new science curriculum that’s part of the district’s broader curriculum overhaul, sports equipment, arts education materials, and more.

Several public speakers on Thursday raised concerns about the way the district is navigating conversations about the Israel-Hamas war in classrooms. Both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian speakers addressed the board.

Keziah Ridgeway, a public school educator who has been at the forefront of pro-Palestinian advocacy in the school district, spoke out against the district’s $1 million contract with the Boston-based nonprofit Facing History and Ourselves that the board approved Thursday.

Watlington previously cited the deal with the group as a way to support school-level conversations about difficult topics like discrimination, racism, and the Israel-Hamas war. But Ridgeway said when the group visited her school, it delivered what she called a “lackluster workshop” that did not properly address students’ concerns and questions.

Meanwhile, former board member Mallory Fix-Lopez testified on Thursday that information about the year-round school initiative has not been adequately communicated to parents like her who have kids starting at one of the pilot schools next week.

“I would’ve thought by now, at the very least, that we’d know the working definition of ‘all-year school.’” Fix-Lopez said.

The board also voted to approve the memorandum with Drexel over the protests of several parents and community members from the two schools. Public speakers told board members they did not have sufficient time to review the proposal. They said the partnership was “full of promises that have not been met” and they are seeking a sustainable funding plan from Drexel in addition to space for more community input.

The spending items approved by the board Thursday include:

A $6.4 million contract with Saga Innovations and Littera Education, for high-impact tutoring. Less than 1% of students participated in the district’s post-pandemic tutoring programs in 2023. According to new but limited data from the district, it piloted new tutoring programs in two schools from April to June of this year, and 126 students participated. Of those students, 65% demonstrated increases in their math scores.
A $31.7 million contract with Amplify Education, Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, and SAVVAS for new K-12 science instructional resources.
A $13.8 million agreement with the city to fund out-of-school time programming for Parker’s year-round school initiative. In a section of the board’s meeting documents, the district said it will be evaluating the pilot program this year and have laid out metrics — like attendance and number of students participating — to help them determine the success of the program.
A combined $4.7 million for athletics costs including sports equipment, apparel, and referee fees.

The district also provided an update on its federal COVID relief spending in the board documents for Thursday’s meeting. The district received $1.1 billion in the third and final round of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) through the American Rescue Plan Act. All of that money has been “fully obligated” but not all of it has necessarily been spent, the district said. The deadline for using that aid is Sept. 30.

Altogether, the district has received about $1.8 billion in ESSER funds.

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

Philadelphia’s newest teachers share their hopes and fears for the coming school year

2024-08-16T18:38:26+00:00

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Some 800 new teachers are entering Philadelphia classrooms for the first time this year. They come from a variety of backgrounds, but share a desire to inspire their students and make an impact on young lives.

Philadelphia’s newest educators are arriving at a crucial time for the school district. School leaders have been dealing with significant challenges including an ongoing teacher shortage, decades of underfunding, aging facilities, new curriculum mandates, and a rising number of students experiencing homelessness.

At a new teacher orientation at The School of the Future this month, Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington said this year, he wants new teachers to focus on their “ambition and joy.” But above all, Watlington said he wants those joining to stick it out — even when things get tough.

“You’re gonna have some great days, you’re gonna have some good days and there are going to be some challenging days,” Watlington said. “Whatever you do, don’t go home and quit.”

According to Watlington, the district will be starting the school year with 95% of teaching positions filled. But that still means thousands of students may find themselves without a permanent, certified teacher this year. And those vacancies will also mean heavier workloads for other teachers, paraprofessionals, and other school staff.

The journey to the classroom has looked different for every new educator this year.

Many came through traditional college degree programs and are taking teaching roles as their first jobs, while others got a taste of the classroom experience as paraprofessionals and pursued their full-time certification through teacher pipeline programs offered by the district, charter schools, and colleges like Cheyney University.

Some new educators never considered teaching until they stumbled upon alternative programs like Breakthrough of Greater Philadelphia’s student teaching fellowship program.

Watlington said the district will be there as well to support teachers who struggle.

“You chose us, we choose you back and we’re gonna have your back.” Watlington said.

Chalkbeat spoke to several new teachers this year to get a sense of how they’re feeling, why they decided to become educators, and any advice they’d give to others considering joining the teaching workforce. Here are five of their stories.

How broken water fountains influenced a teacher’s approach

Kenny Chiu says his background as a child of immigrant parents gives him a special connection to students from different cultural perspectives.

Chiu’s parents immigrated to Philadelphia from China a few years before he was born. Chiu grew up in Chinatown and South Philly and said he’s a proud product of the city’s public school system.

He’s currently a senior at The University of Pennsylvania and said he is “99% sure” he’ll be pursuing his certification to teach full-time when he graduates. He’s been teaching seventh grade history to Philadelphia public, charter, and parochial school students at Germantown Friends School this summer through Breakthrough’s teaching fellow program. Chiu said it’s been an eye-opening and fulfilling experience.

Chiu said he remembers attending school with 35 kids per class, broken water fountains, and out-of-order bathrooms, with no school nurse on duty. It’s that personal experience and understanding he hopes to bring to his students.

“There are a lot of issues outside of teachers’ control that teachers have to deal with,” Chiu said. “It’s a lot of pressure also to have such a big task of educating young people in our city.”

Chiu said he learned a lot through Breakthrough’s fellowship program this summer. He found it useful to get a sense of classroom teaching — with a lot of mentorship and support — before he has to make any big career decisions.

Chiu said he is “really looking forward to being someone that students can look up to. Whether you’re struggling in school or struggling with things outside of school, I really want to be a solid mentor and solid support for them.”

Students will ‘see through’ BS from teachers

This is technically Mark Bey’s 27th year teaching, but it’s his first time teaching in his home city for many years.

Bey will be teaching Spanish at Paul Robeson High School this fall. He first started teaching in the Philadelphia school district in 1998 but moved to New York City where he taught for several years. Now, he said he’s looking forward to being back home.

Bey said he missed Philly’s “diverse population” both in terms of demographics of the students and the teacher and school leadership population, which he “found lacking in New York City.”

Despite his experience, Bey said he still gets nervous for the first day of school.

His advice for other new teachers: “Be your authentic self.”

“If you present BS to the students, students will see through it,” he said. Bey recommends incorporating your passions into lesson plans. For example, as an avid photographer, Bey said he starts every class off with a photo prompt and discussion. Many of the images he’s taken himself on his travels.

Bey said his students really engage with the exercise because it’s clear he’s sharing something he cares about and it gives his students permission and encouragement to share things they care about as well.

Longtime paraprofessional transitions to full teaching job

Dontaya Sellers, a longtime paraprofessional in the district, will be teaching fourth grade English Language Arts and Science at Joseph Pennell school for the first time this fall.

Sellers is a Cheyney University graduate who was a paraprofessional for many years before pursuing her full teaching certification this year. She said that because of her history with the school district and her connections at Cheyney, she was able to get her certification fully paid for through the district’s Para Pathway program.

“I love kids. I’ve always loved kids,” Sellers said. She said with all of the news about national teacher shortages, and the calls for new teachers, “I felt like this was the time to do it.”

Sellers said she’s “really excited” to get to know her students, parents, and staff, but she’s also feeling some anxiety.

“I know things don’t always happen the way our minds think they’re gonna happen,” she said.

‘This is our classroom, this is our home’

Marissa Rivers is another former paraprofessional entering the 2024-2025 school year as a fully certified elementary school teacher at Universal Alcorn Charter School.

Teaching is a second profession for Rivers. She started off in human resources and management, in charge of recruiting and interviewing job candidates. Rivers said when she was interviewing new, younger employees — mostly 17- and 18-year-olds — she realized they were “lacking in certain areas” that made companies pass them over.

“I felt that it was important for me to go back and want to be a part of resolving that problem. And how do you do that? You go back in the classroom,” Rivers said.

Rivers made the transition from the business world to the classroom as a paraprofessional in a second grade classroom in Philadelphia. But because her school was short staffed, she was asked to step up to serve as a full-time second grade teacher while she was in the process of getting her degree and certification.

“I was able to take everything that I was learning in my classes and directly apply it,” Rivers said. She said when she saw her students struggling, she was able to reach out to her teacher training mentors for help.

Her advice for other new teachers is to get students involved in the classroom rulemaking process.

“What I like to do at the beginning of the school year, we all come up with the class rules together, and that makes them a part of the classroom,” Rivers said. “It’s not like a directive, but it’s more of ‘this is our classroom, this is our home, and these are the rules that we are going to follow.’ And when we come up with it together, it’s easier for them to remember.”

Rivers said she’s most nervous about helping students behind in their reading catch up to their peers and to grade-level expectations.

“I want to make sure that I do everything that I can to get those students to go above and beyond,” Rivers said.

Two young women share a passion for teaching

Dena Hill, 21, is originally from Germantown, just recently graduated from Cheyney and is entering a classroom for the first time this year. She’ll be teaching special education, one of the hardest to fill positions in the district.

The shortage of Black teachers is also something Hill, who is Black, has been thinking about.

“I know how much my teachers impacted me,” Hill said, " I would love to do the same for children that look like me.”

Hill said she is looking forward to “actually seeing that ‘aha’ moment on [a student’s] face when they actually grasp a concept.”

Hill attended new teacher orientation this month with her friend and Cheyney classmate Brooklyn Stanback, 22. Both young women share their passion for the profession. Stanback will be teaching fourth grade math.

“I still have good connections with all my teachers, especially from preschool,” Stanback said. “I want to be that next impact for somebody else. I want to be the person they look up to.”

For Stanback, she’s most excited about bringing a new energy to her classroom.

“I’m somebody that’s really energetic, I like to get everybody hyped,” she said.

But it’s the unknown that makes Stanback and Hill nervous.

“Not knowing how I’m going to reach the kids or what type of situation I’m walking into,” Stanback said. “That’s what every teacher is really nervous about.”

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

Philadelphia school board denies Global Leadership Academy charter application for fourth time

2024-06-28T18:54:54+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education voted for the fourth time Thursday to deny a charter for a proposed Global Leadership Academy International High School because the revised application did not meet academic, financial, or operational standards.

The board has five new members appointed by Mayor Cherelle Parker. But the board’s vote to reject the application from Global Leadership Academy (GLA) continues a significant multi-year trend: It has not approved a new charter school since Philadelphia regained local control of its schools from the state in 2018. Still, the privately managed but publicly funded schools — including cyber charters — now educate nearly 80,000 of the city’s students.

The vote was 7-0. Whitney Jones abstained and ChauWing Lam was absent. Jones, a finance manager who has worked for charter organizations, said he abstained due to a business conflict.

The board denied the application despite a statement of support from Councilman Curtis Jones and the political connections of Naomi Booker, a veteran city educator who is the driving force behind the two existing K-8 Global Leadership Schools.

The board did vote to grant five-year renewals, with conditions, to four other charters — Ad Prima, Laboratory Charter School of Communication and Languages, Mariana Bracetti Academy, and Maritime Academy — without any dissent.

In their final action meeting of the 2023-24 school year, the board also voted to approve a $20 million contract with various external nonprofits and community organizations to fund Parker’s year-round school initiative, which is kicking off this fall at 25 pilot schools.

During her mayoral campaign last year, Parker never made clear whether she favored creating more charter schools in the city. Instead, she stressed that she wanted to see an end to any competition between the district and charter sectors. But except for Jones, her new appointees voted against the revised GLA application.

Booker, who was present at the meeting but did not speak, is the founder and CEO of Global Academies, which runs Global Leadership Academy Southwest and Global Leadership Academy Charter School in West Philadelphia, both K-8 schools.

GLA Southwest, the former Huey Elementary, is one of 21 district schools that officials turned over to charter management under the Renaissance program with the promise of rapid transformation. That promise that has not been realized.

Six students from GLA Southwest, all wearing crisp navy blue blazers with the GLA logo, pleaded with the board to approve the new high school.

“Having another option like Global Leadership Academy Charter High School is important for students like me who need a good place to learn,” said Troy Williams, who described the stressful process of applying to selective district high schools.

“Parents are struggling to find a good high school that fits what we want.”

The two existing GLA schools would be feeders for the proposed high school, although GLA officials planned to open the new school in the former Cristo Rey building in North Philadelphia, far from the other schools’ West and Southwest Philadelphia locations. The proposed school was set to start with 150 students and expand to 600.

While applicants touted the new school as a destination for current GLA students, they also claimed the school would be a separate entity from the other GLA schools, Mariel Ziegler, interim chief of the district’s charter school office, told board members.

Board member Joyce Wilkerson wasn’t buying that. “I do believe it is the same operator, and think it is important to consider the academic performance of the schools they currently operate,” she said.

Ziegler’s presentation of the charter school office’s evaluation of GLA’s revised application showed that the two existing Global Leadership schools had much lower achievement levels than the district as a whole or a set of comparison schools.

In 2022-23, while 34% of district students and 35% of students in peer schools scored proficient on the state PSSA exam in English Language Arts, just 19% of GLA Charter School students did so. That figure also represented a sharp decline from the 40% proficiency that GLA’s schools reached in 2017-18. In math, just 4% of students reached proficiency, compared to 17% in the district as a whole and 15% in peer schools.

Wilkerson also questioned Global Leadership’s financial viability, citing its shaky credit rating despite an influx of federal pandemic aid: “It’s hard to believe the schools could be at risk of defaulting with all the federal resources out there.”

Jones, the councilmember who represents the district where the two existing Global Leadership schools are located, nevertheless urged the board to approve the charter. “When I walk into Global, I feel something special,” he said, adding that many parents had called him about getting their children into the schools. “To be honest about it, the facts are that it’s a good school.”

But Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, a watchdog group, cited her group’s recent findings that most charters enroll fewer students than they’re authorized to.

“No reason has been presented to change the board’s mind about rejecting this school,” Haver said. “There is no need for a new charter in any part of the city.”

Wilkerson’s positions on charters contributed to recent controversy.

In April, the City Council refused to vote on confirming Parker’s renomination of Wilkerson, who had chaired both the Board of Education and the School Reform Commission when the state ran the district. Members cited her opposition to several new charter schools. Parker responded by declining to name a replacement for her, and she continues to serve.

The district’s charter office has also been accused by some charter leaders of being biased against Black-run charter schools. But a state audit cleared it of any intentional discrimination. GLA founder Booker is Black.

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’s charter school authorizing process complies with state laws, audit finds

2024-05-07T22:23:19+00:00

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Amid charges from some advocates and City Council members that the Philadelphia school board is biased against Black-run charter schools, Pennsylvania’s Auditor General has found that Philadelphia’s authorizing, evaluation, and renewal process complies with all relevant state laws, regulations, and guidelines.

The audit, released Tuesday, highlighted some areas for improvement, but did not raise concern about discriminatory practices. The purpose of the audit was not to explicitly respond to or investigate the allegations of racial bias.

At a press conference, Auditor General Timothy DeFoor said the audit represented “good news to share” because the Charter Schools Office “complied with all state laws and guidance, as well as its own internal processes regarding new applications.”

He also said that it was “important to note that the school board, not the charter schools office,” approves new charter school applications.

The audit scrutinized the procedures followed by the Charter Schools Office for the academic years 2022 and 2023, a period that saw seven new charter applications, none of which were approved, and four charter closures. Two of those closed had Black leadership. It also reviewed the October 2023 investigative report by the Ballard Spahr law firm into the allegations of racial bias. That report found no “intentional bias” in the authorizing and evaluation process, while calling the rate of closure of Black-led charters “concerning.”

The state audit said the office could make some improvements to its Charter School Performance Framework, such as including the responses of charter operators to its findings in the evaluations it makes public, and better monitoring of charter school admissions practices.

In explaining that recommendation, DeFoor cited the problems with Franklin Towne Charter High School, where an investigation found it had excluded students who live in certain ZIP codes with mostly Black students, “in violation of the charter school law and its own charter.”

While the 80-page audit mentions the Ballard Spahr report, it does not describe any independent investigative findings of its own on the topic of racial considerations or bias on the part of the charter schools office.

On the principle that “the oversight body and management should demonstrate a commitment to integrity and ethical values,” the audit found “no issues.”

Last week, city council approved eight of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s nine appointees to the Board of Education, which has direct control over charter school monitoring through its Charter Schools Office. It declined to vote on the nomination of former board president Joyce Wilkerson after charter school advocates mounted a letter-writing campaign against her. Council president Kenyatta Johnson gave no explanation for refusing to consider her nomination except that she “didn’t have the votes.”

During questioning of the nominees, Council member Isaiah Thomas, chair of the education committee, raised angry allegations about bias against Black-led charters, which he said have been closed at a disproportionately higher rate than others. In response, board president Reginald Streater, who had also briefly been the target of the charter advocates, told council that the charter schools office followed all applicable laws and procedures.

Parker then did an end run around council by declining to appoint anyone to replace Wilkerson and announcing that she would continue serving on the board. In response, Thomas said he will convene hearings on whether the city should move to an elected or partially-elected school board, as is done in several other cities.

Peng Chao, the chief of the charter schools office, appeared with DeFoor at the press conference in Harrisburg Tuesday. He said he was “pleased the Auditor General found that our office complied with all applicable legal requirements … in Philadelphia we have a robust evaluation system that … holds all charter schools to the same set of performance standards to foster high-quality education options and improvement outcomes for all of our students.”

Saying “there is no perfect system,” he noted that “a strong system is self-reflective.” The office will “continue to learn, reassess and develop best practices as the landscape of public education evolves.”

A spokesperson for Thomas said they wanted to study the report more before responding.

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 mayor plans to go over City Council’s head, put contested nominee on school board

2024-04-29T21:49:48+00:00

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A power struggle has erupted in Philadelphia between Mayor Cherelle Parker and City Council leadership that could have serious implications for Parker and impact one of the country’s largest school districts.

The person at the center of that tug of war is longtime Board of Education member Joyce Wilkerson. After a public back-and-forth, the City Council voted Monday to pull Wilkerson’s nomination to the school board from its agenda for the second time. Council President Kenyatta Johnson said Wilkerson still did not have the votes to be confirmed.

But Parker is not backing down. She sent a letter to Wilkerson Monday asking her to stay on until a new appointment is made, which Wilkerson has agreed to do. The rest of Parker’s school board nominees were approved by the council April 19 and are due to take their seats Wednesday.

It’s not entirely clear what effect the dispute over Wilkerson will have on the board and the school district. But during a hearing on the nominees, several councilmembers pressed them about their views on charter schools in the city, and indicated that they would like to see the school board approve more charters, especially those with Black leadership. The board hasn’t approved a new charter school since 2018.

If the relationship between Parker and the council deteriorates over Wilkerson’s fate, it could have significant consequences for the school’s budget and the council’s support for long-term education plans from both the board and Parker, who has proposed year-round school for the city’s students.

Wilkerson is the longest serving member of the board, and served as its president from 2018, when the district shifted from state to local control, until 2022. Before that, she spent two years as the chair of the School Reform Commission that ran the district after the state took it over.

A smiling Wilkerson read Parker’s letter to reporters after the vote. The letter called her a “laudable” public official during her time on the board.

A separate statement from Parker’s office confirmed that she had asked Wilkerson to continue serving past Tuesday.

The mayor’s office said it has a legal opinion that spells out her authority to keep Wilkerson on the board, but did not release it. The City Charter requires the City Council’s “advice and consent” on board appointees.

And the council — specifically Johnson and Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas — appears to be signaling that the body will not be a rubber stamp for Parker’s administration.

Some officials don’t view nominee as ‘beloved friend’

Various councilmembers have told Chalkbeat they don’t have passionate positions on Wilkerson either way, but are voting with Johnson and Thomas against the backdrop of important budgetary negotiations.

Despite the role charter schools played during the hearing on Parker’s school board nominees, Councilmember Kendra Brooks denied that her concerns about Wilkerson stemmed from the board’s unwillingness to approve new charters or its approach to charters in general.

“I’ve never been a supporter of charters, so the notion that this is about charters, I push back against,” said Brooks in an interview. She started her public career as an education activist fighting for adequate resources for her neighborhood schools, among other causes, and said she would have voted no on Wilkerson’s nomination: “The years I’ve been doing this education work, Joyce was never our beloved friend.”

Pressed further, Brooks said that if Wilkerson’s presence on the board “is the only thing saving the state of education in Philadelphia, we are doomed.”

Thomas also issued a statement Monday saying he does not support Wilkerson “because our schools have been inadequate under her leadership.”

“This is bigger than one person. This is about the need for change and doing what’s best for our children and families,” Thomas wrote.

Johnson has repeatedly rebuffed questions from reporters about the reasons for the opposition to Wilkerson’s nomination. Critics of the council’s move have noted that Dawn Chavous, who is married to Johnson, also serves as spokesperson for the African American Charter Coalition, which first leveled the allegations of racial bias against the school board regarding Black-led charters.

Chavous did not respond to an email from Chalkbeat on Monday.

Before calling for a vote to remove Wilkerson’s nomination from the agenda, Johnson said that members had heard from many members of the public, including but not limited to charter school supporters, expressing concerns about Wilkerson.

“I will not make those concerns public out of respect for Ms. Wilkerson,” he said.

Councilmembers, by a voice vote, also rejected a motion to make their positions public through a roll call.

Curtis Jones was the only councilmember besides Johnson to speak publicly Monday about the situation and he expressed misgivings about the process by which Wilkerson’s nomination was being held up.

“We are barely past 100 days,” Jones said, referring to Parker’s time in office. “And we’re not allowing the mayor to have the benefit of the doubt.”

“I trust my mayor and trust my leadership,” Jones added. “If you’re asking her to cook the meal, she should be allowed to buy the groceries.”

For her part, Wilkerson said she is “delighted” to have Parker’s support and to remain a member of the board.

“When Mayor Parker announced my nomination, one of the things we talked about is the significance of continuity,” Wilkerson said.

Legality of mayor’s move is in question

Still in question is whether Council will challenge the legality of Parker’s move.

The Home Rule Charter states the nine members of the board “shall be appointed by the Mayor, with the advice and consent of a majority of all the members of the Council after public hearing.”

Parker’s Deputy Chief Education Officer Sharon Ward said the mayor interprets the charter to say Wilkerson can continue to serve until someone is named to replace her, since the council removed her nomination from the agenda but did not reject it. Parker could also choose to indefinitely delay nominating someone else, perpetuating Wilkerson’s term.

Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, an attorney with the Public Interest Law Center, said in an interview Monday there has to be a mechanism by which governmental bodies like the Board of Education can continue to function even in the absence of a traditional confirmation process. Parker is betting her push for Wilkerson to remain on the board would fall under that mechanism, he said.

Philadelphia is the only district in Pennsylvania with an appointed, not elected, school board. The City Council voted in 2018 to amend the City Charter to require the council’s advice and consent for school board nominees.

Donna Cooper, a former aide to Ed Rendell when he was Philadelphia mayor and governor and now executive director of the advocacy group Children First, came to the Council’s chamber to support Wilkerson and later said in a statement: “Clearly the mayor knows how to play chess.”

The newly constituted school board’s first meeting about its long-term goals and strategy is scheduled for May 9, and their first action meeting as a voting body is May 30.

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

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.

Charter school debate dominates Philadelphia school board nominees’ hearing

2024-04-20T00:10:53+00:00

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Following a heated interrogation by the City Council over charter schools, eight of Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s nine nominees to the Board of Education are moving ahead. But the future of Joyce Wilkerson, the longest serving board member, remains in limbo.

The Council’s committee of the whole voted Friday to approve eight of Parker’s nominees, including current board President Reginald Streater. Those nominees will now head to a full council vote next Thursday.

In addition to Streater, Crystal Cubbage, Cheryl Harper, Whitney Jones, Wanda Novales, Joan Stern, Sarah-Ashley Andrews, and ChauWing Lam all received Council approval. Wilkerson’s nomination was deferred. The new board must be seated by May 1, but it doesn’t have to be a complete slate of nine members.

Leading up to the hearing, rumors circulated that Streater, as well as Wilkerson, would not receive enough votes because of their recent votes in opposition to several new charter schools. Streater and the rest of the nominees, barring Wilkerson, ultimately earned a unanimous voice vote from those council members present to move ahead. However, the overall tenor of the councilmember’s questions and comments signaled many of them would like to see more charter schools — specifically Black-led charter schools — in the city.

After the meeting, the board nominees made it a point to say that they were sticking together as a slate.

“We have unfinished business,” said Streater, as Wilkerson stood beside him, adding that Parker “picked the nine people who she thought could get the job done.”

Wilkerson declined to comment on why she thought there was opposition to her nomination.

Council President Kenyatta Johnson gave no reason for delaying the vote on Wilkerson, and did not speak with reporters after the hearing concluded. But based on council members’ questions and comments, several members seemed to want to send a message regarding the board’s charter school policies.

They apparently focused on Wilkerson since she led the board from 2018 until 2022; during that period, no new charter schools were approved. She was also chair of the School Reform Commission for two years before that when the district was still under state control.

The school board is the sole authorizer of charter schools in the city.

After a six-and-a-half-hour hearing, Isaiah Thomas, the chair of the council’s education committee, told reporters that “we felt like it was best to continue dialogue” around Wilkerson’s nomination but did not give a reason for the opposition. “Once we have more of a consensus, I think that you’ll see a decision being made,” Thomas said.

In addition to the intense questioning about charters, returning board members were grilled about the “deplorable” condition of school buildings and the absence of a promised school facilities plan from the school district. They were also pressed about the new, lottery-based special admissions policy that has contributed to a surge in empty student seats in many of the district’s top schools.

Thomas led a particularly pointed line of questioning directed at the four incumbent board members about what he alleges is a discriminatory charter authorization process that’s resulted in the district closing an outsize number of Black-led charter schools in recent years.

Of the charter schools that board has voted to close, Thomas said 80% of those were founded or led by Black people, even though they comprise only about 25% of the 82 charters in the city.

“Those numbers aren’t racist?” Thomas asked during a particularly intense exchange with Streater.

In fact, from 2010 to 2021, the district’s governing body voted not to renew or revoke the charters of 13 charter schools. Eight of those — a little over 61% — were Black-led.

Political divisions over the treatment of Black-led charters in Philadelphia came to a head last year following the release of an independent report examining alleged bias in the charter school approval process.

The report determined that there was no intentional bias in the authorization process. But the authors did point to inherent flaws in the system that resulted in Black-led charter schools being non renewed or closed in “greater numbers than their peers.”

Several councilmembers and public speakers on Friday chastised the board for what they perceive as a failure to address any of the systemic flaws noted in the report.

Councilmember Anthony Phillips outright asked the board members: “Will you champion public charter schools as vital partners in creating a system of great schools that better serves Philadelphia students and families?”

None of the nominees answered that question directly. But board member Lam said: “Every charter decision made is a difficult one,” noting that while public dollars fund charter schools, the district does not manage them.

Councilmembers hold considerable funding power over the district, determining how much of city tax dollars are allocated to schools. The Board of Education has no taxing power of its own.

Parker never said explicitly during the campaign whether she favored the creation of more charter schools. But her close ties to charter consultant Dawn Chavous — who is married to Council President Johnson and served as chief of staff to state Sen. Anthony Williams, one of the state’s leading charter proponents — has raised eyebrows among traditional public school supporters.

Chavous also serves as spokesperson for the African American Charter Coalition, which first leveled the allegations of racial bias against the school board regarding Black-led charters.

Several public speakers expressed their support for Wilkerson including Loree Jones, the district’s former director of external affairs. She praised Wilkerson’s “brilliant competence and solid balanced approach” to decision-making.

Asked if Wilkerson’s nomination would be considered before the May deadline, Thomas said, “I’m not sure. I mean, negotiations are unpredictable.”

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

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.

Latino-led charter schools attract Philadelphia families with tight-knit communities and Spanish

2024-03-22T17:23:43+00:00

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All four of Margarita Albino’s children have passed through the halls of Pan American Academy Charter School.

The Northeast Philadelphia resident, who is Dominican, was drawn to the school by its dual language program. Although Albino is bilingual, she says she feels more comfortable with Pan American’s staff, which is made up of predominantly Spanish-speaking Latinos.

“The school knows that it’s needed to keep [the heritage] alive in them,” she said, adding later, “They have no problem assisting me in Spanish.”

Latino families in Philadelphia say they’re choosing charter schools operated by Latino-led nonprofit organizations because the schools are able to fill gaps not filled by the school district. Several Spanish-speaking parents and caregivers told Chalkbeat that Latino-led charter schools are providing more cultural representation, language accessibility, and a tighter-knit community than their traditional neighborhood public schools.

The Latino population in Philadelphia has almost tripled since the year 2000, reaching about 16% of the city’s residents in 2020, according to the census.

Additionally, about a quarter of the roughly 197,100 students in the Philadelphia school district identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to district data. And in the 2022-23 school year, the district reported 17% of students were English learners, a 9% jump from the 2014-15 school year. Almost half of English learners came from Spanish-speaking homes.

Though the majority of Hispanic students in Philadelphia are enrolled in traditional district schools, Hispanic students comprise 18% of total charter school enrollment, according to a report by advocacy group Children First. The group also notes Hispanic students make up the largest number of Philadelphia-based cyber charter students with 1,478 students, or 80% of total cyber charter students in 2023.

In the 1970s, Philadelphia public schools were trailblazers for bilingual education. The district oversaw a pilot program for English as a second language and a Bilingual Institute to train and recruit teachers. It also opened a bilingual school, as well as bilingual programs that reached about half of the burgeoning Puerto Rican student population.

But the programs’ budget, which was supported by federal funding, eventually dwindled. Today, just eight out of 218 district schools offer Spanish-English dual language programs.

There’s also the issue of staff representation and educators’ ability to connect to Latino families. Only 4.4% of teachers in the district are Hispanic, according to a 2022 Research for Action report. A lack of bilingual and culturally competent staff can weaken parent-teacher communication and impact students’ academic success, according to research.

The school district said it’s aware of these gaps and is working to address them by hiring more Spanish speaking bilingual counseling assistants and teachers.

Nathalie Nérée, the district’s head of special education and diverse learners, said there are plans to implement another dual language program in a public school. But she said the district would need more resources and community support, since dual language programs are “costly.”

Diana Garcia, principal of district-run Willard Elementary School in Kensington, said there have been several families that have left her school for Pan American Academy Charter School, which is in Fairhill and is run by Congreso de Latinos Unidos. Thirty-five students whose designated local public school is Willard attend Pan American, according to district data.

Garcia said one reason for this is the convenience of having their children across grade levels attend the same school. But she also said “there is more work to be done” when it comes to district staffing. She said she hired at least eight more staff members to accommodate Spanish speakers at Willard after becoming principal.

“If this school who has a 45% Latino population doesn’t have Latino representation to service those families, then we’re failing them,” she said.

‘You were encouraged to celebrate your child’s success’

There are at least four Latino-led charters in Philadelphia that advertise having a sizable number of Spanish-speaking teachers, as well as dual language programs for students.

The district’s recent enrollment data shows that 91% of students at Esperanza Academy and 84% of students at Pan American identify as Hispanic or Latino. At Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School in Olney run by ASPIRA Inc. of Pennsylvania, 86% of students identify as Hispanic/Latino.

Although the Latino-led charter schools embrace the Spanish language, they do not guarantee if any staff speak Portuguese, which is spoken by Brazilians, or indigenous Latin American languages like Qʼeqchi’ spoken by some Guatemalans; there has been an influx of these groups in recent years.

Glenda Marrero, principal of Hostos Charter School, says that parents are more involved when there’s faculty who speak the same language.

“They tend to come to more activities because they know they’re not going to miss out,” she said. “There’s nothing like sitting in a room and not understanding nothing, but people are clapping around you.”

Cesar Ríos, a bilingual guidance counselor for students in grades 4-8 at Hostos Charter School, said that he witnesses more “parental and familial engagement” at the school.

He said one example of the school’s work with Latino families involves helping undocumented children or family members who need academic or other support.

He also said not all Latino students come from Spanish-speaking families, and that Hostos prioritizes teaching students about Latino “cultural heroes that might not otherwise be addressed let alone highlighted at another school.”

Farrell Elementary school teacher Angelee Rivera said her daughter transferred to Esperanza Cyber Charter School for her junior year of high school.

Rivera, who is Puerto Rican, said she felt the charter school, which is run by the local Hispanic-focused nonprofit Esperanza, embraced the Latino community. She was especially touched by remarks made by the CEO of Esperanza, the Rev. Luis Cortés, Jr., who is Latino, at her daughter’s graduation.

Cortés Jr. encouraged families to “turn up” and loudly celebrate their students’ achievements: “‘Our kids, they go through so much in their life just for being Black and brown and they survived the pandemic. … When your child’s name is called I want you to show out!’”

Rivera said Cortés Jr.’s words reminded her of an incident at the Philadelphia High School for Girls that occurred around the same time as her daughter’s graduation. Officials at Girls High withheld some students’ diplomas during the graduation ceremony because their families cheered loudly as their names were called.

“You have a school like Girls High, if you dance across the stage to show that you’re proud of yourself, you’re kind of punished,” Rivera said. “And yet in a school that is about community and is about the Latino community specifically, you were encouraged to celebrate your child’s success.”

Philadelphia school board denies charter school application for third time

2024-03-01T02:49:54+00:00

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Philadelphia Board of Education members voted to deny an application for a new charter high school Thursday night, citing declining academic performance data and several recent charter school closures in the city.

Board members voted 6-3 to deny the proposed Global Leadership Academy International Charter High School, which sought to enroll 150 students in ninth grade its first year and build up to 600 students in grades 9-12 by year five.

Board President Reginald Streater said the decision was a “hard one” because of the strong community support for the school. But he said he had too many concerns with the details of the application and cited his experience watching multiple charter schools “collapse” in recent years.

The board hasn’t approved a new charter school in the city since 2018. But Mallory Fix-Lopez, the board’s vice president, noted that the board has “expanded the charter sector by over 2,000 seats” since 2018. It remains to be seen whether the board’s stance on charters clashes with new Mayor Cherelle Parker’s vision for public education in the city.

Global Leadership Network CEO Naomi Johnson-Booker, a longtime Philadelphia educator, has tried for years to add a high school to the already existing two Global Leadership K-8 schools. But the board has repeatedly rejected her attempts.

One of GLA’s schools, Global Leadership Academy at Huey, is a Renaissance charter school. The district turned the school over to the network in 2016, but it has since failed to significantly improve student academic performance.

Peng Chao, chief of the district’s Charter Schools Office, presented academic data for GLA’s existing schools which shows sharp declines in the percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced proficient in English Language Arts and Math standardized tests from the 2017-18 school year to 2022-23.

Chao also noted the charter group’s proposed curriculum materials for high school English language arts, mathematics, and science “still do not fully demonstrate that the proposed charter school would meet all grade level requirements” set at the state level.

“There is a question there as to whether they would truly be able to achieve all of their academic requirements,” Chao said.

In defense of her schools’ performance, Johnson-Booker cited a flood in one of the school buildings that interrupted testing during one school year and the impacts of the pandemic that affected school performance nationwide.

Several students, parents, and elected officials testified in support of GLA and the proposed high school at the Thursday board meeting, saying the school community provides a safe and positive environment for students in the city.

But ultimately, board members said they had too many concerns with the application.

Board member Lisa Salley, who voted to approve the school, took a different view. She said the charter school office’s “analysis is anemic and needs work.”

The charter school approval process has come under fire in recent months for alleged bias against Black-led schools. However, an investigation found district leadership never deliberately discriminated against such schools.

In a statement following the vote, Ken Kilpatrick, a spokesperson for Global Leadership International, called the board’s decision “myopic and selfish” and said the organization “will be reviewing our legal options and will announce our next steps when prepared to do so.”

Logan Peterson, a spokesperson for the board, said the network can appeal to the state’s charter appeals board or resubmit their application.

Meanwhile, Parker’s assertions that “high quality” charter seats would be valued as much as traditional district seats during her tenure as mayor have raised questions as to whether the school board would begin approving charters again.

The board’s decision could have significant political ramifications. Parker has convened her Education Nominating Panel to consider reappointing or remaking the board to reflect her priorities. She’s given no signal yet whether she intends to replace any of the current members. Parker could decide to replace none, some, or all of them.

The next public meeting of the Education Nominating Panel is scheduled for March 12.

Board approves contracts for parent stipends, nurses

In addition to the charter decision, the board voted to approve more than $230 million in contracts for classroom furniture, payments for substitute nurses, stipends for parents who drive their kids to school, and more.

Here are some of the items included in those contracts:

$60 million for “furniture and classroom fixtures.”
$50 million for “educational resources” including textbooks, gym supplies, science materials, and other items. This does not include core curriculum items.
$10 million for ESS Northeast, LLC for payments to substitute nurses and other school staff.
$10.5 million for a contract with The Home Depot for custodial supplies and equipment.
$36 million for monthly payments to parents who drive their children to school. According to the district, there are approximately 14,000 households or parents that are enrolled in the program for the 2023-2024 school year.
$2.7 million for Catapult Learning, LLC and Littera Education, Inc. for a high-impact tutoring pilot in two middle schools serving grades 6-8 for the 4th marking period. (Less than 1% of students used these programs as of 2023.)
$10 million for furniture and equipment for “Digital Literacy Labs” including computers and “codeable robots.” According to the district, there are 113 elementary and middle schools that offer digital literacy in the city. The district wants an additional 74 schools to have access to these labs by the start of the next school year.

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

Philadelphia’s ‘Renaissance’ charter schools did not produce what was promised

2024-02-28T12:30:00+00:00

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On the first day of classes last September, the Philadelphia school superintendent and mayor joined other officials outside of Guion S. Bluford Elementary School to cheer on its 539 students as they entered the building.

The school district’s choice of Bluford for this annual ritual was telling. From 2010 to 2022, Bluford — built in 1972 to serve a growing population in the Overbrook neighborhood — had not been run by the district, but as a charter school operated by Universal Companies as part of the district’s Renaissance Initiative.

Then in the summer of 2022, in a dispute with its board of trustees, Universal ended its contract, and for that academic year the school operated in turmoil. Without its longtime manager, Bluford struggled to hire teachers, convince parents of its viability, and keep up the facility — among other problems, it lost internet access — until the district stepped in to build a new staff and assign a turnaround principal in 2023.

Bluford was part of one of the most sweeping education policy shifts ever undertaken in Philadelphia. The Renaissance Initiative — launched in 2010 under Superintendent Arlene Ackerman while the district was under state control for poor performance — strove to turn around about 10% of Philadelphia’s low-performing district schools by ceding them to charter organizations that promised to do better.

“We will transform historically failing schools and embrace bold new educational approaches with proven track records of success that can transform schools,” Ackerman wrote of the Renaissance initiative in her ambitious reform plan for the district.

At the height of the Renaissance Initiative, 22 former district schools were controlled by charter operators. But district leadership has quietly moved away from the model. Over the past seven years, four schools, including Bluford, have been returned to the district. One, Daroff Charter School, closed entirely. Now 17 schools are part of the initiative — and no new schools have been added since 2016.

“The goal was to prove that charters would work with any kid, not just about parents who were highly motivated to enter a lottery, and to show that a neighborhood school turned over to a charter organization would do better than if run by the school district,” said Donna Cooper, executive director of Children First, an advocacy group.

“As far as I can tell, the data didn’t result in that.”

In fact, a Chalkbeat analysis has found that the dramatic turnaround promises of the Renaissance program never materialized.

Some schools made incremental progress over the years that slightly outpaced the district as a whole, but the group of schools overall has not seen meteoric success.

Indeed, in 2023 the Renaissance charter schools as a group mostly performed worse in standardized tests for elementary and middle schoolers than the district averages, the analysis showed. And compared to district schools, a lower share of Renaissance charters exceeded those averages.

“It was a bad idea poorly implemented,” said Chris McGinley, who served on both the School Reform Commission that oversaw the district while it was under state control and the Board of Education, which won back control of the district in 2018.

The program could be under greater scrutiny as Mayor Cherelle Parker takes office. Parker has had a mixed message on charters, continually emphasizing that she would not stand for people pitting district-run and charter schools against each other.

But she hasn’t said whether she would like to see growth of the charter sector, which already educates about a third of the nearly 200,000 students in the city’s publicly funded schools. And she has not yet named new school board members, who could decide the fate of the Renaissance program itself and its remaining charters.

Parker’s 50-member education policy subcommittee includes the CEOs of four of the seven organizations that run Renaissance charters, three of which operate schools that were recommended for nonrenewal due to subpar academic performance while the fourth was denied a new charter application based on the record of its existing schools.

Her appointees to the Mayor’s Office on Education, Sharon Ward, an activist and former state official, and Debora Carrera, a former district principal assistant superintendent, declined comment and couldn’t be reached, respectively.

Superintendent Tony Watlington declined to comment on the program.

Peng Chao, head of the board’s Office of Charter Schools, which evaluates existing charters and vets new applications, said that the outcomes for the Renaissance schools “have been mixed.”

“With a sector of over 20 schools over the course of more than a decade, it isn’t surprising that some schools have excelled in certain areas and others have struggled. Every school, Renaissance or not, has a different arc,” said Chao.

Betting on a school turnaround model

Turning district schools over to charters has been a go-to turnaround method in major urban districts for more than two decades. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, the state of Louisiana took over the New Orleans schools, shut down all but a few that were high performing, and created a Recovery School District that was essentially a system of charters. Chicago had its own Renaissance schools initiative that leaders are rethinking.

In Philadelphia, the movement flourished when the district was under state control and coincided with a push in Pennsylvania to expand the charter sector. Even before the official start of the Renaissance program, under the influence of prevailing Pennsylvania politics at the time, other district schools had become charters.

Charter expansion has long been the favored school reform strategy of Pennsylvania’s Republican governors and legislators as they resisted more spending on education and sought to weaken unions, even though the state had the widest gaps in the nation between high-wealth and low-wealth districts. Only last year did a Commonwealth Court judge rule the funding system unconstitutional.

Ackerman was betting her career on the success of Renaissance schools. She told Pew Charitable Trusts in 2010, “If I can show [parents] what the other side of the rainbow looks like, I don’t care who comes in after me. They are going to force the new superintendent and the new administration to give them what their children deserve.”

Ackerman’s vision for the Renaissance program included two models designed to offer “greater autonomy in exchange for increased accountability,” according to her 2009 reform blueprint for the district, Imagine 2014. Implicit in the entire initiative was to set up a competition to determine which turnaround strategy was more effective — more internal resources and a staff shakeup, or charter conversion. The schools that remained under district control were given more resources and called “Promise Academies,” while those that were handed over to charter organizations were dubbed “Renaissance” charter schools.

“Arlene was very strong on the idea that these programs would run in parallel with a lot of ability to compare the results from the programs,” said former School Reform Commission member Joseph Dworetzky. “I thought it was an interesting idea.” Dworetzky also said the board considered this more efficient and a way to stem the spiraling costs to the district of charter proliferation.

The Renaissance charters had defined catchment areas like traditional district schools, but otherwise operated independent of the district, the same as any other charter school.

At first, things seemed to be going well. An 18-month interim report found “The Year One outcomes for schools in the Renaissance Schools Initiative suggest that something positive is happening.” In 2014, Renaissance charters were doing a successful job keeping students enrolled for the entire school year, another report found.

But under Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, cuts to education spending between 2010 and 2014 put a strain on the entire system. The belt tightening effectively ended the Promise Academy experiment by stripping the schools of extra programs and supports. The Renaissance charters were impacted because, as the district’s budget decreased, their per pupil payments went down.

In 2011, Ackerman resigned.

Her successor, William Hite, continued the Renaissance conversions, but decided to let parents vote, first on who the new operator should be and then whether there should be a conversion at all. This caused conflict, especially at Wister Elementary School in Germantown, where Hite had second thoughts about his initial recommendation. During the 2016 debate over whether the school should become a charter, parents were bitterly split, and the School Reform Commission overruled Hite to approve the turnover.

After that, Renaissance conversions ceased.

In March of 2020, as McGinley was preparing to leave the school board, which by then had resumed control of the district, he proposed a resolution to formally end the Renaissance program altogether — but that resolution was quietly removed from the meeting agenda and never resurfaced.

How Renaissance schools measure up

Determining the impact of the turnarounds is challenging in Philadelphia, since two major events have occurred since the program started in 2011 — a revision of standardized tests in 2015, limiting the ability for apples to apples score comparisons, and the educational upheaval of the pandemic.

But looking at results, most of the Renaissance charter schools do not show high rates of proficiency. According to the Chalkbeat analysis, these schools started out well below district and state averages in English Language Arts and math performance — that’s why they were targeted for this intervention.

The analysis, though, shows that none of the schools are performing particularly well today. For instance, a majority of the Renaissance charters saw less than 10% of students score at or above proficiency on math tests in 2023. By some metrics, a few made incremental progress over the years.

Several schools, including Harrity Elementary and Mann Elementary, operated by Mastery, showed spikes in indicators including test scores for the first several years, said Chao, head of the board’s Office of Charter Schools.

But, he added, “Sustained improvement in student achievement, however, has not been as evident or consistent.”

The saga of Memphis Street Academy@JPJones in Frankford is telling. Once a junior high school with a reputation for out-of-control discipline and general disarray, it is now run as a Renaissance charter for 5th through 8th grades by American Paradigm schools. In contrast to its past, it is calm and orderly, with a solid teaching staff and lots of student activities.

But its achievement scores have remained persistently low — math proficiency is at 1%, and the Board of Education has voted not to renew the five-year charter signed in 2017.

American Paradigm has since sued the district in federal court saying the performance standards they agreed to, based on absolute achievement rather than growth in student scores, are unfair. The school can remain open during the appeals process.

Hite, who was superintendent between 2012 and 2022 and presided over the creation of five Renaissance charters, in hindsight questioned the effectiveness of the initiative.

“What I recall is that they saw climate and culture indicators improve, and in some cases saw growth improve, particularly [in a reduction of] children who scored below basic,” Hite said in an interview. “But we really didn’t see marked improvement in achievement.”

Hite attributed this to the myriad factors besides school quality that affect student outcomes, including the impact of poverty, violence, and the lack of essential services.

“This stuff takes time,” he said.

Bluford and Daroff were not the only schools that exited Renaissance. Two other district schools that became Renaissance charters, Olney High and its feeder Stetson Middle, were also taken back by the district due to both lagging performance and financial problems within Aspira, Inc., to which they had been turned over.

Michael Roth, now Olney’s principal, worked in the school under both models. He is not a fan of charter conversion as a school reform strategy.

“I think it’s offensive,” he said. “A lot of these measures were experimenting with communities of color. I’m not saying some good things didn’t come out of it, but my thought is, why don’t we properly fund the public schools and make sure they have the resources they need and do it right without switching back and forth?”

Tangela McClam, Principal of Bluford Charter School, left, greets students on the first day of school.

Renaissance supporters say look beyond test scores

Scott Gordon, the founder and longtime executive director of Mastery Charter, deems the initiative a success, saying that the Renaissance program brought numerous improvements to schools and their surrounding neighborhoods, even if test scores did not dramatically rise. Mastery has run nine Renaissance charters, and essentially built its brand around the program.

Chalkbeat’s analysis showed that Mastery performed marginally higher on average than other Renaissance charters on the 2023 state tests, the PSSA, but still had overall scores below the district average (with one single exception on the English language arts test).

Gordon said the model showed that a different governing structure could bring more stability to neighborhood schools, improve academic outcomes while serving the same kids, and draw parents back into the building.

Before Mastery, he said, ”These were schools in a never-ending negative spiral, lots of transiency, kids with high needs. As the school struggles, parents begin leaving, it struggles more, and it goes downhill.”

‘We needed a turnaround in a turnaround’

Bluford’s history shows that the initiative both fell short of being transformational and also often sowed confusion for families.

Bluford was one of the original Renaissance charter schools. Formerly the William B. Hanna elementary school (it was renamed for astronaut and alum Guion Bluford, the first Black person in space), Bluford was turned over to Universal Companies. Like the other schools in the program, it had long suffered from poor academic performance.

But the desired turnaround never happened; in 2015, the School Reform Commission voted to revoke the charter because it did not meet its academic targets. “I was struck by the notion that we needed a turnaround in a turnaround,” commissioner Feather Houstoun said at the time. But appeals kept it open — even though the Board of Education’s own Renaissance schools policy was supposed to supersede the state’s charter authorization, evaluation, renewal and revocation process.

Then, in 2022, Universal had its falling out with the board of trustees that oversaw it, leading to its tumultuous year and the district’s decision to return it to district control.

“It was very traumatic,” said teacher Tyshea Tucker. “Everything was so sudden.”

When the upheaval occurred, Tucker had been a teaching assistant at Daroff studying for her degree. She moved to Bluford when it was still a charter, and then applied to stay when the district took over and is now a second-grade teacher.

All the disruption was even more unsettling for her students, she said, many of whom have already had to deal with trauma in their lives. The staff turnover, she feared, reinforced feelings that adults weren’t there for them. She said she had to “go the extra mile” to build relationships and trust with them.

For longtime neighborhood stalwarts like Tamara Keene, who sent two sons through Bluford, the changes have been jarring.

Keene said the school functioned well under Universal at first.

But when Universal left in 2022, along with about half the staff, the board running the school “didn’t have a lot of control. … They spent a year just holding the school down.”

The turnover split parents, some of whom wanted the school to remain a charter, while others, like Keene, wanted a traditional public school option. “I’m still upset that there was no neighborhood school that was not a charter,” she said.

This current tension between charters and traditional schools harkens back to why Ackerman launched the Renaissance experiment in the first place. Despite scant evidence that the Renaissance schools delivered the promised transformation, Ackerman had concluded at the end of her time as superintendent that dramatic educational improvement for traditionally underserved students was impossible within the existing structure of large school districts with many power centers, especially teachers unions.

And her ideas for reform are still present today.

Like Ackerman, Parker is advocating for longer school days and a longer school year, tall orders to make happen within the traditional district structure.

But if it does happen, families like Keene’s will be the ones experiencing it firsthand.

Although Keene’s children are grown, she will continue watching the transformation of Bluford from a new perch — three of her grandchildren now attend the school.

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.

In reversal, Philly school board votes to renew charter school amid shifting political climate

2024-01-26T03:14:10+00:00

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In a rare move, the Philadelphia Board of Education voted Thursday to reverse its previous decision not to renew a charter school, meaning it can continue operating for another three years — with 19 separate conditions.

By a unanimous vote, the board passed a settlement agreement that renewed until 2027 the charter of Southwest Leadership Academy, a K-8 school with nearly 600 students that had been having academic, operational, and financial problems, according to the board’s Charter Schools Office.

“I expect the school to make progress over the course of the charter term and build on the recent increases in academic achievement we have seen through the most recent data from the 2022-2023 school year,” said Board President Reginald Streater.

Streater noted that the Charter Schools Office recommended that the board vote to extend the school’s charter, although he also said he remained concerned “about the school’s current financial position.”

After the vote, the school’s CEO Leigh Purnell and Principal Christina Green hugged in relief.

Last June, citing operational, financial, and academic problems, the board voted 7-2 not to renew Southwest Leadership Academy’s charter, putting the school’s future in jeopardy. It has continued to educate nearly 600 students as the school’s appeal of the board’s decision has played out.

The board’s latest decision comes amid heightened pressure from lawmakers and advocates who have claimed Black-led charter schools, like Southwest Leadership Academy, face systemic racial bias in the city. An independent report released in October found no “intentional bias” from district leaders against those schools. But it called the rate of closure of Black-led charter schools “concerning” and said a problematic authorizing and evaluation process could lead to the perception of bias.

The decision also hints at a change in the political climate for charter schools under new Mayor Cherelle Parker, who during her campaign repeatedly said she would not tolerate competition between district and charter schools.

“I will not allow anyone to act as if district-run and charter schools are warring factions,” she told Chalkbeat in an interview.

The board hasn’t approved a new charter school since 2018.

Though they don’t outright control it, the mayor and city council hold a lot of sway over the school district. Parker has the ability to appoint all nine members of the school board; that process is set to begin soon. The city also controls local funding for schools since the school board has no independent taxing power.

On Thursday, Peng Chao, the director of the Charter Schools Office, told board members that the school’s trustees and academic team were working hard to straighten out its problems, and said his office would continue to help. He noted that six years ago, Southwest Leadership Academy was one of the highest-performing charters in Philadelphia.

Before the vote, several students urged the board to keep the school open.

“I would not be who I am today” without the education and guidance she got at Southwest Leadership Academy, said Renee Fernandes, who is now a senior at William Penn Charter, a private Quaker high school “I never saw a private school in my future, but SLA made it happen.”

Purnell and other speakers pointed out that the school is a haven for many students from the African diaspora in Philadelphia. Southwest Leadership Academy “is the very first school where I’ve been able to culturally connect with students,” said Arun Arungodade, who said she was a member of that diaspora.

Shirleen Thomas-Moore, who described herself as “guardian and auntie” to a fourth and fifth grader at Southwest Leadership Academy, said they both learned to read in kindergarten. “I am pleased with the education there,” she said.

In advance of the vote, Purnell thanked the board for letting the school continue. In an interview after the vote, she said, “Our proficiency scores are not where we want them to be, however we are able to achieve tremendous growth with our students.”

Charter renewal includes conditions for academics, financial controls

The board identified several serious concerns about Southwest Leadership Academy before members voted last year not to renew its charter.

A 2022 evaluation by the board’s Charter School Office found that the school didn’t meet standards for academics, organizational compliance and viability, or financial health. The evaluation also found numerous problems with enrollment procedures and employee background checks.

A month after the board’s June 2023 vote not to renew the school’s charter, Southwest appealed the board’s ruling to the state Charter Appeals Board. Critics of the board’s move at the time included Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who chairs City Council’s education committee.

The resolution approved by the board on Thursday offers a conditional five-year renewal of the charter. It is retroactive to 2022, so will expire in 2027. With the settlement, the state appeal is rendered moot.

The renewal agreement includes requirements for academic improvement, but the targets include more flexible options if the school can’t meet the most stringent stipulations.

The conditions say that ideally, math, language arts, and science test scores improve enough to be “no more than 5 points below the district average,” or the average for comparable schools based on grade span and demographics.

If the school doesn’t meet that standard, it will be renewed by the board if it meets average growth benchmarks set by the state, or if it achieves “an annual increase in the proficiency rate” in each subject, “year over year.”

According to state data, 24% of students scored proficient or advanced in English Language Arts on the Pennsylvania state test in 2022-23, up from 19% the year before. In math, 10.1% of students scored proficient or advanced, up from 5 % in 2021-22. Its science scores are somewhat better.

The resolution also said that the school must stop its “gender based lottery” process for admitting its students. The school has separate boys’ and girls’ classrooms.

Southwest Leadership Academy must also prove that all teachers and aides dealing with special education students have the proper certification. The school must also hire a consultant to help recruit and onboard new board members and assure that they are properly trained in “financial oversight and governance.” It also specifies that all board members submit all required financial documents to guard against any potential conflicts of interest.

Additionally, the school is under a tight deadline to submit a “financial and internal controls plan” by Jan. 31.

Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools asked the board for more transparency and consistency in the charter authorization and renewal process.

In 2018, shortly after the city regained control of the district from the state, the newly installed Board of Education reversed the decision of the School Reform Commission to close Richard Allen Charter School for poor performance. Instead, the board gave it a renewal with many conditions. The school is still operating.

Larry Jones, the founder of Richard Allen, is a leader of the African American Charter School Coalition.

At Thursday’s meeting, representatives of the African American Charter School Coalition urged the board to impose a moratorium on closing any charters until the renewal and evaluation process is fixed.

In 2022, the board issued a notice of nonrenewal to Laboratory Charter School, which also has Black leadership, but several months later reversed itself and renewed the charter for five years.

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.

Pennsylvania lawmakers ponder big changes to charter school funding

2024-01-24T14:17:15+00:00

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering significant changes to the way charter schools are funded as they undertake a monumental overhaul of public education mandated by a court ruling.

More than 160,000 Pennsylvania students are enrolled in brick-and-mortar and cyber charter schools, with the latter’s enrollment having ballooned in recent years.

Tuition for these students is almost entirely funded by the public school districts in which they live. In conversations with Spotlight PA, key lawmakers on both sides of the aisle acknowledged that this arrangement leads to financial losses for districts, which can’t reduce costs enough to offset charter tuition.

For years, attempts to overhaul the more than two-decade-old law that governs charters and their funding have repeatedly failed in Harrisburg.

But as lawmakers begin hashing out their legally mandated overhaul of the commonwealth’s school funding system, they’re also taking a serious look at the charter law.

Democratic- and Republican-authored reports, meant to kick-start the funding conversation, offer a glimpse at possible common ground.

They suggest giving public school districts reimbursements for costs associated with charters. Leaders in both chambers have also said it could be possible to change the way districts pay cyber charters for certain students’ tuition.

To make any changes to the way charter schools are funded, though, lawmakers will have to pick their way through a political minefield.

Status quo is based on district spending

The amount that traditional public school districts pay for students’ charter tuition is based on their own per-student spending, with some deductions (facilities expenses are held back from the total, for instance).

The Scranton School District, for example, spent $15,667 per student during the 2021-22 school year; charter tuition for any student without a disability who lives in that district was based on that number.

If a student has a disability, their tuition is built on that base rate for the district, plus a standard percentage of its spending for all disability services — regardless of the kind of disability the student has.

Public school districts and advocates have criticized these billing practices for years.

For one, the mechanism by which disabled students’ tuition is calculated uses an average that doesn’t take different kinds of disabilities, and their different costs, into account. Because districts’ payments for severe disabilities tend to inflate the total, charters can get more money than a particular student needs.

As state Rep. Pete Schweyer, D-Lehigh, recently told Spotlight PA, “A child with spinal bifida is vastly more expensive to educate than a child with some level of hearing loss.” Schweyer chairs the House Education Committee, which will play a key role in negotiating education overhauls, and he broadly supports changes to charter financing.

Lawmakers also face a challenge inherent to Pennsylvania’s funding structure for charters: When a student moves from a traditional public school to a charter, there is no corresponding level of savings.

Education circles commonly refer to this as a “stranded cost” — the gap between the savings a school can realize when a student leaves for a charter, and the cost it still bears to pay for charter tuition.

In a 2017 study that delved into the finances of six different Pennsylvania districts, the nonprofit Research for Action found that charter enrollment negatively affected traditional districts, and that impact deepened as more students left. While RFA found that these effects decreased over time, public schools never completely stopped losing money under the group’s model. The consequences were bigger in smaller districts.

What’s on the table for charter school changes?

Lawmakers on the Basic Education Funding Commission were tasked with coming up with new overall financing formulas for public education, which Democrats and Republicans unveiled in separate reports earlier this year. Both reports included proposals related to charter schools.

The reports pitched the return of reimbursement for at least some stranded costs associated with charters — an old idea. A previous state budget line item that provided a partial reimbursement was cut under former GOP Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration.

“If charter school reimbursement had remained part of the budget and flat funded since 2010/11, it could have offset districts’ need to pass these costs onto taxpayers by approximately $2.5 billion before adjusting for inflation,” the Democratic report said. “However, charter school costs have more than doubled in the past decade.”

The GOP report also noted stranded costs, though it focused specifically on costs associated with cyber charter schools. It offered two reimbursement options, both of which would calculate payments based on districts’ expenses for cyber charter tuition in particular.

Schweyer, the House Education Committee chair, noted that one reason there’s some bipartisan consensus on the issue is that it could be tied to lowering property taxes — a long-held priority for some Republicans.

“Property taxes make up the majority of districts’ budgets, and many administrators testified [during education hearings] that charter payments are a big reason why property taxes must be so high,” he said during his conversation with Spotlight PA.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the union that represents around 180,000 public school workers, has called for $500 million annually to be devoted to the reimbursement line item. While neither the Democratic nor Republican report made a specific financial commitment, PSEA spokesperson Chris Lilienthal said it’s “promising” that both reports called for the funding to be restored.

The Democratic report also briefly mentions changing the way districts pay charters for disabled students’ tuition. Schweyer said there’s some bipartisan agreement on creating a tiered system in which payments would be tied to a disability’s severity and associated expenses.

Sen. David Argall, R-Schuylkill, who chairs the GOP-controlled upper chamber’s Education Committee, concurred that this tiered system could be on the table, at least when it comes to cyber charters.

“The devil will be in the details, but yes,” he said of the concept.

He also confirmed that some Republicans support bringing back the charter school reimbursement. Because lawmakers are already broadly prepared to make major education investments to satisfy the terms of the landmark 2023 school funding court decision, it’s one of the less politically tricky charter school changes on the table.

“No one’s ox gets gored on that front,” Argall said. “I think we understand that it’s a cost that we need to help school districts.”

A deep well of political challenges

Lawmakers are entering talks on charter school policy with the understanding that areas of consensus are limited.

“We haven’t successfully touched this issue in years,” Argall said. “If we can get a 10% agreement, let’s do 10%, and then we’ll get the other 90%.”

Members largely consider cyber charter schools to lie within that 10%.

Enrollment in these online-only schools has ballooned since the pandemic, making them a particular focus for legislators — especially because despite their lower facilities costs, they’re funded through the same formula that brick-and-mortar charters are.

For instance, some lawmakers, particularly in the GOP, have said they’re open to a tier system for disabled students’ tuition in cyber charters but not necessarily in brick-and-mortar charters. The latter schools are generally larger and more established.

Schweyer, the Democrat, said he favors applying the tiers more broadly, but that “all of this is a hard sell.”

“Sometimes we’ve just got to get as far as we can and measure results before we take a second bite of the apple,” he said.

Charter advocates have agreed to take part in these funding formula discussions, but shy away from any policy change that would lead to a lower tuition share.

Anne Clark, who heads the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, said she agrees that the current charter law “doesn’t serve anyone well.” But she thinks cyber charter schools are being used as a scapegoat because “it’s an easy attack,” and said her fundamental position is that charters should get the same share of funding as any traditional public school.

“What I would like to see is a discussion about what it takes to fund students well,” she said.

Inextricable from any conversation about charter school policy is the political and financial pressure it puts on lawmakers. Public school unions exert significant influence on lawmakers via campaign donations, as do charter advocates, particularly ones tied to large, well-established brick-and-mortar schools.

For instance, Vahan Gureghian, who heads Chester-based for-profit charter operator CSMI, doled out nearly $800,000 in the 2022 election season alone. The money primarily went to top legislative Republicans, including state Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (she got $125,000 that cycle) and state House Minority Leader Bryan Cutler (he received $50,000). Gureghian also gave prodigiously to legislative Republican campaign committees.

Gureghian isn’t the only big charter operator who gives hundreds of thousands to politicians, and the donations are not dictated by party alone. Philadelphia-area Democrats in particular have long had close ties with charter school operators. And though the party has in recent years cut down on the cash it takes from these groups, charter boosters and their allies still have influence.

Education Opportunity PAC, a group focused broadly on school choice — which includes championing state support for private and parochial schools along with charters — gave to a long list of Democrats in 2022. Big names include House Majority Leader Matt Bradford ($15,000 in 2023), Senate Appropriations Minority Chair Vincent Hughes ($30,000 in 2022), and longtime Sen. Anthony Williams (another $30,000 in 2022). Gov. Josh Shapiro also took $10,000 from the committee in 2022.

Education Opportunity gets a significant portion of its funding from other PACs that are funded almost entirely by billionaire Jeffrey Yass, Pennsylvania’s single biggest school choice donor. In 2022, nearly 40% of the PAC’s funds for the cycle came from Yass’ PAC, Students First.

Public sector teachers’ unions like PSEA, meanwhile, concentrate most of their spending on supporting Democrats. Legislative leaders are the biggest beneficiaries of that money — House Speaker Joanna McClinton received $123,500 in the 2022 cycle, Bradford got $90,500, and Shapiro’s gubernatorial campaign got the lion’s share of the union’s spending, with $775,000.

Philadelphia City Council to hold hearing on bias against Black-led charters

2023-11-02T21:27:22+00:00

City Council plans to hold a hearing in December on whether the district has discriminated against Black-led charter schools.

On Thursday, Council approved a resolution, unanimously and without discussion, introduced by Council member Isaiah Thomas declaring that “Black led and founded institutions have been held to standards that are inconsistent and changed regularly, causing a lack of transparency in the School District’s process of reviewing, managing, and closing non-district led schools.” The hearing is scheduled for Dec. 6.

In a report released last month, the law firm Ballard Spahr found what it considered a flawed and problematic charter school authorizing and renewal process that leaves the district open to charges of bias — but uncovered no evidence of deliberate discrimination against Black-led charters. The report was two years in the making and covered the period between 2010 and 2021.

At the same time, the law firm recommended changes, including more transparency in the charter process and anti-bias training for Board of Education members.

The report was commissioned by the Board of Education in response to years of allegations of racial bias from the African American Charter School Coalition, which represents 17 of 21 Black-led charter schools.

Investigators found that during that period eight of the 13 schools whose charters were revoked by the district were Black-led, even though only about 1 in 5 city charters were founded and continuously led by Black individuals or organizations. (The report also noted that this year the Board of Education voted not to renew the charter of another Black-led institution, Southwest Leadership Academy.)

At the time, coalition officials issued a statement saying that the report backed up its charges of discrimination and “shows that the public school charter authorization process needs to be completely overhauled.”

In Pennsylvania, unlike in some other states, only the host district can authorize charter schools, creating an inherent conflict of interest.

Philadelphia has about 65,000 students in 82 charters, educating nearly 1 in 3 children who attend publicly run schools, and making it one of the largest charter sectors in any major city.

The report said that district officials were aware as far back as 2017 that there were “differential” results in the charter authorizing process, but took no action.

The nine-member school board, appointed by the mayor, has no taxing power of its own, relying on City Council to allocate city funds to the district, most of it through property taxes.

Max Weisman, Thomas’s communications director, said in an interview that there is “anecdotal evidence” pointing to a “different set of standards and a different set of processes that Black-led and white-led institutions go through.” He said that constant personnel turnover in the district’s Charter Schools Office exacerbates the problem, and that white-led institutions have more wherewithal to hire consultants and others to contest a proposed charter non-renewal or revocation.

He said witnesses at the hearing would include district officials as well as charter operators who have been making the allegations.

“It is important that we have oversight over our charter school system, so we can ensure that our public dollars are being spent the right way,” said Thomas in a statement announcing his intent to introduce the resolution. “The answer, though, does not lay in unfairly investigating Black-led institutions.”

Thomas, who sits on the council’s education committee, is a volunteer coach at Sankofa Freedom Academy, one of the city’s oldest charter schools. “I’ve seen myself how beneficial this model is,” Thomas said in a statement. “Black-led institutions are vital entities in the city because they open up students to broader perspectives, leadership and learning styles, and curriculums that not only improve tangible results but also make for a more enjoyable learning experience.”

The district’s Charter Schools Office issues annual reviews on each charter school as well as renewal reports every five years. Those reports evaluate the schools in three areas: academics, operations, and financial health. It gives each charter a rating of either “meets standard,” “approaches standard,” or “does not meet standard” on dozens of metrics. It does not make a formal recommendation to the board on whether to renew a charter or not.

Before approving its own budget and taxes, City Council holds annual hearings on school spending, grilling district officials and board of education members about various policies and making known their own priorities and preferences.

The issue of possible bias against Black-led charters has not come up in the mayoral election that will take place next week between Cherelle Parker, a Democrat, and David Oh, a Republican. Parker has recommended increasing the district’s share of the property tax from 55% to 58% as a way to generate more revenue for the schools. Oh has said he would like to elect five of the nine school board members so that they feel more connected to the community – although that would complicate the issue of taxing authority.

But overall, aside from Parker’s proposal for year-round school, which she has not explained in detail, education policy has not been a big issue in the race.

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.

Report finds no intentional bias by Philly against Black-led charter schools

2023-10-06T21:09:51+00:00

Philadelphia district leadership never deliberately discriminated against Black-led charter schools in decisions relating to authorizing, expanding, and closing the independently managed, publicly funded schools, according to a report released Friday.

At the same time, the law firm Ballard Spahr concluded in its 132-page report that what it considered a problematic authorizing process could lead to worries about bias. It called the rate of closure of Black-led charter schools “concerning” and said complaints from charter leaders interviewed “raised issues that corroborated systemic reasons” that could explain the perception.

Based on the firm’s review, “Black-led charter schools have been subject to nonrenewal proceedings and/or closure actions in greater numbers than their peers.”

The board commissioned the investigation two years ago after allegations of racial bias from the African American Charter Schools Coalition, which represents 17 of 21 Black-led charter schools. It was conducted pro bono by Ballard Spahr, with a data analysis by the Center for Urban and Racial Equity at a cost to the district of $55,000.

“The investigation has not revealed any evidence of intentional [sic], overt racially discriminatory acts by any [School Reform Commissioner], Board of Education member, or [Charter Schools Office] employee against a charter leader,” the report said.

But the charter coalition said in a statement that the report actually backs up its claims of discrimination.

“Our limited review of the document substantiates our assertions that the charter renewal process is flawed and broken — contrary to the Philadelphia Board of Education’s assertions. What we’ve learned thus far is that the report, coupled with the data initially presented by our organization related to disparate outcomes for Black operated schools, shows that the public charter school authorization process needs to be completely overhauled.”

The report itself said that “not all the charter leaders interviewed alleged intentional discrimination,” but some “opined that the charter authorizing system suffered from systemic bias and other flaws.”

Board of Education President Reginald Streater said in an interview that board members are “pleased, not a happy pleased, but pleased [that] the investigation has not revealed any evidence of intentional or overt racially discriminatory acts by the board or charter office against any charter leader,” and that there is “no finding that any charter closure was done improperly.”

The investigation found that district leaders themselves became concerned about this issue as early as 2017, but that there is no “evidence that the district took meaningful steps to address or investigate… Nor did the district otherwise characterize the matter as one of urgent concern.” It did not focus on the issue until the Black charter coalition raised it, the report said.

The report recommends that district leaders petition the state to revise how charters are authorized. Currently, under state law, charters are authorized by the host district, which creates an inherent conflict of interest. In other states, universities and other entities can establish charters. Pennsylvania’s charter school law has not been meaningfully amended since 1997.

Investigators also recommend that the district split its charter support operation from its charter evaluation function, also as a way to minimize any potential conflict. Now, both are done by the Charter Schools Office.

It also says that the charter renewal process should be more transparent, with more opportunities for public input. It suggests the district do a periodic “equity audit” of its charter authorizing and renewal practices — looking at such factors as staff diversity, anti-bias and racial training for employees, and communication with stakeholders.

And while not finding intentional acts of discrimination on their part, the report recommends that Board of Education members undergo anti-bias training.

The charter coalition’s response also cited the inherent conflict of interest in how charters are authorized in the Commonwealth and said it doubts the district’s ability “to act in good faith with any remediation processes.” The statement said coalition leaders will have a more detailed response to the report once they have reviewed it in its entirety.

From 2010 to 2021, the period covered by the report, the district governing body — either the state-dominated School Reform Commission, or the Board of Education, which resumed control of the district in 2018 — voted not to renew or to revoke the charters of 13 schools, eight of which were Black-led. (It noted that the district in June 2023 voted not to renew Southwest Leadership Academy Charter, another Black-led charter.)

A Black-led charter is defined as one that has a Black founder, board, and current leader, said Lawrence Jones, who was a founder of Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School. Those charters that may currently have Black leadership, but were not founded by African Americans and focused on educating Black children, are not part of the coalition, he said.

Jones and other Black charter leaders met with Streater Friday to go over the report. In an interview after that meeting, Jones questioned the finding that there was no intentional bias. “We want to dig into what the report shows,” he said. (His school, which opened in 2001, was recommended for nonrenewal in 2018 but has not been closed.)

The investigators said that the issues around this are myriad and complex. Some charters, like Walter D. Palmer Leadership Academy, which was founded in 2000 and closed in 2014 due to poor test scores and financial problems, were established by known or legendary Black leaders in the city. Several of the closed charters specifically promised African-centered education, including Wakisha (closed in 2014), Khepera (closed in 2019), and Imani Education Circle (closed in 2016).

Others, like Bluford and Daroff, were former district schools turned over to Black-run charter management organizations. Both these West Philadelphia elementary schools were long operated by Universal Companies, founded by music entrepreneur Kenny Gamble. But after a series of internal problems that led to the schools’ boards breaking the relationship with Universal, Bluford returned to district control this year and Daroff closed entirely.

Streater noted that in some of the cases of charter revocation, the decision was upheld by the state-run Charter Appeals Board or by court decision, bolstering the argument that the votes to revoke their charters were justified and not the result of bias.

At the same time, he said there is room for the district leadership to review its practices around charter evaluation, renewal, and closure.

“The board is looking forward to…continuing the evolution of charter practices in Philadelphia” that will maintain and increase “quality seats and a student-centered approach to education.”

There are now 82 charter schools in Philadelphia, which educate about 65,000 students, or more than a third of those who attend publicly funded schools. Proportionally, it is among the largest charter sectors in any big city.

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.

How charter schools work in Philadelphia, and why they’re controversial

2023-10-02T18:04:20+00:00

The issue of charter schools is one of the biggest ongoing debates in Philadelphia and the education landscape nationwide.

On the rise across the U.S. since the 1990s, charters have added fuel to the question of how to allocate school funding and whether parents should have more options for where to send their children.

The influx of charters, which now constitute about a quarter of schools managed by the School District of Philadelphia, has complicated the decision-making process for parents choosing between the public neighborhood schools nearby, magnet public schools with citywide admissions, and tuition-based private schools.

Local policymakers have long sparred over how many charter schools should operate in the district, how oversight of their administration should work, and how they should be funded relative to public schools. The Philadelphia Board of Education has not approved a new charter since 2018, the year it regained authority over the district from the state, which had temporarily taken control of Philly schools.

In partnership with The Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting and Chalkbeat Philadelphia, Billy Penn is launching a series examining how charter schools are impacting educational disparities in Philadelphia. We’ll explore how charters are managed, how they stack up against the city’s public schools, how equitable their admissions are, the politics behind their funding, and what the experience of teaching at a charter is like, among other topics.

To kick off, we’ll address 10 key questions about charters and how they differ from other school models.

What are charter schools?

Charter schools are best understood as a hybrid between public and private schools. They receive a good amount of government funding and are held to some of the same operational standards as public schools, but are managed privately. In Pennsylvania, they’re managed by nonprofits.

While exempt from a lot of the Pennsylvania School Code, charters must maintain the same employee criminal history checks, open meetings, health and safety regulations, special education programs, civil rights, and open records as public schools do. Charter schools also have to follow the same statewide assessment system, including administering the PSSAs and the Keystone exams.

Charters must offer core courses (think math, science, and English) that are aligned with state and federal standards, but can design their own curriculums. Charters are also allowed to offer their own electives and academic programs or “tracks,” such as Spanish immersion programs or programming around the arts or sciences.

Of the Philly School District’s nearly 200,000 students for the 2022-23 academic year, about 58% were enrolled in public schools, 33% in charters, 7% in cyber charter schools, and the remainder in alternative schools.

How are charter schools funded?

Charter schools are different from private schools, which receive no public funding and charge each student tuition.

In Pennsylvania, local school districts follow a state formula to send charters a per-student payment from their taxpayer-funded budget. Exactly how much depends on each district’s per-student expense, so it varies widely across the commonwealth.

For non-special education students, the per-student amount allocated to charters in the 2023-24 academic year ranged from about $8,600 in Luzerne County to over $26,500 in Bucks County. Philadelphia falls on the lower side of the scale at about $11,500 per non-special ed student.

The special education expenditure is much higher, usually at least double the per-student amount. In Philadelphia, the district sends charters more than $36,000 per special education student enrolled.

How do charters get started?

To open in Pennsylvania, a nonprofit must first apply to and obtain a charter from its local school board that outlines a set of requirements and standards for the school to operate. (Cyber charter schools obtain their charters directly from the state.) The board must hold at least one public hearing on the application.

If a charter school is rejected during the process, the nonprofit behind it can revise and resubmit the application locally or appeal the decision to a state board composed of the Pennsylvania secretary of education and six members appointed by the governor.

Charters must be renewed by the school district at least once every five years. The local school board can choose to renew the charter for just one year if it has questions about the school’s performance, with the idea that it will use the additional year of academic data to determine whether to renew the charter for longer.

What are the arguments in favor of charters?

Since their inception in Minnesota in 1991 and their arrival in Philadelphia in 1997, charter schools have been a hotly debated topic.

Proponents argue that they improve student success in the long term. They often believe the public school system in place doesn’t serve all students well for various reasons, ranging from systemic inefficiencies to intrinsic biases. Those in favor of charters say their existence creates needed competition between schools, increasing the overall quality of education by forcing schools to innovate in curriculum and approach.

Some charter schools perform exceptionally well; some do not. In 2023, 21 of U.S. News and World Report’s top 100 high schools were charters (none is in Pennsylvania). The list ranks schools based on performance on standardized tests, college preparation, and graduation rates, among other factors.

What are the arguments against?

Opponents of charters believe they harm public schools by funneling money away from an already underfunded public school system to privately administered institutions with less oversight than the district at large.

Past charter school CEOs and other administrators in Philadelphia and elsewhere have been accused of mismanaging or even embezzling millions of dollars in funding.

Opponents also argue that charter admissions can be inequitable due to bias or bad management, or too selective based on the sensitive information an applicant may have to give when applying. For example, in 2012, Philadelphia’s overseer of charters found 18 schools imposed “significant barriers to entry,” with one school requesting a typed book report and proof of citizenship.

A significant proportion of charter schools don’t survive. Nationwide, more than 25% of charters close within five years, and 40% close within 10 years of opening, according to a 2020 analysis by public school advocacy group the Network for Public Education.

Between 2013 and 2020, Philadelphia saw 16 charter schools close, according to the school district. The district currently has 87 charters in operation, versus 217 district-run public schools.

How do charter schools perform versus public schools?

On average across the country, there were “no measurable differences” found between reading or math scores at either the fourth grade or eigth grade level, according to a 2017 U.S. Dept. of Education report.

In Philadelphia recently, there were minimal differences between the lowest state test scores for charters and public schools. In science, about 33% of charter school students scored “below basic” compared to 34% in public schools, according to an analysis of 2022 PSSA data for schools in the district.

In English, about 25% of charter school students scored below basic versus 30% for traditional public schools. Math scores were similar, with roughly 65% of students in both charter and traditional public schools scoring below basic.

Philly charter schools had an average 85% four-year graduation rate in 2021, while traditional public schools had a 75% average graduation rate, according to an analysis of district data.

How do students get into charters?

Charter schools, like all other schools, are legally not allowed to discriminate against race, religion, gender, and other forms of identity. But while any student can enroll in a charter, if more students apply than the school can teach, students are put into a lottery system.

These charter school lotteries are not overseen by the district and have at times faced criticism of discrimination.

Last spring, for example, a top administrator at Philadelphia’s top-rated Franklin Towne Charter School alleged that the lottery was manipulated to keep certain students from being enrolled and that most of the students denied were from predominantly Black ZIP codes. The school district investigated and found enough evidence to recommend the charter be revoked. The Philadelphia School Board voted in August to send Franklin Towne official notice of this, kicking off a process that could take years to resolve.

Who teaches in charter schools?

Pennsylvania law says at least 75% of charter school professional staff must hold appropriate licenses and certification.

Principals, vice principals, or assistant principals at charters must hold administrative certificates. Special education teachers, school nurses, school psychologists, speech and language pathologists, and any positions defined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, must also hold appropriate and valid certifications.

Unlike at public schools in Philadelphia, regular teachers at charter schools are not required to be certified.

Charter school teachers can be a part of a union. The Alliance for Charter School Employees in Philly, organized by the PA-AFT, allows individual employees of charter schools to join its union even if other members of the school choose not to.

What are Philadelphia Renaissance Schools?

Back in 2010, Philadelphia School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman launched a “Renaissance Schools Initiative” aimed at improving the lowest-performing public schools by turning them over to charter nonprofits.

These schools became charter schools with one difference: Instead of open enrollment, they are required to continue to serve students in their “catchment areas,” or neighborhoods.

At first, seven district schools were turned over to charter providers, and more were converted under Superintendent William Hite. But since their inception, four of these schools have either closed or been returned to the district as public schools. In the 2023-24 academic year, there were 18 Renaissance charters in operation.

Where does Cherelle Parker stand on charters?

Cherelle Parker, the Democratic nominee for Philadelphia mayor who is heavily favored to win the race to succeed Jim Kenney in November, has been guarded in her comments on the district’s current charter school system. (Philly mayors do not have direct oversight over schools, but do appoint school board members.)

Parker has said she supports “good seats” no matter what kind of school they’re in, “but we can’t get there if there is a battle between charters and traditional public schools,” she told Chalkbeat last spring.

To reduce the criticism that charters suck funding out of the public school system, Parker said she would advocate for state reimbursement to districts for any student that switches from public to charter. This used to exist, but was rolled back in 2011.

“Reinstating this will grow the pot of funds and allow for more opportunity for Philadelphia’s students no matter what type of school they attend,” Parker said.

Aspira to repay Philadelphia district roughly $3.5 million to settle charter enrollment dispute

2023-09-22T14:26:52+00:00

A leading community development organization that runs two charter schools will repay the Philadelphia school district more than $3.5 million, according to a settlement approved Thursday by the Board of Education

The payment from Aspira, Inc., ends a yearslong legal dispute between the district and Aspira over whether the district can be required to pay charters for students that exceed their agreed-upon enrollment caps. Antonio Pantoja Charter School and Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School both enrolled more students than they had been authorized to for several years between 2016 and 2021 — when they did not have active charter agreements with the district.

In addition, Aspira has agreed to withdraw its application to open two new charter schools in the city, one a K-8 and one a high school. It also agreed not to file a new application to open a K-8 school for five years, but can reapply as early next year to open a new high school.

This is the latest chapter in Aspira’s turbulent history of running charters in the district. Several years ago, the organization had to relinquish charters for two formerly district schools it ran. The schools, Olney High and Stetson Middle School, are now back under district control.

De Hostos and Pantoja, both K-8 schools, have separate boards of trustees, but both are operated by Aspira. The resolution says that de Hostos, which is on North Second Street and enrolls 510 students, will repay the school district $3,163,986 in installments over five years. Pantoja, which is in Kensington and enrolls 700 students, will repay $371,537, also over a five-year period.

It is unclear whether these repayments represent the full amount under dispute or a compromise.

As part of the agreement, both schools have new charters through 2028, with predetermined enrollment ceilings that they signed last week, Peng Chao, head of the district’s charter school office, said in an interview.

The board’s vote on the settlement was 8-1, with Lisa Salley voting no. Calls to Aspira’s office asking for comment were not returned. Aspira Executive Director Alfredo Calderon could not be reached for comment.

Chao did not make a presentation at the meeting explaining the resolution that included the settlement. No board members asked questions or commented on the resolution before voting on it. And no one from Aspira came to speak during the meeting’s public comment period. Board members didn’t respond when Lisa Haver, co-founder of the advocacy group Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, asked for a fuller explanation of the resolution.

According to an explanation provided by the Board of Education in its meeting materials, the disagreement centers on the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years “regarding the number of students permitted to be enrolled under the Hostos Charter and the Pantoja Charter, respectively.”

De Hostos has been in operation since 1998 and its charter was renewed in 2003, 2008 and 2013. Pantoja opened in 2008 and its charter was renewed in 2013. Both their charters expired, and they refused to sign charter renewal agreements in 2018. Under Pennsylvania’s charter school law, schools can continue operating without an active charter.

During the dispute over enrollment, Aspira and the boards of both schools appealed to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, arguing that the district should give them additional funds for the students above their caps. The agency initially sided with the charters, even though the district “filed multiple objections” and demands for hearings, which led to the negotiations that resulted in this settlement.

As part of the settlement, Pantoja and de Hostos have also agreed to withdraw from a lawsuit now in Commonwealth Court brought by several charter schools over whether the district is paying them the proper amount. The district disputes the way charters account for federal aid, some grant funds, and prekindergarten expenses, saying these practices result in overpayments to them.

Other Philadelphia charter schools still involved in that lawsuit include Esperanza Charter High School and two cyber charters.

Aspira is also withdrawing its applications to open two new charter schools: Aspira Bilingual College and Career Preparatory Academy and Aspira Dr. Ricardo E. Alegria Preparatory Charter School. It will also end any legal appeals related to enrollment at de Hostos and Pantoja that are still pending.

Aspira proposed Alegria as another K-8 school — which the group said would eventually enroll 1,000 students — and the Bilingual College and Career Preparatory Academy as a 1,200-student high school. Aspira agreed not to file another K-8 charter application for five years, but could propose another high school as early as next year.

According to their academic evaluations, based on test scores and other factors, Pantoja and de Hostos perform comparably to — if not slightly better than — district schools.

In 2017, Aspira was forced to surrender the charters for Olney High School and Stetson Middle School. These were formerly district schools ceded to charter organizations in 2011 under the Renaissance school turnaround initiative.

But the School Reform Commission, which then governed the district, cited myriad financial and organizational flaws with how the schools were run. It also determined that Aspira had used state and local per-pupil subsidies to guarantee a $15 million loan to Aspira Community Enterprises, Inc., which had acquired the former Cardinal Dougherty High School building.

At Thursday’s meeting, the board also voted to extend the charters for five years of two schools run by KIPP — KIPP DuBois and KIPP North Philadelphia.

The vote was 8-1, with Salley again the lone vote in opposition. Board member Chau Wing Lam, who voted in favor of extending the two KIPP charters, said that while the academic performance at the schools are “disappointing,” she noted that the decision is based on incomplete information, namely the absence of testing during 2020 and 2021.

The last new charter school approved to operate in the city was Hebrew Public in 2018, when the state controlled the district. Since resuming control of the district that same year, the school board has not approved any new charter schools.

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 district seeks to revoke Franklin Towne’s charter over discrimination allegations

2023-08-14T21:24:03+00:00

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A highly ranked Philadelphia charter school is in danger of losing its charter following allegations of discrimination within their admissions process.

The Philadelphia School District is recommending the city’s Board of Education begin the process to revoke Franklin Towne Charter High School’s charter, citing evidence that the school’s lottery admissions process was allegedly “influenced” by “nonrandom factors” for several years, according to a memo released Monday.

The school, in the Bridesburg neighborhood, is accused of systematically excluding students from certain city ZIP codes where Black families are in the majority.

According to the memo to the board authored by Peng Chao, the district Acting Chief of Charter Schools, the district charter school office “received initial outreach” from the chief academic officer at Franklin Towne in April alleging that the school “implemented discriminatory lottery practices.”

The district conducted an analysis that revealed, for the 2020-21 through the 2023-24 school years, the racial composition of the admitted students versus those who applied “raises questions about the selection process and suggests potential factors influencing the acceptance outcomes,” Chao wrote in the memo.

In an email statement on Monday, Franklin Towne CEO Brianna O’Donnell said her office “ordered an investigation through an impartial reputable outside agency” to look into the allegations when she took over the position in February. “That investigation is still under way,” the statement said.

In February, months before the discrimination allegations surfaced, Joseph Venditti, Franklin Towne’s CEO since 2004, resigned.

The allegations were first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer in May and Chao told reporters on Monday his office would provide evidence supporting the revocation recommendation at the school board meeting on Thursday.

“Our families, and our students need to have faith that the charter schools in our city are implementing fair and open enrollment processes,” Chao said Monday. “This is also about making sure that the adults who have the privilege of operating and governing this charter school directly are also held accountable for what has occurred over the course of time.”

Chao noted Franklin Towne “is not a new school,” as it opened in 2000, and therefore “the individuals in charge of the school…need to be held accountable.”

The school’s student demographics haven’t reflected those of the wider city in previous years. According to its 2014 application for a National Blue Ribbon Award, which the school won, Franklin Towne’s student demographics were 2% Asian, 8% Black/African American, 14% Hispanic, and 76% white in a city where the population was 42% Black and 36% white at the time.

According to the district’s charter school office website, a charter school operating in Philadelphia “must be accessible to all students within their district” and “must enroll and support all students, including those with special needs and limited English proficiency.”

The high school serves 1,300 students in grades nine through 12 and is currently operating under a charter agreement effective July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2024, according to the district memo.

In a statement on the Franklin Towne website, O’Donnell said the school’s leadership was “blindsided” by the district’s decision to initiate the charter revocation process.

“The data used to prepare our renewal application over the summer gave us no reason to believe the school is in any violation that would prohibit our charter from being renewed,” the statement read, cautioning that charter revocation processes “often take years to complete,” hinting at future action: “Especially if appeals are involved.”

The charter office’s investigation revealed a section of the school’s admission data, that included a yellow highlighted note labeled, “Do not take” with a list of 11 students as well as a note labeled, “Not in good standing” with another list of 11 students.

The investigation also highlighted five majority-Black city ZIP codes where, over the course of four school years, fewer than 10 students were accepted to Franklin Towne despite 88 students applying.

The charter school office does not regularly complete admissions analyses like this one, Chao said, but he did not rule out expanding this process to other charters operating in the city.

“We certainly hope that the outcomes here that we’ve seen in the analysis are unique to this scenario…in terms of whether or not this type of evaluation gets expanded into other scenarios, that’s something that we’re looking into,” Chao said.

If the board votes in favor of revoking the school’s charter on Thursday, their action would “kick off a hearing process,” Chao said.

Any hearing officer assigned would then work with the board to consider whether or not to actually revoke the school’s charter “at some point in the future.” After that, a potential appeals process could begin depending on the outcome, Chao said.

O’Donnell said in her email statement “given the voluminous work,” an investigation of this type requires, “we are puzzled as to how the Charter Schools Office could conclude in far less time than a reputable outside agency needs to complete its investigation.”

As to whether the current admission process took place under Venditti or continued after O’Donnell became CEO, Chao said, “it’s our understanding” that Venditti “was still in place for at least part of it,” but that there wasn’t “one set point in time at which there was a handoff” to O’Donnell.

“Acceptance processes and enrollment processes tend to span the course of multiple months from the winter through basically now and families are finalizing their schools for the new year,” Chao said.

Still, O’Donnell said in her statement on the school website, “regardless of how the [board] votes on Thursday, we will continue to educate students, enroll new students, and hire new staff.”

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

As Philadelphia mulls year-round schooling, a charter school network shows what it can look like

2023-08-07T11:30:00+00:00

Mikayla Woody and Aniyah Brown-Johnson are spending part of their summer doing things that might make their friends jealous: crafting a social media strategy and setting up a TikTok account.

A few hallways over, other kids are studying African dance, growing basil and lavender, and constructing London’s Big Ben clock out of clay.

These students are not at summer camp, or stuck in a cubicle completing a marketing internship. It’s all part of their year-round school program at Philadelphia’s Belmont Charter School.

Belmont’s model might soon attract more attention. Democratic mayoral nominee Cherelle Parker — the city’s Democratic nominee for mayor and therefore the favorite to assume the office next year — has made year-round schooling part of her education platform. And Superintendent Tony Watlington included a pilot for year-round school in his five-year-plan adopted by the district in June. They’ve said it would be a worthwhile idea to explore in response to concerns about the pandemic and student safety.

But they have yet to release further details about their vision. And there are a host of questions and potential challenges linked to whether district schools have the funding, staffing, and desire from teachers and parents to adapt something like Belmont’s approach to more than 113,000 students in traditional district classrooms.

So parents and students have been left to wonder: Would year-round schooling mean academics for 12 months? Shorter and more frequent breaks around holidays? Or something akin to an educational camp during the traditional summer recess?

Officials at Belmont Charter Network schools in West Philadelphia say their long-running summer extension program could be an option for policymakers to consider. But making it work has required Belmont to be flexible and listen to parents.

A young Belmont student during a summer activity. Belmont students say they want a year-round program that puts a focus on outdoor projects, field trips, and team-building activities.

Keeping school buildings open to ‘expand community’

Belmont charter schools educate over 1,200 students in pre-K-12 across three campuses, and their summer programming adds about seven weeks to the traditional 180-day school year.

Their buildings are open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday during July and August, as well as the latter part of June; the school district’s last day for students was June 13.

This year, Belmont’s school buildings were closed for as few as four business days between the last day of the 2022-23 school year and the start of summer programming. But some campuses closed for six days. When it comes to putting breaks on the calendar for a year-round schedule, Belmont prioritizes flexibility.

Teachers working in summer learning programs were given a few weeks off between the end of the regular academic year and the start of summer programming. During those breaks for teachers, the charter network ran more camp activities and field trips. Those teachers will also get two weeks off before they go back to Belmont in the fall.

Belmont’s July and August programs offer 255 students the chance to participate in a combination of camp activities like swimming, sports, and crafts. There are also lessons on everything from Greek mythology and undersea biology to Egyptian mummies and European currency exchanges.

Though small, the summer programs are highly individualized, in terms of activities as well as scheduling. Younger children participate in camp-related activities during the day, while older students have more opportunities for work-study programs, job training, and classroom learning in small groups.

The network also offers paid internships for high school students, flexible schedules for those with jobs, field trips, and college tours. And it has community service requirements.

The Philadelphia school district also offers free academic programs during the summer, including special education programs, workforce training, and a “full day school-meets-camp experience,” at locations across the city. But not every district school building is open for these programs.

Beth Dyson, chief of staff for the charter network, said she thinks Belmont’s programming has been responsive to parents, students, and teachers. Belmont’s summer extension program has been running for nearly two decades, Dyson said, though it’s mostly “flown under the radar.”

Morgan Schrankel, a reading specialist at Belmont, put together the summer lessons on foreign currency exchanges and is leading arts activities for students.

She said working during the summer has allowed her to “expand her community” at Belmont by working with new students. It’s also given her an outlet to experiment with lesson plans.

“When I’m following a curriculum, when I’m worried about testing, when I’m doing all those things, I kind of have to do things one way. But this allows me to do things I’m passionate about,” she said.

The opportunities outside regular coursework at Belmont during the warmer months are also crucial. Woody said her summer internship has helped build her resume and prepared for life outside of and after high school.

“You’re actually gonna take these skills and apply [them] to something,” Woody said. “Build references, build your resume, and different things too because that can be hard. We don’t get a lot of chances. So it’s just like, work with what you’ve got, and know what’s being provided to you.”

Dyson said Belmont surveys parents and students continuously to learn about what’s working and what’s not.

For example, families reported wanting more child-care coverage for older students earlier in the summer and for young children later in the summer.

As a result, Belmont staggered starting dates for their middle school and high school programs and extended their early education summer programs further into August to accommodate family needs.

Year-round school is far from a panacea

When they’ve discussed year-round schooling, Parker and Watlington have said it’s one way to address learning disparities, provide child care for working parents, and give kids places to go during the summer.

For example, they’ve touted it as a way to help students who are struggling academically after COVID’s disruptions. Lagging state test scores have underscored worries about their progress and the district’s ability to meet its long-term goals.

Just 19% of all Belmont students scored proficient or advanced on state English language arts exams for the 2021-22 school year, an 11 point decrease from the previous year, and 4% did so in math. Belmont’s scores are lower than the traditional district schools’ results during the same time period.

There are other acute concerns beyond academics that Belmont tries to address. In recent years, people under the age of 18 have made up a growing number of gunshot victims —as well as perpetrators — in the city. Simultaneously, school climate ratings in the district have dipped. There are also city curfews and age restrictions limiting where young people can gather, and these can feel especially constraining in the summer.

That desire for students to feel “cared for and appreciated,” Dyson said, and that they feel like they’re making good use of their time, are big factors in how Belmont’s leaders have designed the year-round schooling program.

“The number one goal is for our kids to have a safe, consistent place to be,” said Jane Lawson, Belmont’s managing director of out of school time.

The first Belmont charter school started in 2002 following the state’s takeover of the district as the city’s first “turnaround school” in what was originally a district-run school. The network has grown to include five schools across three locations in Philadelphia.

Belmont has its critics. There’s been resistance to its attempts to grow over the years. And just before the pandemic, it attracted controversy regarding the sale of its district-owned building.

Dyson said Belmont has not been contacted by the Parker campaign or anyone from the school district to discuss their summer programming and how it fits into the network’s approach to year-round school. A spokesperson for the Parker campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Belmont students spend the summer participating in a combination of camp activities like swimming, sports, and crafts, in addition to academics.

Getting funding, avoiding teacher burnout are key

Then there are hurdles related to dollars, cents, and staffing.

The pilot in the district’s five-year plan doesn’t include a cost or other details about potential year-round programming. Watlington has admitted the district lacks the funding to accomplish all of the goals in his strategic plan as the district faces long-term fiscal worries.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union hasn’t commented on any year-round school proposal yet. But in order to make such a big shift, the district and the union would have to renegotiate the district’s teacher contract, which expires in August 2024. Such talks could be daunting.

A related issue: teacher burnout and turnover, which has become a national crisis. Philadelphia has faced significant staff turnover recently, and Pennsylvania as a whole faces a teacher shortage.

That was the backdrop for a simple question Woody had for Philadelphia education leaders: “Are y’all gonna be paying teachers more?”

She added that, in her experience, teachers are already “worn out” from expectations during the regular school year, and many may not be eager to keep working during the summer.

At the same time, to Dyson’s surprise, she said Belmont hasn’t really experienced challenges finding some regular classroom teachers willing to sign on for summer programming.

That also provides continuity for students, Dyson said, even if they work with teachers who aren’t their regular classroom teachers, because seeing someone familiar in the hallways helps students with feelings of anxiety about the next school year.

Tara Quinn, a former district teacher who is in her fifth year teaching at Belmont, said having sufficient break time for teacher “rejuvenation” is non-negotiable, something Woody and Brown-Johnson said is also necessary for students.

Without that time off, Quinn said, she would have seriously considered not teaching during the summer: “I need some kind of break.”

Then there’s the financial incentive. Quinn said having the opportunity to earn extra money during the summer was also a big motivator — she has a son in college and the extra income has been helpful.

Woody and Brown-Johnson said if they could advise Watlington and Parker, they would encourage the city to set up a year-round program that puts a focus on outdoor projects, field trips, and team-building activities for students.

Woody said the priority should be “something inspirational, educational, and fun. You don’t want to have busy work and boring work.”

Internships, work-study programs, or other job-related activities are also a must, they said.

But Brown-Johnson’s advice about the nuts and bolts of a good year-round program comes with a general caveat: She encouraged policymakers to think about making year-round school optional, not a mandatory one-size-fits-all solution.

Many students might not adjust well to being in classrooms year-round, she said. Rather, “everybody should have a say” in what their school’s program should look like.

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

Philly board of education votes again to deny three charter renewals

2023-01-27T23:03:23+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education Thursday voted for a second time to deny renewal to three charter schools — including one that has been operating for 20 years and enrolls 1,800 students — citing concerns about potential conflicts of interest regarding their legal representation and management practices.

The nine-member board had voted nearly unanimously at its October meeting not to renew the charters of the three schools — First Philadelphia Prep Charter, Tacony Academy Charter, and Charter School for the Arts and Sciences at HR Edmunds — but made no comments at the time as to their reasons.

At Thursday’s meeting, the newly elected board president Reginald Streater made a lengthy statement outlining his objections, saying he had received feedback on the October meeting “from some members of the public, including from representatives of the impacted charter schools, suggesting I wasn’t clear. Tonight I want to elaborate.”

He didn’t say why a repeat vote was necessary, other than that his comments should be addressed to items that were on the agenda of that meeting.

“When charter schools and their charter management companies have overlapping board members or have the same legal counsel, I can’t help but question whether management fees, services, and termination provisions in these management agreements can be negotiated at arm’s length,” Streater said. “Ultimately, how are public funds being spent and what impact does this have on the educational services provided to students? Are adequate protections in place?”

Other board members didn’t speak, but the vote to deny the renewals was 7-1, with only Cecelia Thompson indicating she favored renewal. Julia Danzy was absent.

At the board’s October meeting, the votes against renewing First Philadelphia and Tacony were unanimous; the vote against renewing Edmunds was 8-1.

First Philadelphia and Tacony are managed by the charter management organization American Paradigm. Edmunds, a former district-run school converted to a charter under the Renaissance Schools initiative, is run by String Theory.

Although Streater didn’t name the firm, the law firm Sand and Saidel represents both the boards and the management companies at the three schools. All three schools also get financial services from the consulting firm Santilli & Thomson, which works closely with Sand and Saidel.

“I become concerned when I perceive charter schools’ losing autonomy to their charter management companies,” Streater said in his statement at the board meeting.

Lawyer: Charters ‘violated no law’

Sand and Saidel managing partner Daniel Saidel said in an interview with Chalkbeat that neither he nor the charter schools have violated any law or ethical principle and defended the arrangement as saving the schools money that can be applied to the children’s education.

In addition, he said, the schools signed a charter agreement given to them by the district, which subsequently sought to impose conditions.

“There’s no substance or evidence or findings of fact to show that somehow these kinds of relationships are nonviable” he said, or “illegal, immoral or unethical … Nothing was said that we did something wrong.” The denial was based on “opinion, not facts,” he said.

He pointed out that the charter schools, which are all in the northeast section of the city, can continue to operate under an expired charter.

The charter office had proposed that First Philadelphia and Tacony Academy be renewed for five years with conditions, and Edmunds for one. None of the schools fully meets academic standards set by the district, according to their most recent charter evaluations.

The summary of the charter agreements for all three schools, released as part of the meeting’s agenda before the vote, required “the submission of a conflict of interest policy that is in compliance with the Nonprofit Law and the Ethics Act and the submission [of] conflict waivers if legal counsel for the Charter School also represents the management organization for the Charter School.”

The charter office recommended First Philadelphia for a five-year renewal with conditions including the more explicit conflict of interest policy, clarity around student rights regarding expulsion, and the conduct of its admissions lottery. The K-12 school was founded in 2002 and has 1,800 students, making it one of the largest in the city, district or charter.

According to its most recent evaluation by the charter office, First Philadelphia approached academic standards for grades K-8, but failed to meet academic standards for 9-12

At the meeting, Teeona Crumpton said several of her family members who attended First Philadelphia over the last 20 years went on to college and successful careers. Her daughter is now a sixth grader there.

“This school gives youth a foundation in education that prepares them for a successful future,” she told board members. She said teachers have high expectations and students have access to arts programs, computers, tutors, and other resources.

Tacony, a K-12 school that opened in 2009, has 1,000 students. According to its evaluation, it meets academic standards for K-8, but not for 9-12. Its five-year renewal conditions were similar to those at First Philadelphia.

String Theory Edmunds, which the management company took over in 2012, is a K-8 school with 1,000 students. Its evaluation concluded that it did not meet academic standards, with scores on the Pennsylvania Performance Profile that fell below both the charter and district average.

District officials have expressed frustration that under Pennsylvania’s charter law, which has not been significantly revised since its adoption in 1997, charters can continue to operate under an expired charter unless the authorizing body moves to revoke it. By voting not to renew the charter, the board Thursday took a step in that direction.

Under the charter law, the school can appeal, with the final arbiter being the Charter Appeals Board based in Harrisburg. The cumbersome process can blunt incentive for schools and the district to reach agreement on many policies, especially complex and controversial ones around legal representation and admissions policies.

The three schools are already operating under expired charters, as Saidel pointed out. The School Reform Commission, which ran the district when it was under state control, did not act to renew these charters in 2017, when the last charters they signed in 2012 technically expired.

“This is not a new issue for the schools,” said one district official who spoke on background. “They are well aware of our issue. They have chosen not to resolve it.”

In his opening remarks, Streater also responded to criticism by elected officials to another controversial board action: its decision earlier this month to file a lawsuit against the city regarding a new ordinance that district officials say could delay the opening of school in September. The ordinance sets stricter occupancy standards for school buildings regarding asbestos and other potential environmental hazards.

After the lawsuit was filed, city officials said the district should have sought to resolve the issue through collaboration, not a lawsuit. Streater said Thursday that the district had done just that to no avail.

“This lawsuit was filed because our concerns have not been addressed,” he said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in the city. She is a former president of the Education Writers Association. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly’s Black charter school leaders vow to push back after board votes

2022-06-27T22:39:55+00:00

Editor’s note: This article was updated to reword material that appeared verbatim in a Philadelphia school district press release.

The movement to preserve Black-operated charter schools won’t be deterred by the Philadelphia Board of Education’s votes last week to begin the process of closing two such charters, say members of a coalition who believe certain schools face racial bias in how they’re regulated.

The school board unanimously voted June 23 not to renew the charters of Southwest Leadership Academy Charter School and Laboratory Charter School, which both have Black leadership. Those votes followed the recommendation of the district’s Charter School Office.

The board also voted to proceed with requiring Memphis Street Academy at J.P. Jones, which is managed by American Paradigm Schools, to surrender its charter. Though Memphis Street is not considered a Black-operated charter, 96% of its students identify as Black, Hispanic, or multi-racial.

Officials said poor academic performance and other oversight issues drove their decisions, and board member Reginald Streater called charges that racial bias influenced the votes “factually false.” However, supporters of Black-led charter schools—including state and local politicians who led a protest outside district headquarters before the votes—say they’re not done fighting what they called the board’s unfair approach. The dispute comes amid an investigation into the city’s charter authorizing practices.

“We’re going to continue to stand up against any type of systemic bias, whether it affects charter schools, Black-operated district schools, private schools, bodegas, or car dealerships,” said Larry Jones, the CEO of the Richard Allen Charter School who also a member of the African American Charter Schools Coalition.

Southwest and Laboratory will remain open for now and in the fall. Charter schools can appeal to the State Charter Appeal Board if local boards vote to repeal their charters, and they can remain open during the appeals process. However, that process can take many months, or up to a year in some cases.

Leigh Purnell, the CEO and principal of Southwest Leadership, said the school plans to appeal the board’s vote. Purnell said the city’s charter schools office failed to work with Southwest Leadership to develop an improvement plan.

“I do not believe the school board received a well-rounded picture, a holistic picture, of our school,” Purnell said.

Ashley Redfearn, CEO of American Paradigm Schools, which operates Memphis Street, said in a statement that the school is currently open for summer programming and plans to be open for the 2022-2023 school year. Redfearn said her organization plans “to pursue every legal channel to continue to provide quality, well-rounded education and support” for the school’s students and community.

Closing Black-operated charters a thorny issue

The votes against the three schools come six months after the board authorized the law firm of Ballard Spahr to probe whether racial bias is a factor in the charter school authorizing process. These allegations came from the charter schools coalition, which represents 22 schools and has called for an overhaul of the district’s charter office, as well as new ways for the district to evaluate the schools.

Ballard Spahr is expected to release the results of its independent investigation this fall.

In a report to the board about schools whose charters are up for renewal this year, acting chief of the Charter School Office Pen Chao said Southwest Leadership failed to meet generally accepted standards of fiscal management and audit requirements related to short-term and long-term financial sustainability. For instance, the school was unable to provide documentation for 14 of 40 identified financial transactions, a 43% error rate, Chao noted.

Meanwhile, Laboratory Charter did not have a fully compliant enrollment process. It also failed to timely identify students as English learners; and failed to maintain and obtain FBI background and Pennsylvania criminal background checks for employees.

And Memphis Street Academy failed to meet the required academic standards set out in its charter. Chao said the school had previously agreed that if it did not meet any of those academic standards, it would voluntarily forfeit its charter.

Students, parents, and teachers spoke on behalf of the schools before the board votes.

Steven Bilksi, assistant principal and ESL coordinator at Memphis Street said that families served by his school have benefited from the “transformative initiatives” his school has put in place, in accordance with its charter.

“These initiatives have allowed us to provide all of our scholars and families with the necessary work to succeed academically, socially and emotionally,” Bilksi said.

And Jae Strothers, who works at Laboratory Charter, said that she loves “the work that we do at Laboratory, as well as the children’s parents.”

Local and state politicians, including members of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus, addressed the board in support of the three schools before the votes. In addition, state Sen. Anthony Williams and City Councilman Isaiah Thomas denounced the anticipated votes during a protest outside district headquarters.

“If they decide to ignore the state legislators who fund the school district, and to ignore the city council members who fund the school district, and still move in the way that they want to, it’s time for us to wage war,” Thomas said.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

With COVID surge in Philly, educators call for temporary return to remote learning or stricter health protocols

2021-12-21T22:15:49+00:00

Amid a rise in COVID-19 cases, eight schools in the Philadelphia school district have closed temporarily because of positive cases.

The closures come amid an outcry over the recent death of an unvaccinated student at Olney Charter High School and data showing only about 21% of eligible children in Philadelphia have received the vaccine. Some educators are pushing for classes to go remote ahead of the holiday break, which begins Dec. 24, and for stricter health and safety measures for schools.

Before the recent closures, the district had only temporarily closed five schools this school year, said district spokesperson Monica Lewis. She told Chalkbeat the district has no immediate plans to go virtual amid this recent COVID spike. “We remain confident in our efforts to keep positive test rates relatively low considering the size of our student population,” she said.

Five schools, which serve early learners, have closed for a 10-day period, including Ethan Allen, Abram Jenks, John Welsh, Pennypacker, and Sullivan. Allen’s 10-day period ends Dec. 24, while Jenks, Welsh and Pennypacker’s ends Dec. 27. And Sullivan’s period ends Jan. 4, a day after district staff are scheduled to return. (The schools will reopen after the scheduled winter break.)

Three more schools — Kenderton Elementary School, Waring Middle School, and Penn Treaty High School — also have been closed for 10-day periods, according to the health department. They will reopen Jan. 4.

Another school, Randolph Technical High School in Nicetown, closed for a 48-hour investigation due to positive COVID-19 cases. The closure affected all classes and grades, though its ninth grade was already under quarantine until Jan. 4. The 48-hour closure ended Dec. 21, according to the school district.

“We are very much aware and encouraging people to be mindful to take care of themselves and loved ones, wear your masks and get tested,” Lewis said, adding that the district encourages eligible people to get vaccinated for “an additional layer of protection.”

The district also has six schools where COVID testing is offered to families, she said.

To date, 2,260 students and district staff have contracted the virus this school year— with 258 since Dec. 5, according to the district’s COVID dashboard. The district has more than 120,000 students and about 20,000 staff members.

Under district guidance, whole schools are only closed if 3% of the school population tests positive for the virus. That’s less strict than the previous guidelines, which closed buildings when there were six COVID cases regardless of the size of the student population.

The city health department released numbers Dec. 20 showing a spike in COVID cases. Philadelphia has averaged 641 new cases of COVID-19 per day over the last two weeks, an increase from about 254 per day around the Thanksgiving holiday.

The spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus has some educators in Philadelphia questioning whether students should continue learning in person ahead of the holiday break, which starts Dec. 24 and runs until Jan. 4.

Robin Cooper, president of Local 502/CASA, the principals union, told Chalkbeat that all schools should be virtual for the remainder of the week.

“We’ve been polling members, and about 80% are for virtual,” she said, adding that the omicron variant and a lack of cleaning in some schools has caused concerns.

“It’s just a mess,” she said.

Though he disagrees with the prospect of schools going remote, Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, raised concerns about contact tracing of positive cases in schools.

“The teachers are very concerned and the contact tracing seems to be taking a longer period of time. And as a result of that, that causes a tremendous amount of anxiety among the members in our schools,” he said. “The nurses are so overworked that they cannot do the contact tracing.”

Some districts across the country are adjusting winter breaks or considering remote learning in January amid the omicron wave. But James Garrow, communications director for Philadelphia’s health department, said in an email that the city wants to keep schools open. “In-person education is beneficial to students in so many ways, we are committed to keeping students in school.”

He also said there are no imminent plans to alter school health protocols. “We believe that, so long as everyone follows the guidance of getting everyone vaccinated and boosted, wearing a mask whenever they aren’t eating or drinking, and staying home if they feel the slightest bit sick, we can help keep cases down,” he said.

Teachers at Olney called out of work Dec. 20, causing the school to go virtual, after the death last week of senior Alayna Thach from COVID. Educators at the charter school have been protesting what they say are inadequate health and safety protocols. The charter high school is run by ASPIRA Inc. of Pennsylvania, which operates in primarily North Philadelphia communities, including Hunting Park, Olney, and Kensington.

The school has offered vaccine clinics, and Thach’s family said she had planned to get vaccinated in January.

After long road, Philly board renews Universal Audenried’s charter

2021-12-10T22:36:19+00:00

Months after Philadelphia’s Board of Education vowed to investigate allegations that Black-led charter schools have been targeted for closure, the board voted to renew Universal Audenried Promise Neighborhood Partnership Charter School’s charter.

Though the board voted 7-1 in favor of the popular Black-led charter school in South Philadelphia, it came with pushback that may affect the process in the future of how charter schools will be reviewed for renewal.

Board member Mallory Fix Lopez, who voted against the renewal, raised an issue about the actions of the former chief financial officer for Universal, who was placed on administrative leave in May 2019 yet continued to sign and authorize checks. She also spoke of the high number of suspensions and expulsions at the school compared to the district. “I felt they were too egregious to overlook,” she said.

There was a formal objection made by members of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, or APPS, stating in a letter that the board did not disclose the full terms of the agreement and violated Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act. “The board has denied the public to be heard on this agreement as the public has no knowledge of what it contains,” the objection said.

At last month’s meeting, the board voted unanimously to approve the renewal application for Universal Vare Promise Neighborhood Partnership Charter School in South Philadelphia, which is part of the same charter network, but delayed a vote on Audenried.

On Dec. 6, the school board was notified that the Board of Trustees for Universal Family of Schools approved the terms and conditions and executed the renewal charter agreement issued by the charter school’s office. The agreement is for a five-year term through June 2026.

The agreement included conditions related to expulsions, employee background checks, financial issues, and a surrender provision if Audenried fails to meet the conditions. The action item to exercise surrender of charter was withdrawn from Thursday’s agenda and was replaced with an action item for renewal.

“We will continue to perform at high levels and serve our scholars and community over the next five years,” said Penny Nixon, superintendent and CEO of Universal Family of Schools after Thursday’s decision.

Past revocations of Black-led charters have drawn criticism from the 20-school African-American Charter Schools Coalition, which has raised concerns about the treatment of schools with Black leadership. The coalition called for an overhaul of the district’s charter office, demanding fairness, transparency, and equity on evaluations, oversight and expansion of charter schools.

If a charter agreement is revoked, the charter is dissolved, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Students attending a dissolved charter school can then apply to another school in their district, regardless of application deadlines. Charters, however, have a right to appeal to the Pennsylvania Charter Appeal Board before being dissolved.

City Council member Isaiah Thomas criticized the board’s presentation in the spring, saying, “it was like a gloomy cloud came over when Black charters came up,” with talks about accountability reports and “making sure you bring the hammer down” when the board’s expectations are not met.

Philadelphia has 85 charter schools, with a total enrollment of more than 75,000 students, or about a third of those enrolled in the city’s publicly funded schools. The school district, through its charter schools office, is the sole authorizer.

Black and Latino charter leaders operate 19% of the charters in Philadelphia, according to the coalition, but account for 87% of those recommended for closure or nonrenewal over the past several years, according to the coalition.

The district says it evaluates charter schools based on academic, operational, and financial measures and that charters recommended for closure or nonrenewal often have not met state standards for student proficiency in reading and math, mostly measured by standardized test scores. Graduation rates also are considered for high schools.

In May, board members pledged to address the allegations made by the coalition and hire an independent investigator.

The board hired Philadelphia-based law firm Ballard Spahr LLP to lead the investigation. The firm, which is working pro bono, might hire a third-party consultant with experience in racial equity analysis to assist the investigation. If it does, the school district will pay for the consultant.

The results of the investigation are expected in the fall, according to the board.

Philly board hires firm to investigate racial bias in charter school authorizations

2021-12-01T23:05:52+00:00

Months after the Philadelphia school board vowed to look into allegations that Black-led charter schools have been targeted for closure, the board announced Wednesday that it’s hiring a local firm to investigate racial bias in how charter schools are authorized.

The board has tapped Ballard Spahr LLP, a Philadelphia-based law firm to lead the investigation. The firm, which is working for free, might hire a third-party consultant with experience in racial equity analyses to assist in the investigation. If it does, the school district will pay for the consultant.

The results of the investigation are expected in the fall, according to the board.

“The board takes allegations of racial bias seriously, and we want everyone to know that we are looking transparently at what we do in order to continuously improve our work on behalf of Philadelphia’s students,” Board of Education President Joyce Wilkerson said in a statement. “We also want our minority founded and led schools to know that we recognize the value their voices bring to the table as we continue to strengthen charter authorizing practices.”

The announcement comes after the school board delayed a vote last month on whether to close Universal Audenried Promise Neighborhood Partnership Charter School, a popular Black-led charter school in South Philadelphia. That vote now is scheduled for Dec. 9.

At last month’s meeting, the board voted 7-1 to push back the vote. The dissenting vote was from Mallory Fix Lopez.

At the same meeting, the board voted unanimously to approve the renewal application for Universal Vare Promise Neighborhood Partnership Charter School in South Philadelphia, which is part of the same charter network.

Universal spokesperson Devon Allen said the school has no comment about the upcoming vote.

Past revocations of Black-led charters have drawn criticism from the African American Charter Schools Coalition, a group of 20 schools, which has raised concerns about the treatment of schools with Black leadership. The coalition called for an overhaul of the district’s charter office, demanding fairness, transparency, and equity when it comes to evaluation, oversight and expansion of charter schools.

City Council member Isaiah Thomas criticized the board’s presentation in the spring saying “it was like a gloomy cloud came over when Black charters came up” with talks about accountability reports and “making sure you bring the hammer down” when the board’s expectations are not met.

Philadelphia has more than 80 charter schools, with a total enrollment of more than 75,000 students, or about a third of those enrolled in the city’s publicly funded schools. The school district, through its charter schools office, is the sole authorizer. According to the coalition, Black and Latino charter leaders operate 19% of the charters in Philadelphia, but account for 87% of those recommended for closure or nonrenewal over the past several years.

The district says that it evaluates charter schools based on academic, operational, and financial measures and that charters recommended for closure or nonrenewal often have not met state standards for student proficiency in reading and math, which are mostly measured by standardized test scores. Graduation rates are also considered for high schools.

In May, members of the board pledged to address the allegations made by the coalition and hire an independent investigator.

In the case of Audenried, charter officials are discussing provisions under a “surrender clause,” meaning the school must meet certain conditions for renewal or it will forfeit the school’s charter. According to the school board, if Audenried fails to comply with two of the conditions for renewal under the surrender, then board may vote for closure by June 30.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, if a charter agreement is revoked, the charter is dissolved. Students attending a dissolved charter school are then able to apply to another school in their district, regardless of application deadlines. Charters, however, have a right to appeal to the Pennsylvania Charter Appeal Board before being dissolved.

Racial allegations thrown over provision given to one Philadelphia Black-led charter high school

2021-06-05T00:33:20+00:00

More than a month ago, the African American Charter Schools Coalition accused the School District of Philadelphia of discriminating against Black-led charter schools by targeting them for closure at a disproportionate rate.

Now the coalition is pointing to the treatment of one charter high school as the latest in what they say is a pattern of discrimination by the district’s Charter Schools Office.

District officials renewed all charter schools this year, but attached a “surrender clause” to the renewal for Universal Audenried Promise Neighborhood Partnership Charter School, a predominantly Black school in South Philadelphia. The provision gives a charter school the opportunity to improve rather than face non-renewal for being out of compliance with their charter agreement, officials said. But the school typically has to agree to close, without going through the state’s appeals process, if it doesn’t improve.

In a statement to Chalkbeat, the Charter Schools Office said the provision creates a “path forward for the charter school.”

But the coalition, and other charter supporters, say the “surrender clause” would allow the district to close Universal Audenried without appeal — and they questioned why it was the only school to receive such a provision this year.

“When a surrender clause is a condition of renewal, the school district violates the law and subjects the charter school to its findings without the due process of appeal,” said Penny Nixon, superintendent and CEO of Universal Schools. “The Board of Directors of Universal Schools will not agree to a charter renewal agreement containing a surrender clause for Universal Audenried or any of the Universal Family of Schools.”

Nixon said Universal Schools plans to seek legal counsel on the provision.

Jeanne Allen, founder and CEO of the national charter advocacy organization Center for Education Reform, said the clause is a “poison pill in the renewal process, which in effect gives districts the upper hand to close a charter regardless of its quality, facts or demand.”

But the Charter Schools Office said Universal Audenried already had such a provision in its current charter, which was for a period of five years ending this month. Officials said they decided to extend it because the school was out of compliance in several areas, including its expulsions process, background checks for employees and some financial practices. Both sides must agree to the “surrender clause.”

Out of the thirteen charter schools listed in this year’s cohort of schools renewed by the district, there are six Black-led charters: Global Leadership Academy at Huey; Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School; Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School; Universal Charter School at Audenried; Universal Charter School at Vare; and West Philadelphia Achievement Charter School.

Three of the 13 schools’ current charters had a “surrender clause,” including Universal Audenried. District officials, through their review process, decided that two of the three met the conditions for renewal with conditions but without the surrender provision. Universal Audenried didn’t, they determined. (The Charter Schools Office didn’t name the other two schools.)

Board President Joyce Wilkerson defended the Charter Schools Office’s determination and said the surrender provision gives Universal Audenried “another chance.”

“Universal Audenried’s renewal report clearly outlines the many ways it is out of compliance with its charter and the law,” she said. “Most importantly, these include the expulsion of over 30 students, many of whom were not provided with basic due process rights. This is particularly concerning as Universal Audenried is a Renaissance charter school that should be aligning with district policies that promote restorative justice and restorative practices for students.
Additionally, the charter school’s own independent audit found material weaknesses in the charter school’s financial practices in multiple years. The Charter Schools Office’s recommendation is a path forward for the charter school and would allow Universal Audenried another chance to fix these significant problems.”

The African American Charter Schools Coalition called for an overhaul of the district’s charter office more than a month ago, demanding fairness, transparency, and equity when it comes to evaluation, oversight and expansion of charter schools.

The group’s call to action came after the majority of the school board voted to follow the recommendation of a hearing officer to not renew Universal Bluford and Universal Daroff schools in West Philadelphia. Only board members Lisa Salley and Cecelia Thompson voted against the non-renewals.

Board members later agreed to look into claims of systemic bias made by the coalition. Some city council members also have called for a review.

City Councilman Isiah Thomas, who agreed with calls for an investigation, said the surrender clause is “another example of an added level of scrutiny for Philadelphia’s Black institutions.”

“It is unacceptable that the only district school to receive renewal with a surrender clause is a Black-led school,” Thomas said in a statement to the district. “We cannot use terms like ‘racial equity lens’ and ‘anti-racism curriculum’ while putting discriminatory clauses on schools that are created by and for the Black community.”

Audenreid’s Principal Joshua Anderson told Chalkbeat the provision was a surprise.

“I’ve been at Audenreid since 2011. I was a history teacher there and I’ve sort of seen the transformation and the improvements that have happened over the past 10 years. Based on the school performance report that the district publishes every year Audenreid is often the highest performing neighborhood school in the city.”

Kenny Gamble, music mogul and founder of Universal Schools, said Universal has done an excellent job of providing a high-quality education to students. He said they will “vigorously fight against any injustice that seeks to violate the rights of an appeal or, more importantly, educate our children.”

David Hardy, who is a member of the coalition and founder of Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School, called the provision “an attack on charter schools which are serving the least advantaged students and which parents have depended on as long as the District schools have failed them.”
It was announced on Thursday that the head of the Charter Schools Office, Christina Grant is leaving Philadelphia to become the state superintendent in Washington D.C. Peng Chao will lead the office in an interim position. Grant declined to comment on her departure.

‘Should kids get vaccinated?’: Philadelphia students ask questions about COVID-19 vaccine during town hall

2021-05-22T01:22:42+00:00

Speaking Friday to a group of students at Mastery Charter School in West Philadelphia, Kamau Stanford’s message was clear: “Don’t get medical information from your friends. Don’t get medical information from Instagram influencers.”

Stanford, the guest speaker at a vaccine information event held at the charter network’s Shoemaker campus, urged students to look to medical professionals and reputable sources online for information about COVID-19 vaccines. He cited the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, among them.

The Germantown native is a graduate of Central High School, a former 12th grade dean of students at Shoemaker, and the current chief operating officer for the Philadelphia Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium.

He fielded a barrage of questions from a group of socially distanced students. Questions included “What’s the vaccine made of?” and “If you had COVID, can you get vaccinated?”

Stanford emphasized that he’s not a medical doctor, but spoke to students to raise awareness about the vaccine. He explained that Pfizer is the only vaccine currently approved for emergency use in children 12-17.

Unlike the Philadelphia school district, which chose not to offer in-person learning for 10th to 12th graders this school year, Mastery has tried to bring back as many students as possible to its 18 schools across the city. The charter network, which enrolls about 14,000 K-12 students, started hybrid learning back in March and April, meaning students learn in person on some days and at home on others.

Multiple schools in the Mastery network will host vaccination clinics on campus. They will be open to eligible students, their families, and members of the community.

Meaghann Lawson, the principal at Shoemaker, said the event was important for the students because they have been disproportionately affected, with some having contracted the virus. She noted: “Our ability to have them come back in the building and to feel comfortable so that they’re able to be successful is critical.”

Lawson said approximately 40% to 50% of all grades have returned to Shoemaker since the network opened its doors this semester.

Superintendent William Hite of the Philadelphia district said low and declining rates of COVID-19 cases in the city, relaxed pandemic restrictions, growing vaccination rates, and the ability to vaccinate students 12-15 would enable the district to reopen fully in the fall.

“Most importantly, the rate of positive COVID cases within our district has remained well below 1%,” he said, citing rates from in-school testing.

The city’s health department recently suggested that students over the age of 12 consider getting the Pfizer vaccine before returning to school. City officials have yet to announce its policy on face masks for summer and fall sessions.

In Philadelphia, children 12 and up do not need the consent of a parent or guardian to be vaccinated, according to the city’s health department.

Stanford noted a lot of colleges and universities are making it mandatory for on-campus students to get the vaccine. “It doesn’t affect sixth and seventh graders, but for kids who are graduating, it definitely affects them because it determines what their college is going to look like.”

Khaira Nahl, a dean at Mastery Shoemaker, said Friday’s event was beneficial for students.

“They need to know what’s going on,” she said. “I did enjoy the students kind of like asking questions and trying to find out more information on their own. I think the pandemic helped to bring health to the forefront of their minds.”

Stanford’s sister, Dr. Ala Stanford, founded the Philadelphia Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium. Community and political leaders have praised her organization for outpacing the city in vaccinating Black residents.

School board will investigate claims of bias against Black-run charter schools in Philadelphia

2021-05-12T21:09:21+00:00

Less than a month after the Philadelphia Board of Education decided not to renew two Black-led charter schools, its members said Tuesday they will look into claims of systemic bias made by a coalition of Black charter school leaders.

Some members of the board, along with city council members, pledged Tuesday to address the allegations during the school district’s annual budget hearing before council. The board will be seeking an independent entity to investigate the claims, a board representative told Chalkbeat Tuesday.

The African American Charter Schools Coalition is calling for an overhaul of the district’s charter office, demanding fairness, transparency, and equity when it comes to evaluation, oversight and expansion of charter schools. The group’s call to action comes after the majority of the board voted to follow the recommendation of a hearing officer to not renew Universal Bluford and Universal Daroff schools. Only board members Lisa Salley and Cecelia Thompson voted against the non-renewals.

“While we believe that we do this in a fair and equitable manner, concerns have been raised that our practices have discriminated against African American founded and led charter schools,” said school board member Salley. “We take all allegations of discrimination seriously and are working now to provide these schools with an independent entity who can unpack and investigate these allegations.”

Attorney Rudy Garcia, whom the school board hired to review the two schools, cited low proficiency rates in math, English language arts, and science, and failure to comply with other applicable laws, such as maintaining Pennsylvania child abuse clearances, and state and federal criminal backgrounds.

Black and Latino charter leaders operate 19% of the charters in the city, but account for 87% of those recommended for closure or nonrenewal over the past several years, according to the coalition.

Board member Julia Danzy said the board has high expectations for all schools. “Many of our charter schools, which serve approximately one-third of the public school students in Philadelphia, are doing phenomenal work; but for schools that are not serving students well, it is our responsibility to hold them accountable.”

But Councilmember Isiah Thomas criticized the board’s presentation saying “it was like a gloomy cloud came over when Black charters came up” with talks about accountability reports and “making sure you bring the hammer down” when the board’s expectations are not met.

“That’s the exact issue we’re trying to communicate, the tone, the perception,” Thomas said. “The statement made today is another example exactly of what we’re talking about.”

He pointed to the schools’ role in promoting “equity and inclusion,” as well as acknowledgement of the importance of “the images young people see every day,” the importance of role models, and opportunities for international travel.

Thomas also raised the issue that the Black-led institutions have suffered from some kind of “retaliation,” which he did not explain in detail.

School board president Joyce Wilkerson denied Thomas’ accusations thrown at the board.

“I know of no effort made to retaliate against any institution that spoke to this alleged discrimination,” Wilkerson said. She requested any specific allegation to be forwarded to her office.

State Sen. Anthony Williams and Council members Maria Quiñones-Sánchez and Curtis Jones Jr., were also a part of the virtual news conference held by the coalition Tuesday. They expressed concerns over the allegations made by the coalition.

The district evaluates charter schools based on academic, operational, and financial measures. Charters recommended for closure or nonrenewal often have not met state standards regarding student proficiency in reading and math, which is mostly measured by standardized test scores. For high schools, graduation rates are also considered.

Bluford Principal Crystal Gary Nelson appeared on WURD 96.1 FM Tuesday and said the board’s renewal process is flawed and her office “did not have any input in the final charter renewal report.”

Penny Nixon, superintendent and CEO of schools at Universal, said students at Black-led charters are learning. “This notion that we cannot educate our children is false and must be addressed.”

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, if a charter agreement should be revoked, the charter is dissolved. Students attending a dissolved charter school are able to apply to another school in their district of residence and normal application deadlines will be disregarded, the department’s website states. Charters, however, have a right to appeal to the Pennsylvania Charter Appeal Board before being dissolved.

“If you look in terms of diversity and equity of staff, the Black-operated charter schools almost double the percentage of minority teachers compared to traditional charters and the school district,” said Larry Jones, the CEO of Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School in Southwest Philadelphia.

Studies have shown that having just one Black teacher between third and fifth grade significantly improves a child’s chances of graduating high school and attending college.

Ninety seven percent of the students at Daroff are Black and less than 1% are Latino. At Bluford, 98% of the students are Black and the remaining 2% is split between Latino and Asian American students.

“But the real impact is the impact having leaders and teachers and decision makers of color have on students,” Jones said. “If you see all of the schools operated by Blacks and educating Black students being closed, it’s a difficult situation that is hard to explain.”

Southeast Pennsylvania superintendents call for charter funding reform

2021-05-06T17:09:24+00:00

A group of Southeast Pennsylvania school superintendents said Wednesday that the current funding model for charter schools is unfair and outdated, and that it diverts needed dollars away from their districts.

Payments to cover the cost of charters, especially cyber charters that are fully virtual, are forcing school systems to cut programming or push for tax increases in their districts, school leaders said during a press conference over Zoom.

“We’re maintaining maximum tax effort just to keep our programs going,” said Sam Lee, superintendent of the 6,000-student Bensalem Township School district in Bucks County. “If something doesn’t change relating to charter funding, options and opportunities for our students will be severely compromised.” About 100 Bensalem students are enrolled in cyber charters.

Superintendents said there are two main problems with the charter school funding system: Cybers receive the same amount as brick-and-mortar schools, even though they do not have the expense of maintaining a building. And charters get one amount for general education students and an additional sum for students with disabilities, which is the same regardless of the severity of their needs. Those payments can be double or even triple the regular education amount, and often exceed the actual cost of educating the students with disabilities enrolled in the charters, most of which have mild impairments.

Although Pennsylvania cyber schools have consistently performed poorly in state and national studies of effectiveness, about a quarter of the charter students in Pennsylvania are enrolled in cybers. And charter cyber enrollment increased during the pandemic by about 25,000 students.

“This is not just an urban issue,” said Jim Scanlon, the superintendent of the West Chester Area School District, which has about 12,000 students and a $270 million budget spread across small towns, suburbs, and farms. “In all school districts in the Commonwealth, tuition dollars are sent to poorly run charter schools.”

Under the Pennsylvania charter school law, which has not been significantly revised since it was first enacted in 1997, the reimbursement formula considers the district’s prior year per-student cost for general and special education students. For West Chester, the amount allocated for students with disabilities is more than double that of general education students — $34,000 compared to $16,000.

He said that providing speech and language therapy costs his district an extra $1,500 per student, not $16,000, which would be the cost of educating a student with complex medical needs or who is enrolled in a life skills class. Charter schools enroll very few students with severe disabilities.

“It’s like going into a restaurant and buying a hamburger, but being charged for a five-course lobster dinner,” Scanlon said.

State law does not require charter schools to spend the special education funding on those students.

In his proposed 2021-22 budget, Gov. Tom Wolf is recommending a uniform payment of $9,500 per student to cyber charter schools and a three-tiered payment system to all charters for students with disabilities, depending on their needs. While similar to the funding formula used to allocate state special education money to school districts, it will likely face opposition in the Republican-controlled legislature.

Philadelphia Superintendent William Hite had a conflict and was unable to join the Wednesday press conference, but said Thursday that he agrees with his fellow school leaders. Changing the special education funding formula alone would safe Philadelphia $52 million a year, he said.

About half the 170,000 charter school students in Pennsylvania are enrolled in Philadelphia schools. Both Hite and members of the Philadelphia Board of Education have long sought changes in the charter funding formula and are urging support of the governor’s proposed changes. More than $1 billion of Philadelphia’s $3 billion budget goes to charter school payments.

Lenny McAllister, CEO of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, a lobbying group, said the governor’s changes would cost charters $229 million. He said the proposal “only further highlights where the governor ranks the needs of Pennsylvania’s neediest students and their families: as second-class citizens.” Charter advocates say this because the regular education formula gives a smaller amount to charters than the host district’s full per-student cost.

He said that the governor and “special interest groups” are scapegoating charters for budget problems that are actually caused by rising teacher pension costs.

Scanlon and the other superintendents said they weren’t trying to end school choice.

“This is not about the competition” said Daniel McGarry, superintendent in Upper Darby, a diverse suburb adjoining Philadelphia. “It’s more about leveling the playing field.”

Under state law, Pennsylvania charters must be nonprofit, but they are allowed to have management contracts with for-profit entities. And some do, including several cybers.

“Taxpayers are funding a for-profit business … and it is not right,” said Stephen Rodriguez, superintendent of the Pottstown School District in Montgomery County.

“For most of the charter era, Philly has taken the brunt of it,” said Lawrence Feinberg, the director of the newly formed Keystone Center for Charter Change at the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, which organized the press conference. “But with COVID, all 500 districts got slammed with cyber charter tuition.”

The Center was established in an effort to get long-sought changes to the charter reimbursement formula “over the finish line,” said Feinberg, who is also the president of the Haverford Board of Education.

As most district high schoolers stay remote, Philadelphia’s Mastery charter network invites all students back

2021-04-30T14:43:05+00:00

Sharon Brewer is getting the chance to spend at least some of her senior year in school, in person.

It didn’t come a moment too soon.

“I was doing terrible at home,” she said.

Same for her classmate, Parris Boyette.

“It’s the best thing that happened to me,” said Boyette, a 17-year-old basketball player, about returning to school in person last month. “My grades are going up, I’m understanding more. When I was home, I was not paying attention. Here, I’m paying attention.”

Inside Sam Scarpone’s English class at Mastery Charter School-Pickett Campus in Germantown.

The two are students at Mastery Charter School-Pickett Campus in Germantown, a combined middle and high school with grades 6-12 that reopened for in-person school more than a month ago.

Unlike the Philadelphia school district, which won’t bring back 10th to 12th graders this school year, Mastery has tried to bring back as many students as possible in all grades in its 18 schools across the city. The charter network, which enrolls about 14,000 students, started hybrid learning back in March, with some starting in April, and has moved its students phase-in at a faster pace than the district.

Most students are back two days a week, except for those with special needs, who can come in four days.

“It is indisputable that in-person learning is what’s best for students,” said Mastery CEO Scott Gordon. Its internal assessments indicated that students learning at home were attaining less academic growth than in a typical year, he said. At the same time, he said, they were also showing “greater levels of depression and anxiety” as levels of gun violence hit historically high levels.

As a result, “we made it an absolute priority” to maximize in-person learning, including for older students, he said.

While the district also sought an early and fuller return to school buildings, it was a rougher road, exacerbated by deep distrust over dangerous building conditions. After a protracted dispute with the teachers union over school safety that was finally settled through mediation, the district has brought back students in phases. Students in prekindergarten to second grade began hybrid learning in three waves in March, followed by students in third to fifth grade this week. By May 10, sixth through ninth graders can begin in-person learning, most for two days a week. The school year ends on June 11, meaning the last eligible students will have just 10 days of in-person learning.

Most high school students won’t be back this school year.

“We’ve said this before, we understand this is not the school year any of us have envisioned,” said Monica Lewis, the district’s spokeswoman. “Those in high school, particularly seniors, are probably disappointed. They have missed out engaging with friends and doing activities typical of high school life. But this was the plan most in line with efforts to get through the pandemic as safely as possible for all students and staff and school communities as well.”

To help students who might have fallen behind, the district is beefing up its summer offerings, providing credit recovery courses, and encouraging families “to reach out to school to see what services are available,” she said.

Keylisha Diaz, one of two student representatives on the Board of Education and a junior at Philadelphia Military Academy, a district school, has been keeping in regular touch with seniors and other high school students advocating for their needs. Seeing the process up close, she said she has developed a keen appreciation for the hard choices faced by the district’s leadership.

At the same time, she said, “It’s very upsetting seniors didn’t get the experience they were hoping for.” At this point, however, given how late it is in the school year, most of those she has spoken to have made their peace and “are fine with staying virtual.”

Instead, she said what they are looking forward to are the end-of-year rituals, especially graduations, which the district has said will be held outside. It is also providing free caps and gowns to students. Proms, however, will not be held.

Two different approaches

Like the district, Mastery has paid close attention to the guidance from federal and state health agencies. But the charter network has been determined to bring students back since the start of the year.

Mastery held outreach sessions for parents in the summer, and then opened school buildings for a short time in September. Schools closed again when there was a surge in coronavirus cases in November and stayed closed for the rest of the winter. A phased reopening began in early March, with all students who wanted to return coming back for some in-person learning by the end of April.

Across the country, many school districts have focused first on reopening buildings to younger students and those in special education classes. High school reopening also has been a challenge because older students change classes more often, making it difficult to create socially distanced pods.

Like the school district, Mastery has faced challenges with social distancing and classroom capacity. Almost all their schools are converted district schools ceded in the hopes of rapid academic turnaround, so they have many of the same challenges with old and poorly ventilated buildings.

But Mastery hasn’t faced bitter pushback about safety. The network spent $4 million on upgrading ventilation, including the purchase of expensive air purifiers, and $2.5 million on COVID-19 preventative measures like frequent student and staff testing, said Gordon. It tests weekly, using less expensive batch tests for 20 people at a time; if there is a positive reaction the source can be traced to one or two participants who can then be retested individually.

The network also conducts careful contact tracing. People entering the building can scan their phone in front of one device so they can be notified if someone else in the school that day tests positive. They step in front of another device to have their temperature taken. Mastery maintains a dashboard of positive test results, and it says there were 63 cases this week and 306 since testing began. Pickett has had eight positive cases, according to the dashboard.

Mastery spokeswoman Kerry Woodward said that since reopening it has had one classroom quarantine and two schools have “paused” in-person instruction due to an uptick in COVID-19 cases; Wister is closed until May 3 and Clymer until May 5.

The school district started a dashboard after pressure from the The Caucus of Working Educators and Parents United for Public Schools, activist groups that were seeking more transparency and had begun tracking positive COVID-19 cases on their own.

Like most charters, Mastery doesn’t have a teachers union, but it still faced questions from teachers and students about whether it was safe to be in buildings. Gordon said that he and his team maintained constant communication with its teachers and the network’s 11,000 families.

Mastery Pickett Principal Margaux Munnelly talks with student Parris Boyette.

“We had open town meetings, and lots of meetings to get staff comfortable,” Gordon said. “When we have an infection, we respond quickly. We built confidence we could manage through this.”

Sam Scarpone, an English teacher at Pickett, said at first she was apprehensive about returning, mostly when teachers were not being prioritized for vaccinations and due to “fear of the unknown.” Once she set foot in the building, she said, “all my fears dissipated.”

While it varies by school, just under half of Mastery’s students have elected to come back to the hybrid model, Gordon said. At district schools, the figure has been closer to one third of those eligible at any given time.

Neither the school district nor Mastery could offer exact numbers on how many high school students are on track to graduate now compared to the norm in other years, although Mastery said it has not detected a dip.

‘It’s not natural for them to be so isolated’

At Pickett, Principal Margaux Munnelly said that returning to in-person school has major benefits: increased engagement with learning, lessening of distractions, more interaction with teachers, and the opportunity to socialize with friends.

“You want to see your students learn and grow and thrive,” she said. “Welcoming our students back into our building over the last several months has been a joy. I could not overstate the importance of the connections I am seeing our students make with our teachers and with each other.”

Both Scarpone and Katy Kahn, who teaches Advanced Placement and honors literature classes, said they want to see more students in the building. They feel the benefits far outweigh the risks.

“I want as many kids back as possible,” Kahn said. “I’m also planning summer camp. I’m anxious about getting kids up and out for academic and social purposes. The kids need it. It’s not natural for them to be so isolated.”

In fact, after the initial wave in March, more students did decide to come back to Pickett, which enrolls more than 900 students. Just over 300 students returned in March and another 200 returned this week at the start of the fourth and final marking period — meaning about half the 917 students have chosen to return.

To be sure, with maybe a quarter of students there at any given time, the vibe in the school is still nowhere near normal, although some classrooms now have 10 to 12 students in them, spaced out and working on laptops behind plastic barriers. During lunch, there is one student per table, and everyone faces the same way. Hallways are still eerily quiet during class changes.

For seniors like Brewer, however, returning has been a lifesaver. For most of the year, she worried she wouldn’t be able to graduate because her grades plummeted. While some students, she said, were excelling at home, she struggled.

“I am a social person, I need to be in class writing, taking notes, and listening to my teacher talk. I need to be physically participating. I need to ask questions, I can’t sit around and wait for a breakout room,” she said.

Since she came back to school in person, “I feel like I’m improving already. I get more work done. I’m more verbal. The best part of being back here is I’m able to get to the grade-point-average I’m used to.”

Boyette is also happy to be back. He also said being at home all the time was too distracting. “I just want to be with my friends,” he said.

School is better, he said, but in many ways “it feels weird. You can’t walk around like you used to, you’ve got to stay away from other kids.” So, like Brewer, he studies and buckles down on his work. Unlike at home, he pointed out, where the TV, smartphone and refrigerator beckons, “There is nothing else to do here.”

Munnelly, the principal, had to agree. “It’s not the same. But it’s something.”

Philadelphia school board votes not to renew two Black-led charter schools despite outcry from parents

2021-04-23T20:38:47+00:00

Members of the Board of Education voted not to renew two Black-led charter schools despite public outcry from parents, ending a long conflicting relationship with the district.

The majority of the board voted to follow the recommendation of a hearing officer to not renew Universal Bluford and Universal Daroff schools. Board members Lisa Salley and Cecelia Thompson voted against the non-renewals.

Attorney Rudy Garcia, whom the school board hired to review the two schools, made a damaging case Thursday for the district to cut its ties.

“I concluded that there were ample grounds for non-renewal for both schools,” Garcia said during his presentation to the board Thursday. He cited low proficiency rates in math, English language arts, and science, among many other concerns about the schools’ financial viability.

“Both had negative margins and low ratios, meaning they had insufficient funds to cover liabilities,” Garcia said. “Both had negative non-restricted fund balances, or rainy day funds that would cover unexpected emergencies.”

Garcia said both schools failed to comply with other applicable laws such as maintaining Pennsylvania child abuse clearances, and state and federal criminal backgrounds, Garcia said. “There were many instances where that information was not in the files. And that has an effect on student safety,” he said.

Garcia noted there were many files missing on student health, dental and immunization safety at the two schools, including meeting violations of the Sunshine Act.

Parents of students who attend Bluford and Daroff testified at Thursday’s board meeting on behalf of the two schools.

Milon Attaway, a parent of a second grader at Bluford said, “We are begging that you vote against the non-renewal recommendation and let Bluford keep progressing. I’ve personally witnessed the intellectual advancement of Bluford scholars. I spend nights texting my teachers and no matter what time they always respond. My son’s scores are significantly higher and he’s on the honor roll. He wants me to let you know to keep his school the same.”

Francisco Echevarria is the father of a second and fifth grader at the school. He said it’s the culture that has kept his children enrolled at Daroff since kindergarten.

“Universal Daroff is a true staple in the West Philadelphia community and it provides my sons with regular and special education services,” Echevarria said.

Lashana Woodson, a graduate of Daroff, has a daughter who has attended the school since kindergarten and is graduating from the eighth grade with straight As.

“What has saddened me throughout this process is the overwhelming discrimination against Bluford, Daroff and Universal Company as well as the large Black and Latino charter schools of Philadelphia,” Woodson said. “This is something the officer failed to detail in his report.”

James Ruffin, Daroff’s principal, acknowledged the school faces some behavioral problems. ”But if you look at Daroff students, they are hungry for knowledge and they want what every student wants,” Ruffin said. “I also want to dispel the myth that our parents don’t care about their kids. They want the best for their kids.”

In a statement late Thursday, Penny Nixon, superintendent and CEO of schools at Universal, said the company questions the accuracy and objectivity of the data utilized as the basis for Garcia’s recommendation for non-renewal.

“An expert testified and demonstrated that both Universal Bluford’s and Universal Daroff’s academic performance exceeded the School District of Philadelphia in their properly identified peer group,” the statement said. “The vote is a continued assault on Black-led and founded charter schools.”

Over the years, Daroff prided itself in educating students who come from some of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Daroff is located at 56th and Vine in West Philadelphia, while Bluford is located at 57th and Media in the Carroll Park section of West Philadelphia.

Universal had joined a coalition of Black-run charters in Philadelphia claiming systemic bias has led the school district to recommend closure or non-renewal at disproportionately high rates. According to the coalition, Black and Latino charter leaders operate 19% of the charter schools in the city, yet account for 87% of those recommended for closure or non-renewal in recent years.

The African American Charter Schools Coalition held a press conference in November to highlight disparate outcomes in charter regulation. The group includes 21 of the 22 Black-run charters in Philadelphia, which enroll students from 13,000 families.

A press conference scheduled for Tuesday was canceled. Leaders were scheduled to call for a moratorium on closing Black-founded and Black-led schools “until an investigation into the systemic racism in the district is completed,” according to the media notice.

Philadelphia has more than 80 charter schools, with a total enrollment of more than 75,000 students, or about a third of those enrolled in city publicly-funded schools. The school district, through its office on charter schools, is the sole authorizer.

Daroff and Bluford together serve 1,250 students. The schools are among the city’s Renaissance charters, which can only enroll students from their neighborhoods.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, if a charter agreement should be revoked, the charter is dissolved. Students attending a dissolved charter school are able to apply to another school in the student’s district of residence and normal application deadlines will be disregarded under these circumstances, the department’s website states.

A representative told Chalkbeat that the attorneys for the schools are filing to the Charter Appeals Board Friday. The schools have asked parents, teachers and staff to stay the course as Universal works with the attorneys via the state’s appeal process.

“Universal will address and defend our academic growth and improvement, organizational compliance, viability, and finances as an Education Management Organization against the Board’s vote of non-renewal for Universal Bluford and Universal Daroff,” the statement said.

Nixon has argued that both Bluford and Daroff outperform schools serving a similar demographic.

“Our schools are not perfect, and there are minor operational issues that we have addressed,” she said. “However, there is nothing that substantiates a non-renewal recommendation given the great work that we have done turning around both schools that were failures under the school district.”

But Garcia argued the district looks at comparison groups to determine if these schools were performing better, same as, or worse as the students in the same grades of students in the school district, or students in the charter sector, or similar charter schools that serve similar student bodies.

“This was a way of determining how they were doing compared to other schools,” Garcia said.

Philadelphia board rejects five charter school proposals

2021-03-05T03:29:15+00:00

With barely any comment, the Philadelphia Board of Education unanimously denied five new charter school applications Thursday after hearing scathing critiques of all of them from the district’s reviewers.

Christina Grant, head of the district’s charter school office, described all of the applications as deficient either in their planned academic program, operations, finances, or evidence of community support — sometimes in all four areas. The office doesn’t directly recommend denial or approval, but these evaluations had few positive things to say.

The five schools were seeking to enroll more than 4,300 students. The district currently has 86 charter schools that enroll over 70,000 students, more than a third of the 200,000 total in the city’s publicly funded schools.

Charter school expansion was the main reform strategy initiated by the board’s predecessor, School Reform Commission, which governed the district for nearly two decades after the state declared it academically and financially distressed. The board has not approved a new charter school since taking over its governance when the district was returned to local control in 2018.

More than $1 billion of the district’s $3.3 billion budget consists of tuition payments to charters — and the state’s charter school funding formula hasn’t been significantly revised since the law was passed in 1997. Combined with a declining state share of overall school costs, this means that charter and district schools compete for increasingly scarce resources.

“The district does not need and cannot afford any more charters,” said Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, which advocates against charters.

Two of the proposed new schools would have been operated by Aspira, Inc., which already runs five charters, including a cyber school. The proposed new schools were the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Preparatory Charter School, for kindergarten through eighth grade, and the Bilingual Business, Finance and Technology Charter High School.

The community development organization has a troubled history dotted with investigations into its management and financial practices relating to its charters — including its use of state and local per-pupil subsidies for the schools as collateral for loans to shore up other aspects of its operations.

Two of Aspira’s existing schools, Olney High and Stetson Middle, are former district schools that were converted to charters in an effort to turn them around under an initiative called Renaissance Schools started by the SRC. But due to mediocre academic performance and questionable finances and operations, the board voted in 2018 not to renew the charters and reabsorb the schools into the district. But Aspira appealed to the state and the schools remain under Aspira’s management.

Even the SRC, in 2017, voted not to renew Olney and Stetson’s charters.

No district school has been converted to a charter since 2016 under the Renaissance program, and board President Joyce Wilkerson, who also served on the SRC, has questioned the effectiveness of the model.

Grant’s critique said that the applications for both new charters would give Aspira “outsized control” and contained “numerous inconsistencies in anticipating per-pupil funding,” among other shortcomings. It was proposed that many of the employees would work directly for Aspira and not for the schools, which would present a problem in creating a cohesive staff and school culture, Grant said.

The three other proposed charter schools voted down Thursday were Empowerment Charter School, Philadelphia Collegiate Charter School for Boys, and Pride Academy Charter School.

Empowerment was proposed as a kindergarten to fifth grade school in North Philadelphia operated in conjunction with the educational leadership company Jounce Partners. Courtney Taylor, presented as the principal of the school, said it would be named for Shirley Chisholm and would nurture students to be “activists” and “reach beyond their potential” in a close-knit community.

Several parents and community members spoke in favor of Empowerment, not least because it promised to be staffed by people of color.

“One of the things that is important to me is that children see someone who looks like [them] as a teacher,” said Ruth Williams, a community member. “I didn’t see a teacher who looked like me until high school.”

But the charter office report said the application “did not present compelling evidence of the founding coalition’s ability to establish and operate a charter school.”

The Philadelphia Collegiate Charter School for Boys, proposed to locate in Mount Airy, would “prepare Philadelphia’s next generation of young men,” according to its application. It would be managed by an organization that runs a similar school in Baltimore.

“Being in an environment with leadership of men of color can be transformational in the lives of young boys they serve,” said Eric Worley, a graduate of the district and longtime city resident.

The district’s critique said, among other things, that the application did not clearly outline the role of the management organization and did not present a curriculum that would meet state requirements.

In rejecting this application, board members Julia Danzy and Reginald Streater said that they saw value in gender-specific education, especially for boys of color, but that this proposal fell short. “This application does not contain what we need,” Danzy said.

Pride Academy, a K-5 school proposed for Germantown, planned a project-based curriculum to help students develop life-long learning skills for the 21st century.

Jamie Meekins is a local small business owner and potential parent who had hoped to partner with Pride in its hands-on curriculum around nutrition. He urged approval, as did parent John Scarborough. “I believe in the vision of teaching through project-based learning,” he said, adding that he would enroll his child if it opened.

But Grant said its application lacked “a systemic approach for its educational philosophy” and did not show enough evidence of community support.

Among nearly 30 speakers, about half opposed charters on principle, while echoing the shortcomings of these applications, and the rest offered support for Pride, Empowerment and the Collegiate School for Boys. No speakers at the meeting spoke on behalf of the Aspira charters.

Pennsylvania wants to allow districts to delay standardized testing until fall

2021-02-23T22:19:09+00:00

Pennsylvania Education Secretary Noe Ortega has informed the U.S. Department of Education that he wants to allow districts and charter schools to delay administering state exams until September, taking advantage of an option offered when federal officials told states on Monday that they must resume testing this year.

Acting Assistant Education Secretary Ian Rosenblum sent a letter to chief state school officers Feb. 22 telling them to administer standardized tests for 2020-21, despite the disruption caused by the pandemic and the prevalence of virtual learning. The department did not offer states the option to avoid giving tests entirely but offered flexibility, including the ability to give the tests later in the year rather than in the spring, as is customary.

“State assessments and accountability systems play an important role in advancing educational equity, by enabling states, districts and schools to use data to target resources to the students with the greatest needs,” Rosenblum’s letter said. “In addition, parents need information on how their children are doing.”

In response, Ortega on Tuesday posted on the department’s website a draft letter to Rosenblum stating that 320 of the state’s nearly 750 districts and charter schools are offering remote-only instruction due to state health guidance regarding the spread of the coronavirus in their areas. He said it would be “impossible” within the next six weeks to balance health concerns while “safeguarding … the validity of any assessment results.” The letter asks federal officials to issue one of the permitted waivers on the testing requirement.

Noting that the all-remote districts and charters enroll disproportionately high numbers of students who are economically disadvantaged, English learners, Black and Hispanic, or have special needs, Ortega said that the complex logistics of administering the tests in the spring would result in lower test participation and therefore defeat the purpose.

“The very student groups that have faced the greatest historical disadvantages will be systematically underrepresented in any near-term statewide assessment administration,” Ortega’s letter to Rosenblum said. “To be clear, Pennsylvania feels a moral imperative to assess students as one means of understanding and documenting learning loss; however, the assessment administration itself should not serve to aggravate or confound the issue.”

In Philadelphia, the district has remained entirely virtual as have most of its more than 80 charter schools, which together enroll more than 200,000 students.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools across Pennsylvania — and the nation — to shut down in March, a few weeks before the scheduled administration of the state standardized test, the PSSA. Since Rosenblum’s letter, several states including Michigan and Colorado took immediate steps to suspend the usual testing or substitute local assessments to fulfill the requirement.

Many civil rights groups told President Joe Biden’s administration that they opposed waiving the tests entirely, saying such assessments are necessary to expose entrenched educational inequities among different student groups and help direct resources where they are most needed.

While affirming that view, Education Voters of Pennsylvania, a leading advocacy group, issued a statement saying it agreed with Ortega’s position.

The group said the decision allows educators “to focus their time and energy for the remainder of this school year on teaching and supporting students” and on determining how to invest “one time federal funding to help mitigate the harm that Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable students have experienced” due to the pandemic.

The public is invited to weigh in on Ortega’s letter to Rosenblum by emailing RA_EDESEAWaiver@pa.gov.

Despite nonrenewal, one Philadelphia charter school remains hopeful

2020-12-23T23:53:46+00:00

Administrators at Universal Daroff Charter School in West Philadelphia are appealing the decision by the city’s Board of Education to not renew its charter status.

Though it’s unclear when the Charter Appeals Board in Harrisburg will rule, the school is optimistic about the outcome.

Penny Nixon, superintendent and CEO of schools at Universal, said their students are learning. “This notion that we cannot educate our children is false and must be addressed.”

Daroff prides itself in educating students who come from some of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Located at 56th and Vine in West Philadelphia, it’s one of two charter schools under the Universal umbrella slated for closure. The other is Universal Bluford, at 57th and Media in the Carroll Park section of West Philadelphia.

Universal has joined a coalition of Black-run charters in Philadelphia claiming systemic bias has led the school district to recommend their closure or non-renewal, at a much higher rate than other schools. They say that Black and Latino charter leaders operate 19% of the charter schools in the city, yet account for 87% of those recommended for closure or non-renewal in recent years.

Bluford and Daroff have underperformed their peers on academic and management measures. The charter office rated both the lowest among the district for finances and administration. Both district reviewers and classroom observers noted poor board practices and “mixed” levels of quality instruction and student performance.

Nixon argued that both Bluford and Daroff outperform schools serving a similar demographic. She’s confident that a fair comparison with district neighborhood schools would show Universal Bluford and Daroff deserve applause and appreciation.

She said the renewal system is broken and that any bias must be eliminated.

Nixon alleges the Charter School Office did not follow its own process by failing to send both schools in writing its final non-renewal recommendation before making it public.

In an April 9 email, the Charter Schools Office stated that it didn’t send the reports because it hadn’t been informed nor could it identify the CEO of either school.

“This claim by the CSO was both puzzling and inaccurate,” Nixon said.

“In my capacity as superintendent of Universal Schools, I have been the CSO’s point of contact for both schools for their previous charter renewals and the recipient of the ACE [Annual Charter Evaluation] reports for both schools for the past five years,” she said. “Therefore, it is not clear as to why the CSO would not have sent the reports to me or at least have contacted my office to ascertain where the final reports should be sent.”

Philadelphia has more than 80 charter schools, enrolling more than 75,000 students.

Daroff and Bluford together serve 1,250 students. The schools are among the city’s Renaissance charters, which are public charter schools and can only enroll students from their neighborhoods.

When they ran Philadelphia schools, the state and the School Reform Commission created the Renaissance Schools initiative in 2010 to try to turn around low-performing elementary and middle schools. But 10 years later, critics who say Renaissance campuses remain low performing have pushed for abolishing the initiative.

“Remote learning takes a tremendous amount of effort,” Ruffin said. “The silver lining has been my teachers and students are learning so much more about technology and platforms, that once we go back to face to face it will push our entire program to the next level.”

The school teaches from an online program called i-Ready that also enables it to test students to see what they’ve learned and how well they’re meeting state standards, said Katie Hollenbach, assistant principal at Daroff.

“The program is used to supplement the core curriculum and as an additional resource for targeting diverse learners and skill sets. It also helps the school diagnose and tier instruction based off of students’ needs,” Hollenbach said.

Nixon believes the charter schools will win their appeals.

“Universal feels strongly that when the charter school law is applied fairly and impartially by objective reviewers both Bluford and Daroff charters will be renewed,” Nixon said, “because renewal for both schools is what is fair, just, and equitable.”

Philadelphia widens free internet eligibility for families with children in school

2020-12-18T23:46:59+00:00

Do you have Internet Essentials? Take this survey about the quality of your connection.

Philadelphia has expanded eligibility for PHLConnectED, its program to provide free internet access to families with school-age children.

City officials intensified outreach this week to families who now qualify for the program.

Under the new guidelines, all families who participate in public benefit programs with income qualifications, such as food stamps, will be eligible. Students who receive special education services or are learning English also qualify.

“We want to connect as many families as possible to reliable internet access,” said Mayor Jim Kenney in announcing the outreach campaign. “As digital learning continues, access to high-speed internet is more important than ever.”

Among the main beneficiaries of the expansion are customers who were enrolled in Comcast’s low-cost Internet Essentials program — especially those who fell behind on their payments — before the pandemic forced most learning online and Comcast began offering free access to new customers.

Even at $9.95 a month, the cost can prove too much for families who are struggling with other obligations, especially those who lost jobs during the pandemic.

“Throughout this process, we’ve also learned that many families already have internet service, but struggle to afford it,” said Chief Information Officer Mark Wheeler. Those already enrolled were not eligible for the two-months-free offer Comcast made last spring to new customers when some virtual learning began for almost all the schools in the city.

About 7,000 people signed up for the Comcast offer between April, when the offer was made, and August, when PHLConnectED started as a joint venture with the city, school district, internet service providers, and several foundations and non-profits. The $17 million program promised free internet until June 2022 to eligible households with students enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade in the Philadelphia school district, as well as at most charters and some private schools.

Those 7,000 families have since been notified that they could enroll in PHLConnectED and receive free internet through the end of the 2021-2022 school year. That group accounts for more than half of the 12,000 families PHLConnectED has enrolled since its August launch, according to officials.

As part of PHLConnectED, the city designated three organizations to employ “digital navigators” who track down families, tell them about their eligibility, and help them complete the multi-step process.

“Most of the people I have talked to on the phone about Internet Essentials and PHLConnectED, they don’t know where to start,” said Miyo Imai, a digital navigator for the ExCite Center of Drexel University.

Besides Drexel, the other organizations with digital navigators are Community Learning Center, an adult literacy organization, and SEAMAAC, an advocacy group for immigrants.

Even before PHLConnectED started, Drexel and the other organizations had been reaching out to clients trying to help them with their internet connectivity and to obtain Chromebooks or other devices.

Signing up for PHLConnectED requires several steps, and many families just didn’t follow through.

“They have to take the initiative,” said Imai, who is a Drexel student studying computer science and psychology. “In the beginning, we weren’t getting very many calls, and we weren’t sure how to get the word out there.” It’s a Catch-22, she said — promoting a program online doesn’t work if people aren’t online.

“It was hard to get the word out to people who really needed it,” she said. The city turned to advertising through other means, which helped somewhat, she said.

But altogether, she estimates that she only succeeded with about 10 families to complete the process from beginning to end.

To sign up for the program, families can call a 24-hour, 211 hotline. They get a promotional code from the district or their participating school, which they must then activate before receiving the equipment they need to get online. Some families, such as those with less stable living situations, get hotspots through T-Mobile if that will better serve their needs.

Imai and other navigators said many families are in situations where other life challenges take priority over signing up for internet access.

“We have people coming back to us who don’t know how to set it up once they get a kit from Comcast,” Imai said, “Some have data plans on their phone, so we can send them links. But with other people, it is harder. They’ve never seen a modem or a router, they don’t have any idea what to do with them. There is such a range of people’s experiences with tech.”

Other people have called the Drexel navigators to say that their internet speeds are “ridiculously low. “One woman said she couldn’t open up a single web page,” she said.

Existing customers whose bills are in arrears will not have those obligations forgiven, but have not had their service cut off and will be able to receive free service through June 2022.

Before the expansion, eligible families included those with no access or access only through mobile phones, anyone experiencing housing insecurity, or those who had students who spent their days with caregivers at locations without access.

‘The cutting edge of safety’: Philly area schools plan widespread coronavirus testing

2020-12-11T15:51:00+00:00

School administrators across the Philadelphia area are moving forward with plans to provide coronavirus testing to students and staff — a step seen by many as essential for in-person learning to proceed safely.

The planning comes as a surge of coronavirus cases have compelled the School District of Philadelphia to delay bringing some students back to the classroom, and forced other schools in the region to suspend in-person learning.

Mastery Charter — which runs 26 schools with more than 14,000 students in Philadelphia and Camden — announced Thursday that it would provide free weekly coronavirus tests to all students and staff who want them, whenever in-person education resumes.

“We really recognized it was the cutting edge of safety, and something that was incredibly important to ensuring the health and safety of our kids,” said Laura Clancy, a senior adviser with Mastery.

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia also confirmed Thursday it was in discussions with local government and school districts in the region to pilot a program to administer COVID-19 tests in schools. A CHOP spokesperson declined to offer more detail, but Chester and Delaware counties, as well as two Montgomery County school districts, Lower Merion and North Penn, confirmed they would be participating. A spokesperson for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health said they are “having some conversations about how it could be organized in Philly,” but said nothing was formalized.

School District of Philadelphia Superintendent William Hite also said Thursday that he expects tests to be available for all students and staff that want them when classrooms re-open. The district is partnering with the city’s health department, but could not yet give specifics about what the testing program will look like and how it would be administered.

“The test will be voluntary, but will be mandatory for people with [COVID] symptoms,” Hite said. “That’s our approach right now, but we’re in the process of finalizing, we hope within the next couple of weeks, a plan for administration.”

Grappling with cost

Public health and education experts have honed in on consistent testing as the key to making in-person instruction safe during the pandemic. One recent study from Johns Hopkins and Duke University found that weekly coronavirus tests can reduce transmission within a school by 60 to 70%. Officials in New York City reopened elementary schools this week, even as the pandemic worsens, based largely on weekly testing.

Mastery’s experience administering a small number of coronavirus tests to students and staff this fall convinced the charter network that routine testing was effective, Clancy said. For one, their overall positivity rate mirrored the city’s rate at the time. Perhaps more importantly for reducing transmission, Clancy said many of those who tested positive had no symptoms.

“If really the only way to tell if someone who is asymptomatic is sick is to do a test…that’s a pretty compelling reason to do a screening program,” Clancy said.

Clancy said Mastery’s plan is only possible because the cost of coronavirus tests has fallen dramatically in the last few months. The school system will pay about $12 per test. By comparison, the average cost of a coronavirus test last summer was $127.

Still, those tests add up. Mastery plans to spend up to $2.7 million of federal coronavirus stimulus funds to pay for the endeavor through the end of the year. The charter network has been able to absorb many other pandemic-related expenses, such as laptops for all students, in part because of its strong philanthropic support.

Mastery is budgeting for a plan to test roughly 50% of all students — the amount they expect will want to return to in-person learning when it becomes available — every week from mid-January through the end of the school year.

If the School District of Philadelphia wanted to do the same testing program for the same proportion of its students, it would cost about $15 million. The district is currently facing a budget gap of nearly four times that amount.

Cost is proving to be a major obstacle for other schools, many of whom have struggled to pay for more basic necessities in the COVID era, including personal protective equipment. A spokesperson for the African American Charter School Coalition, a group of Black-led Philadelphia charter schools, said some of those schools would like to implement consistent COVID-19 testing for students and staff, but have long since run out of federal stimulus funding, and lack other philanthropic support.

“There is limited funding that these schools have,” coalition spokesperson Dawn Chavous said. “With limited funding, you are limited in terms of what you can do.”

Program to connect Philly residents to the internet will ramp up in the next few weeks, officials say

2020-09-18T20:44:45+00:00

Sometimes when Ashley Chalmers Young’s second grader, Zion, tried to do his homework last spring, his mother would get an important phone call, and he’d have to stop.

“All we had was mobile internet,” through her cellular service, Young explained. And in the era of at-home pandemic schooling, this wasn’t sufficient to keep Zion engaged.

Young, who used to drive for Uber and Lyft but hasn’t worked since the onset of COVID-19, has high hopes for Zion, who she calls her “little professor.” She tried to sign up for the low-cost Internet Essentials program through Comcast, but said she could never make it happen, either by going to a Comcast store or calling a phone number she was given. “They were giving me the runaround,” she said. “It was difficult to do what they were asking.”

Young, her husband Antoine and two sons live with her mother Mary, who likes to volunteer at Zion’s school, Philadelphia Hebrew Public Charter in East Falls. One day while there, her mother “mentioned what we were doing to get online and the school was nice enough to loan us an internet box,” Young said.

That box is a mobile hotspot that the school distributed through PHLConnectED, a citywide program that aims to make sure all Philadelphia families have reliable internet access, especially at a time when those without it cannot take advantage of free public education.

City officials told the board of education on Thursday that PHLConnectED is getting off to a slow start. But they expect it to ramp up quickly and officials forecast that 7,400 households will be up and running by the end of September.

“We knew that in the first two, three, four weeks, it would be slow,” said Mark Wheeler, the city’s chief of information technology. “We know from many of our partners that it takes multiple mechanisms to get people to sign up or participate.”

The $17 million, two-year program, funded by a combination of public and philanthropic funds, was announced on Aug. 6 with a goal of signing up 35,000 city households to broadband access within two years. This would happen either by giving them access to Comcast’s Internet Essentials program, or through providing individual T-Mobile hotspots to those for whom that is the best option. This would include homeless families and the housing insecure.

“We are so grateful for this program,” said Emily Hurst, the executive director of Philadelphia Hebrew Public, a new charter in East Falls that has 250 students in grades K-2. “It’s a herculean effort by the city, the philanthropic community and the school district.”

Hurst said so far, the school has handed out 22 hotspots, and has helped “a number” of other families sign up for Internet Essentials, which under PHLConnectED is free for two years.

At Hebrew Public, more than 10 percent of her families had a need, Hurst said. Hotspots have turned out to be a more practical solution for many families, not just the housing insecure, because some students spend their days in multiple households. “Our families are creative and resilient, and a lot of families are piecing together care for their kids,” she said.

A map of the number of student households without internet from page 9 of the PHL ConnectED presentation by city officials to the Board of Education, September 17, 2020.

Superintendent William Hite has estimated 18,000 city students lack broadband service that is fast enough for doing schoolwork. PHLConnectEd is available to students enrolled in the district, the city’s more than 80 charters, and the Catholic Independence Mission Schools. The district, the individual charters, and the mission schools have all compiled a database of students who potentially qualify for the program, he said.

Using this information the program has reached out to 9,700 households with students who qualify for codes that allow participation in Internet Essentials, Wheeler told the board.

In addition, he said, 1,000 mobile hotspots from T-Mobile have been assigned to eligible students, based on determinations by their school that this is their best option. But he emphasized this doesn’t mean that many have received them.

“This is an eligibility number as opposed to a pickup number,” Wheeler said. “We know from partners who work with families who are under different types of stressors, it does take multiple outreach mechanisms to get them to participate.”

Hite said at Thursday’s board of education meeting that through PHLConnectED, so far 495 have fully connected to the internet, 274 by activating their codes for wired access, and 221 through hotspots. To reach Wheeler’s goal, that means nearly 7,000 people will need to successfully connect in the next two weeks.

Wheeler and Otis Hackney, the city’s chief education officer, are optimistic this will happen.

They told the board that since PHLConnectED started a 211 hotline on Aug. 24 about 2,500 families have called it. Soon, the hotline, run by United Way and available in 150 languages, will be upgraded to not only confirm eligibility, but to directly contact callers to the internet service provider that fits their needs. They are hoping this will help more families actually complete the connection process.

The city is basing its projections for fully connecting thousands more students quickly on the experience in Chicago, Wheeler said, which also started slowly but then saw a surge in participation.

“Chicago also had the same situation, [at first] it was low. After getting the word out...they saw a snowball effect, and we believe we are going to be on the same trajectory,” he said.

Since starting its program in July, Chicago has signed up 25,000 households through its Chicago Connected program, which has a $50 million budget and is organized more centrally than Philadelphia’s effort. Chicago’s big surge occurred in the week before school opened.

Hite has also been in touch with officials in Chicago, where he learned that persistence is key. “It takes multiple touch points, from using the code to getting the internet installed,” he said. “ We will continue that outreach, we have social workers and case workers visiting homes of students we have not heard from.”

One of the obstacles Chicago has faced is skepticism from families that the internet access will be free and they won’t get a bill.

To allay such fears and help families complete the process, another component of PHLConnectEd is the availability of “digital navigators” who can assist with the final steps. People at several nonprofit community organizations providing navigators said that so far, however, the demand for them has been low.

“We are working on doing more on the ground outreach,” said Lois Seffu, the family literacy coordinator at the immigrant advocacy groups SEAMAAC, Inc. “I don’t know, maybe it is still a thing of people not understanding what we’re offering.”

But Seffu and others working in outreach also expect that to change.

Andy Stutzman, who is organizing digital navigators through Drexel University’s ExCITe Center, said he thought there was some confusion over whether those who call the 211 hotline should be forwarded to the navigators. According to Wheeler and Hackney, that is being corrected.

“Everything is moving so quickly, we are working out bumps in the road for that,” Stutzman said. “We are expecting more calls in the near future.”

PHLConnectED BOE Meeting 9 17 2020 Submission (PDF)PHLConnectED BOE Meeting 9 17 2020 Submission (Text)

Funding inequities hamper Philly efforts to maintain a quality, diverse teaching force, report says

2020-08-25T22:55:20+00:00

A new report says Philadelphia is facing dire teacher shortages in key areas in both public and charter schools, and that more experienced and fully certified teachers are inequitably distributed.

Research for Action, a nearly 30-year-old nonprofit education research organization based in the city, said that Philadelphia has fewer teachers per student than the state and national averages, and would need to hire 1,500 more in both district and charter schools to reach the state average ratio. Statewide, the ratio is one teacher per 15 students; in Philadelphia, it is one per 17 students.

The shortages are driven mostly by funding inequities, the report said, including the state’s failure to reimburse districts for “stranded costs” incurred when students leave the district to attend independently run, publicly funded charter schools.

Citing earlier RFA research, the report said that even as enrollment declines, “districts are not able to maintain services, including student/staffing ratios, while implementing budget cuts needed to accommodate the new costs districts must pay to charter schools.”

The fully certified teacher shortages are most acute in special education, high school math, and middle school math, English, and science. And while student enrollment has been declining in the district, the number of teachers has declined at a faster rate.

Larisa Shambaugh, the district’s chief talent officer, said in an interview that the issues raised in the report are valid and a matter of concern for the district, which is working hard on recruitment, retention, and reducing turnover. Some of the older data, for instance, on the percentage of teachers who are not fully certified, has improved, although she did not have the latest figures handy.

“We live and breathe the belief that our teaching workforce in the district is what is the key to success for our students,” she said.

This year, she said, the district hired about 600 new teachers and has filled more than 99% of its vacancies. On the issue that the district should have more teachers to reduce class size, Shamburgh said that “we don’t staff by teacher/student ratio, but by class size needs.” Under the teachers’ contract, classes can be up to 30 in grades K-3 and 33 for higher grades, but the actual class size is “well below that,” although she did not have specifics on hand.

The report also found that, as recently as 2016, up to a quarter of math classes are taught by teachers who are not fully certified in the field, and that in the 70 schools, both district and charter, where at least 96 percent of the students are black and Hispanic, the figure is 39 percent.

The district “is increasingly relying on emergency teaching permits,” the report concluded.

While she didn’t offer current numbers on emergency permits, Shambaugh pointed out that not being fully certified doesn’t necessarily mean a teacher isn’t qualified. Many in Philadelphia are second career teachers who have advanced degrees in their fields but lack courses in pedagogy. The district has started a teacher residency program with Drexel University that this year produced 67 teachers, most of color, in STEM subjects and Spanish.

Shortages in specific content areas, including science, math, and special education, “is a national issue,” she said. This year, the district started a program offering high school teachers $10,000 in tuition help toward obtaining a joint certification in special education, she said.

While Philadelphia has “among the most diverse teaching forces in the state,” the report notes that “Philadelphia’s students are far more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity than those who teach them.” While 31% of the city’s teachers are people of color, 86% of the students are Black or Hispanic. Nearly two-thirds of all the teachers of color in Pennsylvania work in Philadelphia.

Only 6 percent of the state’s teachers are people of color, compared to a third of the students. Shambaugh noted that to increase teacher diversity, “we can’t solely rely on the teacher preparation pipeline in Pennsylvania, which is very white.”

The number of students seeking and completing teaching degrees in Pennsylvania has plummeted in the past decade. Nationally, enrollment in teacher preparation programs has fallen by 34 percent, but in Pennsylvania, the plunge is 67 percent, from nearly 40,000 in 2008-09 to just over 13,200 in 2017-18.

As the overall numbers declined, the proportion of teacher candidates who are Black or Hispanic shrank. In Pennsylvania’s teacher preparation programs, 6% are Black and 4% are Hispanic, “well below” national averages of 11% and 16%, respectively.

Compared to most surrounding suburban districts, Philadelphia’s teachers — once the highest-paid in the area, have fallen behind. In Lower Merion, for instance, the average salary is just under $102,000. In Philadelphia, it is $72,500.

The contract with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers expires on Aug. 31, and while salary is expected to be a big issue, the district is forecasting an $800 million deficit by 2025 without additional revenue. It had brought its budget nearly into structural balance before the coronavirus, but forecasts now show state and city revenue declining precipitously while pandemic-related expenses are adding to the district’s bottom line.

“Many of the barriers and challenges to improving recruitment and retention of a qualified, more diverse teaching force are endemic to the structural inequity within which the Philadelphia school system operates,” the report said. “Efforts to eliminate broader inequity may prove the most effective long-term strategy for strengthening the teacher workforce in the city.”