Chalkbeat

Philadelphia’s school selection process postponed to October

2026-08-31T21:50:50+00:00

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Philadelphia’s school selection process this year will begin later than usual as the district waits for state officials to finalize standardized test scores.

The process will now open on Oct. 5 at 4 p.m. and close on Nov. 24, according to a statement from district officials late on Monday.

The selective admissions process was originally scheduled to open on Sept. 8, Superintendent Tony Watlington told families as much in his back-to-school letter just last week. The district’s subsequent decision to postpone the admissions process was done to ensure “families have access to official, verified 2026 assessment data when making their school choices,” according to the district statement.

Delays in releasing scores from the 2025-26 PSSA and Keystone exams have left educators and school leaders scrambling this year, and created uncertainty for families. District officials did receive preliminary PSSA score information in June but have opted not to release those scores to educators and families. Instead, they’re waiting for the state to review and release official results, which officials expect sometime this fall.

Criteria-based schools in the city usually rely on the most recent PSSA exams as part of their admissions requirements. District officials had previously said students would take an “alternative assessment” that could replace the PSSAs.

Monday’s statement said students will use both their 2025 assessment results and the official 2026 data as part of their applications this year.

“Once the verified 2026 PSSA and Keystone results are released … later this fall, District staff will contact all applicants to assist them with submitting their scores,” the district said. “Families do not need to take any action regarding their 2026 assessment scores at this time.”

There are several other important updates to the selective admissions process this year:

The district will only consider final grades in English Language Arts (or reading), math, and science. Grades in social studies, writing, or any other class won’t be used to determine a student’s eligibility for school admission.
Students who attended the district’s summer career and technical education program will get priority if they are applying to such a program for the 2027-28 school year.
ZIP code preference is still a factor in the admissions system. Families whose home address is within one of the following eligible ZIP codes may receive priority consideration when applying to Masterman, Central, Carver, and Palumbo: 19132, 19133, 19135, 19138, 19140, 19141.
Prekindergarten students seeking to enroll in the same school for kindergarten will get lottery preference.
The individualized review process has been expanded. This process is used for students who are English learners and those with disabilities or 504 plans. Those students will receive an individualized review regardless of whether they meet the eligibility requirements for any criteria-based school to which they applied. District officials said this is designed to allow more qualifying students applying to criteria-based middle and high schools to be considered.

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

‘We’re going to listen’: Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington sets sights on rebuilding trust

2026-08-26T16:53:35+00:00

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Philadelphia Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. has begun his fifth year on the job with his focus set on improving students’ academic performance.

But other pressing issues, including the 17 schools the district plans to close beginning next year, may command the attention of students, families, and staff.

The release of last year’s state test scores remains “delayed by the state,” Watlington said, but previous scores show that while students’ math performance has improved, reading performance has declined. The district’s graduation rate has risen, and the number of dropouts has declined.

“We’re going to keep putting our foot on the gas,” Watlington said, adding that he’s focused on improving communication with families and building stronger partnerships with parents and community members. That will include paying some family and community members a “modest stipend” to become ambassadors for the district.

Still, it’s unclear whether Watlington’s strategy will strengthen the district’s relationships and repair trust with the thousands of families facing school closures or whose children’s education has already been disrupted this year by asbestos concerns or the end of certain programs.

Chalkbeat spoke with Watlington Wednesday about his plans for the upcoming school year. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

We’re coming off a year with high tensions, largely about school closures. Some teachers and students said they lost trust in the district. How will you go about building trust this year?

Trust is the cumulative effect of small acts over time. It takes a long time to build it, and it takes a little time to erode it.

We’re going to be transparent, and we’re going to tell our families and communities the truth. Truth is kindness, I believe, and especially when we have to deal with really difficult issues.

One of our truths is, in the sixth-largest city in the United States of America, the district-operated schools have a 65% occupancy rate, and 35% of those seats are sitting vacant. It’s inefficient for the taxpayer’s dollar.

I understand people who have strong feelings about school closures, and we’re going to empathize. We’re going to stay at the table. We’re going to build transition committees with school communities. We’re going to listen. We’re going to do something with that feedback.

We’re going to continue to work as partners, and we’re not going to take personal when conversations get a bit strident. That’s when we need to stay in the fight, work together, and we can disagree without being disagreeable.

What do you plan to do in the coming year — be it around academics, curriculum, family support, staff support — that’s different from when you first started?

Number one, I’m going to focus on academic achievement. We had the right strategy in math. Three through eighth grade math, we’ve got nearly a 13-percentage-point increase (in proficiency rates over three years).

On the reading side, we expected there to be some implementation dip. We think we absolutely did the right thing to standardize the reading curriculum across the school district. A lesson learned is that we’ve got to double down on how we support and prepare teachers. We need the classroom teaching to change in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Superintendent gives his annual State of the Schools address on Wed., Jan 7, 2026 at Thomas Edison High School.

Half of the day, kids have to be exposed to grade-level standards, not remedial work, not just tutoring. Because we will never improve and fix this problem through tutoring and remediation. We will never remediate or tutor our way to excellence.

We see graduation rates going up, but we don’t necessarily see all high school academic scores going up. Do you worry at all that the standards to reach graduation have lowered?

I don’t think the standards to reach graduation have lowered. I do think that I want to challenge the notion that when school districts improve their graduation rates, there are people who automatically want to say, “Well, they’re lowering their standards.” Because I think there’s a bias against public education in this country. I really do, and the bias is strong, and that’s why I’m here in Philadelphia.

I’m going to stand tall and strong and tell people many public schools are doing better with the students that we serve than kids in other sectors. As third through eighth grade kids get (academically) stronger, and we continue to invest in those lower grades as they move up, we will do nothing but produce stronger high school students and graduates.

I think there’s a problem with grade inflation in higher education and K-12. I’ll admit that at the same time.

Some Philadelphia superintendents stay a long time. Some don’t. Why stay in the role?

This is personal to me. As a student who came out of poverty myself, I know that public schools are the way to get into the middle class and solidly in the middle class. I know that public schools are what can help to create wealth and generational wealth that far too many Americans don’t get.

I just think all the pieces are coming together at one time, despite all the challenges we have. I’m optimistic about the progress that has been made.

And then finally, I’d like to stay 10 years and one day — and beat (former Superintendent) Bill Hite’s record of 10 years.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Students plan to ‘keep going and keep pushing’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Philly schools ask communities to help shape transition plan as controversial closures move ahead

2026-08-20T22:10:34+00:00

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The School District of Philadelphia’s closure plan is moving ahead as written, even as elected officials demand parts of the plan be reconsidered.

District officials announced Thursday they are opening applications on Aug. 31 for new school transition committees. Those committees will be set up for the nine schools closing this academic year, schools receiving students from a closing school in 2027-28, and any school phasing out grade levels at the end of school year 2026-27. Each 20-person committee will include a mix of teachers, school staff, parents, caregivers, community partners, and students.

The district says the committees will give feedback and help shape transition plans that reflect the needs of each school community.

Superintendent Tony Watlington and district representatives have spent the last few years defending themselves against criticism aimed at their approach to community engagement about the closures. At several board meetings, neighborhood hearings, rallies, and protests, Philadelphians said they don’t feel that their input has been deeply considered. Even individuals named by the district to sit on advisory committees in the early stages of the process said they found those efforts to be perfunctory and frustrating.

Since the vote to approve the facilities plan, elected officials, led by City Councilmembers Nina Ahmad and Isaiah Thomas, who chairs the city’s education committee, have launched a war against district leadership — threatening lawsuits, calling for school board members’ resignations, and shutting down board meetings in an attempt to gain some control over the list of schools scheduled to close.

Thursday’s move to assemble transition committees signals the district has no intention of making changes to the plan anytime soon.

Watlington said in a statement that for the transition process to be successful, the district will need to meaningfully partner with school communities.

“We really want this to be something that represents ‘nothing for us without us,’” Watlington said at Thursday’s school board meeting. “We want to be equal partners in how we implement this facilities master plan.”

In June, the district appointed Shakeera Warthen-Canty to lead the newly created school transition office, which will oversee implementing the facilities plan. The plan includes closures but also promises to modernize some 169 buildings. Watlington has said it’s a 10-year, $3 billion vision to build a new high school, renovate pools, update HVAC systems, improve bathrooms, refurbish athletic facilities, add kitchens, and redesign classroom spaces.

The transition committee applications will be open through Sept. 18. Watlington said the district’s outreach to parents and school staff “won’t be limited just to these committees. There’ll be other deep engagement.”

People can submit feedback on the transition process through this form.

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

Pennsylvania still hasn’t passed a school cellphone ban. Some Philly principals aren’t waiting.

2026-08-20T15:03:47+00:00

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At West Philadelphia High School, kids are sometimes on their phones — but they’re not breaking any rules.

The school has a new cellphone policy, implemented last school year, that requires teachers to lock up student phones in a clear cabinet at the front of each classroom. During class, the phones are visible but out of reach. Then, when the bell rings, kids get them back.

That means students can scroll TikTok at lunch and text their parents between classes. During some lessons, teachers can unlock the phones, allowing students to use them for schoolwork.

“We want to be innovators,” said climate manager Eugene Lett Jr. “We want kids to have their phones. But not during instruction time.”

West Philly High’s approach differs from the so-called “bell-to-bell” cellphone bans taking off around the country. In states such as New York and New Jersey, lawmakers now require schools to prohibit student cellphone use throughout the school day, including lunch and transition times. These policies include some exceptions but are largely meant to prevent student cellphone use at school entirely.

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro has said he wants lawmakers to pass a similar ban. Proponents say bell-to-bell bans encourage social interaction and help kids focus on learning. But as Pennsylvania lawmakers continue negotiating school cellphone use regulations, some school leaders say they like their own approaches, which a statewide ban could disrupt.

The state Senate passed a bill in February to ban students’ use of cellphones during the school day, and the House passed an amended version in June. The bill includes exceptions for students who need devices for medical use, translation, or communication support. But lawmakers have yet to agree on a final version, as disagreements remain over which schools the ban should apply to and what exceptions it should include.

That means districts are largely on their own to determine how to manage student cellphone use. In Philadelphia, the district leaves cellphone policies and enforcement up to individual schools.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has supported Shapiro’s call for a statewide cellphone ban. But Superintendent Tony Watlington has previously said he believes decisions about student cellphone use are “best made at the school level.”

Philadelphia leaves cellphone policies up to schools

At West Philly High, Principal Marla Travis said the school used to require students to store their phones in locked pouches for the entire day. The goal was to limit distractions and keep students focused on learning. But in practice, she said, it was difficult to implement and made kids and families anxious.

Phones still buzzed even if they were stored away, and some kids found ways to unlock the pouches. The cost of buying new pouches and the staff time needed to unlock them for hundreds of kids at the end of each day also added to the challenge.

So Travis’s team met with students and staff during town halls to discuss what they could improve. Teachers wanted an easier way to manage the end-of-day phone unlocking rush. Students wanted to check their phones a few times throughout the day to communicate with their families.

Travis got the idea for the clear, locked cabinets from an airport charging station. They cost $35 each and are simple to use, she said. A handful of times, students have tried to turn in dummy phones to avoid handing over their real ones. But overall, she said, “they seem to like it, and they abide by the rules.”

West Philadelphia High School Principal Marla Travis says locked cabinets in each classroom help the school limit student cellphone use while still allowing students to use phones between class.

But a mile away, at James Rhoads Elementary School, storing student cellphones in locked pouches has worked well, said Principal Megan Wapner.

The school provides Yondr pouches to all students in grades 3-8. Students lock their phones inside before entering the building in the morning, and staff unlock them at the end of the day.

“We’ve seen engagement tremendously improve,” Wapner said. “We’ve seen our teachers’ ability to teach has completely changed.”

Wapner implemented the Yondr pouches at Rhoads shortly after the pandemic, when she said she saw students frequently distracted by their devices. Teachers struggled to compete with the endless entertainment of YouTube and Instagram. Students would sometimes get in fights based on texts or rumors.

In middle school, “big feelings are happening all the time,” said Rhoads English language arts teacher Rafael Schneider. Being without their phones gives students a kind of “cooldown time,” he said, and keeps them present in class.

James Rhoads Elementary School Climate Manager Lamond Muhammad displays the Yondr pouches the school uses to prevent students from using their phones.

Teachers and leaders at Rhoads say managing phones and unlocking pouches for their 400 students isn’t a strain. But they understand it could be trickier at schools with older kids or more students.

Still, Wapner said she supports a statewide ban. Families and students were initially skeptical of her school’s policy, but pushback is now rare, she said. She said she believes a statewide ban could help other schools get cellphone use under control.

“We have really seen a difference,” she said. “You won’t see them on their phones at all. You won’t see phones in the building, and you will also see kids talking, looking at each other, making new friends.”

Philadelphia’s state test scores are delayed this year

2026-08-18T22:51:00+00:00

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Typically, Philadelphia teachers and principals use state test scores from the prior school year to assess student learning, roster kids into the proper classes, and prepare for the year to come.

Not this year.

Several teachers told Chalkbeat this week they haven’t seen results from the 2025-26 PSSA or Keystone exams and aren’t sure why. In the past, these scores have been shared with educators and school leaders around June. Teachers returned to classrooms this week for professional development, and students will return on Aug. 24.

School district officials said the holdup is with the state.

The district “has been notified that the release of official statewide PSSA and Keystone results by the Pennsylvania Department of Education is on hold,” district spokespeople said in a statement to Chalkbeat Tuesday. They did not respond to requests for clarification.

A spokesperson from PDE said in an email that school-level data did get sent out to school districts in June but that a “review of preliminary data is still underway.”

The delay will have ripple effects for students, educators, and school leaders. Though they have some student data from STAR benchmark exams, school staff rely in part on state assessments to determine which students need additional support, where teachers are most needed, and where extra resources should be spent.

The district “cannot use the 2025-26 assessment results to evaluate year-over-year student achievement or as the required criterion for school selection,” according to its statement.

Instead, students will be able to take an “alternative assessment” in the fall and submit those results. Not having state test scores for school selection could pose a host of new issues for families when that process opens on Sept. 8, but without further information from the district, any potential impact on admissions is unclear.

Typically, the state releases PSSA and Keystone test data to districts early in the summer. District officials then have a period, usually from June through July, to review the data, share it with school leaders, and make sure nothing looks awry. After that, the state sends out statewide comparison data that districts can share publicly. In past years, that comparison data was shared at school board meetings by September or October.

According to a field message PDE sent Tuesday morning, the statewide comparison data is still being analyzed and is not being shared publicly. However, that message confirms districts received preliminary school-level assessment data in June.

It is unclear why the district wouldn’t be able to rely on those results to measure student achievement or make school selection decisions.

Several Philly charter school leaders have shared preliminary state test results with their teachers, Chalkbeat has confirmed.

At least one Pennsylvania school district — Conrad Weiser Area School District in Berks County — has shared its preliminary PSSA data, according to school board documents.

Philadelphia is not the only district grappling with test score controversy. Testing experts are calling for an investigation into New York City’s scores, and New Jersey educators say their state score delays are forcing schools to start their academic years without crucial data.

This story has been updated to include comment from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

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

Philadelphia’s school asbestos problem is already derailing back-to-school

2026-08-17T22:35:36+00:00

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After a $17 million HVAC renovation and nearly two years of construction, Kensington High students and staff were hoping this school year would get off to a smooth start.

Instead, they were hit with a familiar Philly school problem: asbestos, a toxic substance that can cause breathing problems and lung disease when it deteriorates and is inhaled.

During renovations at Kensington High School this summer, an asbestos inspector identified concerns about the demolition of the old HVAC system, Deputy Superintendent of Operations Oz Hill said in a letter sent to the school community last week. To remove asbestos and clean the building, the district will relocate students and staff to the unoccupied Austin Meehan Middle School building seven miles away for the remainder of 2026.

“We know this is disappointing news, but the health and safety of our students, staff, and workers is our first priority,” Hill said. He added that the district looked for buildings closer to Kensington, but none were suitable for the school’s more than 400 students and 90 staff members.

Kensington is one of many century-old district buildings where asbestos must be constantly monitored and occasionally remediated. That process is time-consuming and expensive, but failing to do so can create hazardous health conditions. In recent years, district leaders have pledged in public and in court to improve asbestos monitoring and ensure quick remediation. Still, asbestos remains a problem, raising concerns that the district isn’t doing enough to keep school buildings safe.

“This is a repeat of the playbook we’ve seen at other schools,” said Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg during a press conference Monday.

Over the past few years, district leaders have temporarily closed a handful of schools due to asbestos, including Ben Franklin High School and SLA Beeber. They’ve also shut down parts of other buildings to conduct asbestos remediation.

“Unfortunately for the staff and the kids in the community, it’s going to be a chaotic year,” Steinberg said.

Last year, the Department of Justice criminally charged the district in a first-of-its-kind case, finding that it failed to conduct proper asbestos monitoring between 2015 and 2023. To defer prosecution, the district agreed to inspect buildings every six months and regularly repair damage.

Superintendent Tony Watlington has separately said his facilities plan, which includes closing 17 schools and upgrading nearly 170 others, will ensure all students attend classes in high-quality buildings.

But the district does not yet have the funds to complete all the renovations Watlington is seeking. In the meantime, nearly 300 school buildings have asbestos that must be monitored.

District promises support for displaced Kensington High students

District spokesperson Naima DeBrest said in a statement Monday evening that the district suspects a third-party contractor improperly removed asbestos containing material during demolition work at Kensington High.

The district removed that contractor from the job, and the contractor is not working on any other district project. The district is on schedule with its regular asbestos inspections, DeBrest said.

Steinberg said district officials briefed him and other union personnel on the matter in July and allowed them to inspect the building.

Steinberg said district officials told him that a contractor who was not certified or trained in asbestos removal or remediation demolished an area containing asbestos. The contractor did not follow asbestos removal best practices, which means the materials could have contaminated several parts of the school.

“A lot was being done quickly,” said Jerry Roseman, the PFT’s director of environmental science, who inspected the damage. “It needed more careful management, knowing there’s asbestos throughout the building.”

The district will provide transportation for all Kensington students to Meehan, Kensington Principal José E. Lebrón told families in a letter over the weekend.

It will also transition the lab spaces for Kensington’s marketing, computer technology, and computer engineering programs to the new building. District officials also said they will create a school safety plan and share it with families ahead of the first day of school next week.

“Please rest assured that our dedicated team has been working around the clock to create a safe, vibrant, and welcoming space where our students can thrive from day one,” Lebrón said.

Families can access more information during upcoming meetings:

In-person information meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 18 at 5:00 p.m. at Kensington CAPA.
Virtual information meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 19 at 5:00 p.m. via Zoom.
Austin Meehan open house for Kensington High on Friday, Aug. 21 at 1 p.m.
Austin Meehan open house for Kensington High on Saturday, Aug. 22 at 10 a.m.

This story has been updated with additional information from the Philadelphia school district.

Why a Philly district report on the success of its summer programs includes ‘imperfect data points’

2026-08-14T16:52:31+00:00

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From the field trips to the childcare, Philly kids and their families say they’re enjoying the summer school programs provided by the school district and the city.

But are these programs translating to more success in the classroom? That question has been a tough puzzle to solve for district officials. And a report conducted by the district doesn’t necessarily provide encouraging — or clear — answers.

Every summer, thousands of students participate in the bevy of free summer programs Philadelphia offers. They range from camps and sports to workforce training, traditional classroom learning, and safe spaces for young people. Superintendent Tony Watlington and Mayor Cherelle Parker have promoted the programs in part as a way to boost academic achievement and reinforce math and reading skills during the summer, when the threat of learning loss is greatest.

But a new report from the school district about summer programming in 2025 found some students in three grade levels who participated in Summer Achievers — a core part of Parker’s push for year-round school — experienced more learning loss in reading on the Star assessment compared with district students overall. The report’s authors caution that in general, district students’ fall Star test scores are lower than their spring scores from the previous school year, due to the “summer slide.”

The popularity of these programs is growing: From 2023 to 2025, enrollment in the five largest summer programs rose from roughly 14,800 students in 2023 to nearly 16,800 students in 2025. And national research has found that summer programs can help students’ academic progress in math and literacy.

But spotty attendance is one of the reasons why measuring academic outcomes for students in summer programs can be difficult. The district does not track whether students attend the academic portion of the summer programs, or which students come on which days.

Several researchers told Chalkbeat that the district’s analysis, which it published in June, is ultimately inconclusive. They also raised questions about how the district is measuring academic success for students in the program. Not all Summer Achievers students took the Star assessments. And the report doesn’t say how to distinguish outcomes for Summer Achievers, who are also district students, from the district’s overall performance.

“You can’t tell from this [report] whether or not the summer programs had any significant positive impact on participants relative to the district,” Jon Supovitz, director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview.

There are separate, broader challenges related to assessing these summer programs, like isolating the effects of academic-focused programs from recreational ones. The programs, most of which are voluntary and free, attract a different group of kids than the district educates overall.

District officials told Chalkbeat that summer programming isn’t like tutoring and shouldn’t be evaluated the same way. They said their test score analysis was meant to be descriptive and includes “imperfect data points” intended to guide future summer program planning efforts. The programs are evolving and are intended to help students succeed over a longer stretch of time, they added.

“Would we expect there to be dramatic changes? Probably not, based on the model of the program,” Joy Lesnick, the district’s deputy chief of research, evaluation, and academic partnerships, said in an interview.

The district is betting that getting young people in the habit and pattern of attending school — or school-like environments — will boost attendance rates and create a positive association with learning that will compound over time.

“If you’re in the pattern of going to school and it’s a fun thing that you do and you’re doing these things that you enjoy, then you’re going to keep coming,” Lesnick said.

Summer Achievers just wrapped up its third summer. It’s part English and math class staffed by district teachers, part summer camp. It’s not mandatory and runs for around six weeks for four days a week from June to July. Lesnick said that works out to around 20 days of programming — the academic portion can account for three to four hours of each day.

But district officials say the intent of the programs goes beyond boosting standardized test scores.

“Ultimately we want the academic achievement to improve,” Lesnick said. “We also know that engagement and a strong school climate and a love of learning are also really important things to keep going, especially if you’re young.”

The report did identify what the district considers successful outcomes from some of the other five largest summer programs, although those aren’t based on measures like test scores. Nearly two-thirds of students required to attend Summer School recovered one or more academic credits, and nearly 60% of enrolled seniors graduated over the summer of 2025 as a result.

For some students, the programs are having the desired effect in terms of changing their mindset about school.

“This program actually helped me,” one summer school participant said in a written response to the district’s survey included in the 2025 report. “I’m glad I experienced this because it was a wake up call to come to school more.”

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

Unequal algebra access in Philly is ‘discriminatory’ says key city official as district plans changes

2026-08-06T19:56:49+00:00

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Philadelphia school officials say they want all eighth graders to have the opportunity to take an algebra course before high school, but they’re still roughly 50 schools and a school year away from reaching that goal.

Until everyone has access, the district’s math offerings remain inequitable, education advocates and city councilmembers said at a City Hall hearing on Thursday. And councilmembers said they want schools to offer the course to all students regardless of where they live or their test scores, although not everyone is necessarily on board with that idea.

Philly school leaders announced Thursday they intend to offer algebra at all 126 district schools that enroll eighth graders by the 2027-28 school year — for those students who are prepared for the extra rigor. That determination will be made based on students’ Star test scores.

“We certainly want to offer it to students who are ready for it,” Brenda Elliott, the district’s deputy superintendent of academics, told Chalkbeat before Thursday’s hearing.

Amid a heated national debate about when to offer access to the advanced math course, in Philly, patchy algebra availability for eighth graders can mean deserving students are locked out of the most competitive public high school. In addition, some see algebra as a gateway course to more advanced classes like calculus and career opportunities in science and technical fields. But experts caution not all eighth graders have a solid grasp on the basic concepts that algebra builds on. And granting universal access hasn’t translated to success for some districts.

City Councilmember and Education Chair Isaiah Thomas called Philly’s current approach “discriminatory.” And Councilmember Nina Ahmad said at the hearing that by not offering algebra to all eighth graders, “we’re really truly not letting our children have a quality education” at selective admissions schools, “which changes their trajectory in life.”

A 2023 Chalkbeat analysis determined that the lower the median household income in a Philly school’s surrounding neighborhood, the less likely that algebra is offered to eighth graders by that school. And because the course is a prerequisite for admission at Julia R. Masterman — the district’s most selective public high school — hundreds of students every year are effectively excluded from even applying there.

Thomas said his own children were among those excluded because they could not take algebra before high school.

About 400 district eighth graders passed the Pennsylvania state math test in 2025 and “could have succeeded in algebra, but didn’t have the opportunity because their school simply did not offer it,” Symbol Lai from Children First, a Philly nonprofit, said Thursday.

Lai suggested the district implement a universal screening process so “students’ readiness for algebra isn’t left up to chance.”

Philly is not the only city school district grappling with the algebra problem. In 2014, San Francisco pulled algebra courses from middle schools in an attempt to improve students’ foundational math skills and reduce racial disparities in math achievement. After largely failing to accomplish that, the San Francisco school board voted in March to reinstate the class as an elective available for all eighth graders.

In the 2025-26 school year, a total of 65 Philly schools offered algebra, an increase of 15 from two years before. The majority, 40 schools, offered it through a dedicated class in the building, and the remainder offered it through the district’s hybrid in-person, virtual learning program called Cross School Learning.

For the upcoming school year, Elliott said 42 district schools will offer algebra as a dedicated class or section and 33 schools will participate in Cross School Learning. That will bring the total number of schools offering algebra in some form to 75 schools.

That still leaves 51 district schools serving eighth grade students without access to algebra, according to district figures.

The district also offers a course called Algebra 1a for ninth graders who may need what Elliott called a “booster” class. The first-semester course allows students “to address gaps and build up their math proficiency,” and begin the grade-level Algebra 1 class in the second semester.

The course launched at 12 schools in the 2025-26 school year because Elliott said too many district students were failing Algebra 1 in ninth grade, signaling they weren’t properly equipped for the level of math rigor.

“When kids fail a class, particularly in that first year of ninth grade, it can be deflating,” Elliott told Chalkbeat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ongoing

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday, Aug. 8

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

Where: 6006 W. Girard Ave

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

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

Where: 4821 Germantown Ave.

When: Noon to 3 p.m.

Wednesday, Aug. 12

Congreso block party featuring a backpack giveaway and petting zoo

Where: 2800 N. American St.

When: Noon to 3 p.m.

Thursday, Aug. 13

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

Where: 2401 N. 54th Street

When: 3 to 6 p.m.

Friday, Aug. 14

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

Where: 4200 Wissahickon Ave.

When: 4 to 7 p.m.

Saturday, Aug. 15

The Southeast Asian Market’s annual school supply giveaway

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

When: 10 a.m.

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

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

When: 1 to 4 p.m.

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

Where: 6624 Haverford Ave.

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

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

Where: 5245 Germantown Ave.

When: Noon to 3 p.m.

New World Leaders’ back-to-school event

Where: 5700 Haverford Ave.

When: 2 to 5 p.m.

Bright Little Scholars’ Back-to-School Giveaway

Where: 4500-02 Westminster Ave.

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

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

Where: 126 Leverington Ave.

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

Sunday, Aug. 16

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

Where: 1633 W. Oxford St.

When: 3 to 6 p.m.

Wednesday, Aug. 19

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

Where: 5901 Market St.

When: 4 to 6 p.m.

Friday, Aug. 21

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

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

When: Noon

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

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

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

Sunday, Aug. 23

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

Where: Canaan Baptist Church, 5430 Pulaski Ave.

When: Noon to 3 p.m.

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

Where: West Philadelphia YMCA, 5120 Chestnut St.

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

Saturday, Sept. 5

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

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

When: Noon to 8 p.m.

Where to donate school supplies

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

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

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

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

‘Nobody feels good, nobody’s learning’: How high temperatures disrupt Philadelphia’s school days

2026-08-04T14:11:07+00:00

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For nearly two years, teacher Isabelle Ouyang and her colleagues have dealt with the presence of construction workers, shuffling between classrooms, stress over schedules, and a host of disruptive renovations.

Ouyang has, essentially, pardoned all that dust, because Philadelphia’s Kensington High School now has air conditioning. With a $17 million estimated price tag, it hasn’t come cheap. And she’s still worried about disruptions continuing into the next school year.

“Having AC in our school, I feel really lucky,” said Ouyang, a special education teacher. “But it felt a little bit like things were being figured out on the fly.”

As climate change leads to more extreme weather and hotter summers, ensuring students can remain safe and comfortable in Philadelphia’s old schools has become a perennial challenge. Research shows that high temperatures take a toll on student learning, attendance, and behavior.

Around 50 Philadelphia schools — or nearly one quarter of district schools — still won’t have what the district considers to be adequate cooling when the school year begins later this month. That number has shrunk over the past few years after the district spent COVID relief dollars on upgrading HVAC systems and received a $200,000 donation from Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts.

In the last four years, the number of Philly schools without air conditioning has fallen from 118 to 52. Still, the district seems unlikely to meet its previous goal of air conditioning all its buildings by 2027. The complicated and expensive process of adding cooling to old buildings like Kensington High, which was built over a century ago, illustrates why getting there can be so challenging.

The Philadelphia district has an official plan for extreme heat that includes sending students at schools without adequate cooling to learn remotely at home when outside temperatures are forecast to reach 85 degrees or above before 9 a.m. At the end of last school year, the district used that protocol twice, moving students to remote learning for approximately 50 schools without adequate air conditioning.

Superintendent Tony Watlington has said the district’s 10-year facilities plan is key to ensuring students go to school in buildings that have air conditioning and similar upgrades. It includes closing 17 schools, colocating several, and modernizing nearly 170 buildings.

“We want to get to a point where we don’t have to send kids home early” when it gets too hot out, he said during a tour of John M. Patterson Elementary School in Southwest Philadelphia earlier this summer.

Patterson doesn’t have adequate cooling, but is supposed to get a $45 million upgrade under the facilities plan to increase its capacity and add air conditioning to key parts of the buildings.

District spokesperson Naima DeBrest said in a statement that the district is “shifting from separate, immediate renovations to integrating cooling upgrades into the broader, long-term modernization projects planned over the next 10 years.”

The district, however, does not yet have all the funding to pay for the upgrades at schools slated for renovations under its 10-year plan.

Adding AC to old schools can take years

Kensington High School’s HVAC upgrades included replacing aging heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, along with updating ductwork.

Separately, the building also got new windows to replace ones that had become opaque with wear.

At other schools, the process of upgrading cooling systems has also become costly and drawn out.

John F. McCloskey Elementary School in Cedarbrook was one of the dozens of schools that had to send students home to learn remotely at the end of last school year due to high temperatures, because it does not have adequate cooling.

The local utility Philadelphia Gas Works has been studying whether installing a geothermal system, which would serve the school as well as a neighboring community center, could be a solution for the school. Geothermal systems don’t require burning fossil fuels, making them favored by climate advocates.

A PGW spokesperson said the utility expects that study to be released in the coming weeks, a year and a half after the utility first announced its plans. It estimates installing the system would cost around $19 million, without tax incentives, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Though that could save the district money on gas in the long run, there is no budget or timeline yet to install it.

That means for the upcoming school year, McCloskey still won’t have adequate cooling, and kids will once again learn remotely if temperatures get too hot.

Linnea Bond, environment and health education director at the advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania, has been following PGW’s work on its geothermal study for years. She said she’s glad it’s made progress, but that’s only one step.

“I don’t want them to leave these kids hanging,” she said.

High temperatures take a toll on students, staff

When temperatures climb, students do worse on tests and can have more disciplinary problems, research shows. Attendance also declines on high-heat days, studies have found.

School districts need robust heat plans to prepare for those challenges, said Allison Poulos, an associate professor in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. That can mean everything from ensuring staff and students have access to water to redoing schedules so school isn’t in session during the hottest times of the year.

It’s important that schools have “really thought through what resources they have, what they don’t have, and what decisions they will make,” said Poulos, who helps run the university’s HeatReady Schools initiative. “Because I think these are going to continue to persist and probably get more problematic as time goes on.”

One Philadelphia math teacher who asked not to be named because she was not authorized to speak by the district said the lack of air conditioning in her building frequently derails learning during the hottest months of the school year.

She’s rarely able to make significant curriculum progress on days when school goes remote due to heat, she said, because it happens with little warning. On days that are hot but don’t meet the district’s temperature threshold for closure, she notices absences spike in her classroom.

For students who do attend, the classroom heat is like an unavoidable, uncomfortable distraction.

“Nobody feels good,” she said. “Nobody’s learning.”

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.

340 Philadelphia school staff positions saved from cuts via last-minute city agreement

2026-06-10T22:36:41+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district has reached an agreement with the City Council and Mayor Cherelle Parker to stave off the 340 school-based position cuts it had planned for next school year.

But no additional recurring revenue source is coming under the deal, Parker said Wednesday.

Parker said the district will use $48 million in onetime funding City Council approved as part of its budget deal last week to pay for those positions next year. In the following years, Parker said she will continue to work with the City Council to find a way to generate new, recurring funds for the district. If that does not happen, the city will find the money through other budget cuts.

“There is no new predictable and recurring revenue source in the budget,” Parker said. But she said they made some tough decisions to ensure the district gets the funding to keep these positions over the next five years.

Parker did not share details about where that money would come from if there is no new recurring revenue source, but said there would be more information in the budget plan her team will release tomorrow.

The 340 positions the district planned to cut included climate staff, special education aides, counselors, and teachers. Though no staff would have been laid off under the plan, staff would have had to find new positions and their empty positions would not be filled.

Educators and public school advocates have spent the last few months warning district leaders that the cuts would upend schools, drive educators out of the city, and leave students with less support at a time when they desperately need it.

The deal announced Wednesday would not reverse the 220 building substitute position cuts or the 130 central office position cuts the district adopted.

Last week, Superintendent Tony Watlington told council members that the district could not restore the school-based positions without finding sources of recurrent multiyear funding, according to a memo Chalkbeat obtained.

He argued relying on onetime stopgap funding to cover annual costs such as salaries could negatively impact the district’s financial outlook.

But on Wednesday, standing beside Parker and Council President Kenyatta Johnson, he said he was grateful to accept the deal and called it “Christmas in June.”

Many school staff were told to find new positions months ago due to the budget cuts. Now, the district plans to work with principals as well as the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers to fill those positions again.

Figuring out how to fill the restored positions “is a great problem to have,” Watlington said.

52 Philadelphia schools will go virtual Friday due to high temperatures. Here’s the list.

2026-06-04T21:09:29+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district will close 52 schools Friday and move to virtual learning due to high temperatures, district officials announced Thursday afternoon.

Early childhood programs located at those schools will also be virtual, and all in person after-school programs in those buildings will be canceled.

The transition to virtual learning will hit around one-quarter of the district’s schools. Schools not on the list will continue to operate as normal. Students may also still participate in field trips.

In a letter announcing the change, Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill said the district recognizes “that unexpected shifts to virtual learning can create challenges for families.”

“While we know that in-person learning is the best environment for students, the safety and well-being of our students, staff, and families remains our top priority,” Hill said.

Temperatures are expected to hit 90 degrees on Friday in Philadelphia. Many schools lack air conditioning in all rooms.

The district also moved dozens of schools to virtual learning on May 20 due to high heat. That move came after the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers urged the district to keep students and staff safe amid soaring temperatures.

The 52 schools that will operate virtually on Friday are:

AMY Northwest
Bache-Martin*
Blaine, James*
Building 21
Catharine, Joseph*
Comegys, B.
Comly, Watson
Cooke, J.
Crossan, Kennedy
Disston, Hamilton
Dunbar, Paul
Emlen, Eleanor*
Fell, D Newlin
Fox Chase
Franklin, Ben HS
Girard, Stephen
Harding, Warren
Henry, Charles
Hill-Freedman
Hopkinson, Francis
Houston, Henry
Howe, Julia
Jenks, Abram
Jenks, John S
Lamberton*
Lingelbach, Anna
Loesche*
Ludlow, James
McCloskey, John
McClure, A.*
McMichael, M.*
Mitchell, Weir
Moore, J. Hampton
MYA
Olney Elementary
Overbrook ES
Parkway West
Patterson, John*
Rhawnhurst*
Rowen, William
Roxborough HS
Sayre, William
Sharswood, George*
Sheppard, Issac
South Phila. HS*
Spring Garden
Spruance, Gilbert*
Sullivan, James
Tilden, William
The U School
Wagner, Gen. Louis
Washington, Martha

An asterisk indicates the school has prekindergarten or Head Start on site.

Philadelphia budget deal will not restore hundreds of school staff cuts, superintendent says

2026-06-04T19:59:30+00:00

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School District of Philadelphia leaders say $50 million in one-time funding approved by the City Council will not restore hundreds of staff positions the district is cutting, according to a memo obtained by Chalkbeat.

The City Council gave initial approval on Thursday to a $7.1 billion budget deal for the 2027 fiscal year, but rejected Mayor Cherelle Parker’s proposed rideshare tax that her administration said would generate $48 million in its first year and would stop the elimination of 340 staff positions at Philly schools.

Instead, the council sent $48 million from other budget sources in a one-time allocation to the school district to stop the cuts.

But later on Thursday, the City Council received a memo from Superintendent Tony Watlington saying that the funding was insufficient because it did not address the “underlying drivers of staff reductions.”

“The District cannot restore the 340 school based positions without a commitment to recurring and predictable funding over multiple years,” Watlington wrote in the memo.

He also wrote that the district’s finance team believes relying on a one-time funding to support recurring expenditures like salaries “may be viewed as a structural budget imbalance and could negatively affect the District’s long-term financial outlook, borrowing costs, and future capacity to invest in school facilities.”

Watlington’s memo does not address how the district could use or plans to use the $48 million instead.

Councilmembers quickly denounced the letter.

Education Chair Isaiah Thomas called Watlington’s memo “offensive and disrespectful” in a speech from the City Council floor on Thursday.

“For me that’s very, very shortsighted and doesn’t show leadership,” Council President Kenyatta Johnson said of the letter. He said district leaders should welcome the $50 million and reverse the cuts.

Standing alongside Watlington and Board of Education President Reginald Streater at City Hall Thursday, Parker called the $48 million a “band-aid” solution that would not solve the district’s persistent financial challenges: “It doesn’t get to the heart of the matter which is a $300 million structural deficit.”

Johnson said councilmembers remain committed “to work for long-term recurring revenue for the school district.”

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

Philadelphia city council approves budget without rideshare tax for schools

2026-06-04T17:36:18+00:00

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Philadelphia City Councilmembers had been warning for months that Mayor Cherelle Parker’s proposed rideshare tax was dead on arrival. On Thursday, they put it to rest.

City Council gave initial approval to a $7.1 billion budget deal Thursday that leaves out the $1 tax on companies like Uber and Lyft that Parker said would have generated $48 million to stop staff cuts at Philly schools. Instead, councilmembers’ will draw a one-time infusion of $48 million from other budget sources for the school district. Members did approve Parker’s proposal for a use-and-occupancy tax on cell phone towers, which her administration says will send $2.4 million annually to the district.

That $50 million deal for fiscal year 2027 may be too little too late for a school district already in turmoil. The school board approved a district budget last week that included millions in cuts. Earlier last month, board members approved a plan to close 17 schools.

A coalition of advocacy groups and labor union organizers rallied outside of City Hall on June 2, 2026 in support of Mayor Cherelle Parker's rideshare tax:

Several educators told Chalkbeat forced transfer decisions have already kicked off and the district’s hiring process for next school year has reportedly been thrown into chaos. And while that $50 million may save some staff positions, 220 building substitute positions will still be cut. Enrollment declines mean some schools are eliminating class offerings and losing school-based workers beyond what the rideshare tax would have supposedly covered.

School district spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers’ President Arthur Steinberg said Thursday that Council’s deal may staunch some of the budgetary bleeding, but without a source of recurring revenue like the rideshare tax, the school district will continue to face financial challenges.

Failing to establish a source of recurring revenue for the district “will accelerate the exodus of teachers and exacerbate the shortage,” Steinberg said. “One-time fixes will not cut it.”

Councilmembers also approved a resolution Thursday calling for hearings to explore finding recurring revenue sources for the district in the future.

Meanwhile, public school advocates spent the week knocking on council members’ office doors, urging members to budget for more than $50 million citing the district’s $300 million deficit and urgent needs.

“A vote for less than $75 million means building substitutes are left behind and schools facing enrollment-based cuts get no relief,” Shanée Garner, executive director of the Lift Every Voice parent advocacy group, said in a statement. “It means the children and schools carrying the greatest burden today will continue carrying it tomorrow.”

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

Why switching Philadelphia to an elected school board would be very complicated

2026-06-03T20:42:06+00:00

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Furious over the Philadelphia Board of Education’s vote to close several schools, City Council Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas wants to explore changing the board from one appointed by the mayor to one that’s elected.

But doing so would be an immensely complicated and politically daunting process. State lawmakers would need to pass legislation that the governor would need to sign. The mayor would need to give up the power of appointing board members, and voters would have to approve this change.

And switching to an elected board could also strip the City Council of much of its influence over the district. That’s because those and other legal changes could ultimately grant the school board major authority it now lacks: the power to tax.

The proposal from Thomas follows a citywide uproar over the district’s decision to close 17 schools, which he vehemently opposed; he’s promised to sue to halt the closures, although no such suit has materialized so far.

His push to overhaul how school board members are selected highlights longstanding conflicts between different political power centers in the city. It also channels concerns that unlike for every other school district in the state, Philadelphia residents lack direct representation when the board makes significant decisions about spending, charter school expansion, curriculum mandates, desegregation initiatives, and more.

In the current setup, the school board members and the superintendent must go every year to the mayor and council to push for a share of city taxes sufficient to help the district meet the needs of its students, after many years of what a court deemed were inadequate levels of state funding that violated the Pennsylvania Constitution.

That forces board members and district leaders into an annual tussle with the council over the budget. What’s made that even more stressful is the district’s longstanding structural deficit. For 2026-27, the board just adopted a $4.6 billion budget with $225 million in cuts as it attempts to cope with a projected shortfall of $300 million.

All that means if the school board gained its own taxing power and could rely less on city government, it “would be a huge structural shift in how the city and the school district operates,” said Christopher McGinley, a former Philadelphia school board member who also served as superintendent in two suburban districts with elected boards.

It’s unclear what if anything would convince city officials to relinquish their current power over school funding and school board members. Thomas said last month while he is in favor of an elected school board, he does not support giving it taxation power.

Mayor Cherelle Parker picked all nine current board members at the start of her term. Nominees are first vetted by an Education Nominating Panel, which is also appointed by the mayor. They are then subject to the “advice and consent” of the City Council. (Board member Joyce Wilkerson was appointed by Parker but never got the council’s approval, and now serves as a “holdover” member, which has caused additional controversy.)

Parker’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

An elected school board might spawn new political problems in Philadelphia even if it eases current ones. Still, some believe that the existing process is inadequate for dealing with the district’s myriad challenges.

Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, a longtime critic of the board, pointed out that at neighborhood hearings on the proposed school closures, nearly every speaker opposed them, to no avail. To her, an elected Philadelphia school board is also an issue of fairness.

“Why should every other school district in Pennsylvania have an elected board and Philadelphia does not?” she said

Pennsylvania school boards have taxing power — except Philly’s

The most direct influence an elected and not appointed board could have on schools in the city would be the power to raise money through taxation.

In all the state’s other 500 school districts, the elected boards of education levy school taxes, while municipal and county governments raise taxes for other needs such as infrastructure and social services. The educational and civic governing bodies are separate entities with their own taxing power, geographic boundaries, and sources of revenue. For instance, Montgomery County has 62 municipalities and 22 school districts.

Shifting from an appointed to an elected school board by itself would not automatically include the power to tax. To give an elected school board taxation power would require a vote by the state legislature and amendments to the state school code. It would also require voters to approve changes to the 1965 education section of the city’s Home Rule Charter.

But unlike other jurisdictions, Philadelphia is its own county as well as its own school district. That means even if an elected school board were granted the power to tax by state government and voters, it would lead to the City Council and Board of Education drawing on the same sources of tax revenue.

Richard Feder, the former chief of legislation in the city law department, said all of those changes would mean “cutting City Council out of the process” of funding schools, which would likely lead to the kind of staunch opposition from the council that Thomas has already expressed.

Besides the considerable political problems, Feder said he doesn’t think giving an elected board taxation power would be a good idea fiscally.

“I spent my career fighting for more school funding,” Feder said, “but we shouldn’t have two competing taxing bodies fighting over the same limited tax base.”

Susan Gobreski, the former head of the advocacy group Education Voters PA, said Philadelphians already elect the officials who provide the funding for schools. The council “is not a single-issue body” like the school board and can put all the city’s needs into perspective, she said.

At the same time, she said, the feeling that the board is accountable to no one is real. Even if an elected board ended up lacking taxation power, Gobreski said allowing the public to pick its members would still be worthwhile so voters could feel they had a say in choosing who to hold accountable for decisions around education policy.

Electing school board members could open Pandora’s box

But there’d be one more complication about a change to an elected board. Feder said to meet state requirements, voters in Philadelphia would have to approve a change to the city charter to allow for a partisan election. Or state voters would have to approve an amendment to the school code allowing Philadelphia to hold a nonpartisan election.

McGinley, who served on the School Reform Commission that previously ran Philly schools and was superintendent in Lower Merion and Cheltenham, worries that electing school board members would open a political Pandora’s box by giving more leverage to interest groups “that would play their cards” on various issues.

But Elaine Simon, a retired urban studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has co-authored an upcoming book on the last wave of school closures in 2013, said an elected board, especially one with regional representatives, would be more sensitive to the needs of different areas in the city.

“Now, the school board members are not representing a neighborhood,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, Board of Education President Reginald Streater is skeptical of what benefits Philadelphia would gain by electing its school board members.

He said more time should elapse before contemplating another major upheaval of district governance. It only recently emerged from an even less democratic period when a state commission ran city schools from 2001 to 2018 before returning control to a local school board.

He pointed out that the state is moving toward school funding adequacy after a historic Commonwealth Court decision, and that in Philadelphia measures including test scores, attendance rates, and dropout rates are improving.

Conditions “are getting better … why change this now?” he said.

Chalkbeat Philadelphia bureau chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this article.

Philly’s dropout rate is declining. Here’s how the district is keeping kids in class.

2026-06-01T20:30:12+00:00

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Shervon Thompson, principal of Philadelphia’s Murrell Dobbins High School, knows students are at risk of dropping out of her school for many reasons.

Some have pressure to work or have trouble finding transportation to school. Others are dealing with trauma from gun violence, a death in the family, or sickness.

Whatever the challenge, Thompson said her approach is consistent: make sure students feel like school is a place where they belong and are supported.

“The first thing is just to make sure that school is seen as a safe haven,” said Thompson. “And try to fill up as many of those resources that we can possibly do to fulfill those needs.”

Dropout rates nationally have declined steadily over the past decade. But in Philadelphia, the number of student dropouts has historically been much higher than the state average. After the pandemic pushed school online, dropout rates spiked still further.

To reverse that trend, Philly has doubled down on hiring staff and contracting with organizations to support and track down students at risk of dropping out. It also reminds families that they can opt to enroll in a district-operated virtual school if students want to stay at home.

So far, that effort appears to be working.

Last year, a record low of around 1,300 students dropped out, representing roughly 2.3% of students enrolled in grades 7-12, according to state data. That’s around half the dropout rate from a decade ago, when Philly had one of the highest dropout rates of any Pennsylvania school district. Though the district’s dropout rate remains higher than the state average, dozens of other districts are in worse shape.

This school year so far, district data shows around 1,275 students dropped out as of April.

At Dobbins, the improvement is especially pronounced: During the 2021-22 school year, 66 students dropped out, but last year, just 19 students did.

Melvin Marshall, the district’s assistant superintendent of student dropout prevention, attributes the success to the district’s increased efforts to reach kids and families before they’re absent from school too long.

“The old practice was that you would drop that student after a certain number of days (out of school),” said Marshall. But now, his team of five focuses on reaching out to those families or students who have been absent for multiple days in a row.

Some schools, including Dobbins, also employ staff to work with kids at risk of dropping out and check on them. And the district contracts with Concentric Educational Solutions, a Baltimore-based education company, to conduct home visits.

“A big part of it is just reaching out to families, finding out the core reasons why the student is not attending school,” Marshall said.

To prevent dropouts, district shares online alternatives

District officials say their success in reducing the number of dropouts is the result of several initiatives working well together.

The district’s 9th Grade Success Network operates in around 30 schools to help students during their first year of high school stay on-track to graduation. District leaders have also said they’re looking to expand a 10th grade support program to keep students on track to graduation.

That follows research from Chicago that found supporting students earlier in high school can significantly improve graduation rates.

“The sooner you can intervene or give support, so that students aren’t withdrawing, the more effective you can be,” said Elaine Allensworth, executive director of the UChicago Consortium on School Research who led the research on keeping students on-track in earlier grades.

Still, those programs don’t reach every student in the district. That’s why it’s important for schools to have good systems to monitor students who are absent and follow up with them to check in and provide support, Allensworth said.

Marshall said his team works to be sensitive and responsive to the pressures on many students and families that can lead to dropping out. Some are concerned about increased immigration enforcement. Others have to care for siblings or earn money to help their families stay afloat.

In some circumstances, Marshall said, getting a student back to their current school isn’t the best option. That’s when the district offers alternatives, like the Philadelphia Virtual Academy, a district-run online school.

When students transfer to other schools, be it within the district or outside of it, they’re not considered a dropout. Letting families know that there are other ways they can finish their degree can often make all the difference, Marshall said.

“Those are the calls that parents are appreciative of,” said Marshall. “We can assist them in pointing them in the right direction to get some of those resources our district can offer.”

Philadelphia school board adopts $4.6B budget with millions in cuts

2026-05-29T00:03:29+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education approved a $4.6 billion budget Thursday night that includes millions in cuts and will result in schools losing climate staff, teachers, counselors, and substitutes.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said cutting some $225 million is necessary to begin to plug the district’s $300 million budget deficit while balancing rising salaries, healthcare premiums, and charter school payments. No staff will be laid off, Watlington has previously said. Instead, teachers and school-based staff might be reassigned to other vacant positions across the district.

“I’m agnostic to how we get the dollars, but we desperately need additional revenue,” Watlington said.

The budget passed 8-0.

The cuts come amid a cloud of bad news for Philly schools. Ahead of the meeting, City Council members rallied outside of the district building and blasted board members for their April vote approving the district’s plan to close 17 schools starting in 2027. Enrollment declines and other funding challenges mean schools will lose more staff, advanced placement classes, and after-school programs than the district is discussing.

Board member Joyce Wilkerson blamed state and federal underfunding for the district’s financial position. Philly is the only school district in the state that can’t raise its own tax revenue and is nearly entirely dependent on state and city funding.

“It’s a national disgrace, and a disgrace to this commonwealth” that Philly schools don’t receive more public funding, Wilkerson said.

Voting to approve the budget amounts to doubling down on the closure plan, City Council member Kendra Brooks said.

City Council member Jamie Gauthier called for the six board members who voted for the closure plan to resign. “We need a school board that is actually accountable to our community,” she said.

Though elected officials are publicly fuming about the closures, no City Council member has proposed a plan to help the district close its budget deficit.

Mayor Cherelle Parker has been pushing a proposed $1 per ride tax on Ubers and Lyfts to funnel more money to the school district. But the tax has become one of the central political battles in the city, and city council members do not appear poised to approve it as is.

Thursday’s vote locks the district’s budget cuts in while negotiations around the rideshare tax continue.

City Council member and Chair of the city’s Education Committee Isaiah Thomas said at Thursday’s rally that the rideshare tax is not part of his negotiation strategy.

Also on Thursday, the board approved a $266 million amended capital budget that lays out major renovations, building additions, system replacements, and playground construction for dozens of schools to be paid for with bonds. The district’s facilities plan intends to modernize some 170 schools in addition to the closures, but there’s no guaranteed funding for that plan, so it’s unclear how realistic those projections are.

The city has a July 1 deadline to enact a budget. Thomas said if school board members and district officials don’t come back to the table to discuss changes to the closure plan, council members will continue to put them on notice.

“We’ll just keep going,” he said.

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

57 Philadelphia schools will go remote Wednesday due to heat

2026-05-19T22:23:22+00:00

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School will go remote for students at 57 Philadelphia schools Wednesday due to soaring temperatures, district officials announced Tuesday evening.

That’s over a quarter of the 218 district-operated schools in the city.

All early childhood centers operating at those schools will also shift to virtual learning.

And all in-person after-school activities, including all athletic programs scheduled for Tuesday, are canceled as well.

The move comes after Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg urged the district to declare a heat emergency Monday.

Steinberg said in a statement that the district’s failure to do so on Monday, when temperatures reached above 90 degrees, put students and staff “in uncomfortable and dangerously hot conditions.” Some 53 Philadelphia schools have “insufficient cooling” according to a district spokesperson’s statement from April.

“District administration is directly responsible for mitigating dangerous conditions inside of school buildings,” said Steinberg. “They should declare Wednesday a virtual learning day so that families and staff can plan accordingly.”

Schools were closed Tuesday due to the primary election. Schools sent students home with their Chromebooks on Monday, according to the district’s announcement.

The 57 schools that will shift to remote learning on Wednesday are:

AMY Northwest
Bache-Martin*
Blaine, James*
Building 21
Catharine, Joseph*
Comegys, B.
Comly, Watson
Cooke, J.
Crossan, Kennedy
Disston, Hamilton
Dunbar, Paul
Emlen, Eleanor*
Fell, D Newlin
Fitzpatrick
Fox Chase
Franklin, Ben HS
Girard, Stephen
Harding, Warren
Henry, Charles
Hill-Freedman
Hopkinson, Francis
Houston, Henry
Howe, Julia
Jenks, Abram
Jenks, John S
Lamberton*
Lingelbach, Anna
Loesche*
Ludlow, James
McCloskey, John
McClure, A.*
McMichael, M.*
Mitchell, Weir
Moore, J. Hampton
Motivation
MYA
Olney Elementary
Overbrook ES
Parkway West
Patterson, John*
Powel
Rhawnhurst*
Rowen, William
Roxborough HS
Sayre, William
SLA Middle
Sharswood, George*
Sheppard, Issac
South Phila. HS*
Spring Garden
Spruance, Gilbert*
Sullivan, James
Tilden, William
The U School
Vaux
Wagner, Gen. Louis
Washington, Martha

An asterisk designates schools that have prekindergarten or Head Start on site.

Should Congress spend big to rebuild schools? This $500 billion campaign proposal will be a tough sell.

2026-05-18T10:00:00+00:00

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America’s schools are crumbling.

There’s black mold in buildings in Alaska and Maine. Classrooms in New Jersey and Texas lack proper heating and cooling. And there are persistent plumbing problems in Idaho and Pennsylvania.

America’s aging school infrastructure is by one measure a nearly $90 billion problem. Federal leaders have acknowledged it since at least the 1980s but have declined to address it. Local school districts and state governments also haven’t solved it — in some cases, even after being ordered by a court to do so.

It’s a problem so big that one congressional candidate running to represent parts of Philadelphia — where the cost of repairing and upgrading public schools could cost up to $10 billion — is making it the centerpiece of his campaign. After struggling to find solutions in the Pennsylvania Legislature, state Sen. Sharif Street, a Democrat, believes only the federal government has the resources to tackle this issue. He thinks a $500 billion block grant proposal could find bipartisan support in a Congress and a country deeply divided on the federal government’s role in education.

“If we don’t address this at a federal level and come up with a massive amount of money to do so, we’re going to constantly be in a space of choosing all bad options,” Street said.

Those who lobby for the issue say Street’s proposal could put thousands of people to work, boost test scores, and strengthen communities. Street thinks it could — and must — be the nation’s next interstate highway project.

To make his case in Congress, Street must first get through a tough Democratic primary for the 3rd Congressional District on May 19. The winner of the primary is the heavy favorite to win the November election.

Regardless of whether Street wins the seat, advocates say it’s rare for a congressional candidate to make school infrastructure a key issue in a pitch to voters.

“It is absolutely viable, if Congress has the will to do it, and it would be transformative for America’s families and communities for decades to come,” said Ally Talcott, executive director of the Build America’s School Infrastructure Coalition, of Street’s proposal. “I think it is quite possibly one of the areas that could bring the country together.”

The centerpiece of Pennsylvania Sen. Sharif Street's congressional campaign is a $500 billion proposal to fund school construction and maintenance.

But Street is wading into a debate where others have previously failed to make progress. Convincing conservatives to support sending $500 billion for school facilities through a Department of Education the Trump administration is working to dismantle would be a tough sell, even if local bond measures for school infrastructure continue to do well at the ballot box.

R. Richard Geddes, a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute specializing in infrastructure policy, said he thinks school construction and maintenance is “a huge sleeper issue” that few are paying close attention to.

Still, for a proposal like Street’s to succeed and that money be spent efficiently, Geddes there should be conditions. He suggested requiring municipalities to bundle projects like Pennsylvania did to build 550 bridges, or setting up a federal credit program like one that provides loans for highway and railroad projects.

Asking thousands of local education agencies to apply for some of the $500 billion pot would be “a mess,” and those districts wouldn’t reap the benefits of scale, Geddes said.

Cities and municipalities should also consider public-private partnerships, Geddes said. That could look like attaching a privately owned gym or coffee shop to a school building to generate revenue that could pay for a portion of the building maintenance.

Geddes said that could come with its own controversy, but “it would still be better than what we have, which is a lack of creative thinking.”

State and local funding lags for school infrastructure

To accommodate the baby boom generation, cities and towns built thousands of new schools. Since then, the fertility rate has declined, and post-pandemic K-12 enrollment has been shrinking. That’s left many school buildings half empty and costly to maintain.

State and local lawmakers typically patch up the worst infrastructure issues with small-dollar grants and emergency funds. But they haven’t come close to fully funding their school facilities’ needs. As of 2023, 13 states contributed less than 10% toward local district investments in school construction and capital improvements, according to the 21st Century School Fund’s State of the Schools report from last year. And 10 states made no contributions at all.

It’s estimated that the average annual gap between what districts are spending on their public school facilities and what is needed is nearly $90 billion nationally, according to the State of the Schools report.

It’s a crucial education issue that has been politically “orphaned,” despite recent history indicating it can be relatively popular with voters said Mary Filardo, a school construction finance expert and founder of the 21st Century School Fund. Voters approved nearly 80% of bond measures for school facilities in 2025, and they approved nearly 74% in 2024.

In May, Texas voters approved a $6.2 billion school bond — the largest in state history.

But local funding hasn’t been sufficient to meet all the needs. And in some places, like Philly, the school district lacks taxing authority altogether.

In Street’s hometown of Philadelphia, the school facilities crisis has become one of the most pressing political issues in the city. With a $300 million budget deficit and declining student population, the district is moving forward with a $3 billion plan to close 17 schools and modernize nearly 170 others.

But right now, the district can’t pay for it. The district’s annual budget is $4.5 billion, yet estimates for the total cost to repair and upgrade its schools range from $5 billion to nearly $10 billion.

“Philadelphia is one of the great American cities. And it’s like, how did you let this get this bad?” said Filardo.

Pennsylvania’s previous program to fund school repairs, known as PlanCon, stopped receiving funding in 2015. A new version has never received state funding.

“There’s no way that the city or the state at the local level can actually fully address those needs,” Street said. “We just can’t do it.”

Street said his proposal, which he acknowledged is a starting point and could end up being much smaller than $500 billion, would have the Department of Education send out funding through an as-yet-undeveloped formula that factors in local population and needs.

The Philadelphia school district spends about $770 million on facilities a year, mostly on debt service and emergency repairs when roofs collapse or boilers fail, Filardo said. Those emergency repairs can end up costing more than regular maintenance and upkeep.

Filardo says for districts like Philly it’s a bit of a paradox: “They’re not spending enough, but they’re spending a lot, and they’re not getting as good a value from what they are spending.”

Geddes said when cities and towns are faced with budget crises, “the easiest thing to do in the world is defer maintenance.” That goes for roads, sidewalks, and electrical grids as well as schools.

He suggested one condition of receiving federal funding could be locking in contracts that would commit municipalities to funding 10 or 12 years of proper maintenance in advance.

That maintenance will be critical, Filardo warned, as construction costs rise and the effects of climate change batter buildings and put extra pressure on electrical systems.

School infrastructure funded with ‘hodgepodge’ of federal policies

Talcott of the infrastructure coalition said the way the country currently treats school construction funding is via “a hodgepodge of federal policies.” Funding goes out piecemeal through several agencies and departments including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy.

A bill in Congress aims to take on the problem, but it’s a far cry from the $500 billion Street is seeking.

The Rebuild America’s Schools Act of 2026 co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, and U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, would set aside $100 billion in direct grants and $30 billion in bonding authority over five years for school construction.

But Scott, the ranking member on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said gaining support for the legislation has felt like an uphill battle. The bill currently has no Republican cosponsors and hasn’t had a hearing. Scott and other lawmakers have introduced a version of the bill four times since 2019.

“If the locality can’t afford it and the state’s not doing it, then it’s either going to be the federal government or it won’t get done,” Scott said.

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

Billionaire and Republican megadonor is funding scholarships for students at closing Philly schools

2026-05-15T17:20:33+00:00

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An organization funded by Pennsylvania billionaire and Republican megadonor Jeffrey Yass is offering scholarships for Philly students displaced by school closures to enroll in private schools.

This week, the Yass Prize — an organization founded by Yass and his wife Janine — announced new “Opportunity Knocks” scholarships. The scholarships will award $8,000 each year through high school graduation for 500 students whose schools are being closed under the district’s recently approved facilities plan.

Caroline Allen, director of the Yass Prize, said the scholarships are intended to provide families with stability during a time of uncertainty in the district.

“We’re really capitalizing on this time,” Allen said. Though no schools will close until 2027, Allen said “we don’t want to wait for two years for these schools to close down to do something.”

Allen said students who are deemed eligible and receive the scholarships could attend any of the 16 private schools in the city that have received the Yass Prize and have been “vetted” as “sustainable, transformational, outstanding and permissionless.” Those private schools are already preparing to receive an influx of students from district schools that are closing or merging, Allen said.

Yass is the richest person in the state and is well known for his support of charter schools and school vouchers. Yass critics in the public education advocacy space have condemned the scholarships as attempts to lure students away from the public school system.

Aly Shaw, senior research analyst at the LittleSis Public Accountability Initiative, a nonprofit research firm, said she’s been tracking Yass’s political spending and was not surprised to see his name on scholarships aimed at drawing students away from public schools.

“This is the disaster capitalism playbook exactly,” Shaw said, referring to the exploitation of crises for profit. She pointed to Yass’s public support for school privatization and aversion to paying taxes as actions that she said have drained funding from public schools. The scholarships are evidence of Yass “taking advantage of a disaster that he created to promote private schools,” Shaw said.

The scholarship applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and awarded on a first-come, first-served basis to the first 500 students who complete all required steps, including an “eligibility review” and school enrollment applications, Allen said.

Through the Center for Education Reform, a group that supports vouchers and similar policies, the Yass Prize has awarded over $60 million to more than 225 organizations across 45 states since 2021.

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

How can schools better prepare students after high school? Here’s what a few experts say.

2026-05-13T19:19:39+00:00

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Several states — including Pennsylvania — have recently overhauled graduation requirements in an effort to ensure students are better prepared for college and careers.

Many now encourage students to earn credentials, like workplace safety certifications, to meet graduation requirements. But with little oversight over which credentials students earn, many in Philadelphia and elsewhere get low-value ones just to check a box.

“Philly is really a microcosm of what’s happening across the country,” said Matt Giani, a research associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, during a Chalkbeat panel event Tuesday. His research has found that credentials vary widely in how valuable they are to students. Without good oversight, schools often find the most efficient ways to help students get credentials — which often means offering ones that are cheap and easy to pass.

Panelists Monica Hawk, CEO of Philadelphia’s One Bright Ray Community High School, and Sean Vereen, president and CEO of the nonprofit Heights Philadelphia, said they’ve seen this play out with Philly students. It’s a good thing, they said, that students know there are paths to success beyond college. But so far, those paths don’t have enough support or funding, they said.

“I think there is a real opportunity,” said Vereen. “But it puts more pressure on the thing we don’t provide kids enough of, which is advice and good counseling.”

Some states are addressing this issue head-on. Ohio has created a tiered system of credentials to encourage schools and students to pursue the ones that are most valuable. And overall, “schools and states are learning how to do this better,” said Giani.

Catch up on the full panel discussion here.

Philly middle schoolers are examining AI — and questioning its impact on their lives

2026-05-08T18:21:54+00:00

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The middle schoolers at Philly’s Marian Anderson Neighborhood Academy have a lot of questions about artificial intelligence.

They want to know how the government is using AI and what impact the technology has on the environment. They’re curious about how it’s being used for creativity, and whether it will be with us forever — or if it’s an economic bubble waiting to burst.

The sixth through eighth graders have been researching these topics and grappling with how it makes them feel about themselves, their education, and the world around them. On Friday, they presented their findings to their parents, teachers, and some state and local officials in their school cafeteria. Overall, they said there’s a lot they still don’t know.

Marian Anderson Neighborhood Academy sixth grader Azizah Simmons researched how AI is affecting kids her age.

Sixth grader Azizah Simmons said she’s weighed the pros and cons and she’s pretty confident that AI’s overall effect on our society is negative. If used correctly, Simmons said language models like ChatGPT could help kids her age improve their writing. More often than not, she said students use it to cheat on homework or cut corners on writing assignments.

But it’s the ubiquity of the technology that worries her most.

“You can’t really escape AI,” Simmons said.

Conversations about AI have permeated every aspect of education since the arrival of models like ChatGPT. Familiar debates about cheating have given way to protests about transparency and student surveillance. Marketing pitches from companies promising “transformative” AI tools are now overwhelming superintendents’ inboxes. In Philly, educators are working with students to build their own curriculum to separate truth from AI slop, and confront the bias that can be embedded deep in the internal code.

And students say they feel like they have as much knowledge — or sometimes more — than the adults in their lives.

Sixth graders Thomas Mapp and Tyshaan Anderson’s research project focused on how video game designers use AI for level design, character creation, and visuals. Outside of school, they’ve been using AI to help them code games in Roblox and edit videos.

Anderson said he thinks the technology has helped kids like him experiment with creative fields like game design without needing to know the ins and outs of specific coding languages.

Marian Anderson Principal Nicole Patterson said she’s been inspired by her students’ civic inquiries and has learned a lot from them.

Patterson said she sees her school as a trailblazer in leading challenging conversations about AI. But she cautioned that “this is unfinished work.” She said students will continue their research and keep talking about these issues.

Marian Anderson computer science and technology teacher Trey Smith said the goal of Friday’s event was to help students and parents discuss how AI is now part of society, culture, politics, and everyday life, not just about how AI works.

“We’re all still trying to figure this out together,” Smith said. “For students to be in dialogue, not just with themselves and each other and me, but also with their families and with legislators and with school district officials and professors — I think it’s so important for them to learn together.”

That learning process can be tricky. Simmons said she ends up using AI involuntarily because search engines like Google now frontload AI overviews. That makes it difficult for young users to differentiate between what is a primary source link and what is AI generated.

“You use it without meaning to. It’s everywhere implanted in our lives,” Simmons said.

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

Philadelphia has a $3 billion school closure and modernization plan. Paying for it could be a problem.

2026-05-06T22:00:56+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district’s plan to close schools and modernize others has a $3 billion price tag. Right now, the district can’t pay for it. And its plan to raise that money might end up being wishful thinking.

Last week, members of the Board of Education voted to approve the plan to close 17 schools, and modernize nearly 10 times that number. But they had serious questions about the district’s plan to fund it. Even Superintendent Tony Watlington, who pushed the board to approve the closures and upgrades, has acknowledged the funding hole.

Watlington has said he wants to raise $2 billion from local, state, and federal government as well as philanthropic grants to pay for school upgrades over 10 years to ensure buildings are well equipped to receive more students. The remaining $1 billion would come from the district’s capital borrowing cycle.

But major questions loom over how the district would ever raise that much money. The district already has a $300 million budget deficit. The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, the district’s nonprofit fundraising partner, has raised $70 million since 2015 — or less than 3% of the plan’s total cost. The City Council has blasted the school closures and its relationship with the district has broken down. And Pennsylvania Senate Republicans, who control their chamber, have opposed sending significantly more money to the state’s largest district.

“We’ve never raised money at this level,” said board member Crystal Cubbage, who voted against the plan, at the board’s meeting last week.

All those difficulties could lead to the district to consider a watered-down version of the plan that leaves out many of the improvements Watlington wants. And they could pile further financial pressure on the district, which in addition to its fiscal problems has been losing students for years and is planning to cut hundreds of school-based jobs.

Watlington has stressed that the aim of the facilities plan is to ensure all students have better access to academic opportunities and go to school in high quality buildings.

Under his proposal, some buildings would get bathroom renovations and updated classrooms. Others would get electrical upgrades and new heating and cooling systems. In some buildings, the district has promised accessibility improvements, elevator replacements, new gyms, and fixed roofs.

The plan’s high cost is a departure from school closures elsewhere that are often meant to save districts money. Watlington has said cost-cutting is not a major aim of the facilities plan, but rather the goal is to shuffle enrollment so that the district can spend money more efficiently.

School leaders have said the facilities plan could still change even after the board’s vote to approve it. No schools are scheduled to be closed until the beginning of the 2027-28 school year.

State, city officials could reject additional facilities funding

When Watlington initially presented the facilities plan earlier this year, he said there was an alternative version that would cost significantly less, take longer, and leave more students in low-quality school buildings.

That plan would cost $1.85 billion over the course of 16 years, and the district could pay for it through its own borrowing. However, it would only reduce the number of school buildings rated unsatisfactory or poor from 85 to 45. And it’s unclear if the district’s list of schools to close and colocate would change under this cheaper version of the plan.

That alternative plan also did not include additional investments that Watlington has recently pledged in certain areas where members of City Council have opposed the plan.

It’s unclear if district officials have tweaked the alternative plan in recent months. District officials did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about it, and board members did not ask about it ahead of the April 30 vote to proceed with the facilities plan.

But regardless of which plan district officials turn to, closing schools while asking for more funding is already deeply unpopular with some members of City Council.

Last week, City Council Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas and several other elected officials interrupted the school board’s meeting and called for the resignation of those who voted for the closure plan. And many have questioned the district’s stated need for more funding while it plans to close schools.

Without significant improvement in average academic performance, Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr. said during a city budget town hall in Southwest Philadelphia Tuesday, “why would we continue to put that money in the district?”

The district has also historically been underfunded by the state. Though Gov. Josh Shapiro has approved budgets increasing funding for Philly schools each year since taking office, his budget proposal for next year still leaves the district underfunded by more than $3 billion, according to a formula adopted by a bipartisan state commission. The district will likely need the support of Republican lawmakers to get more state money.

So far, the school closure plan has brought goodwill from at least one key Republican state lawmaker.

After the closure vote, Sen. Kim Ward, a Republican and the president pro tempore of the state senate, posted on social media that she was glad Philly’s schools “recognize the need for reform” and that she was “optimistic” about working with officials to “ensure Philadelphia students are set up for success.”

Philadelphia Board of Education approves 17 school closures

2026-04-30T23:06:14+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education voted Thursday to move forward with the district’s plan to close 17 schools beginning in 2027.

Board members took their 6-3 vote remotely after fleeing an intense and heated meeting where students, educators, and state and city policymakers demanded the plan be rejected. The vote means the district will kick off the process to close more than 4,000 students’ schools and reshape Philadelphia’s school district.

The $3 billion plan would also colocate and relocate several schools and modernize nearly 170 school buildings. Superintendent Tony Watlington has said adopting the plan is necessary to provide better educational opportunities and high-quality school buildings for all students. The district plans to put $1 billion toward it and raise the other $2 billion from government and philanthropic grants.

Ahead of the vote, members of City Council shouted down board members urging them to “Shut it down!” and students yelled “Shame on you!”

Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, chair of the city’s Education Committee, called for the resignation of every board member who voted for the closures, interrupted the meeting several times and promised a lawsuit would land Friday.

Philadelphia Councilmember Isaiah Thomas and other members of City Council rally the crowd calling to shut down the Board of Education meeting on April 30, 2026.

Board President Reginald Streater, Vice-President Sarah-Ashley Andrews, Joan Stern, ChauWing Lam, Cheryl Harper, and Joyce Wilkerson voted in favor of the plan.

“We cannot fully modernize every building, ignore enrollment shifts, or postpone action anymore,” said Streater. “We must call the question today before financial instability forces the hands of all of us in this room.”

Six of nine board members vote to approve school closures

Students, educators, and families packed the meeting, holding signs and blowing whistles. But few were allowed to testify to the board. Though school board meetings generally must have a public comment period, Thursday’s meeting was technically a continuation of the meeting that the board adjourned last week.

That meant only people who had previously signed up to speak were allowed to address board members. After Streater changed the meeting to be virtual, few people were online to give their comments. Microphones were removed from the meeting room where some people — including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg — waited to testify.

Graham Williamson, a 10th grader at Lankenau Environmental Science High School, said he was inspired to see members of City Council fighting to keep his school open. But he said he had been telling school leaders to keep his school open since the district first announced its plan earlier this year.

“I’ve talked a lot already,” Williamson said. “I think it should be enough.”

Board members who voted against the proposal said they agreed that some closures are necessary. But they pointed out what they said were major problems with the plan, like its $3 billion price tag that the district does not have the funds to pay for and scarce details about what support would be available for students at closing schools.

The plan “will not lead to improved academic outcomes, it’s not financially viable, and it does not get us to the stated goal of 90% building utilization,” said board member Crystal Cubbage, who voted against the plan alongside Whitney Jones and Wanda Novalés.

All board members said they acknowledged that closing schools is a difficult and emotional decision. Even those who supported the plan said they had concerns. But they said the board needs to act to address the district’s declining enrollment, buildings with hundreds of empty seats, and enormous school repair costs.

“We must start now,” said Stern. “We cannot postpone this.”

Vote kicks off school closures, but plan could change

The district’s proposal would begin closing schools at the start of the 2027-28 school year. But there’s a legal process the plan has to go through before any of that happens. And lawsuits could derail the timeline further.

The board’s vote essentially directs the district to begin the process of closing schools. School leaders could still change the plan before the district implements it.

By the meeting’s conclusion, board members disappeared quietly through back doors and more than a dozen police officers stood guard outside the board’s office.

But parents, teachers, and students have told district leadership they will not go quietly.

“We will be here until the last person is removed from this building,” 29-year veteran Penn Treaty Middle School teacher Kristen Young said Wednesday at a rally to protest her school’s closure. “And that will likely have to be by force.”

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

Vote on Philadelphia school closures canceled by Board of Education

2026-04-23T18:15:02+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education will not vote on the district’s sweeping school closure proposal Thursday as previously planned, the board announced.

Board Chief of Staff Sithi Bucciarelli said in a statement Thursday afternoon the board will now meet April 30 to consider the resolution that includes the closures.

The board will still meet on Thursday at 4 p.m., as scheduled, to consider other business not related to the closures, Bucciarelli said.

On Monday, the board announced the plan to close 17 schools beginning in 2027 would be on Thursday’s school board meeting agenda. The reversal comes roughly two hours before that meeting was set to begin.

The resolution included changes to the facilities plan that the district had not shared previously, including removing one school from the closure list. It also included modernizing nearly 170 other schools.

In the last few days, members of the City Council have pushed Superintendent Tony Watlington and Board President Reginald Streater to delay the vote. During two days of tense hearings on education spending, elected officials told school leaders the facilities plan as written has major flaws.

Councilmembers and educators also said the plan’s timeline has been rushed, which meant many people did not have time to review the plan or reschedule their weeks to attend the meeting.

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents parts of West and Southwest Philadelphia, told Watlington and Streater during a Wednesday hearing that delaying the vote would show they were working in “true partnership towards the benefit of our kids.”

On several occasions during the hearing, Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas asked Streater directly if he would delay the vote. But Streater said he could not make that decision unilaterally and would have to consult with other board members.

All 17 councilmembers signed a letter dated Thursday requesting that the board postpone the vote until its May 28 meeting, at the earliest.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers also harshly critiqued the district’s quick timeline for the scheduled vote.

On April 30, the board will only consider the facilities plan vote and a resolution related to issuing bonds.

“We recognize that the future of our school facilities is a matter of significant interest that requires the highest level of collaboration,” said Board President Reginald Streater in a Thursday statement. “In the spirit of partnership, we are taking this time to ensure our stakeholders understand the proposal” before the Board votes.

This story has been updated to reflect that the Board of Education still plans to meet April 23.

Chalkbeat Philadelphia Bureau Chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

Your guide to Philadelphia’s upcoming school closure vote

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is the vote happening and how do I participate?

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

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

What happens if the board votes yes?

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

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

What other actions could the board take?

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

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

How much will the facilities plan cost?

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

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

What will happen to teachers if their school closes?

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

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

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

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

Feud over Philadelphia’s school closure plan leads to threats against district funding

2026-04-22T22:08:29+00:00

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In the hours before the Philadelphia Board of Education is scheduled to vote on its school closure plan, political threats and finger-pointing have reached a fever pitch.

City Councilmembers who say they were caught off-guard by the board’s sudden decision to hold the vote to close 17 schools this week have summoned Superintendent Tony Watlington and Board President Reginald Streater to multiple budget hearings, where they have threatened district funding. They say they felt misled by district leaders and — as Councilmember Nina Ahmad put it — “sandbagged.”

Meanwhile, at rallies to save individual schools from closure, state lawmakers have declared that they have long memories and will not forget the outcome of Thursday’s vote. They’ve said if the board votes to close beloved schools in their districts, they’ll be less likely to advocate for increased state aid for Philly schools.

“The administration, the legislative body, and the school district all look like you’re fighting against each other,” said Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who at a Wednesday hearing asked Streater to delay the planned vote as a signal of political goodwill.

Streater refused to accept or reject the request, saying he would confer with the board members and come to a decision before Thursday.

The fiery political rhetoric signals that the relationship between city government, school board members, and district leaders has been damaged. Still, there are few alternate proposals to get the district the money it says it would need to maintain buildings and close its budget hole. And as angry as elected leaders are about the situation, many of those same officials are among the biggest champions of education funding who might be loath to punish the district by cutting school aid or withholding their support for increasing it.

“I don’t want to talk about school funding until we get a facilities plan that we all agree upon,” Councilmember and Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas told Chalkbeat. “You can’t tell us that we have to get in line with your facilities plan and then tell us we have to get in line with your funding plan. That’s disingenuous.”

The only proposal to increase city funding for the school district on the table right now is Mayor Cherelle Parker’s $1 rideshare tax, which at least one councilmember has said is “dead on arrival” if the closure plan moves forward as written. That proposal would provide an estimated $54 million to offset 340 planned staff cuts — a drop in the bucket for a district facing a $300 million deficit and which has been chronically underfunded by some $1.8 billion annually, according to a Commonwealth Court judge.

Members spent Tuesday and Wednesday questioning and excoriating Watlington, Streater, and the city’s Chief Education Officer Debora Carrera. But when it comes to voting to send the district money, “we always come through,” Councilmember Cindy Bass said at Wednesday’s budget hearing.

At that same hearing, Parker called for unity but did not back down from her tax proposal that has become increasingly unpopular at the City Council.

“I know it’s good theater for people to see what they consider to be our going to war, the administration, versus the council, the legislative branch versus the executive branch in opposition, with the school board in opposition with the school superintendent,” Parker said.

For many elected leaders, the issue might be a defining feature of their time in office. Their speeches over the last few months at rallies to keep schools from closing may help them get attention from families and latch onto a cause that’s spurring civic engagement across the city.

Parker, who appointed all of the board members, is up for reelection in 2027. All 17 City Councilmembers have indicated they intend to seek reelection in 2027, and this year, every member of the state House of Representatives is on the ballot.

“As we go through budget season in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we will remember that vote on Thursday,” state Rep. Morgan Cephas, a Democrat, warned board members at a Tuesday rally to keep Lankenau Environmental Science High School open.

Still, no City Councilmember has put forth a plan to help the district close its budget deficit or allocate more money to prevent closures.

“It’s complex for y’all. It’s complex for us. We’re trying to work as a partnership, and everybody’s gotta do a little bit of give and take,” Council President Kenyatta Johnson said Wednesday.

Education advocates say councilmembers could draw on the city’s budget surplus, shift the amount of tax revenue set aside for the district, or adjust the split of the city’s soda tax revenue to send more money to schools, for example. Thomas told Chalkbeat Wednesday he won’t entertain alternatives until they reach common ground with the facilities plan.

But holding up all city funding for the district appears unlikely.

Bass said Wednesday that not one councilmember “has taken a single vote against any level of funding” for the district in the past.

Thomas said if the board moves forward with a vote on the closure plan Thursday, he’s prepared to consider “plenty of options.”

Chalkbeat reporter Rebecca Redelmeier contributed to this story.

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

17 school closures: Philadelphia Board of Education to vote on new facilities plan Thursday

2026-04-20T17:39:10+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education will vote Thursday whether to move forward with the school district’s school closure proposal, according to a resolution the board published Monday.

The latest version of the plan district officials released Monday would close 17 schools beginning in 2027. That’s down from the initial 18 school closures Superintendent Tony Watlington presented to the board in February.

The district’s updated proposal takes James R. Ludlow School off the closure list and nixes the plan to turn John Moffet Elementary into a middle school. Moffet would now become a K-4 school, with students attending Ludlow for middle school.

It also increases investments in some parts of the city where members of City Council have vehemently fought the plan. And although the district still plans to close Lankenau Environmental Science High School and Paul Robeson High School, it now plans to hold onto those two school properties and eventually repurpose them for community or student use, rather than sell the buildings or convey them to the city.

The plan, which includes colocating some schools and modernizing nearly 170 others, has a $3 billion price tag — up from an initial $2.8 billion. But there’s no guarantee the district will be able to foot the bill. Watlington said during a press briefing Monday that the district will put $1 billion towards the upgrades and hopes to raise additional funding from government and philanthropic grants.

The plans’ ultimate goal, Watlington said, is to increase educational opportunities for all students. Too many students are in half-empty, crumbling buildings that are not offering them the academic opportunities they sorely deserve, Watlington has said. And district enrollment is projected to continue to decline.

Board President Reginald Streater appeared supportive of the plan at the press briefing Monday, but it’s still unclear how other members will vote.

“We can’t expect a different result doing the same thing, understanding our budget realities,” Streater said. “We have to reorganize and go through this reform of how we do things in Philadelphia if we expect to provide our babies the resources they need to be who they want to be and who they can be when they grow up.”

If the board approves the resolution, it will kick start another process for the district and board to complete required legal steps to close schools. One of those steps will likely be additional public engagement.

Streater said the district could alter the plan again, based on enrollment or budgetary changes. But for now, this is the version the board will consider.

“This is the final, final set of recommendations that I’m presenting to President Streater and his Board of Education for consideration,” Watlington said.

Councilmember who fought closure plan now supports it

The district’s decision not to sell Paul Robeson High School seems to have swayed at least one city councilmember: Jamie Gauthier.

Gauthier had previously fiercely opposed the district’s plan. She had organized rallies against it and proposed rezoning the land for Robeson and other schools in her district to prevent them from being redeveloped into commercial or residential buildings. But on Monday, she said she supported the changes.

“This proves that you’re listening. It proves that you care about equity in this plan, and I and my community are grateful,” Gauthier said at the briefing Monday.

The $200 million increase to the plan’s price tag largely stems from bigger investments in Gauthier’s district, which includes parts of West and Southwest Philadelphia. These include modernization projects at Anderson Elementary, Bryant Elementary, and Mitchell Elementary, and a pool renovation at Motivation High School.

The plan increases spending in Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr.’s district in North Philadelphia as well. Young had also fought the facilities plan and said he was considering his own rezoning proposal.

On Monday, Young said in a statement that he welcomed the decision to remove Ludlow, which is in his district, from the closure list. But he called the move “clear proof that the school facilities plan is flawed and isn’t based on any sound rationale.”

“I remain firmly opposed to the Facilities Master Plan as a whole,” Young said.

Education Chair Isaiah Thomas calls closure vote ‘rushed’

Philadelphia Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas immediately critiqued the district Monday for giving Philadelphians only three days notice of the vote.

People had been pleading with the board for months to give them significant advance notice for any vote on the plan. On Monday, several educators told Chalkbeat they worried the tight timeframe would make it difficult for people to reorganize their week to attend the meeting.

“More information needs to be communicated to our communities before a vote is taken, and the school board should not take a vote on this plan until that has happened,” Thomas said in a statement.

Thomas said the vote as scheduled would be “rushed” and would “only further reduce public trust and fear about this plan and its impact on our young people.”

Teachers union opposes plan, is working on alternative

Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said his team did not receive prior notice of the plan’s changes or the scheduled vote.

“I think the timing is awful,” Steinberg said.

The City Council plans to consider a $1 per ride tax on Ubers and Lyfts on Tuesday that would funnel $48 million annually to the district and prevent some staff cuts. With the closure vote now looming, “it’s going to be more difficult to get the public on board and to keep people enthused about” the proposed rideshare tax, Steinberg said.

Steinberg said the union cannot comment on the substance of the plan because district officials did not “show their work” about how they decided which schools they planned to close. The union is working on an alternative proposal that it plans to release in the next few weeks, he said.

The $3 billion price tag is also a major concern, Steinberg said. He worries the district will not have the money to make all the investments and modernizations it has promised.

“My greatest fear is the closures will go ahead because they’re in place and they’re scheduled,” said Steinberg. “You’ll get three or four years down the road, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, well, we don’t have the money. We’re gonna have to stop here.’”

This story has been updated to include comments from City Council Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg, and Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

City faces grim reality: ‘Guns are plentiful’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meet the Philly kids fighting to keep their schools from closing

2026-04-03T17:11:20+00:00

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Eighth graders Alexis Rodriguez and Dominic Wolbert spent the week before a recent Philadelphia Board of Education meeting getting ready.

They had taken hours to write their speeches and get feedback on them from their teachers at Stetson Middle School. They had overcome some nerves and discomfort.

When their names were called to speak at the March meeting, they looked directly at the school board members and told them: Don’t close our school.

“Stetson for me was a place where I could learn, and grow, and befriend people who I hold very close to me,” said Rodriguez, 14. “Phasing out our school is to crush the feeling of safety and belonging.”

With their testimony complete, the two middle schoolers ducked out of the board meeting around the two-hour mark to grab chips and soda from the vending machine. It was still a long night ahead, with dozens of other students, teachers, and parents signed up to speak out against the closures.

Stetson Middle School students Dominic Wolbert (left) and Alexis Rodriguez practiced their speeches to the Board of Education before giving their public testimony at a recent town hall meeting.

In the months since Superintendent Tony Watlington released his proposal to close 18 schools, students have been front and center in the fight against the plan. Kids as young as 6 have testified at school board meetings. High schoolers have planned walkouts, analyzed district data, and built relationships with members of the City Council to try to push change. Some students spent part of spring break attending a training on how to organize against the closures.

Watlington has said the plan will mean all students go to class in quality buildings and have more access to desirable programming, like AP classes. The $2.8 billion proposal also includes modernizing more than 100 schools.

Students Chalkbeat spoke with said they didn’t regularly attend school board meetings or keep up to date with local political decisions. But the school closure debate was one that mattered to them and mobilized them. Some said working together to fight the school closures has forged new deep bonds within the schools. Others said it made them question why it seems students and families have so little say in school decisions.

Qeni Corinaldi, a senior at Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice, said the proposal to close his school got him wondering about who has power over schools in the first place.

“It went from, ‘Oh, my school’s being shut down’ to ‘I’m going to learn more about it,’” Corinaldi said.

After he spoke to teachers and friends, attended a school board meeting, and did some research, he had questions. Why did the mayor get to decide who was on the school board? How did Watlington get his position? Why did it seem that Watlington and the school board were in sync, if they were supposed to be separate entities?

When he realized how much power was concentrated in the hands of just a few people, he was shocked. “The power structure is not what democracy is all about,” Corinaldi said.

Students overcome nerves to publicly criticize school closures

The board will make the ultimate decision about which schools close, but they have not yet said when they will vote. In the meantime, students are pulling every lever they can to try to push the board to make changes.

At Lankenau Environmental Science High School, students have helped organize an event showcasing the school’s programs and ties to the 400-acres of natural land surrounding the campus. At Parkway Northwest, students led a roundtable discussion with Councilmember Cindy Bass to share their perspective on the closure process.

Parents and teachers have helped younger kids get involved too.

Students at John Moffet School in Philadelphia rally on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, to oppose the district's plan to change their school from an elementary school to a middle school.

At a rally outside John Moffet Elementary School, which the district wants to turn into a middle school, 9-year-old Morgan Chism had a simple question about the plan: “Why do I have to walk a mile just to get to school?”

Chism’s grandmother, Brenda Riggins, said he had been raising questions about who makes decisions about education ever since Moffet parents started organizing people against the facilities plan.

Riggins said Chism has always been a civically engaged kid — he would prefer to watch cable news and not cartoons, she said — but this moment has gotten him to ask questions about the deeper issues of inequality that plague the city. Even if he doesn’t fully understand the depth of them yet.

Another Moffet parent, Lina Ahmad, said her son Yahya was really sad about the change planned for the school. But speaking up to try and spare the school has given him new energy, she said.

At the rally, Yahya was too small to see over the podium but spoke confidently about his love for his school. “I don’t want to move,” he told the crowd of parents and teachers. “The school is actually one of the best schools. I don’t want to leave.”

Fitler Academic Plus 8th grader Ana Urena testified at a recent school board meeting to urge the Board of Education not to close her school.

Ana Urena, an eighth grader at Fitler Academics Plus who testified at the board’s recent town hall meeting, said she was nervous about speaking in front of the crowd. But she realized that the decision at stake was one that could lead to thousands of students losing their schools. “That’s what really motivated me to do it,” she said.

She said she hopes that by sharing her perspective, the board will put student voices front and center.

“When I’ve heard the board speak, when I hear the adults that have the power to fix this, all I hear is money. Billions of dollars, millions of dollars. It doesn’t matter,” Urena said. “I don’t hear the students.”

Chalkbeat Philadelphia Bureau Chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Councilmember praises Lift Every Voice’s ‘community power’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it’s not insurmountable, parents said.

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

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

Changing policy in Philly public schools isn’t easy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Philly City Council can’t stop school closures directly. Here’s what 2 members are trying instead.

2026-03-26T15:17:19+00:00

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A second member of Philadelphia’s City Council wants to introduce zoning changes that could influence the school district’s school closure plans and what would happen after closures.

Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr., whose district includes parts of North Philadelphia where the school district wants to close three schools, told Chalkbeat he is looking into proposing legislation that would limit how their respective properties could be redeveloped.

The proposal “would be very similar” to a bill that Councilmember Jamie Gauthier introduced last week to restrict the zoning for four West Philadelphia schools, Young said. That bill would rezone the school parcels to civic, educational, or medical use, which would mean any developer looking to build commercial or residential property would have to go through the lengthy process of getting a zoning variance.

“Rezoning the parcels gives the community more say in what will happen,” Young said. He added that he has not finalized his plan yet because he is in discussions with other members of the City Council whose districts send students to schools in his.

In theory, Young’s proposal could complicate the district’s plan to close certain schools, because it could be harder for the district to sell or offload those buildings if the schools do close.

The City Council has no direct say over which schools close — that decision is ultimately up to the Board of Education. But they do largely get to determine changes to how land can be used in their districts, following a Philadelphia government tradition.

Gauthier’s zoning proposal has not yet passed, but is likely to. The legislation is under review by the Committee on Rules.

District leaders have said the list of schools to close is based on data about building quality, enrollment, and the programs they can offer. Many of the buildings slated for closure are over a century old and require costly repairs. District enrollment has also shrunk over the past decade, leaving many schools with more than 100 empty seats.

But some school communities worry they’re being targeted for closure because their buildings sit on valuable land. Young and Gauthier say rezoning school buildings would ensure the district isn’t motivated to close schools based on their resale value, and that neighborhoods have a say over what happens to the land if their schools close.

“Look around you, several new buildings are going up as we speak,” Gauthier said Monday at a rally outside of Paul Robeson High School in West Philadelphia, one of four schools that would be closed or repurposed in her district. “What does it say that we’re making space for all of these uses, but the district won’t even try to find something for our kids?”

But urban planning advocates say restricting zoning doesn’t guarantee benefits for the neighborhood. Instead, it could cause greater strain on the cash-strapped school district by limiting who would want to buy old school buildings, they say.

“Trying to take real estate out of the equation by trying to limit the upside that somebody might pay to do a residential conversion of a school is really just hurting the school district,” said Jon Geeting, policy and advocacy director for Build Philly Now, a local economic development think tank. “I just don’t really think we’re helping anything by making it harder to redevelop.”

City Council wants more say on school closures

In addition to Robeson, the schools in Gauthier’s district that the district plans to close or relocate are Blankenburg Elementary, Martha Washington School, and Parkway West High School. Her bills would designate all of them as “Special Purpose” zoning, along with Motivation High School, which the district removed from the closure list last month.

That designation would zone the land for uses like schools and libraries. To build something else, developers would have to receive a zoning adjustment. Receiving that adjustment can be a political and time consuming process, with no guarantees.

Geeting and some other advocates say they worry zoning restrictions could lead to vacant school buildings sitting empty — a problem the district is already dealing with from the last round of school closures. It has around 20 school properties that have been vacant for years. Last year, a woman’s body was found behind one of them.

Gauthier “supports finding productive use for vacant school buildings,” Harrison Feinman, Gauthier’s director of communications, said in a statement. “But it is inappropriate to plan the redevelopment of schools while students are still in them.”

Superintendent Tony Watlington has said this round of proposed closures would not lead to any vacant buildings. Of the 18 schools slated for closure, the district plans to repurpose 10 for district use. The district wants to convey the other eight to the city or sell them.

Mayor Cherelle Parker has said she supports the plan, and has indicated she wants to turn some closed schools into housing. But none of that is a done deal. The Board of Education still needs to approve Watlington’s plan.

In the meantime, Young said he’s been looking into introducing a rezoning proposal to ensure his constituents’ perspectives are considered in school decisions, but he did not release further details. The district plans to repurpose two schools slated for closure in his district, Robert Morris and Laura W. Waring. But it wants to convey James R. Ludlow School to the city for redevelopment.

Young said his district has plenty of other vacant land that could be redeveloped for housing.

Young has flexed his power with respect to the school district in other ways. On Tuesday, he held his own town hall about some proposed closures in his district, which district officials attended. And earlier this year, he introduced legislation that would enable the City Council to remove members of the school board. Currently, only the mayor has power to do so.

His aim, he said, is to ensure school decisions serve the local communities he represents.

“The people in those communities directly hold me as their council member accountable for the local issues,” Young said. “Education is a local issue. I’m the only person that they can directly take their frustration out on.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does a typical day look like for you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the budget cuts Philadelphia school leaders are proposing for next year

2026-03-13T15:10:26+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district must make deep cuts to plug a $300 million budget hole, officials said this week.

Superintendent Tony Watlington told reporters no teachers would be laid off in the round of proposed cuts he shared this week. But for the 2026-27 school year, hundreds of district employees would be reassigned to fill vacant positions and an already-lean central office will shrink further.

Philly’s school budget crisis is the result of decades of underfunding and the end of federal pandemic relief funds, coupled with rising teacher salaries, charter school payments, and increased health care costs, Watlington and district Chief Financial Officer Mike Herbstman told reporters Wednesday. That means the school district is currently spending more money than it’s taking in.

The district proposes eliminating all of its approximately 220 building substitute positions and reassigning another 340 school-based positions, like some climate staff and special education aides, to other roles. Those two changes combined would save $56 million.

Some 130 vacant central office positions would be cut, outside contracts would be reduced, and other central office “budget efficiencies” would result in $130 million in savings, Watlington said. Those budget efficiencies would include combining some administrative teams, reassessing property casualty insurance, and changing the way the district approves travel expenses among other savings.

The district would also end two programs championed by former superintendents that gave additional resources and staff to low-achieving schools to help them improve: The former Acceleration Network, previously known as the turnaround network, and the System of Great Schools.

The district’s goal is to eliminate its deficit by cutting $225 million in fiscal 2027 and an additional $20 million in each subsequent year through 2030.

The district will present its initial budget summary for the upcoming fiscal year, including the proposed cuts, to the Board of Education on March 26.

“We’re restructuring some to keep everybody who’s in the house in the house so that there are no position cuts or layoffs,” Watlington told reporters on Wednesday.

It’s unclear how these cuts and reassignments will affect classrooms as principals have only just begun the process of setting their school budgets for the next academic year. But Watlington said he couldn’t rule out some larger class sizes, for one.

“I don’t want to hide or obscure the fact that it will have some impact, because we’ll have to do more with less,” Watlington said. “We will not take our foot off the gas in terms of our expectations.”

Watlington said school leaders will have the discretion to decide which roles are reassigned though they can’t move roles for classroom teachers, principals, and assistant principals.

He did not provide a list of which contracts or vendors the district is looking to cut. But Watlington said he’ll take a “hard look” at reducing any program that does not show a clear throughline to improving student attendance, teacher attendance, test scores, graduation rates, and dropout rates.

In a statement, district spokesperson Monique Braxton said a full list of the vendors who may see their contracts cut or sunset “will be detailed later in the budget cycle.”

Watlington said in the long term, he expects the state to deliver on its constitutional mandate to fund its public schools adequately. A state commission calculated Philly schools need an additional $1 billion to meet student needs. But “that won’t happen in two days or overnight,” Watlington said.

Because Philadelphia is the only school district in the state that can’t raise its own revenue, it is dependent on philanthropy and state and local policymakers.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro recently proposed an increase of $151 million for the district, and Mayor Cherelle Parker this week said she wants to send $12 million more to public schools via a new tax on rideshares and a modification to tax calculations for cell towers.

But even if those increases occur, they would still not be enough to solve all the district’s budget problems, Watlington said. And last year’s state budget delay cost the district $6.5 million in interest payments.

The district is also trying to find a way to pay for its $2.8 billion proposed facilities plan that could result in 18 school closures in addition to modernizations for 160 buildings.

Philly district budget cuts would hit substitute teachers hardest

Watlington pointed to large school districts like Broward County in Florida and Los Angeles Unified School District that recently announced thousands of public school employee layoffs to plug budget holes.

“I think we’ve done our level-best to have a different story here in Philadelphia,” Watlington said.

Though no teachers will be laid off, eliminating building substitutes could mean headaches down the line for Philly’s larger schools.

Herbstman, the district CFO, said schools will continue to receive long-term substitutes for teachers out on extended leave as well as day-to-day substitutes if a teacher calls out sick. But he did not say how those roles would be coordinated or whether additional money would be needed for outside contractors to fill substitute roles.

The individuals currently acting as building substitutes may be assigned to fill other vacant positions, Herbstman said.

Watlington says Philly schools are not wasteful

Watlington emphasized that despite persistent claims of district waste and administrative bloat coming from some elected officials, “the school district of Philadelphia already has a very lean central office.” He said that position is backed up by external audits and recent credit increases.

The narrative that there is rampant waste in Philly schools is “patently, absolutely false,” he said.

Watlington said in addition to the cuts, his office is going to “be very aggressive and very assertive” about growing enrollment in the school district through recruitment — including making their case to private school families.

“This school district has so many wonderful, fantastic things that are happening,” Watlington said, citing his usual talking points about increasing test scores, rising graduation rates, and declining dropout numbers.

“We’ve got a good story to tell. We’re getting better,” he said.

Here’s a breakdown of the planned budget cuts:

Freeze central office vacancies, cut 130 vacant central office positions, and cut other central office costs ($30 million).
Reduce contracts and “low return on investment” programs ($36 million).
Implement efficiencies in the budgeting process ($103 million).
Eliminate 220 building substitute positions ($13 million).
Reassign 340 school-based positions ($43 million).

The school board is expected to adopt a final fiscal 2027 budget on May 29.

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

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker proposes new tax on Ubers to help fund schools

2026-03-12T18:26:59+00:00

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Mayor Cherelle Parker wants to introduce a new Philadelphia tax on rideshares like Uber and Lyft to boost public school funding as part of her nearly $7 billion budget proposal.

In her budget address Thursday, Parker said the new rideshare fees and other tax changes would result in $12 million more for the School District of Philadelphia next fiscal year. That would be on top of the city’s 2024 increase to the percentage of property taxes that goes towards the district. Parker has promised a further increase in 2030.

But the new funding does little to plug the district’s $300 million budget deficit. And even with the relatively small boost, the district still doesn’t have a way to pay for the $2.8 billion price tag of its proposed facilities plan, which includes closing 18 schools and modernizing more than 150 others.

“We are all aware that the school district is facing a financial crisis,” Parker said Thursday. She said she is committed to ensuring Philadelphia schools are adequately funded, but wants the state to contribute more.

The state has increased funding to Philly’s schools in recent years, and Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro recently proposed an increase of $151 million. But that would still leave the district with more than $1 billion less than what a state commission has determined it would need to adequately educate its students.

“It’s the state’s constitutional responsibility to deliver a thorough and efficient public education,” Parker said. But she added that the city will continue to raise local revenue to support schools.

Her remarks underscore the district’s difficult predicament as it makes the case for more funding. Philadelphia is the only district in the state that does not have the authority to raise its own revenue through taxes. Instead, it relies on support from local and state officials.

Parker and some members of City Council have said they believe the district’s funding challenge is largely up to the state to solve. But the Republican majority in the state Senate has previously opposed boosting the city’s education funds.

Parker’s budget proposal kicks off a months-long negotiation process with the City Council, which will hold several hearings about the budget. A hearing specifically about school district funding is scheduled for April 22.

The city’s deadline to pass a budget is June 30. The district is expected to release its own budget summary for the upcoming fiscal year later this month.

Rideshare tax for schools would start in 2027

Parker’s proposed additional funding for the school district would come from two changes to tax laws.

A $0.20 tax per rideshare ride, like Ubers and Lyfts, would bring in $9.6 million annually, city officials estimate. That would begin in July 2027.

A modification to tax calculations for cell towers would bring in an additional $2.4 million annually.

Along with the boost to district funding, Parker’s budget proposal includes $6.5 million more for the city’s free pre-K program, known as PHLpreK. That would expand the program by 100 seats to 5,350.

The budget would also expand Parker’s signature “extended-day, extended-year” program, which provides programming to students during the summer and after school, to two additional charter schools. The mayor’s proposed expansion would increase the number of participating schools from 40 to 47 schools. Parker did not say which new schools would get the program.

The proposal would also allocate $250,000 annually for high school students to earn credits at the Community College of Philadelphia through a dual-enrollment program.

This year’s budget comes amid rising fiscal challenges, Parker said. Though the city is projecting to have a larger “rainy day” fund than ever before, its costs are projected to climb while inflation and slow job growth are expected to add strain. Federal relief funding from the pandemic has also run out.

That’s part of why Parker said the focus of this year’s budget is increasing economic mobility — something that education is essential for, she said.

“All our work in the field of education is the foundation to ensure we increase economic mobility,” Parker said. “Every day, we have to be focused on increasing pathways for our children.”

How a Philadelphia high school is fighting AI slop and internet lies

2026-03-10T18:20:09+00:00

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Nine Kensington Health Science Academy seniors are waging war on misinformation and disinformation in their Philadelphia high school hallways — and they say it’s working.

They know the social media algorithms they spend hours scrolling are feeding them AI slop, medical lies, and political rhetoric customized to confuse and anger their classmates and family members.

They’ve seen loved ones fall for fake videos, and have unintentionally shared some themselves.

Now, these students are on a mission to give their classmates tools to spot internet lies.

“People are trying to control what you think and see,” senior Apollo Sunun told Chalkbeat.

Through a student-powered initiative called Project FACTS, nine Kensington Health Science Academy seniors are teaching their classmates how to spot AI slop, medical misinformation, and political lies before they hit “share.”

In the wake of the 2024 presidential election, KHSA Principal Nimet Eren told Chalkbeat she launched Project FACTS. It stands for “find out where a post is from, analyze it, challenge it, think for yourself before you share.” Eren said FACTS is a nonpartisan effort to teach students how to think for themselves and question the information they’re being presented with.

Media literacy classes have gained momentum in recent years as educators channel their desire to help young people decipher fact from fiction online.

Sunun and eight other seniors quickly joined in the effort: Rafael Rosario, Antonio Edwards, Ian Santiago, Jalyssa Moll, Saniya Salcedo, Carlos Perez, Arianna Cartagena, and Solange Jean.

Eren and those students built FACTS into a curriculum and incorporated it into lesson units for classes to conduct during homeroom and advisory periods. The message became more powerful when students led the charge, Eren said.

In February, Kensington Health Sciences Academy High School seniors presented their FACTS curriculum process at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education Ethnography Forum.

The nine seniors started a FACTS club, meeting weekly during lunch to read articles, social media posts, and other sources of information to interrogate what they’re encountering online and develop informed opinions.

“It’s definitely encouraged me to be more careful with the things I see,” Cartagena said.

Then, they presented their findings to their peers. The students designed fake texts and emails and held assemblies for the wider student population. They talked to their friends about limiting screen time and had discussions about how social media pulls them away from reality.

Eren said before FACTS, the school didn’t have a curriculum to address social media, algorithms, and “everything that was happening online.” Now, she often overhears students in between classes asking each other to “check their facts.”

“I definitely hear kids use the FACTS acronym around the school, and it lets me know people really understand,” Salcedo said.

The key to reaching teenagers? Acknowledging the positives about social media in addition to the drawbacks, the students said.

“We didn’t want to focus too much on the negative, because that would have caused especially people our age, to tune out of what we were talking about,” Cartagena said. “We weren’t trying to persuade them into just thinking that social media was negative, but to make them think about how using social media may impact their lives.”

The students also try to tailor their work to their school. In April 2025, the students delved into medical disinformation around ongoing measles outbreaks across the country. KHSA is a neighborhood high school with a special focus on health sciences so it was a natural fit, Eren said. Students conducted their own research and hosted a panel of doctors, nurses, and reporters who helped them navigate truth from fiction about vaccination fears.

Ahead of the midterm elections, they’re ramping up their efforts again. Several of the FACTS seniors will be old enough to vote in November and they said they’re worried about their classmates — and older loved ones — making political decisions based on bad information.

“If somebody spreads something totally false about one of the candidates that’s running, and somebody believes it, now their mind is swayed to vote for somebody else,” Moll said.

Cartagena said it’s not just about educating teenagers. The adults in their lives need help navigating online spaces — sometimes even more than students do. Salcedo said she’s aware of the scams that target older people and she’s seen her loved ones fall for them.

“It’s kind of scary because [they] can vote,” Salcedo said.

Cartagena said she hopes their FACTS curriculum will inspire students — and parents — to think more deeply about what they’re encountering online. Eren said she wants FACTS to be a national model.

“I think parents, they understand and they know the dangers of social media, but a lot of the time they’re not actively seeking to stop it,” Cartagena said. “I just think hearing and seeing it coming from us, it may encourage parents to be more on top of their kids and their social media.”

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

Philadelphia’s small themed high schools under threat as district plans to close, consolidate buildings

2026-03-06T20:55:20+00:00

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Creating small, themed high schools was once a key component of Philadelphia’s education reform strategy.

The intent behind schools like Paul Robeson, Lankenau, Motivation High, Building 21, and the U School was to offer students more intimate settings, the chance to form close relationships with teachers, and the opportunity for a very different kind of learning experience than what large, comprehensive high schools provided.

Now, however, most of these schools face uncertain futures under the district’s facilities plan, which would close 18 schools and is now being considered by the Board of Education.

Superintendent Tony Watlington’s plan would move most of the small schools into nearby neighborhood high schools and either close them entirely while creating a dedicated program in the larger school, or have them maintain a separate identity in the building with their own principal and staff —the so-called co-location strategy.

“We can’t keep all the small boutique high schools and the neighborhood high schools,” Watlington told the City Council at an early February hearing on his plan. “We don’t have the resources to do all of it.”

In comments to the Board of Education last week, he repeated his conviction that small schools can exacerbate inequality of opportunity. “There is too much disparity in this city,” he said. “What we want to do is level the playing field.”

Research attempting to quantify the benefits of small high schools is limited Generally, the smaller schools have higher attendance and graduation rates, with students more likely to pursue — if not finish — a postsecondary degree.

“Kids have a higher sense of agency and graduate with a deeper understanding of who they are, and what they want” in life, said Simon Hauger, founder of The Workshop School.

And parents and students love them, saying in surveys that they feel safer in these schools and “part of a real community,” Hauger said. Under Watlington’s plan, Workshop would eventually move into Overbrook High School.

In the superintendent’s vision, neighborhood high schools would establish or strengthen a multitude of different programs that could satisfy the needs of all students, a model that already exists at schools like Northeast High. While he expressed some praise for small schools to the City Council, he said in most cases they lack opportunities for students to take Advanced Placement courses, access robust art and music programs, and participate in sports.

Nevertheless, most City Council members have criticized the plan. And members of the public complained bitterly at neighborhood meetings.

Students from Motivation High, which Watlington originally wanted to move into Bartram, and Parkway Northwest, which is slated to become an honors program at Martin Luther King, have been particularly vocal in opposition.

Students at Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice walked out of their classrooms last month to protest their school's proposed closure.

“The school may be small, but small means great,” said Samantha Brumfield, the home and school association president at Paul Robeson High School.

That type of criticism may have had some impact. Initially, Watlington proposed closing Robeson and making it an honors program within Sayre High School. After hearing the public’s dismay, he changed the plan and now proposes combining Motivation High and Robeson into one building. And after an outcry from students and parents at Lankenau High, which has an environmental focus, he changed his recommendation to move these students into W.B. Saul High of Agricultural Sciences rather than to Roxborough. That, however, has not mollified the critics.

Supporters of the small high schools say they were established for a reason that’s still relevant.

“What I love about Paul Robeson is that we teach children to build their own brand,” said Elana Evans, Robeson’s special education compliance manager. Due to the close relationships, teachers can help students figure out “who do you want to be,” and “help you get there.”

But Board of Education President Reginald Streater, a graduate of Germantown High School — a historic neighborhood school that closed in 2013 along with 23 others in the district’s last wave of downsizing — clearly agreed with Watlington when he told the City Council that maintaining so many small high schools in the district is “unsustainable.”

Philadelphia’s small high schools took decades to develop

The history of high schools in Philadelphia is complex. It was fueled by educators’ desire to improve student experiences. But race was also a factor as neighborhood demographics rapidly changed and student enrollment in many schools grew more diverse.

These small high schools were established in Philadelphia in several waves, starting in the 1960s and taking off in the early 2000s under former superintendent Paul Vallas.

Until the 1960s, the vast majority of students in the public system went to neighborhood high schools, although three vocational schools opened in the 1920s and 1930s to teach students trades: Bok, Mastbaum and Dobbins. Two prestigious magnets for the top students, Central High for boys and the Philadelphia High School for Girls, both opened in the 19^th century.

Some of the neighborhood schools, like Olney and Bartram, in their heyday had an enrollment of 4,000 or 5,000 students. They were, for the most part, divided into several distinct “ability” tracks that often served to keep classes largely segregated even as the overall school enrollment became multiracial.

Former mayor Wilson Goode, who is Black and went to Bartram, told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2004 that despite his desire to be in academic classes, his counselor told him he was better suited to an “industrial arts” program within the school. He had to persist to be put into the academic, college-bound track, he said — and even then, despite making the honor roll, his counselor discouraged him from applying to college.

A key moment was in 1963, when the city was undergoing rapid demographic change. That year, district leaders created so-called Motivation programs to handpick what they termed promising but average students in the neighborhood schools and prepare them for college. A frequent effect of this, unintended or not, was to isolate within the program a school’s dwindling number of white students.

In a facilities plan the district released in January, officials proposed closing Southwest Philadelphia's Motivation High School. But now, the plan calls for keeping Motivation High open and combining it with Paul Robeson High School.

What is now Motivation High School was originally the Motivation program at Bartram High. What became Lankenau High School was once the Motivation program at Germantown High School.

Then in 1967, educators created the Parkway program, which they called a “school without walls.” Through Parkway, students could get academic credit for real-world experiences rather than spending most of their time in traditional classrooms.

They also had more control over their learning, creating their own educational plans, working in real jobs, and taking advantage of museums and other cultural and historical resources.

Eventually, three Parkway programs opened — Parkway Center City, Parkway West, and Parkway Northwest. Over the years their education approach became much more traditional, if theme-focused: Parkway Northwest, in Mount Airy, organized around peace and justice studies, for instance. If Watlington’s plan is approved, only the original Parkway will remain; Parkway West would move into Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, and Parkway Northwest into Martin Luther King.

Parkway Northwest focuses on peace and social justice studies. Students and teachers say they worry it will be hard to keep that focus if they are merged into a larger building.

The district’s next wave of new high school creation, in the 1970s, came in response to a 1968 desegregation lawsuit. Philadelphia opened several themed special admissions schools with strict requirements, including the High School for Creative and Performing Arts, commonly known as CAPA, and Carver High School of Engineering & Science. Officials anticipated that these schools would attract a racially diverse student body, which for the most part they did.

The small schools that opened later, starting in the 1980s, are known as “citywide admissions” schools. They also required students to apply, although their standards are more relaxed.

Changes were taking place in large neighborhood high schools too. Before the small schools movement took off, the district attempted to provide more personalized learning for students by investing heavily in “small learning communities” that were autonomous, offered their own courses, and had distinct enrollment, among other features.

But these communities were also designed to counteract the strict ability tracking that was still a feature in neighborhood high schools.

Watlington made key change at Philadelphia’s small schools

Especially in the smaller schools that Watlington called “boutique,” principals historically were able to shape their incoming classes as they saw fit and admit students who may have otherwise fallen short based simply on their grades, attendance and test scores.

However, in a sign of things to come, Watlington and the board put an end to that discretion in 2022, setting up a system that largely removed human judgement and was instead based on an algorithm they said was more fair and equitable. That system, however, made it harder for some schools to fill their spots.

“The new enrollment system was the beginning of the end for these citywide schools,” said one school leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly. “Everybody’s enrollment for the most part has declined in these schools … there’s no longer any flexibility.” For instance, Motivation’s enrollment dropped from 331 in 2022-23 to 151 this school year.

Others involved in the founding and development of these schools said that even co-location with a larger school will have an impact. And they say that uncertainty about the schools’ future is likely to affect enrollment even more.

Students at Philadelphia's Lankenau Environmental High School say their school's campus, near a nature center and urban garden, make the school special. The district wants to close Lankenau and merge it into Roxborough High School as an honors program.

Joshua Kleinman has worked at the U School, which uses a project-based learning model, since its inception in 2014. But he prefers to see an upside in Watlington’s plan, saying that many of the new small schools have long struggled with inadequate and even inappropriate facilities.

U School leaders have “fiercely advocated for a facility we deserve since opening our doors,” Kleinman said. If Watlington’s $2.8 billion plan led to modernized and specialized school facilities, “it would be one of the most ambitious in the school district’s history.”

But Thomas Gaffey, who helped establish Building 21 in 2014 to help all students “develop their passion” in a small, supportive setting, is more pessimistic.

“You can’t take a program like Parkway and put it within a big comprehensive high school,” he said, “and expect it to stay the same.”

Philadelphia schools eliminate half days, guarantee bathroom breaks

2026-02-27T11:00:01+00:00

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Half days are over in Philadelphia schools starting this June and bathroom breaks are now guaranteed.

At the bitter end of a more than eight-hour school board meeting on Thursday night, Board of Education members approved plans to amend the district calendar for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years to end half days for students during staff professional development time.

District officials released new information on Tuesday that the planned half days for March, April, and May will continue as scheduled, but June 11 will be a full day. It will also be the last day of school for students. June 12 will be the final day for staff.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said district data shows student attendance has cratered on scheduled half days. Going forward, he said he wants the district to “eliminate and sunset half days from our school calendars for now and forevermore.”

The board also approved a new district wellness policy that codifies access to recess and bathroom breaks for all students that cannot be restricted as disciplinary action. The policy also guarantees movement breaks every 90 minutes of seat time for elementary school students.

Thursday’s vote was a win for Lift Every Voice parent advocates who have spent the last 18 months urging board members to adopt these changes and more as part of their “joy campaign.”

The advocates said the policy was necessary because some educators and school leaders had restricted kids’ bathroom breaks, recess, lunch periods, and water breaks as punishment for bad behavior.

The board also approved several contracts that will tie in to the proposed plan to close 18 Philly schools and renovate others, including:

A resolution authorizing the district to apply for up to $20 million from Pennsylvania’s Public School Facility Improvement Grant program for school building improvements.
Adding $17.5 million to an existing $7 million contract with Keystone Realty and Fellerman & Ciarimboli Law, PC, to identify school district buildings that are significantly undervalued and appeal those valuations.
Adding $3.3 million to an existing $5.3 million contract for InProcess Consulting, LLC, for the software behind several district apps and dashboards, including the facilities planning process data dashboard.

Clarification, March 3: This story has been updated with new information from the district about the remaining half days for this school year.

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

Will Philadelphia’s school board approve closing 18 schools? It has a lot to consider first.

2026-02-27T03:06:52+00:00

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Philadelphia’s $2.8 billion plan to close nearly 20 schools is now in the hands of the Board of Education.

Thursday’s board meeting marked the first time most of the members spoke publicly about the proposal the district released last month. It’s likely to be the core issue of board meetings going forward.

The district’s plan would close 18 schools beginning in 2027, colocate (combine two schools in one building) and relocate others, and invest in more than 100 school buildings. Superintendent Tony Watlington announced at the meeting Thursday that the district removed Conwell Middle School and Motivation High School from the initial proposed closure list it released last month after taking community feedback into consideration. He said the district would not cut staff positions as a result of the closures.

Board members said during the meeting that they understand the motivation behind the proposal but need more information and more time before they decide whether they support it. A vote hasn’t been scheduled. The board will hold a town hall March 12 to hear more feedback.

Students, educators, and families packed the meeting, with hundreds more in an overflow room, urging the board to reject the proposal. Several union officials, state representatives, and City Council members joined them in a protest before the meeting, calling for more transparency about the data officials used to decide which schools to close and more investment in school building maintenance.

Several self-described “shy kids” testified that their schools helped them come out of their shells and improved their mental health. They asked for greater investments in their buildings and urged officials to consider students as “more than lines on a spreadsheet.”

Students from AMY Northwest and Lankenau Environmental Science High School said the district should fix the selective admission application system that they said keeps small schools’ enrollment artificially low. Parkway Northwest and Laura Waring students said by closing their school the district was closing their home.

Watlington emphasized that the plan comes after dozens of community engagement meetings and reflects feedback from Philadelphians.

Kathryn Lajara, special education compliance monitor at Stetson Middle School, said she felt like the meetings so far had been “just checking a box.”

“They keep claiming that this is what people want, but it’s actually not,” Lajara said. “They hold these community meetings, but then there’s really no comprehensive feedback from it.”

Board members ask for more clarity about closure plan

Board President Reginald Streater asked for open hearts and minds from the public about the plan. He said that chronic underfunding and declining enrollment put the district in a difficult position.

Streater said he was infuriated that the board is being asked to consider closing schools but that it is willing to make tough decisions.

Watlington told board members that the plan would benefit all students by increasing access to desirable classes and academic programs and ensuring students attend class in high quality buildings.

Several board members called for more clarity about how the district would address transportation and safety concerns and provide support for displaced students. Some said that they worry the plan doesn’t directly support student learning and that the promised new opportunities would not be equally accessible.

“If we are asking communities to sacrifice neighborhood schools, the benefit must be worth the sacrifice,” said board member Wanda Novalés.

Several board members said they worried about how the district would scrape together enough money to afford the plan’s $2.8 billion price tag. District leaders have already said they would need additional philanthropic and public funding. And they wanted to know how school leaders will prevent this situation in the future.

Watlington said he doesn’t believe in closing schools and that he wouldn’t want his own child’s school to close. He said he is committed to growing district enrollment to avoid future closures. However, he said if enrollment continues to decline — a trend largely the result of falling birth rates — “we’ll be back in this boat again at some point.”

Leaders of 5 school-based unions oppose school closure plan

Leaders of five school-based unions joined the protest before the meeting, including the heads of the teachers union, principals union, and school police officers union.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg called the plan to close schools an abomination. He said he feared students and staff would leave the district if the board approves it.

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, which represents school principals and other staff, called for more transparency from the district about the decision-making process.

Bernadette Ambrose-Smith, president of the School Police Association of Philadelphia, said she was particularly concerned about student safety. As far as she knew, Ambrose-Smith said that the district had not done a safety analysis of the closure plan.

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

Philadelphia district removes 2 schools from proposed school closure list

2026-02-26T22:00:00+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district no longer plans to close Russell Conwell Middle School and Motivation High School, Superintendent Tony Watlington announced Thursday.

The decision to spare the two schools from proposed closures comes after nearly a month of intense community pushback against the district’s sweeping facilities plan. Watlington has said the plan would help the district provide more resources and opportunities to all students, and would also include investments in schools that remain open.

The changes also follow concerns of some prominent city officials who have so far opposed the plan. The district has also altered the plan to switch the schools some students would relocate to.

But 18 schools — most of which have mounted strong protests against the closure plan — would still close beginning in 2027.

Watlington presented the updated plan to the Board of Education Thursday afternoon. The board will ultimately decide whether that plan goes through, but it’s unclear when members will vote on it.

Watlington said at a press briefing before the board meeting that the changes represent the district’s commitment to listening to community feedback.

“Our community, quite frankly, made some suggestions that had merit,” Watlington said. “The fact that we can’t make all the changes that people across this great city recommended should never mean that we can’t make some of the changes.”

In addition, under the revised plan, Lankenau Environmental Science High School would merge into Walter B. Saul High School as a career and technical education program. That’s a shift from the initial proposal to merge Lankenau into Roxborough High School as an honors program as officials initially proposed. However, the Lankenau building would still close.

Meanwhile, students from Paul Robeson High School would relocate to Motivation, rather than Sayre High School. That means rather than joining a neighborhood high school, current Robeson students would remain at a small, criteria-based school.

Lastly, Lewis Elkin Elementary School would no longer add grades to become a K-8 school. Instead, it would remain a K-4 school and students would attend Conwell after graduating. Conwell would have an honors program that students could apply for through the district’s school selection process.

In total, more than 4,500 Philadelphia students would still have their schools closed in the coming years. The plan has the same price tag of $2.8 billion, which the district says would require extra philanthropic and public funding on top of district funds.

Philadelphia City Council seeks leverage over school closures

Members of Philadelphia’s City Council don’t have any direct say over the closure plan. But that hasn’t stopped them from speaking out about it.

Last week, council members grilled school leaders over the plan. President Kenyatta Johnson said members would not “rubber stamp” the plan, and some members indicated they could withhold funding from the district in the city budget process to back up their views.

Several prominent members rallied in particular support of Conwell Middle School in Kensington. City Council Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas previously said he would “never support” a plan that included closing Conwell, a school he attended. Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, whose district includes Kensington, said Conwell “should not be on that list.”

When asked about political influence over the plan, Watlington said his team listened to all Philadelphians and “took all that feedback together.”

Watlington said his team heard from Conwell alumni and accounted for feedback that the district should invest more in Kensington, which the district categorizes as socially vulnerable. But he denied that the district played favorites.

“We landed on these recommended changes not reflecting any one voice or sector more than the others,” he added.

Fewer students would switch to neighborhood high schools

When he announced the school closure plan last month, Watlington said one of its major goals was to reinvest in neighborhood high schools. The initial proposal would have closed five criteria-based magnet high schools or citywide admissions high schools with low enrollment. Students at four of those schools would instead attend neighborhood high schools.

But at crowded community meetings, many high school families said they chose small schools for a reason. Some said they would leave the district entirely rather than send their children to larger neighborhood high schools.

Many neighborhood high schools have been in a tough position in Philadelphia, juggling hundreds of students with few resources. Some have a reputation for chaos and violence. School leaders said funneling more students into those schools would enable them to create more opportunities. But now, they seem to be walking back that strategy.

Only one closing school — Parkway Northwest — would still merge into a neighborhood high school. It would become an honors program at Martin Luther King High School, even though many families have said they would not want to send their children there.

“All children in all of our schools are important, and we think they all deserve the very best,” Watlington said. “We also won’t hide from the fact that we heard some feedback from individuals who said that they prefer the smaller, boutique high school experience.”

Philly to defend a $2.8 billion plan to close schools amidst student walkouts and lawmakers’ protests

2026-02-26T17:31:54+00:00

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Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington is preparing to defend the district’s school closure and modernization plan at a marathon board meeting Thursday. He’s got his work cut out for him.

The plan would close several schools starting in 2027. Some buildings would be handed to the city, others sold, and many repurposed as district swing space or administrative offices. Officials say the Board of Education won’t vote on the plan Thursday.

Late Wednesday, the district quietly released plans to upgrade some 200 buildings. However, those changes come with a big caveat: Academy at Palumbo, for example, may get new bathrooms “if the district is granted additional government and/or philanthropic funding.” In other words, that funding is far from guaranteed.

Meanwhile, reactions to Philadelphia’s school closure plan underscore the political and policy tightrope district officials are now tiptoeing. The district’s closure plan has been shouted down by community members, teachers, elected officials, public school activists, and union representatives since its introduction. City Council members told district representatives earlier this month that though they don’t get a vote on the plan, they’ll make their feelings known through the budget process.

At community meetings across the city, district officials have been on the receiving end of blistering tirades and passionate pleas from Philadelphians who say the proposed closures and mergers will decimate communities, spur gentrification, crater student achievement, and wipe away any iota of trust and goodwill the district has gathered.

District officials have maintained the plan would be good for Philly. They say it’s necessary to shift students from half-empty, aging buildings into schools more equipped to give them the academic opportunities and staffing support they need. They say there will be a transition year during which district staff will support schools through the challenges of merging and relocating.

Ultimately, students will benefit from these changes, Watlington has said.

The students of Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice, one of the schools targeted for closure, don’t feel the same. They walked out of their classrooms on Wednesday singing “we shall not be moved” and carrying signs that highlight their high graduation rate and their commitment to public service.

State representatives have shown up to community gatherings and protests to voice their support for the schools in their neighborhoods.

“I’m concerned. I’m annoyed because it’s too fast,” State Rep. Darisha Parker said at a recent community meeting at Fitler Academics Plus in Germantown. She told district representatives “if you’re going to disrupt, uproot, and destroy our community then we need to tell you what we ain’t going to do for y’all.”

Philadelphia ninth grader Dane McFarland spoke passionately about how much Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice has meant to him and his friends.

Parker said the district was being “unfair” and should have convened meetings with local and state representatives to walk them through the plan and give the community time to raise funds before putting closure on the table.

Watlington has said the plan will cost $2.8 billion, using $1 billion in district funds and $1.8 billion in new public and philanthropic dollars.

But getting the political support for that funding will be an uphill battle.

“I know we at war,” Parker said. “They never convened a meeting with the Representatives who’ve gotta pay for these bills.” People at the district “just come up with a number and say, ‘find the money and make it work,’” Parker said.

State Rep. Morgan Cephas said on Instagram that in her nine years as a state representative, “a school has never closed in my district and it will not start now!” She rallied to protect Overbrook Elementary School, another school the district plans to close. At a packed community meeting at Overbrook recently, students sobbed into microphones begging district staff not to close their building.

School staff and the unions that represent them also aren’t sold on the plan.

Ahead of tonight’s board meeting, the five unions representing district employees are planning to hold a “save our schools” rally to protest the closures and are demanding to see the data underlying the district’s decisionmaking.

“Our schools need fixing and funding — not closure,” Philadelphia Federation of Teachers Chief of Staff LeShawna Coleman told the City Council earlier this month. The union conducted its own review of the plan and said they are “gravely concerned” that the plan will “provoke distrust and anxiety among beloved, established educators in schools designated for closure.”

But the community opposition to the plan has also revealed something more fundamental about Philadelphia neighborhoods: Residents want the chance to turn things around.

Ala Stanford, a congressional candidate who graduated from Fitler, said at a recent community meeting that if the district was serious about investing in schools, district officials could start by having more of a presence in the communities they serve.

“Come show up so we can show you who we are and what we’re doing,” Stanford said. “Maybe there could be a philanthropic effort where we can donate. The state can give some, y’all can give some. The community gives what they can.”

Parker and others who spoke at Fitler said they want to host a fish fry, raise money, “and do what we can” to keep their school open.

This story has been updated to reflect new information about planned upgrades to some 200 schools.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stigma and few choices drive students away from school meals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philadelphia district students will have a remote learning day Tuesday

2026-02-24T00:56:29+00:00

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All Philadelphia district schools will be remote Tuesday as the city continues to shovel out from a historic winter storm, officials announced Monday evening.

All after-school activities for Tuesday are also canceled. The district’s central office and early childhood centers will operate remotely as well.

The district closed school buildings Monday after parts of the city received more than a foot of snow on Sunday night into Monday morning. Though the intensity of the storm has subsided, a snow emergency remained in effect as of Monday evening.

Tuesday will mark the fifth day this school year the district has closed schools due to snow. A storm last month led to one full snow day with no schooling and two remote learning days. The district allotted one extra day in its calendar that allowed for the full snow day.

Families and staff can stay up to date about the district’s weather-related closures on its website.

Pennsylvania’s teaching workforce is in trouble. ‘Strategic staffing’ could change that.

2026-02-23T22:41:50+00:00

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Teaching in Pennsylvania is at a breaking point, according to a new report.

The rate of educator attrition is rising, turnover is disproportionately impacting urban and rural districts, and on the ground teachers are reporting feeling burnt out, overworked, and underprepared.

All of this creates an inhospitable environment for student learning, according to new research from PA Needs Teachers, a statewide coalition led by the Teach Plus advocacy group and the National Center on Education and the Economy.

Their solution is to radically reimagine what it means to teach in Pennsylvania schools. The report’s authors, including Philly teacher Trey Smith, are proposing shifting from a traditional one-teacher-in-front-of-one-classroom approach to something that’s more collaborative that would help students as well as educators.

In the various models they propose, small groups of educators and support staff work together to schedule, plan lessons, give constructive feedback on their teaching, and help each other grow.

New teachers would receive mentorship and guidance, experienced teachers would be compensated and recognized in their schools, and paraprofessionals and tutors would pay extra attention to struggling students.

In practice, a group of 100 students may share a team of six educators who get guidance and support from a “lead teacher.” That would replace a model, for example, of four teachers each responsible for their own separate classroom of 25 students with little feedback on their individual teaching styles.

The report authors call it “strategic staffing.” Smith thinks of it as a teaching team. And schools in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, are primed for this sort of innovation.

“I really want us to think about, how are we honestly accounting for what teachers know and how they can grow?” said Smith, who teaches at Marian Anderson Neighborhood Academy in Southwest Center City. “Teachers are not all the same, so whatever system we design, we can’t treat teachers like widgets or cogs in a big machine.”

Smith said any new teaching model has to “maximize the talent we have,” including teachers with varying levels of experience and classroom management skills.

New teachers with the least classroom experience are often given the most challenging school assignments. Black or Hispanic students and those from low-income families are therefore the least likely to receive the most experienced, qualified teachers in Pennsylvania.

And Philly, which employs less than 20% of the state’s teachers, accounts for 30% of statewide attrition, according to the report.

As a digital literacy teacher, Smith is a specialist. That means when other teachers need coverage, either because they’re absent or trying to find time to plan ahead, he’s often the first to get the call to step in. But what he said he really wants is to be in constant conversation with other teachers to game-plan and get creative about ways lessons can interlock and students can engage with the same ideas across multiple subjects.

“I have no collaborative planning time with my colleagues and my grades because I’m their coverage,” Smith said.

Doylestown middle school teacher Jill Weller-Reilly, another co-author of the report, said if the state wants teachers to stay in the field, schools need to provide educators with opportunities to grow and advance in their careers.

“We don’t lose new teachers because they can’t do the job. We lose them because we don’t help them learn how and set them up for success,” Weller-Reilly said.

According to Teach Plus polling from 2025, 70% of educators nationwide said they “definitely” or “probably” would want their school to adopt such an approach.

The report authors note there are no state-level limits on class size at the K-12 level, and the state does not mandate a specific student-to-teacher ratio. As a local control state, Pennsylvania school districts have a fair amount of autonomy for things like budgeting, teacher time, and compensation. Those factors could make “strategic staffing” easier to implement.

However, union negotiations and limited district resources do mean districts like Philly would have to get buy-in from multiple parties to launch a strategic staffing model.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg signaled some interest in the idea, saying in an email to Chalkbeat that “districts including ours must be more innovative with resource allocation to improve hiring, retention, and professional support.”

But change can be notoriously hard for educators, administrators, and school communities. And the report’s proposal comes with a cost.

While most strategic staffing models are intended to be budget-neutral after schools have gone through the design process, the Teach Plus advocates said, there are significant up-front costs to getting one of these models off the ground.

Teach Plus wants state lawmakers to establish a grant program and a way to evaluate the effectiveness of Pennsylvania’s programs alongside similar models like North Carolina’s Advanced Teaching Roles program. State evaluations of the North Carolina program are beginning to show promise, with some data demonstrating it helped improve students’ math and science scores and teachers’ perceptions of their jobs. North Carolina’s program costs about $16.5 million to run annually in 17 districts.

Another major hurdle to establishing strategic staffing in classrooms is simple exhaustion with new initiatives. Philadelphia, like other major city school districts, has experimented with innovative teaching and learning models in the past, only to have them fade away or lose funding and attention.

But Smith said if the changes are born from the bottom up, and truly take educators’ ideas into consideration, it could make Philly a prized destination for future teachers.

“I still am hopeful if the approach is such that it really honors what teachers know and think, that’s how the model can work,” he said.

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

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

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

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This story originally appeared in Kensington Voice.

The Kensington Tigers play “trench.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kensington Tigers have a coach with high standards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘A strong brotherhood’ drives team’s success

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kensington High School boys basketball fans react during a game.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philadelphia wants to entice students back to neighborhood high schools. Will it work?

2026-02-13T18:43:51+00:00

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For Philadelphia parent Samatha Bromfield, the choice to send her kids to Paul Robeson High School was deeply thought-out.

Bromfield said she spoke to her children and saw what they needed: “They needed something small. They needed a family.” That’s what she found at Robeson, which has around 300 students and where the teachers all know her children’s names.

But now, the school’s future is in doubt. Robeson is one of the 20 schools the district wants to shutter in an effort to address declining enrollment and move students out of dilapidated buildings. Five are criteria-based magnet high schools or citywide admissions high schools with low enrollment.

Many of those schools would be absorbed into neighborhood high schools as honors programs. But their buildings would fully close in 2027, and the district has not made clear exactly what options current students will have then. Students who recently accepted an offer to schools on the chopping block have been told their only other option is their neighborhood school.

All together, those moves amount to a shrinking number of choices for some students and families, who have come to count on the idea that they have a real say in where they go to high school in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s high school selection process is a rigorous and often confusing one. It requires middle school-aged students to explore dozens of options and rank their top picks for a lottery system.

The choices are meant to help students find schools that “nurture their passions,” Superintendent Tony Watlington has previously said. For decades, the district has promoted these options to attract families.

Now as the district moves to close some of those schools and reduce the number of choices, families say they feel betrayed. If the plan moves forward, officials will be faced with the challenge of enticing families back to neighborhood schools.

Already, many say they will not go.

“I choose to decide where my children go,” Bromfield said. “If you decide — you, as in the board members — decide to close Paul Robeson, I have a choice to pull my children out of the public school system.”

Why attracting families to neighborhood high schools is so difficult

Watlington will present the plan to the Board of Education, which will ultimately decide which schools close, later this month.

Until then, district officials have told students at closing schools and those who recently accepted offers to attend them that they should stay enrolled. If they want to switch schools, their only option is attending their neighborhood school.

Watlington has stressed that the district plans to create a transition team to support all families impacted by the closure plan. The district’s goal, he has said, is to keep all students within district schools.

“We are laser focused on doing everything we can to not contribute to more out-migration of students,” he said during a recent radio interview.

The plan would provide students more access to desirable opportunities, like AP classes and career and technical education programs. It includes investments in some neighborhood high school buildings.

But attracting families to neighborhood high schools will likely be a tall order. For decades, school leaders have pushed small high schools as an answer to parents’ concerns about neighborhood high schools, which often have a reputation for being more chaotic and violent than smaller magnets.

In the meantime, these small schools are also trying to convince incoming families to stay enrolled, even with the threat of closures looming.

Successive district leaders in Philadelphia have championed different versions of specialized schools. In the early 2000s, for example, then-chief of schools Paul Vallas opened two dozen new small high schools. He divided some schools in half and turned others over to charter organizations under the promise that students’ experiences and outcomes would improve.

The idea was that at small schools, there would be more opportunities and better academic achievement. Increasing the number of available schools would also reduce overcrowding and give families the sense of choice. And magnet programs could offer the promise of a more intimate and often more rigorous education than a neighborhood high school.

In some cases, it works. Several longstanding magnet schools, like Julia R. Masterman and Central High School, are top-ranked in the state with families desperate to get in.

But not every small school is equally desirable. Over the past decade, the district has lost around 17,000 students, largely because of declining birth rates and more students attending cyber charter schools. Some magnet and citywide admissions schools now have hundreds of empty seats.

In the meantime, some neighborhood high schools have also struggled. Several have low academic achievement and, in some cases, reputations for in-school violence. Many are also in old buildings that families say would not represent an improvement for their children.

Watlington and other officials have promised to boost those schools. But so far, families say they’re not convinced.

“The neighborhood schools are unacceptable for me as a parent,” said Janae Crawley, a parent of a student at Parkway Northwest, during a meeting at the school about the closures. The district wants to close Parkway Northwest and turn it into an honors program at Martin Luther King High School, which has around 600 students — more than double the size of Parkway Northwest.

Crawley, like other parents, said the high school selection process was lengthy. After a “very important and very big conversation” with her child, they decided on Parkway Northwest.

Closing the school would be “almost catastrophic,” she said.

District plan would expand capacity at some popular magnets

The district’s proposal isn’t just about funneling more resources to neighborhood high schools. District officials acknowledge that many families want choices in high school selection, and are frustrated that many of the city’s top magnets are exceedingly hard to get into.

By closing some schools and colocating and relocating others, the district would be able to increase capacity at five top magnet schools, Watlington has said. That includes expanding enrollment at Central and Masterman and adding selective middle schools at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush and Palumbo Middle School.

Watlington also wants to open a new, specialized year-round high school that any family could apply to. It’s unclear how students would be chosen for admission or when the school would open.

Still, enrolling more students at neighborhood high schools remains a core promise of the plan. Many students at the schools slated for closure say that’s exactly what they don’t want.

“If I wanted to go to a neighborhood school, I would have applied there,” said Leille Lane, an 11th grader at Motivation High School, which the district wants to turn into an honors program at Bartram High School. Bartram is nearly four times the size of Motivation, and has a much lower graduation and attendance rate.

“If I wanted to attend Bartram or any other school, I would have put that school on my list,” Lane said.

Carly Sitrin and Sammy Caiola contributed to this story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parkway Northwest students say they want to preserve small school environment

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

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

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

Parkway Northwest High School enrolls around 250 students.

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

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

Lankenau’s campus is essential, students and teachers say

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

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

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

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

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

Conwell Middle School families say district has disinvested in Kensington

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a familiar and painful challenge for Robeson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

School leaders say different forces are driving school closures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why fighting school closures might be harder now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Showing Kensington kids their potential

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trusted adults can be key to motivating students

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s how to give feedback on Philadelphia’s school closure proposal

2026-01-30T21:32:20+00:00

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Do you have thoughts on the Philadelphia school district’s proposal to close 20 schools? School leaders say they want to hear from you.

The district’s school closure plan, which officials released last week, would result in nearly 5,000 students having their schools closed and several others schools being relocated or co-located to other buildings.

Superintendent Tony Watlington has said the plan will result in better educational opportunities for students, including more access to AP classes, more pre-kindergarten seats, and more capacity in some of the district’s most-desirable schools. It would also help move students out of deteriorating buildings.

But Watlington has not yet officially presented that plan — which has quickly become controversial — to the Board of Education, which will ultimately decide which schools close. Before he does so, district leaders have said they want to meet with students, educators, families, and community members connected with each school they want to close.

The district plans to host virtual and in-person community meetings with each school it proposes closing. Meetings will begin on Feb. 2 and go until Feb. 21.

Two district-wide town halls are planned for President’s Day, Feb. 16.

Watlington has said he will formally share the plan with the board on Feb. 26.

Several board members said during their meeting Thursday that they plan to attend some of the meetings and hope others do as well. “The community has a right to speak out,” said board member Cheryl Harper.

Anyone can register for the community meetings, including virtual options, on the district’s website.

Here’s where and when they’ll be:

Week 1 — Monday, Feb. 2 to Saturday, Feb. 7

Feb. 2: Russell Conwell Middle School, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m, Virtual

Feb. 2: Warren G. Harding Middle School, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 2: Robert Morris Middle School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 2: Paul Robeson High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 3: General Louis Wagner Elementary, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 3: John Welsh Elementary, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 3: Penn Treaty High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 3 Lankenau High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 4: Parkway NW High School, 6200 Crittenden St., 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 4: Lankenau High School, 201 Spring Lane, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 5: Russell Conwell Middle, 1849 E. Clearfield St., 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 5: AMY at Northwest, 6000 Ridge Ave., 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 6: Laura Waring Elementary, 8:30 to 10:00 a.m., Virtual

Feb. 6: Overbrook Elementary School, 8:30 to 10:00 a.m., Virtual

Feb. 7: Blankenburg Elementary, 4600 W. Girard Ave., 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., In-Person

Feb. 7: William T. Tilden Middle School, 6601 Elmwood Ave., 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., In-Person

Feb. 7: Paul Robeson High School, 4125 Ludlow St., 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 7: Parkway West High School, 4725 Fairmont Ave #2, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., In-Person

Week 2 — Monday, Feb. 9 to Thursday, Feb. 12

Feb. 9: Blankenburg Elementary School, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 9: Fitler Academics Plus Elementary School, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 9: James R. Ludlow Elementary, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 9: Motivation High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 10: John B. Stetson Middle, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 10: William T. Tilden Middle, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 10: Parkway West High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 10: Parkway NW High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 11: Pennypacker Elementary School, 1858 Washington Lane, 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 11: Motivation High School, 5900 Baltimore Ave., 5:30 to 7:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 12: Penn Treaty High School, 600 E. Thompson St., 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 12: John B. Stetson Middle, 3200 B St., 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., In-Person

Week 3 — Monday, Feb. 16 (President’s Day) to Saturday, Feb. 21

Feb. 16: Community-wide Town Hall, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., Location TBD

Feb. 16: Community-wide Town Hall, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 18: General Louis Wagner Elementary, 1701 W. Chelten Ave., 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 18: John Welsh Elementary, 2331 N. 4th St., 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 19: Overbrook Elementary School, 2032 N. 62nd St., 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 19: James R. Ludlow Elementary School, 550 Master St., 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 20: Pennypacker Elementary, 8:30 to 10:00 a.m., Virtual

Feb. 20: Academy for the Middle Years at NW, 8:30 to 10:00 a.m., Virtual

Feb. 21: Laura Waring Elementary School, 1801 Green St., 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., In-Person

Feb. 21: Fitler Academics Plus Elementary, 140 W Seymour St., 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., In-Person

Feb. 21: Warren G. Harding Middle School, 2000 Wakeling St., 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 21: Robert Morris Middle School, 2600 W Thompson St., 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., In-Person

Philadelphia teachers, students call for changes to school closure proposal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Board members encourage people to weigh in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philadelphia school closure plan would move hundreds of students to lower-performing schools

2026-01-29T15:58:56+00:00

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Philadelphia school leaders say the aim of their plan to close 20 schools is clear: give all students better opportunities and support school communities.

By restructuring how the district uses its facilities, Superintendent Tony Watlington has said the district could provide all students with better buildings, more rigorous academic offerings, and more access to arts, music, and physical education.

“Part of the problem here is that there’s so much disparity in the school district of Philadelphia,” Watlington said last week when announcing the plan.

But some members of the City Council say they’re already worried that the proposal would leave students and families in some neighborhoods of the city worse off, and that areas affected by school closures previously are being targeted again.

Nearly half of the schools the district wants to close are in areas the district has identified as vulnerable, based on neighborhood social factors and prior school closures.

Some students at closing schools are also getting a tougher deal than others, because they would move to worse-performing schools, according to Chalkbeat’s analysis of the plan. That can hurt the performance of students at the lower-performing schools for years, researchers have found.

School leaders say they’re listening to communities and heeding the research about how to best go about closing schools and restructuring enrollment.

The district’s plan would mean no students would attend school in buildings rated poor or unsatisfactory, based on their cost of upkeep. And more students would have access to some highly desirable schools and programs, like career and technical education and selective admissions schools.

But as reactions to the district’s school-closure plan roll in, several officials have said they worry the proposal has left their neighborhoods shortchanged.

Several schools in Kensington and surrounding neighborhoods, for example, have a high social vulnerability rating as determined by the district based on several factors. The city also closed the area’s Sheridan West Middle School in 2013.

Still, the district has proposed closing several schools around Kensington. Students at one of those schools — John Welsh Elementary in Norris Square — would move to a school with lower performance, based on state test scores.

“Moving students out of their neighborhoods adds stress, disrupts learning, and pulls them away from the community ecosystems that support them,” said Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who represents Kensington, in a statement. “Equity cannot mean asking the same neighborhoods to carry the heaviest burden, again and again.”

Closures would move hundreds to lower-performing schools

District officials have previously said that they would not focus on school performance in their decisions about which schools to close. Instead, their decisions hinged on factors like how much unused capacity a school building has, whether it has spaces for programming like gym classes and prekindergarten, and social factors in its neighborhood.

That’s unlike the city’s last round of school closures in 2013, when officials scrutinized schools’ test scores when making closure decisions.

Under the new plan, around 90% of the 5,000 students at schools the district plans to close would be reassigned to better-performing schools, based on last year’s test scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA.

But that still means around 400 students at two schools — John Welsh and Overbrook Elementary — would be reassigned to worse-performing schools.

That could create looming challenges for those students, past research has found.

In studies of past school closures in Chicago, researchers found that one year after their schools closed, students who switched to high-achieving schools made gains in math and reading after the closures.

By contrast, students who were moved to the lowest-performing schools lost more than a month’s worth of learning in reading, and a month and a half’s worth of learning in math.

A study of Philadelphia’s school closures in 2013 also found that the achievement of students reassigned to high-performing schools improved after the closures, even though other factors, like school absences, increased for displaced students.

“We know that if the students go to really high performing schools, they did slightly better,” said Marisa de la Torre, managing director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, who conducted the Chicago study.

But she added that school performance is often not what matters most to families, who may care more about keeping their children close to home or in an area they trust. That means districts must balance how they prioritize school performance with other community interests in their decision making process.

The district did not respond to specific questions about the decision to move some students to lower-performing schools. District spokesperson Monique Braxton said the district plans to create a transition team to support school communities through the closures.

Will some neighborhoods go through repeated school closures?

One issue Philadelphia residents have said they care a lot about is reducing harm to neighborhoods where the city previously closed schools.

At community engagement events the district hosted over the summer to get input for its plan, several residents said they worried neighborhoods still reeling from school closures in 2013 would be affected again. That year, a state-appointed board closed 24 city schools. Empty school buildings from those closures still sit unused in some neighborhoods, slowly deteriorating.

School officials said they would factor in information about which neighborhoods were hit by closures in 2013 through a “neighborhood vulnerability” score. The district did not share exactly how it calculated the scores, but said they were based on social vulnerability data from the Centers for Disease Control and whether the school community had experienced school closures in the past.

Still, in the final list of recommendations of which schools to close, nine of the 20 closures are of schools with neighborhood vulnerability ratings of “very high risk” or “high risk.”

That has frustrated several city leaders.

“It seems like we’re headed towards the same people being disadvantaged by this process who are always disadvantaged by this process,” said Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents part of West and Southwest Philadelphia.

Still, Gauthier said the district’s approach does feel like an improvement from the school closures of 2013. She said she appreciated the district’s willingness to hear feedback and host community engagement sessions.

She just hopes that leads to changes to the proposal.

“We still have the opportunity to make sure that there’s equity,” Gauthier said.

Chalkbeat senior data editor Thomas Wilburn contributed to this story.

Philadelphia parents resist district’s plans to close 2 Kensington middle schools

2026-01-28T20:10:06+00:00

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This story was originally published in the Kensington Voice.

Ashley Jenkins plans to send her 2-year-old daughter to Conwell Middle School in Kensington. Two of her sons graduated from the school, and another is in sixth grade.

“It’s a safe haven,” Jenkins said. “Conwell is not only a school to us. The teachers are their aunts and uncles … I can’t imagine losing Conwell.”

But that plan may now be upended.

The School District of Philadelphia announced on Jan. 22 that Conwell and Stetson middle schools are among 20 schools it plans to close starting in 2027. The timeline for closures remains unclear. Some schools will phase out over several years, while others will close more quickly.

The district also plans to expand Lewis Elkin and William Cramp elementary schools into K-8 schools. Conwell students would be reassigned to AMY at James Martin, on East Ontario and Richmond streets. Stetson students would be phased into Elkin and Cramp. Both middle school buildings would be converted into district swing spaces.

The proposal is part of the district’s long-awaited reorganization plan, driven by declining citywide enrollment and building issues, including asbestos and poor ventilation.

The proposal has drawn opposition from City Council members, parents, alumni, and educators, who see the schools as integral resource hubs and safe spaces in their communities.

Conwell Middle School graduates and brothers Syncere Clark Williams and Rayneal Woods Clark with brother and current Conwell student Yahshua Woods and younger sister Lailah Hall at Rayneal's high school prom in 2025.

Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who serves on the City Council’s Education Committee and whose district includes both middle schools, said the announcement caught her by surprise.

To many community members, Lozada said, Conwell is more than school.

“They are part of a family,” she said. “Conwell should not be on that list.”

Conwell operates a food pantry twice a week. Her office just delivered a freezer to the school last week.

The district has cited underenrollment as a reason for the closures, according to Lozada. Districtwide enrollment has declined by about 17,000 students over the past decade. The drop has been steeper in Kensington: Enrollment at Conwell fell from 176 students in 2022 to 109 in 2025 — a 38% decrease.

While Conwell is a magnet school, more than half of its students live in the surrounding neighborhood.

“The reality is that it’s underenrolled because of the neighborhood,” Lozada said. “It’s a public safety issue. It’s not because successful academic learning is not happening there, or that the teachers are not coming anymore, or that the building is falling apart. It’s more about what’s happening on the outside. So, instead of responding and making the neighborhood safer, the [students, teachers, and faculty] are being compromised and almost punished.”

Santysha McDuffie said Conwell has supported her family year after year. She picks up Thanksgiving turkeys and winter coats from the school, where her kids are in sixth and eighth grade.

“Whenever we’re having issues, the school is always there to help,” McDuffie said.

Santysha McDuffie's daughter Madison sitting in the Conwell Middle School library, where McDuffie said she likes to spend time.

McDuffie lives about a 15-minute drive from Conwell and chose the school over other options after researching and receiving a recommendation from a friend for her son, Lawrence.

“He’s a smart boy, and he needed a school that was going to keep him on his toes,” said McDuffie, adding that her son has been challenged because he has been assigned high school-level work.

“He’s excelling in it, and he loves it,” she said.

McDuffie’s daughter, Madison, is also thriving.

“I know she’s safe there,” McDuffie said. “She feels more like herself. She’s opening up.”

Recent investments raise questions about school reassignment

The district’s proposal to close Conwell comes after hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested in the school in recent years, raising questions about how the closure aligns with those expenditures.

Conwell was designated $333,333 in opioid settlement funds, one of six Kensington schools to receive money from lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors. As of December 2024, about $109,950 of those funds had been allocated for science equipment, including 3D printers, and for after-school programs like the Conwell Media Team. The media lab itself is a recent development. In 2023, the media lab teacher crowdfunded for gear.

Additional opioid funds were designated for a therapeutic space, student support amenities, and schoolyard improvements, including space for an outdoor farming program, and a washer and dryer for students’ clothes.

Separately, Principal Erica Green used a $20,000 Lindback Award she received in 2022 to upgrade the school’s science lab and expand STEAM programming.

Meanwhile, the school opened a new turf soccer field in 2024.

The proposed reassignment of Conwell students to AMY at James Martin also raises questions about how the district is applying its own school rankings, which are part of its decision-making process. The district ranked the building, programming, capacity, and neighborhood vulnerability for every school it operates in the city.

According to district data, AMY’s building is rated poor and its programming unsatisfactory. Conwell received higher rankings in both categories, with its building and programming classified as fair.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said during a press conference last week that no students would be moved into buildings rated poor or unsatisfactory. He also said that 90% of students would be reassigned to schools with comparable or better academic outcomes.

The district’s plan also calls for modernizing 159 school buildings, but it has not provided details on how those upgrades would affect schools slated to remain open, including AMY.

The district did not respond to a request for comment regarding this reassignment in time for publication.

Stetson Middle School is ‘neighborhood fixture’ in Philly

A majority of Stetson Middle School students live in the surrounding neighborhood. Stetson’s enrollment has declined since the district contentiously revoked the school’s charter status in 2022, after a years-long battle between the Philadelphia Board of Education, families, and the charter company, ASPIRA. Enrollment fell from 616 students that year to 511 in 2025 — a 17% decrease.

Since the district’s announcement, a petition has launched in opposition to Stetson’s proposed closure and has over 520 signatures.

The petition raises concerns about potential overcrowding at Elkin and Cramp elementary schools, where Stetson students would be reassigned. The district has labeled both schools as underutilized.

“Schools like Stetson serve as community hubs where families connect,” the petition states. “This loss could fragment our closely-knit community and erode social ties.”

Tony Rocco, who taught full time at Stetson for nine years before retiring in 2019, teaches an after-school photography class there twice a week.

“Stetson has become a fixture in the neighborhood,” Rocco said.

While the school has had its challenges, Rocco said he has watched generations of families pass through, and has seen students like Benny Martinez-Russi flourish.

Martinez-Russi, 19, graduated from Stetson and is now a first-year student at Temple University on a full academic scholarship.

“If I drive past the area, I’m gonna feel nostalgia,” Martinez-Russi said.

He was quiet when he started there, but teachers, including Rocco, whom he described as a father figure, helped him warm up.

“I see the good work that gets done in that school every day and the difference that every teacher tries to make for their kids,” Rocco said. “It breaks my heart to see Stetson and the parents, potentially again, having to go through yet another bunch of changes.”

Photography teacher Tony Rocco, left, with Benny Martinez-Ruzzi, middle, a Stetson Middle School alumnus who's now a Temple University student.

District data shows Stetson’s building faces bigger structural challenges than Conwell’s. Stetson’s building was rated unsatisfactory, with a score of 41%, and its programming received a score of 25%. The neighborhood’s vulnerability score was flagged as “high risk.”

The district defines high neighborhood vulnerability as places with many social and economic challenges, including those that may have experienced school closures in the past.

A state hearing officer’s report found that ASPIRA made progress improving Stetson’s climate but fell short on academic and financial promises. A charter appeal board voted 4-1 to revoke the school’s charter status in 2022, about three years after the school board voted to not renew ASPIRA’s contracts.

“I just hope that they’re thinking through, as much as possible, about the decisions that they make,” Rocco said. “Do you have a better plan for Stetson, or is this something that is just dollars and cents in a spreadsheet, where you’re trying to figure out how to save money? Because those are my kids.”

In Norris Square, the district plans to close John Welsh Elementary. The district rated the building as poor.

Under the proposal, Welsh students would be reassigned to John Hartranft and William McKinley elementary schools. The plan is to modernize and repurpose the Welsh building into a year-round high school.

In Frankford, the district wants to close Warren G. Harding Middle School. The James J. Sullivan School, John Marshall School, Henry W. Lawton School, and Laura H. Carnell School would expand, with Sullivan moving into the Harding building.

In Fishtown, Penn Treaty High School would also close.

Councilmember Jeffrey Young, whose district includes Penn Treaty, said the district told him Penn Treaty students would be phased into a high school in the Kensington catchment area. William Bodine High School would move into Penn Treaty’s building to expand capacity.

What’s next for the proposed Philadelphia school closures?

Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas will meet with every council member to discuss proposed closures and community needs, Lozada said.

Then, she said the education committee will review each council member’s priorities and bring them to the school board and the district.

Lozada said she will host community meetings to gather feedback. The district has also scheduled community engagement sessions for every school slated for closure throughout February.

“I would want none of them to close, but if we have to close them — if we can’t get to a point where we can’t save them — then I want the transition to be as easy and as safe as possible, not just for our children, but for our teachers,” Lozada said.

According to the district, teachers and staff affected by the plan should retain their jobs, and that principals in “good standing” would also be retained.

The district’s recommendations will be presented to the Philadelphia Board of Education on Feb. 26.

“Any changes in information that we have shared will be provided at that time,” said district spokesperson Monique Braxton in response to a request for comment.

The school board must approve the final plan and may make changes.

Philadelphia will have another remote learning day Wednesday

2026-01-27T22:07:07+00:00

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Philadelphia district students will have another remote learning day Wednesday, district officials announced Tuesday afternoon.

The district’s early childhood centers and central office will also operate remotely. All after-school programs and professional development sessions scheduled for Wednesday are also canceled.

Wednesday will be the third school day where students don’t attend class in their school buildings following a severe snowstorm over the weekend. Students had a full snow day Monday and a remote learning day Tuesday due to the storm.

Philly students are scheduled to be dismissed three hours early on Thursday and Friday this week for report card conferences.

Some other cities pummeled by the storm have already re-opened schools. New York City’s schools were open Tuesday following a remote learning day Monday.

But other districts are opting to keep class remote. Pittsburgh will also have a remote learning day Wednesday, as will Baltimore.

City officials said Tuesday that they are working to plow streets and clean up from the storm, which dropped more than nine inches of snow on the city. The city lifted its snow emergency status on Tuesday morning.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Councilmember wants to protect Conwell Middle School from closure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Union leadership says school closures would be ‘devastating’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Families, teachers worry school closures will be damaging

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philadelphia school district wants to close 20 schools starting in 2027, affecting dozens of others

2026-01-22T16:17:45+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district wants to close 20 schools starting in 2027 as part of a reorganization plan that will affect 1 in 3 traditional district schools and reshape the city’s public education landscape.

Nearly 5,000 students would have their schools closed in the coming years, based on this year’s enrollment counts. Another 2,800 students would have their schools moved to a new location following the district’s plan to co-locate and relocate eight current schools to different facilities.

The changes will mean major shifts for school enrollment across the city. More than 20 schools would add seats or grades to accommodate students from closed schools, and some catchment boundaries in the Northeast would shift. The district would also open four new schools in existing buildings and upgrade infrastructure at nearly 160 school facilities.

In total, the plan would affect roughly 30,000 students, or a quarter of current district enrollment. That includes students at schools that would be new co-location sites and those at schools that would add one or more grades.

The proposal would have a particularly large impact on middle schools, with more than a dozen elementary schools turning into K-8 schools to absorb students from six closing middle schools.

The plan represents the district’s effort to address some fundamental challenges facing Philadelphia’s schools. Many schools are below capacity by hundreds of students after a long-term decline in district enrollment. Over the past decade, district enrollment has declined by around 17,000 students, reflecting a citywide population decline and a jump in the number of students enrolled in cyber charter schools.

Crumbling asbestos, broken sinks, and poor ventilation plague the city’s school buildings, which are on average more than 70 years old. Fixing those problems would cost billions that the district doesn’t have.

Yet the proposal — which the Board of Education must approve — will likely ignite fierce opposition. Some have been warning the district for months about the downsides of fracturing school communities. Bitter memories from the last round of school closures could be a factor: After the district closed 24 schools in 2013 largely to save money, some students’ academic performance and attendance took a hit, and the district’s financial problems persisted.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said during a press briefing this week that the plan would improve the quality of education the city’s schools can offer.

“We must find ways to more efficiently use our resources, so we can push higher quality programming into all our schools, while at the same time addressing under and over enrolled schools,” Watlington said.

The district has begun sharing its plan with affected schools this week and will present its recommendations to the Board of Education at its February meeting. The board ultimately must approve the changes and could reshape them before any closures begin.

Teachers and staff at schools that will close will keep their jobs to help fill the district’s vacancies, Watlington said. Principals “in good standing” will remain employed by the district.

Philadelphia school closure plan likely to trigger protests

Students and staff will begin to be affected by the changes at the start of the 2027-28 school year. The exact timeline for closing individual schools remains unclear. Some closing schools will gradually phase out grades over several years, while others will close at once and students will merge into a different school.

For neighborhoods where schools are slated to close, empty buildings will likely become a looming concern. After the last round of closures, several buildings were left deteriorating for more than a decade. The district now owns more than 20 buildings considered persistently vacant, meaning they haven’t been used in several years.

Under the proposed changes, the district would close 20 school buildings over the next 10 years. It has specific plans to repurpose 12 for district use, including opening a year-round high school in one.

But the future of the other eight closed buildings is unclear. The district wants to turn many over to the city to create housing or other public infrastructure. Though Mayor Cherelle Parker has broadly supported turning empty schools into housing, those changes would require specific action from the city.

District officials say they are aware of how challenging these changes can be — and how worried many Philadelphians are after the last round of closures. Over the past year, they hosted dozens of community engagement events and sent out several surveys to solicit feedback.

Watlington said the responses helped guide the recommendations. But many educators and community members said it was difficult to give feedback without yet knowing which schools would see changes. The new list will likely result in pushback and protest as teachers and neighborhoods hope to keep their schools from closing, as some successfully did ahead of the 2013 closures.

Watlington promised students and families will be supported through the transition. He said 90% of students who will change schools will be reassigned to schools with comparable or better academic outcomes.

Watlington pledged the plan would also result in specific improvements for district students. No district students will go to a school with a building rated as poor or unsatisfactory, he said. Other improvements include:

Doubling the percentage of kindergarten students who have access to district-operated pre-kindergarten from 25% to 50%.
Increasing the number of high schools that offer five or more AP classes by 12%.
Increasing the percentage of schools that offer “robust” music, art, and physical education programming from 57% to 70%.
Increasing the number of middle schools that offer Algebra 1 from 53% to 100%.

The plan addresses some of Philadelphia families’ common concerns, like limited space at some of the most desirable magnet high schools and severe overcrowding in the Northeast. It also expands career and technical education program offerings and access to other sought-after programming, like pre-K.

Under the proposal, the district would increase the number of seats at five criteria-based schools, including Central and Masterman, which are consistently two of the top-ranked schools in the city. It would also open a new middle school to feed into Palumbo High School, another top-ranked magnet school.

In the crowded Northeast, the district would modernize several schools to expand capacity, including by creating a new building for Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush and turning its old building into a new catchment high school.

The district is also planning for some high schools that would close to live on in a different form. Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School, Motivation High School, Parkway Northwest High School, and Paul Robeson High School will each close and become honors programs integrated into other schools.

Still, these changes will mean huge disruptions for students and families across the city. After the last round of closures, researchers found school absences for students whose schools closed increased, and they missed more days of school and received more suspensions the farther they traveled to their new school building.

The district originally planned to release its proposal for school closures last November, but then delayed it. Now, school leaders say they’re waiting on the support of the Board of Education, Parker, and funders to move forward.

The district doesn’t have enough money on its own to fund the plan’s price tag. The school changes and upgrades would cost $2.8 billion, which the district wants to pay for with $1 billion in district funds and $1.8 billion in new public and philanthropic dollars.

Without that funding, Watlington said the district would have to “scale down” the plan and keep students at dozens of schools rated as poor or unsatisfactory.

Watlington acknowledged that many people do not want their schools to close. He pledged the district would create a designated team to help families with any transition and give them the “gold standard red carpet treatment directly from the Superintendent’s office.”

“We have one shot at this to get this right,” Watlington said.

Sammy Caiola contributed reporting.

Correction: Jan. 22, 2026: The table in a previous version of this story inaccurately stated that Laura H. Carnell School will absorb students from William T. Tilden Middle School. Students from William T. Tilden Middle School will be absorbed by Thomas G. Morton, John M. Patterson, and Joseph W. Catharine schools.

After a $45 million math curriculum overhaul, Philadelphia sees results

2026-01-15T22:55:32+00:00

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Philadelphia students’ average scores on state math tests have reached their highest rate in nine years, marking a significant recovery from pandemic-era learning loss.

Students from almost every racial group made gains along with students who are English learners, district officials said Thursday at a non-voting Board of Education meeting.

“I’m giddy with excitement,” said Board of Education President Reginald Streater. He added that he remembered a time where these kinds of scores seemed “so far away.”

Still, only around one-quarter of students in grades 3-8 achieved proficient scores on last year’s math state test, called the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA. That’s far from the district’s goal of more than half of the students in those grades achieving proficient scores in math by August 2030.

The gains come as the district struggles with declining scores in reading.

Philly schools began implementing a new math curriculum from Imagine Learning Illustrative Mathematics during the 2023-24 school year, following a $45 million overhaul. The district also recently expanded its high-impact math tutoring program for middle school students.

Deputy Superintendent of Academic Services Jermaine Dawson said scores in third grade math were particularly promising, with more than one third of those students achieving proficient scores last year. That indicates that both teachers and students are becoming more familiar with the new curriculum, Dawson said.

Superintendent Tony Watlington attributed the success to the district’s increased investment in coaching and supporting teachers as they implement the curriculum.

“Giving people more technology, more artificial intelligence, more Chromebooks, more stuff, more tutors, more mentoring — we’ve done all that for decades,” Watlington said. He said that having highly qualified, well-supported and stable teachers is what “moves the needle.”

Philadelphia’s success in math echoes a statewide trend of math scores increasing since the pandemic. But reading scores in Philly and statewide have gone in the opposite direction, and it’s unclear what’s fueling the decline.

Last year, Philadelphia implemented a new reading curriculum and rolled out more reading supports. Still, third grade reading scores remain below where they were a decade ago.

District data also shows a clear correlation between student attendance and achievement. Dawson said his team is focusing on working more with partner organizations and families to reduce the number of students who frequently miss class.

How this Philadelphia teacher is training the next generation of educators

2026-01-12T18:06:10+00:00

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Philadelphia wants to help fill the city’s severe teacher shortage by training some students to become educators before they leave high school.

Gina Dukes champions that effort. She runs the district’s first career and technical education program meant to train future K-12 educators, which launched in 2023 at Science Leadership Academy at Beeber. The district also offers a similar program at Olney High School and an early childhood education program at Parkway West High School.

Students in the program at SLA Beeber learn the fundamentals of teaching, serve as teaching assistants, and have the opportunity to earn up to a year’s worth of college credit. The Center for Black Educator Development supports the program by providing curriculum and learning experiences.

Dukes, who has been teaching for nearly a decade, said the program isn’t just for students who are certain they want to become teachers. Her aim is to inspire any young person to look beyond what they think they’re capable of and plan for a career that can make a difference.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you decide to become a teacher? What led you to want to teach the education career training program?

It was the first job I got out of college. I was always interested in education — I’m from Philadelphia, and I’m someone who had really awesome teachers. I felt in a lot of ways, I got really lucky. I felt like I was kind of plucked out of some environments and put on a different path that a lot of my peers and even family members didn’t have access to.

I was at Daroff Elementary, which has now closed. A counselor told me to apply to Andrew Hamilton, where they have an academic track for middle school. There, I had Ms. Abbott as a teacher, who inspired the TV show Abbott Elementary.

Ms. Abbott was amazing, but she also demanded a level of excellence. She was like, “You’re going to work; you’re going to do public speaking.” That was like the first real challenge I had, and I thrived in her class. Then I went to Science Leadership Academy, where I had a really awesome teacher, Matthew Kay. He made learning so much fun.

I always wanted to be someone like Mr. Kay or someone like Ms. Abbott, who helps students to see themselves beyond what they saw themselves as. I knew that I wanted to change the education system because I felt like I got lucky.

My faith sustains me and reminds me I don’t have to have all the answers or do it on my own strength. I am still growing as a teacher. I realized teaching is not about having it all figured out — it’s about having the courage to keep becoming.

How do you approach teaching and inspiring your students?

Not everyone wants to teach, obviously, and teaching is not for everybody. So my program is for future teachers, but also future leaders. I tell them, regardless of if you want to go into education, you’re going to learn tangible, practical skills that can improve your college application, that can improve your resume, that can take you far in the world professionally.

Teachers are making lesson plans, they’re managing the classroom, they’ve got social emotional skills. That planning, time management, creativity — whatever job they want to do, it’s relevant.

Public speaking is also a big part of my program, college exposure, and leadership. I give students the platform to figure out what they want for themselves. Who do they want to be? What does success look like for you? How can you use the stuff in this program to take you there?

How do you discuss challenges in the education system with your students?

We start with a foundational understanding of the history of education in the U.S., including when schools first started and who were allowed to attend. Students learn about the education reform movements, and we look at current policy.

Every year we go to the state Capitol for student advocacy day, and we meet with lawmakers. Last year, the push was for stipends for student teachers. That really helps students see that they’re not just learning this stuff — this is real. They can actually get involved in these things.

My students see the challenges. I think they see the shortage of teachers who look like them. I think sometimes talking about the challenges makes them get fired up, and I definitely have a lot of kids who are activists in my program.

Philly and many other cities have a severe teacher shortage. What do you think your students need most to continue down the path to become educators and thrive?

One of the biggest things I see is support with going to college. If there could be more scholarships available to students who are committed to teaching in Philadelphia, in schools where there’s a high need, I think that would relieve a burden.

Often for my students, the biggest thing that makes them not want to get into teaching is they think about the money. They think, “Oh, you can’t make a living.” I try to tell them, I’m doing alright. I have been able to do things above what my family has been able to do because of the salary, the stability, the benefits of teaching that I don’t think people often hear about.

I think they also need to see that teaching can be fun. So many people when I tell them I’m a teacher, they say, “Oh, thank you for your service.” Or they’re sad for me, like they pity me. We need to reframe that.

It should be like, “Wow, you’re doing something that’s amazing! You’re changing the future. You’re creating better opportunities.” Not that it’s something to be looked on as a burden, but like a beautiful gift.

Philly will launch 2 schools in new Promise Zone program even as school closures loom

2026-01-07T20:59:06+00:00

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Philadelphia will open two new schools as part of the new North Philadelphia Promise Zone, which is meant to boost student achievement and provide additional support to families in one of the city’s poorest areas, Superintendent Tony Watlington said.

The program will be modeled on the Harlem Children’s Zone, a high-profile education program launched in New York City in the 1990s.

In his annual State of Schools address Wednesday, Watlington said the district plans to open the new schools in existing facilities. He did not say when the schools would open. But his announcement coincides with a facilities planning process that will lead to school closures across the city.

Watlington also said Wednesday the district will release that facilities plan — including recommendations for which schools to close, colocate, modernize, and repurpose — “this winter.”

The facilities plan is meant to better allocate building space and resources, since some schools have hundreds of empty seats and others are overcrowded, especially in the city’s Northeast. Watlington and other school officials say the aim is to provide more access to pre-K, AP classes, and extracurriculars.

Watlington did not say how the Promise Zone program will factor into the facilities plan.

The Harlem Children’s Zone organization provides charter schools and social services to families in one of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods. Researchers found it helped boost student achievement and shrunk the gap between Black and white children’ achievement. However, some experts have warned that efforts to replicate the program elsewhere have had mixed results.

Watlington said Philadelphia’s version has the support of Geoffrey Canada, president of Harlem Children’s Zone, which now runs several charter schools, community centers, childcare programs, and after-school programs in Central Harlem.

“This will be the first big city to replicate the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone,” Watlington said. “We are going to set these schools up to demonstrate to all the rest of us how to not only get better, but get there faster than our district average.”

Watlington said the schools will be staffed by the “very best, most effective” principals and teachers, and they will be “choice schools” that parents will be able to choose. Aliya Catanch-Bradley, principal of Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School, will lead the “conceptualizing” of the zone, he added.

Mayor seeks solution for ‘persistently vacant’ school buildings

Even as the district plans to open new schools, its old facilities remain a burden.

The average school building is more than 70 years old, which has led to expensive upkeep costs along with outdated — as well as sometimes unsafe — learning environments.

The district also owns more than 20 buildings considered persistently vacant, meaning they haven’t been used in several years. One such building, Ada Lewis Middle School in East Germantown, became a crime scene last year after police found the body of 23-year-old Kada Scott buried behind the building.

Mayor Cherelle Parker said Wednesday at the State of Schools event that she is working with the district and school board to create a plan for vacant buildings, including using some to create more housing, one of Parker’s main campaign promises.

The buildings “have been red ink on the school districts’ budget,” Parker said. “We are going to find a way to do something that has never been done in the city of Philadelphia before: develop a plan for those buildings that have been persistently vacant.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philadelphia opens new Thomas Holme School, adding seats in the overcrowded Northeast

2025-12-16T22:19:07+00:00

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Philadelphia school officials unveiled a new building for Thomas Holme School Tuesday, creating more space for Northeast Philly’s growing student population as the district plans for school closures and other big facilities changes.

The new building has one of the largest capacities of all district elementary and middle schools, with space for more than 1,000 students from pre-K to eighth grade. It replaces the previous Holme school, which was built in the 1950s and had a capacity of 795 students, according to district data.

Holme’s enrollment, which is now at just over 800 students, has crept up steadily over the past several years as the population in the city’s Northeast neighborhoods has ballooned. Elsewhere in the city, enrollment has fallen over the past decade.

The nearly $90 million project, built on the previous building’s footprint, is meant to provide more space and better facilities to Holme students, who have spent the past two and a half years learning in a temporary swing space at Austin Meehan School, a 10-minute drive away. Along with updated classrooms and learning spaces, the 130,000-square-foot building includes music rooms, a dance studio, a new gym, and a cafeteria.

“This building represents our commitment to delivering the learning environments our students deserve: safe, modern, healthy, and inspiring,” said Board of Education President Reginald Streater at the Tuesday ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The building — one of several new or updated schools unveiled this year — will open as the district pursues a facilities planning process that officials say will lead to closing and colocating some schools, along with modernizing and repurposing others.

The new Thomas Holme School includes a dance studio and several music rooms.

But district officials have not yet shared which schools will be closed, colocated, or otherwise affected, and they have delayed the timeline for the process.

Dozens of Philadelphia schools have hundreds of empty seats, while others, especially in the Northeast, are overcrowded. Families and teachers in the Northeast have complained that overcrowding has stretched educators thin and left students without support. The new building may help alleviate some of those concerns.

“They definitely took into consideration the fact that this is a growing community,” said April Tomarelli, an educational facilities planner for the district. “Right now, this will definitely meet the needs of the community.”

Though Holme students gave feedback on the building’s design plans, they have yet to see inside the new building. The school expects to move into the new space in January.

Holme Principal Micah Winterstein said he looks forward to seeing students’ faces when they experience their first day at the new school.

“The space they walk into will say how much we value them,” said Winterstein. “I think every kid deserves a space like this, but I’m so excited for our kids to walk in and know that this is theirs.”

Philadelphia eyes providing more help for 10th graders to boost graduation rates

2025-12-12T20:55:32+00:00

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To boost graduation rates, Philadelphia school leaders say they are looking to expand a key early high school support program to include 10th graders.

This comes after a district analysis released last month found that 97% of students considered “firmly on track” at the end of 10th grade graduated within four years. Students are considered on track based on the number of credits they earn.

The district first began monitoring whether ninth graders were on track to graduation in 2017. It partnered with longtime dropout prevention group Philadelphia Academies Inc. to launch initiatives meant to reduce ninth grade dropout rates and support freshmen in more than two dozen district high schools. The moves are backed by research that shows a strong relationship between the number of credits students have by the end of ninth grade and whether they’ll graduate within four years.

But the intense level of support, attention, and resources that comes with the ninth grade on track program doesn’t follow students to their sophomore year, said Aja Holden, the district’s executive director of the Office of Postsecondary Readiness. Holden said her team was hearing from young people that when they left ninth grade, they were asking “what about us?’”

The work to help more students stay on track to graduate dovetails with the Philadelphia district’s aim to improve the district’s four-year graduation rate and reduce the number of students dropping out. During the 2023-24 school year, the most recent year of available data, nearly 16% of students did not graduate within four years — an improvement from previous years, but still higher than the statewide rate. The number of students in grades 7-12 who dropped out of the district was nearing 4,000 in 2021-22 but has since fallen to 1,680 in 2024-25, according to district data.

Holden said the district is still exploring the possibility of an expansion to 10th grade, including what it would require in terms of resources and staff. The ninth grade on track program is funded through 2027 with $2.6 million of district money and $8 million from the Neubauer Family Foundation. (Chalkbeat receives funding from the Neubauer Family Foundation.)

“Do I believe it will happen? Yes.” Holden said. “Do I have an answer about quite when? No, not yet.”

The new analysis indicates some young people were falling back off track after ninth grade, and that recovery was rare for those who were behind when they started 10th grade. Around 91% of students who were off track at the end of 9th grade remained off track at the end of 10th grade.

Even among 10th graders with excellent attendance, only 14% who were off track regained on-track status, showing how difficult it is for students to recover from being behind.

Students considered off track include those who may be missing a single requirement or several requirements. The more credits a student has missed by the end of 10th grade, the less likely they were to graduate within four years, the district’s analysis found.

The new analysis also underscores how influential ninth grade is for students. Around 80% of students who completed enough credits by the end of ninth grade to be considered on track to graduate stayed on track at the end of 10th grade.

But Holden said it also created a sense of urgency for her and her team to think about how to better support 10th graders too.

For Holden, high school success is more than just credits and grades. She said having a meaningful high school experience, full of good memories, strong relationships, and connections that can help students succeed after they leave the district is paramount.

“I need all of the students of Philadelphia, all the students in the district, all of our tens of thousands of high schoolers, to make it from start to finish,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to be left behind.”

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

Philadelphia district will consider transferring vacant school buildings to the city

2025-12-11T23:10:22+00:00

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Some long-vacant Philadelphia school buildings might be transferred to the city for redevelopment as potential housing units in the near future.

The Board of Education approved a resolution Thursday granting the district the ability to negotiate with the city to sell or otherwise transfer some vacant buildings for housing or other purposes that benefit the community

The resolution passed 6-2, but several board members said they felt strongly that the district should not grant the city any sort of exclusivity or claim on vacant properties without exploring other development opportunities.

Board President Reginald Streater stressed at the meeting that the resolution does not immediately transfer any school buildings to the city but is the first step in a process.

“I would be derelict in my duty if I didn’t explore this as a mechanism,” Streater said.

The approval also is a political move signaling that the board — which is mayorally appointed — is aligned with Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration.

Parker has made building and restoring some 30,000 housing units a core part of her agenda and has publicly expressed her interest in using empty school buildings for that purpose.

Philadelphians, elected leaders, and even a charter school have renewed their focus on the district’s empty buildings after police found 23-year-old Mount Airy woman Kada Scott’s body buried in the woods behind the Ada H. H. Lewis Middle School building, which has sat empty and blighted since 2008.

The district has 20 vacant buildings valued at an estimated $80 million, according to the city’s office of property assessment, that would be considered for transfer under Thursday’s resolution. According to the resolution text, the district would still need to consider outstanding bond obligations, legal processes, or potential revenue impact before making any formal agreement with the city.

Thursday’s resolution kicks off the process of exploring the possibility of a transfer, but any agreements to exchange a school building would need to go before the board for a vote, according to the resolution.

Board member ChauWing Lam, who voted against the resolution, said Thursday she wasn’t sure the document was necessary to have those exploratory conversations with the city. She said she was concerned that the district and board would be foregoing and limiting the board’s ability to consider other offers outside of Parker’s administration by adopting the resolution.

The resolution frames any potential transfers as a cost-saving measure for the district, which is facing a budget deficit and spends money and staff hours on the upkeep of vacant school buildings. The resolution says those buildings are unused and not needed for education and the resources they require could be better spent on classroom needs.

Board member Wanda Novalés said Thursday any proposal brought to the board regarding the sale or transfer of any district-owned buildings should be financially beneficial for the district because the properties “belong to our students.”

Streater said the resolution only covers currently vacant buildings and would not apply to any future schools closed through the district’s ongoing facilities planning process.

A list of schools targeted for closure, co-location, renovation, or reuse is expected in the next few months.

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

Philadelphia district enrollment drops by more than 1,000 students

2025-12-02T22:32:11+00:00

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More than 1,050 fewer students are enrolled in Philadelphia’s district and alternative schools this year compared with last year, according to recent district data.

That marks a sharp contrast from last school year, when the district logged its first enrollment increase in a decade. Superintendent Tony Watlington later said increasing enrollment was one of his proudest achievements.

But since last school year, the district has returned to its previous trend of losing students each year. Over the same period, the city’s charter and cyber charter school enrollment grew by around 500 students each.

District spokesperson Naima DeBrest said in a statement that public school enrollment has been decreasing nationally due to declining birth rates “as well as families exploring alternative education options.”

The district now has nearly 20,000 fewer students than it did a decade ago and is planning to close schools in part to address the decline. Dozens of district schools have hundreds of empty seats, while some in the city’s Northeast are overcrowded.

District officials have said that early next year, they plan to release a list of schools to close and colocate, along with ones to modernize and repurpose.

The district’s enrollment decline doesn’t fully match citywide population trends. Census data shows that Philly’s population steadily grew in the 2010s and peaked in 2020. It then began to decline, only increasing again last year. The city’s population count now looks similar to what it was in 2015.

Still, some citywide demographic shifts are reflected in Philadelphia’s schools. With more immigrants in Philadelphia, around 1 in 5 district students are now English language learners. That’s more than double the share from a decade ago.

The district has three “newcomer” academies meant to support migrant students, but advocates have previously said students and families regularly run into problems accessing translation services and other supports.

The number of Hispanic students has also steadily increased over the past decade, while the number of Black students has steadily declined, which reflects the changing demographics of the city. The number of white students has remained fairly stable.

Philly principals reach tentative contract agreement with school district

2025-11-25T16:07:54+00:00

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The Philadelphia principals union and school district reached a tentative contract agreement late Monday that includes raises and language recognizing administrators “as vital partners in the educational process.”

No further details about the new four-year agreement were available.

The 1,000-member Commonwealth Association of School Administrators Teamsters Local 502 or CASA union represents school principals, climate workers, safety supervisors, and other administrators. They have been working without a contract since their prior four-year agreement expired in August. Union members have packed school board meetings and a City Council hearing in recent weeks, increasing public pressure on the district to reach a deal.

But a strike threat was never on the table. A longstanding provision in nearly all of the union’s prior contract agreements, as well as Pennsylvania’s Act 105 law, forbade administrators from stopping work.

The new tentative agreement “will provide continued stability for our administrative leaders,” said CASA President Robin Cooper in a joint statement with school district Superintendent Tony Watlington late Monday night.

Cooper said the agreement addresses key issues for union membership including wage equity for administrators who have several years experience in the district, across-the-board salary increases, and includes “collaborative language” that “affirms the dedication and innovative leadership” that school principals provide, “recognizing them as pivotal change agents, who drive both student and teacher success.”

Watlington said in the joint statement that the agreement “provides the stability, clarity, and momentum we need to continue our strong partnership with CASA and to advance our five-year strategic plan” as well as “honor[ing] the dedication of our CASA members and upholds our commitment to strong financial stewardship.”

Since August, the district has settled new multi-year contracts with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and the School Police Association of Philadelphia, which represents school safety officers.

The tentative agreement will go to union members for a vote sometime during the first week of December, Cooper told Chalkbeat on Tuesday.

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

Philadelphia school principals demand new contract but stop short of strike threat

2025-11-21T01:08:23+00:00

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Philadelphia principals are ramping up public pressure on school district officials to secure a new contract. But they’re not threatening to strike.

District principals, climate workers, and school safety supervisors packed the standing-room-only Board of Education meeting on Thursday in navy and gold Commonwealth Association of School Administrators Teamsters Local 502, or CASA, T-shirts. Union members have been working without a contract since their previous agreement expired in August.

CASA President Robin Cooper had strong words for Superintendent Tony Watlington and the district, saying contract negotiations have been “one-sided.” The union’s bargaining team has presented several counter proposals to end what Cooper calls “wage compression” and address increasing health premiums, but has been stonewalled by the district’s negotiators, according to Cooper.

“We have to fight our own district to properly support our needs,” Cooper said.

Under their prior contract agreement, members of the CASA union agreed not to strike or stop work.

But she stopped short of calling a strike. Under the union’s prior contract, members agreed they would not “engage in, instigate, or condone any strike, work stoppage or any concerted refusal to perform normal work duties.” That commitment still holds, Cooper told reporters outside of the meeting room.

“This is our district and we’re gonna take care of it,” Cooper said. “We’re still going to stand by our schools because this is who we are, and this is what we do.”

Watlington told City Council members earlier this week he is optimistic about reaching a contract deal in the “near term.”

“We value you and we’re gonna get this done,” Watlington told the union members Thursday.

Meanwhile, several parents, advocates, and community members also testified at Thursday’s meeting demanding the district reconsider its plan to close some public schools.

“It’s true that some neighborhoods face real enrollment challenges, but those neighborhoods call for support, not closure,” education researcher Ryan Pfleger told Watlington and school board members at Thursday’s meeting. “If a building is crumbling, repair it.”

District officials have said the highly-anticipated plan — originally slated to drop at Thursday’s board meeting before being delayed — will include proposals for every school building across the city. Some will be closed and their buildings repurposed, others colocated, and the rest either renovated or left as-is.

The district pushed back releasing a draft of that plan to an unspecified date, in order to gather more community responses through a survey it launched this week.

Watlington said Thursday the goal of the survey, which will be open through Dec. 11, is to solicit big-picture feedback from parents about four main themes: how to better use building space, reduce “unnecessary” school transitions, reinvest in neighborhood high schools, and expand access to selective-admission schools.

“I want people to just step back and just dream a bit,” Watlington said. “We’re committed to not fumbling the football at the two-yard line.”

Board members approve school security contracts

While the facilities plan was not on Thursday’s agenda, board members did vote on several contracts for school security efforts, including:

— $195,000 to expand the district’s existing student-run “youth court” program which helps young people mediate conflicts in school. During the 2025-26 school year, the district plans to add new program sites at Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, William L. Sayre High School, and West Philadelphia High School. The three additional youth court program sites will all be active “no later than June 2026,” according to the district.

— $321,178 to GXC Inc. for walkthrough weapons detection devices and metal detectors at district high schools and middle schools.

— $732,094 to Safe at School Consulting LLC for state-mandated security assessments at all schools by the end of the 2025-26 school year. The assessments will “evaluate current safety measures, identify any vulnerabilities, and provide guidance for any enhancements to physical safety and security needed at each school,” according to the district.

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

Philadelphia is going to close public schools. Here’s how you can weigh in on the process.

2025-11-19T20:25:37+00:00

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The School District of Philadelphia is knee-deep in a process to close, colocate, and renovate schools in the coming years. And district officials say they want to hear more public feedback on how that process is going.

This month, the district announced it would delay the release of a draft plan outlining proposed outcomes for every school, in order to gather more community responses through a survey it launched this week. Superintendent Tony Watlington told City Council members on Tuesday that such a plan would be put before the school board sometime this winter.

“We know that many of the district’s aging and unequal facilities are underenrolled or overenrolled,” Deputy Superintendent of Operations Oz Hill told reporters on Monday ahead of the survey’s release. “This process seeks to more efficiently use our limited staff and facility resources to improve and enhance the quality of education for our students.”

Over the past year, district employees and consultants have hosted some 47 “public listening and learning sessions” and have received over 5,700 responses to an earlier survey about the closure process. But many parents, advocates, and community members say despite all that, the process has come across as vague, frustrating, and overly controlled.

Parents and neighbors at an event Chalkbeat hosted in partnership with Germantown Info Hub last month said it felt like the district was front-loading community engagement early on without providing tangible information about plans for each neighborhood school.

What they want, community members said, is to know what the future holds for their school, not general information about district-wide processes. And they want time to weigh in on those individual school plans before anything is set in stone.

District spokesperson Alex Coppadge told reporters on Monday that principals have made it clear that school-level engagement and partnership will be critical once the draft plan is released.

“We get it. People want to know exactly what’s happening to their specific circumstance, and so we want to be empathetic towards that” Coppadge said. “We want to create space and ample time to make sure that whatever that engagement looks like, is thoughtful, is meaningful, allows us the opportunity to take their feedback back and really try to move forward as partners.”

Once the district releases plans for individual schools, Coppadge said there will be an “extensive engagement period,” but declined to say how long and when that would be.

“I know that it will not be a rushed process, and that we will try to do it as thoughtfully and meaningfully as possible,” she said.

You can respond to the new district survey here.

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

Philadelphia schools’ math scores rise but reading scores fall slightly on latest state tests

2025-11-14T19:12:00+00:00

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Superintendent Tony Watlington says it repeatedly: He wants Philadelphia to be the “fastest improving large, urban school district in the country.”

But state test scores from the 2024-25 school year, released Thursday, show the district still has a lot of work to do.

Around a quarter of students in grades 3-8 achieved proficient scores in math on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, last school year. That marks a slight improvement from the prior school year.

But elementary and middle school students’ reading scores dipped slightly, with around one-third of students achieving proficient scores.

The new data also shows big disparities in student achievement. Black and Hispanic students scored significantly lower than their white and Asian peers. Students who are economically disadvantaged also scored lower than the district average.

Scores remained particularly low for students with disabilities, even though district officials said last year they had a “robust plan” to boost those students’ achievement.

Around 8% of students with disabilities scored proficient in reading last school year, which is nearly identical to the year before. Around 6% scored proficient in math, a slight increase.

The state received a federal waiver for the science PSSA and did not report scores from the last school year because the state was in the process of adopting and implementing new science standards. Students still took a form of the science PSSA last year and the state reported participation rates.

In high school, when students take Keystone exams rather than PSSAs, nearly half of all students passed the literature Keystone test by 11th grade. Around one-third passed the biology Keystone and one-fourth passed the algebra Keystone. (Most students must demonstrate proficiency in Keystone subjects to graduate, but they can do so by meeting other requirements, like passing related classes.)

Preliminary data the district shared in October showed that last school year, student and teacher attendance rose several percentage points. The district also had more than 800 fewer students drop out than the previous year.

Test scores show statewide dip in reading achievement

Philadelphia students’ scores still remain far below the state average.

But the district’s struggle to boost reading scores isn’t unique. Statewide, reading scores of students in grades 3-8 fell by four percentage points last year — a larger drop than in Philly.

As part of the state budget, which passed Wednesday, Pennsylvania committed $10 million to literacy initiatives. The budget also included new requirements that all school districts must use evidence-based reading curriculum beginning with the 2027-28 school year.

Philadelphia implemented a new reading curriculum last year as part of its $100 million curriculum overhaul. The school year before that, it implemented a new math curriculum, and this year it rolled out a new science curriculum.

District officials previously said the new reading scores exposed weak points in how they implemented the new curriculum, and that they planned to provide more support for students and training for staff.

What Pennsylvania’s budget deal means for education

2025-11-12T20:52:34+00:00

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Pennsylvania’s new $50.1 billion state budget — four months overdue — includes a $193 million increase for Philadelphia schools, and several accountability reforms for cyber charter schools and districts’ literacy programs.

The budget and accompanying school code bills reduce the amount that school districts pay cyber charters, while also adding stricter reporting requirements for those schools regarding student absenteeism and academic performance. School districts statewide will also have to adopt “evidence-based” reading curriculum by the 2027-28 school year and do more to support struggling readers.

The budget package also includes $25 million for child care teacher recruitment and retention bonuses; a $7.5 million increase for Grow PA, which gives scholarships to aspiring educators; $30 million for student-teacher stipends; a non-punitive push for students to complete their college financial aid forms prior to graduation; and a $50 cap on teacher certification fees.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro signed the budget package Wednesday afternoon, flanked by Rep. Jordan Harris and House Speaker Joanna McClinton, both Democrats who represent Philadelphia.

“This budget builds on the progress we’ve made to be able to deliver better schools and more opportunity for our kids,” Shapiro said.

In an increasingly polarized and combative political environment, Pennsylvania officials cast their budget agreement Wednesday as a moment of unity for a divided legislature. It also gives badly needed financial relief to the state’s school districts, which resorted to various unappealing tactics like short-term borrowing to keep things running while they waited for state education funding — a situation that one observer likened to setting money on fire.

“We are voting on a budget today that continues to make historic investments in education,” said Harris, the House appropriations committee chair, before the vote in Harrisburg Wednesday. “It’s taken us a long time to get here, but the truth of the matter is we’re here and we’re here together.”

Education spending had been a central sticking point in budget negotiations. But in the shadow of a federal government shutdown and decisive election wins by Democrats this month in many races, Pennsylvania lawmakers said this budget will send a clear political message: We’re capable of compromising.

“I don’t agree with everything in this budget — that’s part of a divided government,” said Republican Rep. Jesse Topper on the House floor Wednesday. But he said he thinks the “robust” increases in education spending with the added requirements that districts adopt “evidence-based” literacy programs “will make a difference” for Pennsylvania students.

While the budget deal does not create a new private school voucher program that Republicans sought, Topper praised the $50 million increase in funding the budget allocates for the state’s existing school choice program that relies on tax credits.

In the absence of a state budget, the Philadelphia district borrowed $585.5 million to allow it to continue to function and will need to pay that money back, in addition to finding funding for the interest payments. A bill pending in the legislature would require the state to pay districts back for “interest payments and fees” stemming from lawmakers’ inability to pass a budget on time.

However, the Teach Plus advocacy group expressed concern that districts will not ultimately get reimbursed for interest they paid on any such borrowing. “That money will never reach classrooms and students, and local taxpayers will shoulder this unnecessary expense,” Teach Plus said in a Wednesday statement.

Philly district officials are also undergoing a complex facilities planning process that will result in school closures and require millions for renovations and building maintenance. The new budget includes $125 million for school facilities funding.

Budget addresses Pennsylvania’s school funding ‘adequacy gap’

This marks the second state budget since a state court ruled in 2023 that Pennsylvania’s previous school funding formula was unconstitutional because it left poor districts underfunded.

Following that ruling, a bipartisan commission crafted a new funding formula to consider districts’ tax bases and students’ needs to distribute funds. The new budget largely follows that formula and boosts funding for the state’s poorest districts.

“This budget responds to the mandates of our constitutional court to address the issues of inadequacy and equity,” said Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Democrat who represents Philadelphia, on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Still, advocates say the additional funding does not fully address Pennsylvania schools’ needs.

“Lawmakers’ five-month delay in passing this year’s budget left schools, educators, and families in unnecessary limbo and resulted in avoidable harm,” said Deborah Gordon Klehr, executive director of the Education Law Center-PA, in a statement. “This is another step forward – one that must be followed by continued commitment and sustained investment until every student, in every community, has the resources they need to learn and thrive.”

Cyber charter reforms will save Philadelphia district millions

Pennsylvania school districts previously have paid cyber charter schools the same amount per student as they provided to brick-and-mortar charters. But the new budget changes that, lowering the amount of money districts owe charters per student. Those changes are estimated to save the Philadelphia school district nearly $50 million this school year, according to an analysis from the House Appropriations Committee.

This year’s reforms replace last year’s $100 million payment to reimburse school districts for the cost of tuition paid to cyber charter schools.

Cyber charter schools will also be required to create policies that monitor whether students are present during synchronous parts of instruction. To be marked present, students “must be visible to the teacher on camera,” the budget bill states. For asynchronous instruction, when teachers are not live on camera, cyber charters will be required to monitor how students are progressing on certain “benchmarks” and report that information to the state.

In addition, cyber charters will have to create wellness check policies to “ensure the well-being” of enrolled students. These changes come after the death of a student enrolled in a cyber charter following her alleged torture and starvation by her guardians.

The budget legislation also prohibits students who are habitually truant from transferring during the school year to a cyber charter school, unless a judge determines that the transfer is in the child’s best interest.

Cyber charter operators said in a joint statement Wednesday the reforms would amount to a significant budget cut and could force up to seven cyber charter schools to close within two years. And they estimate the budget deal would lead to layoffs of 2,000 cyber charter teachers and staff.

Jon Marsh, CEO of Esperanza Cyber Charter School based in North Philly, said in a Wednesday statement that the budget represented “an attack on some of the most chronically disenfranchised and disadvantaged students in our Commonwealth.”

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

Philadelphia school closure plan delayed, won’t be announced in November, district says

2025-11-04T21:07:12+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district will not announce its recommendations this month for which schools will close, pushing back a long-awaited deadline, the district said Tuesday.

Instead, the district will launch a survey to get further community feedback about its facilities planning process and shape its recommendations. The district will share results from its survey in December, and “will go through a comprehensive public feedback period before [submitting] final recommendations to the Board of Education” according to a statement from district spokesperson Monique Braxton.

District officials have said the final facilities plan will include a list of schools to close, as well as ones to modernize, repurpose, and colocate.

Superintendent Tony Watlington has said repeatedly in recent months that the district’s goal for that plan is to increase access to high-quality academic and extracurricular programming across the city.

To accomplish that, he and other school leaders have also said they aim to “rightsize” the district by addressing underenrollment in some schools and overcrowding in others. It is unclear when school closures would begin, but officials have said the process will likely play out over a number of years.

The looming school closures have drawn scrutiny and concern from Philadelphia families, educators, and education advocates. Many have called for more details about which schools could be slated for closure, as well as more information about how the district is weighing different factors in its decision-making process.

The district has missed other deadlines it set for itself throughout the process that will lead to school closures. School leaders initially said they would share data about school facilities in April, but did not publicize a data repository until September.

When the district finally released that data, including scores for schools on their building condition and utilization, officials said the ratings themselves did not dictate whether individual schools would close.

At a protest last month organized by Stand Up For Philly Schools, community members, educators, and city leaders urged the district not to close schools.

“When schools close, communities pay the price,” said Councilmember Kendra Brooks. “The communities who paid a price are communities like mine, Black and brown communities that have already suffered decades of disinvestment.”

Melanie Silva, a parent of a student at Rhawnhurst Elementary, said at the rally that the district has lost the trust of families as it misses its own deadlines and fails to share information that people are desperate to see.

“After months of delays and missing data, it’s clear why so many families don’t trust this process,” Silva said.

What makes a Philadelphia student want to become a teacher?

2025-10-30T22:14:01+00:00

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Why does Philadelphia have a teacher shortage? Monika Shealey hears one answer a lot.

People often tell Shealey, the dean of the College of Education and Human Development at Temple University, that young Philadelphians — particularly young Black and brown people — simply don’t want to become educators.

But on Thursday, Shealey told more than 200 Philadelphia high schoolers visiting Temple’s campus to learn about teaching careers that she believes otherwise.

“You are throwing that narrative out the window,” Shealey said at the Youth in Education Summit. “Let that be the story of the day.”

As Philadelphia struggles to retain and recruit teachers, education groups and leaders are doubling down on initiatives to inspire Philly teens to embark on careers in education.

In recent years, the district has begun the school year with hundreds of vacancies, and the number of graduates from teacher training programs in the state has plummeted.

There’s a particular shortage of Black male educators, who make up less than 10% of district teachers.

“The idea is that we want to increase the number of students and programs in what we call the ‘early pipeline’ space,” said Scott Gaiber, deputy chief of talent initiatives at Elevate 215, a local education advocacy group that helped organize the Thursday event.

The organization is part of a coalition of groups across the city to try to improve teacher recruitment. That coalition, the Philadelphia Citywide Talent Coalition, championed the district’s first career and technical education program for K-12 teaching, which launched in 2023. Since then, the coalition has also supported other initiatives at Philadelphia schools meant to increase students’ interest in teaching, like Thursday’s conference.

The students at the event are involved in different teacher training programs. Students from nine high schools participated, joining workshops on issues like how to apply for college teaching programs and what it’s like to be a Black or brown educator.

To Gaiber, the challenge is clear: even when young people say they’re interested in becoming teachers, several obstacles can derail them from ultimately becoming certified. For one thing, schooling is expensive. And getting a certification often requires overcoming bureaucratic hurdles.

The hope, he said, is that extra programming and “creating a supportive ecosystem” can lower those barriers and ultimately lead to a better-trained and more representative teacher workforce, even if the results won’t be evident for years.

For Elizabeth Melendez, a junior at Esperanza Academy Charter School who attended the event and helped lead a workshop for her peers, working with kids helped her confirm her interest in teaching.

Every week, she helps out with a class of first graders through an internship program at Esperanza.

“I know what I want to do now,” said Melendez. She said she plans to study child psychology and become a school psychologist.

Students learn about teaching through hands-on opportunities

Parkway West High School Principal William Brown said he knows many students are skeptical of becoming educators. Maybe they’ve heard that they could make more money doing something else, or they’re not sure if it interests them.

But he said he’s seen through the school’s early childhood career and technical education program that students often develop an interest in education once they’re exposed to it.

“It’s so important that the students get that hands-on experience,” said Brown.

Last school year, Brown worked with Philadelphia Academies Inc. to launch a program at his school meant to increase the number of Black and Brown male educators.

Students in the program first learn about the history of education in the U.S. and pedagogical best practices. Then they become student-teachers in the middle school that shares the building with Parkway West, earning a stipend for their work.

He said he believes the program has made a difference for his students. “A lot of our boys, especially, are taking their futures more seriously,” said Brown.

Amyha Watson, 16, left, and Meli Jimenes-Jaques, 17, said learning about teaching jobs made them more interested in careers in education.

Thursday’s Temple event wasn’t a magic wand. By the end of the morning, some students in the halls said they still didn’t feel convinced that working in education was for them.

But others said the sessions had a real effect on how they pictured their future.

Meli Jimenes-Jaques, 17, said that as a senior at Olney High School, she knew she would soon have to decide what she would do after she graduated. She was interested in working with kids but she didn’t know if she should look into teaching or something else. But after hearing more about the career path of a teacher, she said she felt excited about applying for education programs.

“Before I wasn’t as sure,” said Jimenes-Jaques. “But after seeing all these people and hearing all their voices and their thoughts as well, it really just, like, cemented the fact this is really what I want to do.”

This Philly educator helps students map the land, water, and sociopolitical systems

2025-10-16T20:16:40+00:00

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High school educator Anna Herman is a self-described “food person.” But her interests and expertise extend well beyond the plate.

As an urban agriculture, food, and natural resources teacher at The U School in North Philadelphia, Herman asks her students to research soil health and study the connection between the land, water, and the sociopolitical systems that contribute to their lives and diets.

“It’s about understanding the cycles of nature. It’s about understanding how to have access to more fresh, healthy food,” Herman said. “We’re trying to give kids exposure to things and then tangible career pathways within those things, so that there’s a sustainability throughline within that work.”

This year, Herman was selected to create a new curriculum unit through Yale University’s National Initiative program, which pairs public school educators with Yale faculty to “strengthen teachers’ content knowledge,” according to the program description.

Herman’s unit is called “Mapping the Future.” It combines analog and digital resources — think clay and paper as well as drones and Geographic Information Systems software — to map everything from Philadelphia’s topography to the indigenous histories of the Lenape people as they navigated displacement and environmental changes.

Herman wants her students to “excavate stories” about our land and geography and understand “the connections between how food grows, how energy is used in the food system, and how food companies use cognitive science to sell you ultra high processed foods” among other issues.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

Before this, I ran an out-of-school time urban agriculture entrepreneurship program at Awbury Arboretum called Teen Leadership Corps. I was doing that, and I was an urban garden educator at Penn State Extension. I ran the Master Gardener program for six years. And before that, I was in the industry. I was a food business consultant and entrepreneur. I was a chef, and a caterer, and I worked in restaurants.

I didn’t go to graduate school, I saved up a chunk of money and I traveled. What I learned when I traveled is that every culture that has great cuisine, it’s really about the connection between the crops that are grown, or the cheese that they make, the wine — whatever it is, it’s very much place-based. So I became interested in gardening from that. I was always a food person. I became a garden person and a garden educator because I wanted good ingredients.

I didn’t quite understand those connections initially, that good cooking comes from good ingredients, good ingredients comes from good farms. Good farms come from good soil. Good soil comes from taking care of the cycles [of nature] so I became an environmentalist, sort of through the back door of food. And then I really became an environmental educator probably when I had kids.

This is my capstone career. I came to teaching in my late 50s with a lot of experience in food, agriculture, and natural resources and so this program was a natural thing for me.

What does your work look like in a classroom setting?

We do a boatload of food growing indoors and out. We do some food processing, we do a lot of field trips and work with partners. Our major focus is green career exploration. So it’s thinking about whatever interest you have, there is some way of thinking about that in a more sustainable way. If you’re interested in construction, it’s understanding the material supply chain in the construction field. It’s understanding energy. We do a lot of trips, we have a lot of really fantastic partners who take kids out in the field.

In our classroom, we’re telling sustainability stories around Philadelphia, place-based stories using tools from National Geographic’s 2892 Miles To Go education program, like these powerful GIS tools that [students] could use to do place-based storytelling projects. … We had all these resources. We had all these workshops. It was a really fantastic experience.

I realized one of the things that was missing for me and for [students] was a deeper understanding of how to use how to use maps, how maps can be part of the storytelling, but also how they can help you understand the environment, how they can help you understand history, how they can help you tell stories, and how they can help you learn content.

And how does that tie into your ‘Mapping the Future’ unit?

This mapping unit very much starts with what this geographic area was like before humans. It imagines ecological time. And then it goes into what it looked like when the Lenni Lenape were here. And you can see the neighborhoods, you can see Wingohocking [Creek]. You can see Manayunk, which meant ‘the place where we drink,’ and this is the place where we got clams, and all these names that kids will recognize. And then we use 3D printing to make the shape of Philadelphia.

I have a lot of hands-on opportunities to learn the shape and the geography and the geology of Philly, and then how it specifically relates to watershed issues, environmental issues, where were factories located in the ’50s that now are creating lead issues in the soil? Where’s the water flowing from here to there?

One of our partners brought in a map, literally the size of our gym, that the kids could walk around on and look at the river. They could walk from Schuylkill County down to Philadelphia. And then in Philadelphia to see where the water actually flows.

Anna Herman's students at The U School participate in a map activity.

Students don’t quite understand that we drink the river. If we throw our trash in the street, it ends up in the drinking water, and we have to pay to clean it up. And so we’re trying to make all these very tangible connections in a place-based way.

We’re trying to combine data collection, data visualization, with how you communicate about issues, and how you advocate for things.

How do challenges going on in Philly communities impact your lesson planning?

Every year I poll students and have a process for excavating what things matter to them. It’s almost always gun violence, the opioid crisis, and trash. Those are the three things that they notice that they really want to change.

Our first unit of the year is very much about viewing the city through the lens of those issues. It turns out there’s a lot of really interesting research about how greening and cleaning impacts gun violence and various public health measures.

They find that out for themselves, and then they are very excited to actually [act on it] they’re like, ‘oh miss, we should go out and clean the yard, because people have been throwing stuff around.’ I’m like, ‘that’s a great idea. There’s 12 brooms and four pairs of gloves over there. Go ahead.’ The idea is for them to come up with these solutions.

I have a huge back burner of ideas and projects that we could work on and whatever things kids in this particular cohort are interested in we pull up for the front burner.

What’s something you’ve read that’s made you a better educator?

“The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “Braiding Sweetgrass” were two books that really were influential in terms of reminding myself how connected everything is and how important it all is.

I am a big reader, and I think that speculative fiction, sort of imagining the future and imagining this place in the future—you can’t push towards change without having an idea of what the future is going to be like. I do a lot with the “Parable of the Sower” and “Parable of the Talents” [by Octavia E. Butler].

Ezra Klein’s new book called “Abundance” is also pretty special. Just in terms of the political realities.

In a couple of my units I do flash fiction and ask students to just quick-write: What do you imagine it would be like if we don’t make changes? And if we do make changes? Imagine from the perspective of a kid waking up in North Philly looking out the window, what do they see? What do they smell?

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

Preliminary data shows Philadelphia students have higher math scores, better attendance

2025-10-09T22:50:12+00:00

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Philadelphia students’ math scores have improved over the past three years and student attendance is on the rise, according to preliminary student performance data for last school year shared at a school board meeting Thursday.

Still, the district remains far from hitting the goals set by the Board of Education, which state that more than half of all students in grades 3-8 should achieve proficient math and English language arts, or ELA, scores by 2030.

In math, 25% of students in grades 3-8 scored proficient or advanced on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, known as the PSSA, marking a nearly 9 percentage point increase from three years ago.

The scores show a rebound from the pandemic and reflect the district’s new curriculum, Superintendent Tony Watlington told the board.

“When you hear people say the district is not getting better, we encourage all of us to fact-check folks on the record, because they are,” Watlington said.

But the preliminary scores also show areas of struggle for the district’s nearly 120,000 students.

Over the last three years, grade 3-8 English language arts scores have fallen slightly, with around one-third of students scoring proficient or advanced. In high school, students’ scores on the state Keystone literature exam also fell over the last two years.

The scores indicate the district is still recovering from pandemic learning loss and a subsequent dip in student achievement. Third grade reading scores remain below where they were a decade ago.

At the meeting Thursday, board member Crystal Cubbage pointed out that the district’s test score goals are “ambitious.” Watlington said he plans to keep the targets the same “because we’re doing better in some areas than others” and will review them annually.

Last year, the board voted to adjust the goals and extend the district’s deadline to reach them to 2030. They were originally set in December 2020 before the COVID pandemic and were crafted to be reached by 2026.

District officials say new curriculum, support will improve achievement

The new data comes in the wake of the district’s $100 million curriculum overhaul. Last year was the district’s second year using a new math curriculum and first year with a new English language arts curriculum; this year, it’s rolling out a new science curriculum as well.

Jermaine Dawson, the district’s deputy superintendent of academic services, said the results show where the district needs to provide students and teachers with more support with the new curriculums. The low English language arts scores, in particular, show that students are starting behind from where they should be, he said.

“In ELA we are not happy with those results,” Dawson said. “What this curriculum has exposed for us is that many of these students did not have the foundational skills.”

Dawson said the district has provided further support and training to teachers on implementing curriculum, including professional curriculum learning days that teachers could receive a stipend to attend.

Last year, the district also provided “high-impact” tutoring to around 500 students in English language arts and math. It plans to expand the program to 20 schools this year to serve more than 600 students.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education is expected to release the final results of the 2024-25 school year PSSA and Keystone assessments in November.

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.

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.

This Philly school turned a dusty storage room into a new library

2025-10-02T17:36:51+00:00

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Bahir Hayes, principal of William C. Bryant School, says he learned to love reading in the fifth grade.

That year, he remembers being fixated on a school library book about Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson that he wanted more than anything in the world. His mom preferred that he read Harry Potter instead, and he obliged.

“I was so mad, but it was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me, because that’s where I found my love of reading,” Hayes said.

The effect was immediate. Hayes said that year was a “turning point” in his education. He started spending more time in the school library and saw his reading scores start to soar. He was accepted into a prestigious high school in the city, attended Bloomsburg University, and eventually became principal at Bryant.

From day one as a school leader, Hayes said he’s been focused on one goal: Opening a library so his students could fall in love with books the way he did.

On Wednesday, Hayes finally cut the ribbon on that achievement.

“This was a big dream of mine,” Hayes said. “Opportunities like this can change a child’s complete experience, and actually can change their life. I’m living proof of that.”

Few schools in Philadelphia have libraries within their buildings and only one — Masterman, the city’s most coveted high school — has a full-time librarian on staff. Getting Bryant’s library set up required nearly a year of work with help from several outside partners, including the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children (known as WePAC), Teach for America, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Libraries.

Over the past 10 months, community partners cataloged 5,000 books and cleaned up the dusty top floor of the school that had been mostly used for storage. The new library space has a colorful area rug for group reading, tables for studying, and the sun streams in from the multiple skylights in the ceiling.

What was once a dusty storage room has been transformed into a new library.

Staffing the library will also be a team effort. The school is looking for parent and community volunteers to sign up for library shifts with the goal of increasing parent engagement with the school. Students on Wednesday each received a blue drawstring bag full of books to start their own libraries at home.

Jennifer Leith, executive director of WePAC, said Bryant students have made strong progress in boosting their reading scores over the past few years. She said having a school library will help improve kids’ reading comprehension further.

According to district data, the percentage of Bryant students who scored proficient or advanced on the state PSSA English Language Arts exam increased from 14% in 2021-22 to 24% in 2023-24, the most recent year data was available.

Beyond the benefits of reading books, Leith said the act of selecting what to read helps students learn about themselves, their interests, and the worlds around them and within their imagination.

“Choosing a book can be the one choice students get to make in their school day that’s their own,” Leith said. “It gives them agency.”

Or in Hayes’ case, the book that doesn’t get chosen can be the one to inspire a lifelong love of reading.

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

Philly schools will borrow up to $1.5 billion to pay for a new teacher contract and other costs

2025-09-11T22:20:01+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education approved the new teachers’ union contract on Thursday. But with the state budget still not finalized, members also voted to authorize borrowing to pay for it and other costs.

The new three-year contract includes annual 3% raises over three years and a one-time $1,400 bonus for all Philadelphia Federation of Teachers members. It also provides teachers with paid parental leave for the first time in district history, according to union officials, as well as an end to the controversial sick leave policy known as 3-5-7-9.

Board members voted unanimously to approve the contract. But they also warned the state budget impasse will cost Philadelphia students resources and opportunities.

“It’s a disgrace,” board member Joyce Wilkerson said of the budget standstill. “We need the funding, we need it now, we shouldn’t need to borrow.”

Board Member Whitney Jones said because of the stalemate “and the uncertainty it creates the district is being forced to borrow” more than three times what the board was expecting to borrow. The associated interest payments could soar to $30 million, board members said.

Accordingly, board members also voted 8-0 with one abstention on Thursday to approve the issuance and sale of notes totaling up to $1.55 billion. This money would be short-term borrowing and would need to be borrowed and repaid within the same fiscal year.

“The budget delays are costing our schools money that we do not have and it’s further limiting what we can provide to students,” Jones said.

The contract negotiated between the PFT and the district assumes an increase in school funding proposed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro back in February. More than two months after the state deadline for lawmakers to pass a budget, they remain deadlocked. More than $1 billion in payments for K-12 schools across the state have already been delayed, according to the state department of education.

Philly schools are still awaiting $374 million according to the district’s Chief Financial Officer Michael Herbstman.

Without annual funding increases from the state, the district will likely need to borrow to be able to pay for the contract across all three years, in addition to its other financial obligations like payments to charter schools. The district is already staring down a growing budget deficit.

Herbstman told board members 53% of the district’s budget comes from state funding, and therefore “it’s not sustainable long term to continue to operate as normal without them.” The Philly school district is almost entirely reliant on state, city, and federal funding, as it is the only district in the state that can’t raise its own revenue.

Board Member Wanda Novales said “every week of the delay puts more pressure on our budget, and every dollar spent on interest is a dollar not spent on our kids.”

The $30 million that would go to paying interest on that borrowing would be equivalent to a little over 200 teacher salaries, Herbstman said.

Pennsylvania and Michigan are the only states that haven’t passed a budget this year. And school funding is a major area of disagreement in both states.

In Pennsylvania, where budget negotiations largely take place behind closed doors, Republican legislative leaders have proposed holding public education spending flat while floating increases in state dollars for private school vouchers and tax-credit scholarships. Democrats have rejected those ideas and education advocates have argued such proposals fly in the face of a court ruling that deemed Pennsylvania’s prior school funding system unconstitutional.

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

Philadelphia says SEPTA will restore some transit service for students

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The restored services are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philly is expanding one of its most effective dropout prevention strategies

2025-08-27T14:20:02+00:00

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A Philadelphia program focused on addressing the city’s student dropout crisis is expanding into four new district schools this year.

Philadelphia Academies Inc. — a longtime partner in dropout prevention efforts in the School District of Philadelphia — announced this month it is bringing its 9th Grade Success Network to Building 21, Franklin Learning Center, Philadelphia Military Academy, and Hill-Freedman World Academy for the 2025-26 school year.

The program focuses on schools that serve students from traditionally marginalized groups, particularly Black students, who have faced systemic challenges to persisting in their education, leading to higher dropout rates, research has shown.

School leaders and educators in the program get specialized professional training in adolescent development, relationship building, and intervention techniques. Ninth grade assistant principals also get regular coaching and assistance analyzing student data to ensure those most at risk of dropping out get the attention and support they need.

LaTrina Stewart, ninth grade assistant principal at Franklin Learning Center, will be participating for the first time this school year. She said she’s hoping her students feel “ultra supported” this year.

“I don’t want to have to dig a child out of a hole and I don’t want children to have to dig themselves out of a hole,” she said. “That safety net to catch them before they even get in the hole — that’s what the ninth grade academy provides for us.”

With this expansion, the 9th Grade Success Network will operate in 28 district schools, with a goal to reach 32 schools by next year, said Christopher Goins, the president and CEO of Philadelphia Academies Inc., or PAI. This is the first year the program will work in selective admissions schools like Franklin Learning Center and Hill-Freedman. The program is funded through 2027 with $2.6 million from the School District of Philadelphia and $8 million from the Neubauer Family Foundation.

Nadia Schafer, director of the 9th Grade Success Network at PAI, told Chalkbeat the program is expanding because it’s working.

The program served more than 4,500 students in the 2024-25 school year, according to Philadelphia Academies data. A ninth grade student is considered “on-track” to graduation by the district and PAI if they earn at least one credit in each of the core subjects English, math, science, and social studies, plus one additional credit in a subject of their choosing. Students who earn all As and Bs in their four core classes plus at least one additional class are considered “firmly on-track,” Schafer said.

For the students the program served last year, Latino boys and Black boys improved their “on-track” rates by 5 percentage points and 4.4 percentage points, respectively.

Thomas Murtaugh, ninth and 12th grade principal at the School of the Future, said his student on-track data “drastically improved” since being part of the program. The share of students on-track to graduation went up 27% in the second year of the program and has remained consistently high, he said.

District officials noticed too, Schafer said. In fact, district data shows the “on-track” strategy contributed to a 10.2 percentage point increase in the four-year graduation rate over the last seven years. Superintendent Tony Watlington has also reported the district’s dropout rate was down by more than a thousand students last school year, due in part, to the on-track program.

There’s evidence this approach is working in other large urban school districts. Philly’s strategy was built off of a blueprint initiated in Chicago, which has also reported all-time high graduation rates.

Ebony Hollingsworth-Lowery, ninth grade assistant principal at William Sayre High School is about to start her fourth year with the program, and she said it’s been a “roadmap for success.”

As a former athlete, Hollingsworth-Lowery said the leadership coaching and regular check-ins work for her because they form a kind of “playbook” to help keep her and her ninth grade team of counselors, community advocates, educators, school staff, and administrators all focused on the same goals.

“It forces you to really look at your students, your teachers, and what systems are in place to be able to be successful,” she said. The program instills a way to “know your students, know who they are, but also, most importantly, know their needs, because if we can’t meet their needs, they’re going to retract from school.”

But not every high school is equipped to take on the program, according to Schafer, and there’s a competitive application process for schools to be selected. Schools with lower graduation rates and lower on-track rates are given priority because “we think it’s important to spend our resources where they’re going to make the most difference,” Schafer said.

Schools must also have a ninth grade administrator and a ninth grade core team of educators dedicated to teaching solely ninth grade, “not someone who is teaching English 1, 2, 3, and 4,” Schafer said.

With the ongoing teacher shortage and funding constraints in the city, those requirements can be a challenge for schools. That’s why PAI opened applications to criteria-based schools for the first time.

“It’s tough when maybe it’s not quite time” for some of those neighborhood schools to join the program, Schafer said, but she said they are working with the district to get other neighborhood schools “ready to be able to take on this work in a future year.”

For Stewart, the resources that the success network provides, “should be a part of what high schools get without it being left up to what principals have in their budget,” she said.

But this year at least, she’s hopeful.

“We need this,” Stewart said.

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

On Philly’s first day of school, students and educators feel the strain of SEPTA cuts

2025-08-25T18:06:33+00:00

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Philadelphia high school seniors Aster Chau and Joey Zhou stuck to a routine for the last year to make their more than an hour-long commute to school on SEPTA more bearable.

Each morning, they would find each other on board the train that goes from near their homes far northeast from the city center to Academy at Palumbo nearly 17 miles away in South Philly. “That’s how our friendship bloomed and blossomed,” Chau said.

But in the early morning hours of the first day of school this year, they each braced for a commute that had, overnight, gotten trickier. Their train was about to come less frequently. Their bus would be overcrowded. And the whole commute was about to be less reliable.

“If you’re going to be late, you’re like two hours late, and then there’s just nothing you can do about it,” Zhou said Monday.

Aster Chau walks through a regional rail train on the first day of school in Philadelphia. It usually takes her a little more than an hour to get to school.

This year’s first day of school for Chau, Zhou, and Philadelphia’s nearly 118,000 district students came one day after the region’s public transit system began implementing 20% service cuts due to a funding crisis that state lawmakers have not addressed.

Transit officials have said for weeks that they expected the cuts to leave students and educators who rely on SEPTA with longer and more crowded commutes.

But the school district has not stepped in with an alternative or a plan. Though the district provides bus transportation to elementary school students and students with disabilities, most middle and high school students are expected to take SEPTA if they need to commute to school.

By the end of the school day Monday, Superintendent Tony Watlington said he had already heard from at least one principal that attendance was lower than expected on the first day of school.

At a school board meeting last week, Watlington told parents and students to “Google SEPTA cuts” to find information about routes and to call their principal with any concerns. He also recommended parents apply for the district’s program that could reimburse them for driving eligible children to and from school, although that is mostly reserved for elementary school students.

Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill later sent a message to parents saying that the district understands that the service cuts could present a hardship to staff and families.

“Thousands of students and hundreds of employees ride SEPTA to school and work every day,” Hill said. “As a District, we are hoping that SEPTA receives adequate funding to restore full service.”

A student stands on the platform of the Philmont rail station on the first day of school. Thousands of Philadelphia students rely on SEPTA to get to school.

But for Philly students and educators, that hope provides little relief. Chau and Zhou said along with college applications and getting through AP classes, they’re preparing to shoulder more transit stress this year too.

“It’s just very frustrating at times,” said Chau. “There’s already a lot going on in our lives, and to have to worry about getting to school on top of that is, like, pushing it.”

Families fear transit cuts will make students late

Chalkbeat asked students and educators across the city about how the SEPTA cuts were affecting them, and heard from dozens of students and parents who shared concerns about missing class, losing extracurricular opportunities, and disincentivizing kids from going to school in the first place.

“I’m honestly worried about how I’m going to be able to get to school,” said Nevaeh Martin, 17, a senior at Central High School.

Usually, Martin’s commute from North Philadelphia takes around 45 minutes — as long as the 54 bus that comes near her house arrives on time. But even before the cuts, the bus was unpredictable. Sometimes, she would have to walk for 30 minutes to get to the train station.

Now, like most bus routes in the city, the 54’s service has been reduced by 20%. Martin said that makes her worried that the 6:50 a.m. bus she usually catches might not show up at all.

“If that bus doesn’t come, or a bus earlier doesn’t come, then basically I’ll be late to school,” she said.

Aster Chau and Joey Zhou walk past a school bus during their commute.

Northeast Philadelphia, where there is limited public transportation to begin with, has been hit hardest by the transit cuts. Many students in those neighborhoods who take SEPTA to school will have to walk further, wait longer, or find an alternative way to get to school.

Ella Nguyen, 17, who attends Northeast High School, said she usually takes the bus that goes near her house to school. But now, she’s working on getting her driver’s license so she can borrow one of her family member’s cars to get to school.

“I really didn’t want to drive, because I didn’t see a purpose to it since I relied on SEPTA,” Nguyen said. “But now it’s like, I really hate taking crowded buses. I’m like, wow, I should really learn how to drive for this.”

Still, for many students, there’s no alternative available.

Standing on the platform at Philmont regional rail stop on Monday morning, Chau waved hello to other students readying for their commute to the first day of school. Though many, including Chau, get a ride to the station, they must make their own way into the city for school.

Philadelphia high school senior Aster Chau relies on SEPTA to get to school each day. She says she worries delays will make her late this year.

When the train pulled into the station just before 7 a.m., it was already packed with commuters. Students found empty seats in the quiet car, where their chatter was quickly shushed by adults riding the train to work.

Zhou got on at the next stop and slid in next to Chau. They whispered and used their phones for the rest of the 30-minute ride to the Jefferson train station. There, they tried to catch the 45 bus, but it pulled away right as they got out onto the street. That meant they had to walk the final mile to school.

“We dread it,” said Zhou, adding that she got dinged for being late countless times last year because the bus would pass them.

But Chau said she doesn’t mind the walk, especially compared with trying to squeeze onto a crowded bus. And this way, the teenagers get to hang out a bit longer before the school day begins.

Joey Zhou stops to tie her shoe during her commute to school.

Teachers say the district has not provided guidance

Though the SEPTA cuts have loomed for weeks, several teachers Chalkbeat spoke with said they worried the district had no thorough plan in place to support students and educators navigate transportation delays on the first day of school.

“I received no communication as a teacher from the district about the potential of SEPTA cuts and how that can affect attendance and tardiness,” said Cady Zuvich, a second grade teacher at Ziegler Elementary School.

Zuvich said she worried for students she knew who had graduated and were starting middle school this year, many of whom would have to consistently take SEPTA to school for the first time. Some of those students may expect a bus to show up that was part of the cuts, leaving them waiting and confused, she said.

Zuvich said she had concerns about her own commute too. Like many Philadelphia teachers, she takes SEPTA to get to work. But delays have already made her late in the past. She said the further cuts would likely make those problems even more frequent.

Commuters wait on a platform at Jefferson Station, while a regional rail train runs 39 minutes behind schedule.

Thomas Quinn, who teaches civics at Central High School, said he worries the transit cuts will exacerbate inequities in the city, and make it even more difficult for families who live in underserved neighborhoods to get to school.

He said he plans to use SEPTA’s transit funding crisis as a teaching moment, to explain to students how government action — and inaction — affects their everyday lives.

“It’s something we just need to make sure we’re speaking up about, helping students understand the stakes and how this came to be,” said Quinn. “And then make sure they vote in November.”

Christina Puntel, a Spanish teacher at Walter B. Saul High School, said she wished school officials had been more proactive in providing resources and alternatives to families who rely on SEPTA.

“I think if the district spent a minute listening to parents and children, then we would have at least some tenable way through this,” Puntel said.

As for Chau and Zhou, the students hope their teachers will be understanding this year when SEPTA makes them late. But more than that, they hope the transit system will improve and get the funding it needs to reverse the cuts.

Joey Zhou and Aster Chau walk the final mile to school from the regional rail station in Center City Philadelphia.

Next week, when the full extent of the first round of SEPTA cuts kick in and regional rail schedules change, the only train that will get them to school on time will leave at 6:24 a.m. — half an hour earlier than their already-early morning commute.

“I just feel like SEPTA is so important to everybody in Philly, but especially for students,” said Zhou. “It’s just going to make everything harder.”

This story has been updated with additional information from Superintendent Tony Watlington.

It’s Philadelphia’s first day of school. Here are 3 things we’re watching.

2025-08-25T17:56:25+00:00

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Nearly 118,000 Philadelphia students headed back to classrooms on Monday. Some celebrated birthdays. Others were thankful for the relatively cool weather. And more than a few wished summer could’ve lasted just a bit longer.

With a new tentative teachers union contract agreement under their belts and the threat of a strike all but forgotten, Superintendent Tony Watlington, Mayor Cherelle Parker, Board of Education President Reginald Streater and other elected officials greeted arriving students at Edward Steel Elementary School in Nicetown with cheers and metallic red pompoms.

“This is a school year where we have wind underneath our wings, even though we have a lot of challenges in front of us,” Watlington said Monday.

Indeed, the district is staring down a multi-million dollar budget deficit worsened by a lingering state budget impasse that’s likely to delay crucial payments to Pennsylvania districts. That delay has also caused public transit cuts that are already disrupting students’ rides to and from school. And the district’s ongoing facilities planning process will come to a head this fall when officials are expected to release their plan for school closures and renovations.

Despite the challenges, school leaders opened their doors on Monday with optimistic messages.

Edward Steel Elementary School students are expected to repeat the school motto: "Safety first, respect always, and striving for achievement.”

Steel Elementary Principal Angikindslows Senatus said this year, he’s leaning into his school’s three core principles: “safety first, respect always, and striving for achievement.”

“We want to make sure that regardless of the challenges and the issues that we face, that we make sure that we cross the boundary and meet each other,” Senatus said.

Here are three things we’ll be watching this school year.

Philadelphia school closures are likely

District officials have said the structure of the city’s public school system needs to fundamentally change. That means school closures are likely coming.

As enrollment demographics shift, some schools have become overcrowded, forcing students to learn in hallways and trailers, while other buildings are more than half empty and are costly to maintain. Some schools have temperature-controlled spaces and proper equipment for gym class, career and technical education programs, and prekindergarten. Others have been repeatedly closed for asbestos remediation and inadequate heating and cooling.

As a result, district officials have been drafting a plan to close, repurpose, colocate, and remodel each of its more than 300 buildings. That plan is expected to be presented to the Board of Education in November.

Painful SEPTA cuts could impact student attendance

In the absence of a state budget deal, SEPTA has moved forward with massive cuts, service reductions, and fare increases, including the elimination of some 400-series bus lines, which specifically serve schools at the beginning and end of the school day.

Educators, parents, and advocates told Chalkbeat they’re worried the transit changes will mean students will have a harder time getting to school and participating in internships and extracurricular activities.

The SEPTA cuts are adding “chaos” to the school year, said Sean Vereen, president and CEO of Heights Philadelphia, which connects Black, Latino, and first-generation college students from low-income communities with workforce and college attainment programs.

“There are already too many barriers to young people accessing their opportunities, and this seems to be another place where we’re putting up barriers that we don’t need to,” Vereen said. “Young people require stability and investment, and all these things send the opposite message.”

Watlington has emphasized increasing student attendance rates during his time in office. He said last week that no students will be penalized if they’re late because of transit issues, but it remains to be seen how the cuts will affect district attendance rates.

Teachers welcomed students back to school on Monday with cheers and red pompoms.

School choice programs continue to dominate the conversation

The perennial push for new voucher-like school choice programs and funding are among the issues at the root of Pennsylvania lawmakers’ budget stalemate.

Emboldened by the new national federal tax-credit scholarship program, Pennsylvania Republicans are resurrecting a plan to allow families to use state money to pay some private school tuition and other education costs. While Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro supported a prior voucher proposal, he subsequently backed down and vetoed such a proposal in 2023.

Meanwhile, Democrat legislators have said increasing funding for public school districts is not only their budget priority, but also constitutionally mandated.

At the same time, Philadelphia school officials are trying to balance growing demand for traditional and cyber charter schools with their desire to boost enrollment at neighborhood public schools. The Philadelphia Board of Education voted last May to approve the city’s first new charter school in nearly a decade, but members last week also voted to move forward with the nonrenewal process for two underperforming charters.

While the leaders of one charter school have already said it will close next year, those in charge of another, Memphis Street Academy, have vowed to continue fighting a judge’s closure order.

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

Will SEPTA cuts derail your school commute? Tell us about it.

2025-08-15T15:51:45+00:00

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Thousands of Philadelphia students and educators will experience longer and more crowded commutes on the first day of school as SEPTA, the local transit agency, says it plans to move forward with cutting service by 20%.

Those cuts include the cancellation of several bus lines in the transit authority’s 400-series, which specifically serves schools at the beginning and end of the school day. Many students who rely on standard buses or subway lines will also need to walk farther or wait longer for transit, according to SEPTA officials.

The transit authority had been banking on more funding from the state to forestall the service cuts. But with legislators weeks late on a budget, transit officials have said that cuts are unavoidable and will begin on Aug. 24, the day before school starts.

District officials have said they are monitoring SEPTA’s budget, but have not announced any additional transit options for students who take public transit to school.

The district provides yellow school bus transportation for elementary school students and some students with disabilities. But it expects most middle and high school students who live at least 1.5 miles from their schools to take SEPTA. The district provides free fare cards to eligible students.

Chalkbeat has spoken to some educators and students who say they’re worried about how the cuts could make getting to school on time much more challenging, especially for families travelling a long distance or for students who drop off their siblings before class.

We want to understand how these cuts will affect students and educators across the city. Let us know how your commute is changing, and anything you’re worried about when it comes to getting to school on time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where to find free school supplies in Philly

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

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

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

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

Friday, Aug. 8

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

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

Saturday, Aug. 9

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

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

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

Wednesday, Aug. 13

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

Thursday, Aug. 14

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

Sunday, Aug. 17

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

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

Thursday, Aug. 21

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

Saturday, Aug. 23

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

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

Sunday Aug. 24

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

Saturday, Sept. 6

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

Ongoing

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

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

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

Philadelphia teachers union prepares for strike as contract negotiations continue

2025-07-31T17:17:37+00:00

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Philadelphia teachers union leaders are preparing members for a strike as contract negotiations with the school district continue in the lead-up to the first day of school.

Negotiations are “moving more slowly than I would like,” Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, told Chalkbeat this week. But he said despite the union and district making “some progress” toward an agreement, they have not reconciled some of the most pressing issues. Among them: salary increases for teachers and school staff, reforming the district’s controversial sick leave policy that union members say penalizes teachers for using sick days, and adding 12 weeks of paid parental leave. Union members currently get no paid parental leave.

Christina Clark, a district spokesperson, said in an email Thursday that she would not comment on the details of the negotiation process but that district officials “look forward to working with the PFT on a proposal that honors the hard work of our staff each day.”

Philly school officials have said the district is staring down a growing annual budget deficit, and it remains the only school district in the state that can’t raise its own tax revenue.

Steinberg said he still thinks there’s room for compromise. The district’s “initial set of proposals weren’t as irksome as they usually are,” he said but declined to give more details. “There were some [proposals] that we don’t think we can agree to, but nothing that set a bad tone, as it has in the past.”

A majority of the union’s 14,000 members voted to authorize a strike in June. A work stoppage could disrupt the first weeks and months of school. The first day of school for students is on August 25 and teachers are scheduled to head back to classrooms on August 18.

Though Steinberg said “we’re not ready to walk out tomorrow,” if negotiations stall in the next few weeks, “we could hit the bricks the next day,” he warned. The union’s contract expires on Aug. 31.

Steinberg declined to comment on how likely a teacher strike would be for the start of the school year, but he did say the union has begun reaching out to members who struck with the PFT during its 1981 and 2000 walkouts to give the newer members a “feel for what it was like and what to expect.”

As the summer stretches on, Philadelphia is inching closer to what could be a calamitous start to the school year. In addition to the threat of a teacher strike, the city’s public transit system is preparing to cut SEPTA bus and rail lines that serve more than 50,000 students and extreme heat conditions could likely result in school closures during the first week back.

What’s more, a state budget impasse has officials warning of delayed payments to prekindergarten programs and school districts posing additional complications for Philly schools’ budget. And ongoing uncertainty from the Trump administration has school leaders wary about relying on federal funds.

Labor leaders, including Steinberg, held a press conference Thursday urging Republicans who control the state Senate to send a budget bill to Gov. Josh Shapiro promptly.

Autumn Fingerhood, a district parent and stadium worker with the Unite Here Local 274 labor union, said her daughter relies on SEPTA to get to school, and she’s concerned service cuts could make their morning commute a challenge.

“They need to pass this budget,” she said. “My children need to be taken care of.”

Union contact negotiations throughout the city have also taken on a new tenor following the eight-day sanitation worker strike this month. That strike resulted in a contract agreement that fell short of what the union wanted but shored up the public’s general support for labor, Steinberg said.

“The school district likes to claim that they are the fastest growing large urban school district in the country,” Steinberg said. “A strike will derail that and really eliminate any progress that they have made.”

And as for Mayor Cherelle Parker’s promised teacher salary increases in 2030, “I’ll be long gone by then,” Steinberg said. “My members need money now.”

This story has been updated to include comment from a spokesperson for the School District of Philadelphia.

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

Latino families say they feel left out of Philadelphia school district

2025-07-28T18:34:53+00:00

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Does the Philadelphia school district fail to communicate effectively and frequently enough with its Latino families for their children to do as well as they should?

For Zulma Guzmán, the clear answer is yes.

Guzmán, an immigrant mother of four from El Salvador, has witnessed firsthand the challenges of obtaining information and sees how difficult it can be to access translation services. She has spent years helping Latino parents navigate the school system through her work as a community activist and member of VozColectiva, a community newsroom serving the city’s Latino population.

Zulma Guzmán, an activist and member of VozColectiva, a community newsroom for the Latino community in Philadelphia.

During this time, she said parents have frequently told her that they often miss important information about their children’s school due to language barriers and a lack of resources available in Spanish. Guzmán said Latino parents often tell her the district’s translation services and its work to help English language learners, among other programs, are not enough to meet their needs.

“We need more support, and [schools] always apologize for not having translation services,” she said. “I just don’t understand.”

Questions about how well district schools are connected to and serving these families have become more urgent in recent years. The number of Latino students has increased by 51% since 2018, and they now make up nearly a quarter of the district’s students. Many of the district’s new students are English learners who speak Spanish or Portuguese at home. At the same time, Latino students’ post-pandemic attendance rates lag behind the rates of their white and Asian peers, their state test scores rank at or near the bottom, and they are less likely to attend the city’s most selective schools, the local advocacy group Children First recently reported.

In recent months, Latino parents discussed the challenges they face with the district at a series of roundtables led by 2PuntosPlatform, a local media outlet. They reported feeling left out of services provided by the district and at times fearful of asking for help from their schools, especially given the Trump administration’s policies.

2PuntosPlatform convened the roundtables to hear about Latino parents’ experiences with the school system in a safe setting. Seven to eight people participated in each roundtable; they were not affiliated with 2PuntosPlatform, and Guzmán helped guide one of the discussions.

2PuntosPlatform will report its findings to the school district when all of the roundtables are concluded.

Parents at the roundtables said they missed information about the availability of the school nurse, classes being canceled, and changes in the school bus schedule because they couldn’t communicate effectively with school administrators and teachers. Schools nationwide are grappling with similar challenges as their newcomer and migrant student populations have grown.

District officials say they stand behind its services to Latino families.

Christina Clark, a district spokesperson, said in an email that the district’s Office of Family and Community Engagement is not aware of any issues with families getting translation services, including via Let’s Talk, the district’s platform to help parents and guardians access resources. But she noted the district is working to find new methods to serve this growing demographic.

“We are always reviewing our practices and access to our website to ensure Language Access Services are easier to find and access, and that our district website is user, family, and community-friendly,” Clark wrote.

However, parents at one of 2PuntosPlatform’s roundtables said that it wasn’t as easy to access resources to help them when they face issues, and that sometimes they don’t even know those mechanisms are available.

“Some of the things or resources we have [like translators] aren’t accessible. Information that is accessible to others is not accessible to us,” said Heidy, a district parent, at a 2PuntosPlatform roundtable. “And then this makes us think that we don’t have rights because we don’t know English.” (Chalkbeat is using only first names for Heidy and other parents because of heightened political scrutiny of Spanish-speaking immigrant communities.)

Latino parents share struggles with school system

In the roundtable discussions, mothers reported that having access to translation services is a game-changer when it comes to communicating with their children’s teachers. They told 2Puntos facilitators that when they are able to use a translator, parent-teacher conferences are very useful.

Michelle, a parent who participated in a roundtable discussion, said she finds that the translation services at her school improve her communication with her daughter’s teacher.

But Yessenia, who has two daughters in district schools, said she struggled to participate in her parent-teacher conferences because there was only one interpreter available for all the parents who don’t speak English.

“You have to go at your designated time and you can’t wait for the liaison to be available, so if you are lucky enough, you will get help. But if not, you still need to get in regardless,” said Yessenia.

The lack of professional translators makes it harder for parents and teachers to communicate effectively about the challenges Hispanic students might be facing in the classroom, she said.

The federal Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 states that public schools must ensure English learner students have access to “appropriate language assistance services” so they can get a proper education.

Yessenia said she had a great experience when her daughters were in a Philadelphia Head Start program for prekindergarten, as it offered help for Hispanic families like hers. However, when they moved to higher grade levels in the K-12 system, her family received less individualized support.

Now her daughters are in first and fourth grade, and Yessenia said she’s run into challenges trying to communicate with their school.

“It’s a lot harder, and you find a lot of barriers because sometimes there’s someone at the school who can help,” but it can at times feel like they “simply don’t want to,” Yessenia said.

Instead of receiving services, several Latino mothers told Chalkbeat that they often feel like Spanish-speaking students and bilingual families are being used by their schools as additional translators to supplement the work the district and schools should be doing.

Clark, the district spokesperson, said there are many services to aid families who don’t speak English through the Office of Multicultural Learners. Students have access to an English as a Second Language program, bilingual classes and English development programs. For students in grades 9-12 who arrived in the U.S. within the past year, there are also newcomer learning academies.

The district has increased the number of Spanish Language Bilingual Counseling Assistants and hired more Spanish Language Access Coordinators to aid families, amid the growing number of Spanish-speaking students enrolled in public schools continues to grow, Clark said.

“We recognize that robust language access initiatives are fundamental to ensuring every student can achieve academic success while honoring their unique cultural heritage,” Clark wrote to Chalkbeat.

But parents also said they perceive differences between services for English learners and those for their peers.

Yessenia’s daughter is currently part of the English as a Second Language program at her school, but Yessenia feels she is missing out on the more rigorous academic instruction happening in the general education classrooms.

Teachers and school administrators often call on her daughter to help other students, translate announcements, and even make calls to other parents who don’t speak English to speak about their children on the teacher’s behalf, she said.

In the roundtable discussions, mothers reported feeling scared to ask for help in the past because they had negative experiences and struggled to communicate effectively with people due to language and cultural barriers. They said it makes them feel limited and often leads to misunderstandings.

“People always say, ‘Learn English, you are in America,” said Alejandro, a roundtable participant.

The parents told 2Puntos facilitators that they feel like they could do more to participate in their children’s education and set a positive example, so their doubts aren’t passed on to their children.

After participating in the roundtables, Emma Restrepo, founder of 2PuntosPlatforms, said she was moved by the parents’ willingness to learn and get involved in their children’s education.

“I encountered a community that is eager for information and determined to build a better future for their children, despite the stress and fear they live with every day,” Restrepo said. “The most common barrier we saw was the fear of speaking openly. It’s not easy to feel safe being direct or critical, especially in a country where, if you’re Latino and brown, just existing can feel risky.”

Here’s the data Philly is using to pick which schools close — and here’s what’s missing

2025-07-24T23:32:20+00:00

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School officials in Philadelphia say closures are coming — and they’ve promised to use data about building needs, enrollment, and neighborhoods to decide which schools shut their doors.

But more than a year into the district’s facilities planning process, details on which schools are desperately in need of repairs and which ones are struggling most with enrollment remain murky.

For months, the district has pushed back a promised release of the information officials have said will inform its recommendations of which schools to close, colocate, modernize, repurpose, or maintain as they are. And the data the district has shared — which officials have only made available via printouts at community engagement sessions — includes serious limitations and inconsistencies, according to principals and educators in attendance.

At community engagement meetings held by the district this month, some educators pointed out that the district’s stated capacity for their schools did not seem accurate, based on their experiences in their buildings. Others noted that the data creates an incomplete picture about the city’s enrollment, as it only captures a moment in time and does not include charter or parochial school enrollment.

Ultimately, some principals worry their schools could be targeted for closure or colocations based on data that does not accurately reflect their schools. And some community members said that failing to holistically review their schools’ strengths and challenges could result in decisions that harm children and neighborhoods.

Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill has been telling community members "nothing is etched in stone" and that their input is still valuable.

Many educators and community members attending meetings also asked for clarification about how the data would be used to determine school recommendations. Despite assigning scores and color codes to different school factors, the district did not explain how these scores and codes could make different outcomes for schools more or less likely.

District officials said there was no formula, but that they would take many factors into account including comments and concerns shared at the meetings.

“Nothing is etched in stone,” Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill told a group of educators and community members at an engagement session at Thomas K. Finletter School. “We are still at a point where your input can make a difference.”

Chalkbeat’s analysis of the district’s data revealed further inconsistencies and gaps. The district provided Chalkbeat with a list of each district school’s capacity based on its current metrics. But the figures provided did not match the numbers shared during the engagement meetings. For example, the Abram S. Jenks School is 87% full according to the spreadsheet given to Chalkbeat. But in the printed handouts from the engagement meetings, the school has the same number of students enrolled but is marked “severely overcrowded” at over 130% full.

The data the district gave to Chalkbeat also did not include information for several schools, including schools that recently returned to district control after being operated by charter organizations.

The capacity figures the district provided to Chalkbeat and the capacity figures shared at the community meetings were “collected at different points in time,” according to Monique Braxton, a district spokesperson. The district did not further explain the discrepancies. And updated capacity data for the schools “will be available when we launch the public website,” Braxton said.

District officials have repeatedly said the data they have shared during engagement meetings is preliminary and will be updated after walkthroughs of each school and a review by principals, some of whom have been away on vacation this summer.

The new data will be released before the facilities plan is made public, several district facilitators at the meetings said.

But time is running out. The district plans to solicit feedback on a draft facilities plan beginning in October, which it will then present to the Board of Education in November.

At a session at Thomas K. Finletter School, several teachers and school leaders affiliated with Feltonville Arts & Sciences expressed concerns about the school capacity numbers the district shared at the meetings.

If the district doesn’t have accurate information on its buildings, the educators said, they have serious reservations about the validity of the process overall.

“Don’t make it neat on paper,” said Malcolm Cooper, a music teacher at Feltonville Arts & Sciences, at the risk of making things “messy in real life.”

District’s scores for schools spur confusion, concern

Throughout July, district officials hosted more than a dozen engagement sessions to explain the facilities planning process, solicit feedback, and share printouts of school data. Chalkbeat attended half of these sessions, speaking with parents, educators, community members, and district officials in attendance.

The data printouts included enrollment and capacity numbers, as well as color-coded designations for each school based on building quality, neighborhood vulnerability, and program alignment.

District officials said that school building scores were based largely on a 2024 building audit.

Program alignment scores reflected whether a school’s space adequately serves its programming needs, like having a gym or space for prekindergarten programs.

Neighborhood vulnerability scores combined two factors. One is the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social vulnerability index data for a school’s neighborhood that considers poverty and housing density. The other is whether a neighborhood has experienced a district school closure in the past.

For example, a school with more students enrolled than its building capacity allows may be marked “red” for overcrowding, but have a program alignment of “good,” and a neighborhood vulnerability score of “moderate risk.”

In the community meetings, district officials have said their decisions will primarily consider the neighborhood vulnerability score, then a school’s capacity, utilization, and building’s structural condition, and then the further “nuance” of a school community, including where students could be moved and what special programs schools offer.

But the officials did not make a direct connection between how schools were ranked on these different factors and how likely it is that the district would decide to close, colocate, or modernize them.

But at every session Chalkbeat attended, at least one person asked for more clarity about how the district arrived at the summary scores for each school and raised concerns about their accuracy.

Luisa Velasquez, co-director of the Friends of Vare-Washington nonprofit that raises money to support the elementary school, said she believed the “moderate risk” vulnerability designation assigned to the school didn’t reflect the school’s real needs.

Velasquez noted that though more wealthy families have moved to South Philadelphia, many have chosen to send their kids to private schools, charter schools, or selective admissions schools. As a result, the demographics of Vare-Washington Elementary’s neighborhood don’t necessarily reflect the school’s demographics, she said, “because we have kids from all over the city coming to us to get a decent education.”

In a similar vein, others have noted that the data doesn’t capture the location of charter schools.

Velasquez told Chalkbeat she left the community meeting skeptical of how the district will use its data for decisions about schools.

School data reflects limited timeline and scope

Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill said the engagement sessions so far have been eye-opening. He urged families to attend more meetings, which district officials have said will continue throughout the fall.

“Every single engagement [session], I learn things about these schools and the communities that I didn’t know before,” Hill told Chalkbeat at one such meeting on Monday.

Some attendees also worried that the capacity data was too rigid. In Northeast Philadelphia, for example, school leaders said a growing immigrant population means a school’s enrollment can fluctuate throughout the year. If Feltonville Intermediate School filled its classrooms to 100% capacity on the first day of school, educators asked what would happen after winter break when a handful of new students want to enroll.

A community engagement session about school closures, colocations, and modernizations at Philadelphia's Andrew Hamilton Public School on July 17.

Sabrina Scott-Feggins, principal of General Philip Kearny Elementary who attended a session at the district’s headquarters, said she still has questions about the district’s process and calculations.

For example, since COVID, her school decided to take two underused classrooms and turn them into a makeshift library because the school didn’t have one. Though on paper those rooms may count as empty, she noted that they are in use and provide a vital resource.

But she said she was heartened by the opportunity to provide feedback directly to district officials. And as a principal, she can get on board with a decision that benefits students — even if it means reconfiguring schools.

“I feel hopeful,” said Scott-Feggins. “I feel like this is the beginning of being heard.”

Clarification: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect Principal Sabrina Scott-Feggins’ comments about the district’s planning process.

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

For Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, a renewed focus on civics instruction

2025-07-23T18:52:50+00:00

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Martin Luther King High School social studies teacher Nadirah O’Connor said her students have a lot of questions.

They want to know why their neighborhood is impoverished. Why so many guns are on the street. Why “every five minutes” they are going to a funeral.

And why in nearby wealthier and whiter neighborhoods like Chestnut Hill, there seems to be none of that.

There are no easy answers, but O’Connor tries to unpack these issues in her civics classes, where students learn about the roles of local, state, and federal governments and the responsibility of citizenship.

In time for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence next year, both the Commonwealth and the school district are taking steps to make sure students graduate high school understanding how the government works and the responsibilities of active citizenship.

The state has embarked on a bipartisan effort to provide guidelines and standards for civics instruction, which is now left up to individual districts. At the same time, Philadelphia is completing a major revision of its civics curriculum, which is required for graduation.

“We don’t even have an explicit civics content course until senior year,” said Ismael Jimenez, the district’s director of social studies. “And it has not been updated in two decades.”

Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, the district’s chief of curriculum and instruction, said the goal is to help students “think critically and act responsibly” when it comes to public affairs and to inspire them to participate in civic life.

On the state level, two former members of Congress, Democrat Joe Hoeffel of Philadelphia and Republican Jim Gerlach who represented parts of Chester and Berks counties, have formed a coalition of educators and good-government groups to focus on the quality of civics instruction across the Commonwealth.

The coalition is now working with districts and educators to offer guidelines and resources for curriculum development and “elevate the importance of this subject statewide,” according to Justin Villere, director of civic education for the Committee of Seventy, the good government group that serves as the fiscal agent of the coalition.

The state and district initiatives are independent of each other, but both come as the Trump administration is attempting to ban anything that could be construed as DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — and the nation’s political polarization is heightening tensions about politics in the classroom.

Beyond the DEI ban, the Trump administration is also actively seeking to redirect civics instruction away from what it has termed “woke priorities” such as the rights of immigrant and transgender Americans to “the principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

Not lost on either the city or state officials is that in one of the most important swing states in the nation, students can graduate high school without instruction on how the government works and the importance of voting. In Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, just over half of 18-year-olds were registered to vote, at just under 54% in 2024. By comparison, nearly 74% of the voting-age population as a whole was registered to vote in 2024. Laura Brill, founder of the nonprofit voting advocacy group The Civics Center, cautioned that 18-year-olds are less likely to register in years in which there is not a presidential election.

Pennsylvania civics instruction lacks ‘teeth’

Pennsylvania students have been required to pass a civics test in order to graduate since the General Assembly passed Act 35 in 2018. But, bowing to local control, the state has never specified what the test should include or even whether districts must offer a civics course.

As a result, civics instruction varies widely; Gerlach said a goal of the coalition is to set guidelines, provide more resources for teachers, and develop more programming.

“There’s just not a lot of teeth to [Act 35],” said Villere. Beyond having to send reports to the Pennsylvania Department of Education on what percentage of their students passed the test, the law “doesn’t say what it is assessing, what students need to do to pass, or what are the goals” of civics instruction, he said.

The website, PACivics.org, offers a limited toolkit for teachers, a 2021 report by the conservative-leaning Fordham Institute ranked Pennsylvania near the bottom among states in civics instruction, giving it an F “for the quality, rigor and organization of civics and US history standards.”

Still, little attention was paid until now. “This is a really important conversation,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said when Hoeffel and Gerlach announced formation of the coalition. “The central thing is to focus on teaching our students more about civics and more about how to be discerning about what they read and what they take in on social media.”

That’s part of what Philadelphia’s curriculum update aims to do — although some City Council members, teachers, and civic groups, including Villere’s Committee of Seventy, were disappointed that the Board of Education passed a fiscal 2026 budget that failed to include full funding to pay teachers for continuing to work on the revision or to maintain a “voter champions” program that pays a staffers in high each schools to promote student voter registration.

“District teachers are developing locally relevant, high-quality civics instruction at a fraction of typical costs, yet this funding keeps getting interrupted,” they said in a June letter to Superintendent Tony Watlington and school board members.

“I don’t see this board not supporting civics education,” said board President Reginald Streater in an interview. He noted there was “a lot going on” at the time the budget was voted on, including consideration of charter nonrenewals and dealing with a federal investigation of the district’s handling of asbestos removal in schools. The funds for the civics rewrite and the student registration effort was a tiny piece of the $4.6 billion budget.

Streater cited a 2019 board resolution supporting robust civics instruction and declaring a “student voter registration day” every September. He said, if necessary, it might be possible to find another revenue source to make sure the civics work is completed.

“This board supports the holistic education of students and cares deeply about student civic engagement,” he said.

‘We don’t have to cower from teaching the truth’

Historically — and not just in Philadelphia — complaints that teachers used civics classes to promote a political agenda has tamped down educators’ focus on the subject, a fear that has come to fruition under Trump.

“I think that teachers do have to be careful not to play into that idea that we’re indoctrinating students, because we’re not,” said Central High School social studies teacher Tom Quinn, who also has been involved in the curriculum rewrite. “We’re teaching students how to understand the whole field of government and politics.

“But,” he acknowledges, “there’s lots of controversy in that.”

Central High School social studies teacher Tom Quinn said some students come into ninth grade unaware that there are three branches of government.

When Quinn founded the voter registration effort PA Youth Vote in 2018, the state Republican chair accused him of student indoctrination.

“We can’t let fear dictate what we do and don’t teach,” Quinn said. “Of course we have to be nonpartisan, but we don’t have to cower from teaching the truth if it’s what’s happening in the world.”

Plus, he said, students need guidance on how to “navigate going into adulthood as a person of color, a LGBTQ person, as a white person,” adding: “Understanding privilege and oppression doesn’t mean you have to be saddled with guilt.”

Even at Central, one of the most selective schools in the city, some students come into ninth grade not knowledgeable about the three branches of government, Quinn said. But beyond making sure they understand the balance of powers, civics education is about helping students learn how to use government — state, local, and federal — to benefit their lives, he said.

“We’re working on getting away from textbook-type instruction and more towards using authentic materials,” Quinn said. “We want to teach them how to do government.”

Many textbooks say virtually nothing about the state and local level, Quinn said, though they have a bigger impact on students’ day-to-day lives through such policies as education funding and age minimums for driving, for instance.

“Especially for students who come from disempowered, under-resourced communities, it is our responsibility to give them tools to advocate for themselves and give them political efficacy,” Quinn said. “It’s a huge responsibility, and teaching civics out of a textbook is not doing it justice.”

Kamera Osborne, a Central senior, said Quinn’s civics course opened her eyes.

“As a Black American, I want to be educated on what my people are going through,” she said.

Kamera Osborne, a student at Central High School in Philadelphia.

While Philadelphia’s required African American history course is valuable, “it was my civics class that gave me the understanding of why things are the way they are,” Osborne said.

For instance, explaining the difference between de jure — by law — and de facto — by circumstance — helped her understand how personal decisions of where to live have resulted in school segregation in states like Pennsylvania today that rivals conditions in the South prior to 1954. That’s when the U.S Supreme Court outlawed de jure segregation in the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.

For his students, the big issues are “gun violence, mental health, school funding, drugs and addiction,” Quinn said. Students use a “research or inquiry process” to explore those topics and policies to address them.

In a recent class, he said, some students researched approaches to reducing gun violence, such as registries, red flag laws, and legislation aimed at straw purchasing. They studied the role of federal agencies including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and which Congressional committees deal with gun issues.

Often they send letters to officials and news organizations on such topics as the murder in 2022 of a Saul High School student, the effect of housing vouchers on families’ ability to maintain their homes, and legislation that would curtail the rights of transgender people.

O’Connor, the social studies teacher at King, said that when students get to her class, “they might know the U.S. is a democracy, but they are missing things. Like, where did those ideas come from? They know they are supposed to vote, but they don’t all believe that voting is important.”

While Quinn and O’Connor are concerned that attention to civics education could run afoul of the Trump administration, they say the administration’s anti-DEI agenda makes it even more important for them to make sure that students understand how government works and are well-versed in their legal rights and responsibilities.

What she wants students to understand, O’Connor said, is: “If I don’t activate my voice, nothing gets done.”

This story has been updated with a comment from Laura Brill of The Civics Center.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated which county Republican Jim Gerlach represents.

Dale Mezzacappa is a former senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia and also reported on K-12 schools and early childhood education for The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Public School Notebook.

Q&A: What Philadelphia can learn from Washington, D.C., about fixing crumbling schools

2025-07-18T19:22:58+00:00

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The School District of Philadelphia’s facilities planning process aims to “rightsize” school buildings across the city by renovating some, co-locating or repurposing others, and likely closing some schools.

District officials have promised they’ve learned their lesson from the previous closures in 2013 that had detrimental effects on student academics and cratered community trust in school officials. This time, they said, they want community members to better understand the district’s challenges and involve the public’s input in the decisionmaking.

The district’s decades-long neglect of its facilities coupled with years of unconstitutional underfunding at the state level has had significant costs. The current price tag to make all needed repairs and upgrades to Philly school has ballooned to $8 billion. Of that total, some $4.5 billion is needed for deferred maintenance. Teachers and students say they have been sickened by asbestos and lead. And a number of schools have closed after the discovery of damaged asbestos.

Last month, the Department of Justice filed criminal charges against the district for its multi-years failure to conduct timely asbestos inspections.

Still, some community members have criticized the district’s ongoing facilities engagement process as opaque, perfunctory, and overly controlled. District officials are conducting more community engagement sessions and intend to present their plan to the public this fall.

Given the increased attention on school facilities, Chalkbeat’s partners at Swarthmore College spoke with Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund and a parent activist who was instrumental in the facilities planning process in Washington, D.C. Since the 1990s, District of Columbia Public Schools has invested over $6 billion to modernize 70% of its public schools. In many respects, Washington, D.C., has accomplished what Philadelphia experts say they hope to achieve.

Washington has also grappled with many of the same challenges Philly has: stagnating student enrollment, a previous closure process that traumatized communities, and difficulty obtaining state or federal funding.

Filardo said Washington has lessons to offer about organizing across the city, securing money to modernize and maintain buildings, and how to build a robust community engagement process.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Roseann Liu and Abby Hong: Given the financial constraints of a lot of urban school districts, what do you think would make the biggest impact in remediating toxins in school buildings?

Mary Filardo: Philadelphia is one of the great cities of the United States. It can manage big problems, but it can’t accidentally fix toxic schools. You actually have to purposefully fix toxic schools. You can’t accidentally make things equitable and high quality. You have to purposely do it.

And so that means you have to put on the table what actually is the problem, not what you politically wish the problem was.

Liu and Hong: Reflecting on your experience with the D.C. Public Schools, what do you think are the top ingredients for a robust community engagement process?

Filardo: You have to do whatever processes are going to be required for your particular neighborhood or community to build trust. You have to have to be open, you have to share data, you have to share information, you have to share it in a timely way. And you have to be willing to not know. The system itself has to say, “I don’t have the answers. I want your input in the answers.”

You also have to share your technical people. You can’t hoard the technical people. They have to be used by the community and the administration.

You have to have a dialogue, you have to actually talk to each other and wrestle together. It isn’t just like, I’m going to get input from you, and then I’m going to put it together. The community actually has to be in dialogue with you and with the support of technical folks.

Liu and Hong: If you were in a room with the Philadelphia school district how would you advise them?

Filardo: I remember in Washington, D.C., we had a lead in the water tested, and it tested really high, so they just turned off all the water and they didn’t want anybody to know. I said to the head of facilities, “The public should know that we’ve got lead pipes, lead service, lead everything, and this is a problem. Why are you trying to hide this? You should be using this to make the case.” They didn’t know how to make it public, because of course, one of the main things schools are responsible for is healthy, safe environments for kids.

And you’ve got to engage your people, whether they’re custodians or building engineers or principals or teachers, or whatever, and kind of put it out there. How can we get this done? What can we do to help? It’s very tricky. But it doesn’t go away when you ignore it.

And so that to me, that’s the first thing. You’ve got to sit down, you’ve got to do plans, and you’ve got to try to prioritize, and you have to get the dollars.

Liu and Hong: One of the ongoing challenges of urban school districts is underfunding. How did the D.C. public schools get the money it needed to fix school buildings?

Filardo: You don’t get money unless you have a vision and a plan. You have to do the planning work. It’s not like the building industry or the real estate sector doesn’t understand what it costs to do the work that you’re describing that needs to be done.

So that’s partly where we got our real estate and our building industry saying, “Yes, this is what needs to be done. Yes, you should be doing it.” And realizing, of course, that they were going to benefit from it.

Liu and Hong: What do you think are the biggest lessons that Philly can learn from D.C., both as a cautionary tale, but also maybe some things that we can imitate?

Filardo: I think that a parallel push that we spent some time on, but not nearly enough on is this planning on the day-to-day operations and maintenance. That, too, really requires that the stakeholders engaged, communities looking at it, technical people, trying to figure out, okay, how do we manage this? It’s a little bit like being in an emergency room.

We actually put a lot in our City Council legislation. I think you’re not going to get it unless there’s some requirements for planning, requirements for hearings, requirements for some kind of engagement. Now it doesn’t mean that it gets done well, but it’s a tool.

Liu and Hong: Can you provide a big-picture timeline of the efforts to improve DCPS buildings?

Filardo: [School district] enrollment had been declining and there had been a huge amount of white flight from desegregation. In the early ’90s, they said, “We have to close schools because we can’t afford to fix them.” So they set out to close 10 schools. They put 40 schools on the list and told the community that you had to pick the 10. Well, [there was] a huge outcry.

We essentially looked at the vision from an educational perspective, from an environmental perspective, from a financial perspective, and we worked with the task force. We had utilization data.

The District [Congressional] Committee was a very prominent, powerful thing at that time. They put in the budget bill that there had to be an update of this plan. It became an accepted part of what was going to be happening in the city. From a financial perspective and a management perspective, it was messy, people were still trying to figure out, well, how do we get the work done? And where exactly is the money coming from?

[Eventually the mayor at the time] got how powerful it is from a political perspective to do infrastructure work. People care about the schools in their neighborhoods. So he helped push that and also helped identify a more stable funding source, which was the real estate transfer tax for commercial real estate. We didn’t have any federal money. This was all local money that was going into our renovations and modernizations and all of the repair emergencies.

Planned SEPTA service cuts will mean slower, less reliable commutes for Philly students

2025-07-10T22:33:44+00:00

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More than 55,000 students across Philadelphia could have a harder time getting to class when the school year begins next month because of planned cuts to the region’s public transit system.

Students in Northeast Philadelphia could be particularly hard hit by the proposed 20% reduction in SEPTA service, scheduled to begin on August 24, the day before school starts.

The expected cuts will impact bus and rail lines that directly serve more than 25 district schools, according to a SEPTA analysis. Several bus lines that specifically serve schools at the beginning and end of school days, called the 400 series, are part of the planned cuts.

SEPTA officials have said the reductions are necessary to address a severe funding shortfall and reduce its deficit.

For a school district that relies on SEPTA to transport middle and high school students, those changes could mean major challenges.

Teachers, school staff, and parents who use SEPTA to get to school will also likely experience longer commutes, according to Jody Holton, chief planning and strategy officer at SEPTA.

“Across the whole system, there is going to be crowding, there’s going to be reliability issues,” Holton said. “Even if your service isn’t being eliminated, there will be ramifications.”

As lawmakers continue to negotiate the state budget, which was due on June 30, there is a chance more funding could forestall the cuts. But SEPTA officials say they’re planning for the worst.

For the first time, the transportation authority is creating two different schedules to release next month. One will reflect the planned cuts, while the other will show what’s possible if SEPTA gets more money from the state.

A school district spokesperson said it is too early to comment on the potential impacts of route eliminations.

Philadelphia middle and high school students rely on SEPTA for school transportation

In Philadelphia, students in grades 7 through 12 who live at least 1.5 miles from their school are eligible for free SEPTA cards through the school district. The district generally expects those students to use SEPTA to get to school, and does not permit them to ride on yellow school buses, which are mostly reserved for elementary school students. Students with disabilities may get access to buses or other transportation services as well.

At last month’s board meeting, the school board approved a $34 million contract with SEPTA covering 63,000 fare cards for students from public, charter, and non-public schools for the coming school year. The state reimburses the district for the cost of the passes through a transportation subsidy program.

From 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., 1 in 3 SEPTA riders are students, according to Stephen Bronskill, the coalition manager of Transit Forward Philadelphia, a coalition advocating for better public transportation. The proposed cuts will make those students’ commutes much less efficient, he said.

“Tons of students won’t have access to reliable transit on a daily basis,” said Bronskill in an email. “Others will have to deal with serious delays.”

The changes include eliminating 10 of SEPTA’s 400 series bus lines, which act as a kind of extension to other lines to reduce crowding and make students’ commutes more efficient at the beginning and end of the school day.

Without those lines, students will have to either walk to a different bus stop or make more transfers, according to Melissa Silverman, SEPTA’s director of schedules and support services.

Students in the Northeast will be hit particularly hard

Though the planned SEPTA service cuts will be felt across the Philadelphia region, the worst effects are expected to hit Philadelphia’s Northeast neighborhoods, according to Holton, SEPTA’s chief planning strategy officer.

The area, Holton said, is lower density and therefore more difficult to serve with public transit. But Northeast Philadelphia is also where SEPTA has a high proportion of school ridership on buses, meaning that students will weather the impact of the cuts.

Already, students in the Northeast generally experience longer school commutes, according to research from 2020. That study, which analysed data from the 2017-2018 school year, found that the average high school student in the Philadelphia school district had a public transit commute of just under 30 minutes.

But students in the Northeast and Northwest spent longer getting to and from school, the researchers found, which likely reflected the more limited transit options in those regions of the city. Students attending citywide schools also had longer commutes than those at neighborhood schools.

“Based on the extent of the proposed service reductions, the time and complexity of high school students’ commutes are sure to increase,” Molly Pileggi, one of the study’s researchers, told Chalkbeat in an email. She added that students who traverse farther across the city will likely need to find different connection options and wait longer.

In the meantime, several Philadelphia lawmakers continue to advocate for more state funding for SEPTA to avert the cuts.

“For many families in Philadelphia, SEPTA isn’t optional, it’s how kids get to school and parents get to work,” said state Sen. Christine Tartaglione, who represents part of Northeast Philadelphia, in a statement. “Cutting service or raising fares would hurt families who are already doing everything they can to stay afloat.”

Philadelphia school officials eye closing standalone middle schools

2025-07-02T17:29:50+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district intends to reduce the number of standalone middle schools as part of its plan to cut the number of empty seats and support student achievement, Superintendent Tony Watlington recently revealed.

The district currently operates 14 standalone middle schools, enrolling students from fifth or sixth grade through eighth grade. Watlington said his aim is to reduce the number of grade bands so that students move from one school to another less frequently, and to use district resources more efficiently.

“I want to be clear that does not mean that the traditional middle school is good or bad,” said Watlington at last month’s Board of Education meeting. “We want to limit the number of transitions that our students have to make from one school to the next, as a strategy to continue to keep our enrollment and to build the enrollment and to meet our young peoples’ needs.”

Watlington’s comments about standalone middle schools were part of an update about the district’s facilities planning process, which officials have indicated will lead to school closures — as well as new co-locations and building modernizations — as a way to “rightsize” the district. They’ve also stressed that there is no list yet of which schools may be closed, and that they will continue to engage families and community members in the process before they make any decisions.

The district plans to consider multiple factors, including which neighborhoods have previously experienced school closures, in its recommendations about which schools to close.

There’s a longstanding debate over whether sending students to separate middle schools helps or harms them.

Watlington said that studies of district data show that students in Philadelphia do better with fewer school transitions. One study from 2001 found that Philadelphia students who stayed at their elementary schools for middle grades generally performed better. Some national research has found similar results.

But other studies that compared outcomes of students who attended standalone middle schools with those at K-8 schools found that there was not a significant difference.

Watlington said reducing the number of grade bands also aligns with the facilities planning process’ emphasis on ensuring students get better access to school programs, like AP classes and arts programming.

“Our school district needs to increase access to high quality academic and extracurricular programming across all neighborhoods,” said Watlington. “Because right now, there are huge disparities based on where you live.”

Many school board members expressed support for reducing the number of middle schools, noting that they hoped it would result in better academic opportunities for students.

“I am really happy to see the reduction on the grade bands,” said board member Wanda Novalés. “I think we’re going to see a great benefit from that in our schools.”

Majority of Philadelphia’s standalone middle schools are underenrolled

District officials have said one goal of its facilities planning process is to ensure that there are enough seats for students in crowded schools and fewer empty seats in schools where enrollment has shrunk over the past decade.

The district’s middle schools show how lopsided the city’s enrollment has become in terms of geography, with enrollment numbers peaking in the Northeast while falling elsewhere.

The majority of the district’s standalone middle schools enrolled less than half the number of students their buildings had capacity for last school year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of district data.

Tilden Middle School, for example, had just over 260 students in a building meant for 1,200. At the Academy for the Middle Years at Northwest, which enrolled 150 students last year, nearly a quarter of its seats were empty.

But the two middle schools that were overcapacity last year were both in Northeast neighborhoods, with Baldi Middle School enrolling 200 more students than it had space for.

Board President Reginald Streater urged families and community members to attend upcoming engagement events to voice their feedback.

“There is no secret plan hidden in a drawer somewhere,” said Streater. “This is really, truly intended to be a process that’s co-created with the public.”

The district plans to hold 16 engagement sessions in July, in-person and virtually, about its facilities planning process. See the list of those events here.

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.

Shortage of new teachers is hurting Pennsylvania kids’ academic prospects, report says

2025-06-24T19:27:45+00:00

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When D’Arcy McQuoid was hired to teach special education in Philadelphia public schools 32 years ago, it took a year for the district to find a place for her in a classroom.

Early career teachers today “can’t believe it” when she tells them about that wait.

Philadelphia and other school districts statewide are struggling to find enough certified teachers to fill vacancies, a trend that advocates for students say is diminishing the quality of kids’ education.

Why fewer people are becoming certified teachers in Pennsylvania is complex, but school officials, educators, and experts offered theories from inequity that leads to low salaries to long commute times and undesirable work locations in rural communities.

Advocates are currently pushing state lawmakers to continue sending more money to the state’s poorest schools and provide more funding for student-teacher stipends.

Teachers get their certifications after completing a preparation program and a student-teaching requirement. The credential ensures that they have enough experience and training before entering the classroom.

A recent report from Penn State education researchers found that the number of teaching certificates issued by the commonwealth dropped by more than 60% between the 2010-11 and 2023-24 school years.

When districts can’t find enough certified teachers to fill vacancies from retirement and regular turnover, districts use emergency permits. These permits are less rigorous than teaching certifications, requiring only a bachelor’s degree, and the state issues them only when schools can find no fully qualified applicants.

The Penn State report found that’s increasingly the case, and during the 2021-22 school year, amid the pandemic, the number of emergency permits the state issued surpassed the number of normal certifications.

The number has remained higher ever since, particularly in districts with concentrations of poverty and students of color.

This is a big concern for public education advocates. Emergency certifications were never meant to be in widespread use, said Christopher Lilienthal, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, a teachers union.

“It went from being a stopgap thing that gets used very rarely to something that school districts and school entities have had to use consistently to fill these positions because of this shortage,” he said.

Ed Fuller, an associate professor at Penn State’s College of Education and a co-author of the report, said all teacher shortages are negatively associated with student outcomes. He also stressed that shortages can have a negative economic impact on the state.

“We know when kids have lower achievement, they’re less likely to generate tax revenue, they’re more likely to require more state support in the health system, they’re more likely to end up in the criminal justice system,” he said. “So when we’re not providing all of our children quality teachers every single year … in fact, we’re losing money. We’re losing money from the state.”

Teacher shortages across the state vary widely, but they are heavily concentrated in urban and rural counties, according to Fuller.

Districts with higher rates of poverty tend to be the ones with worse shortages, he said, and those with high numbers of students of color also tend to suffer larger shortages.

Inequalities in Pennsylvania’s public school districts are a longstanding concern among educators and advocates.

State lawmakers are under a 2023 court order to fix what a judge called an unconstitutionally inequitable public education system. Last year, they made their first big attempt at rectifying it, sending $500 million to the commonwealth’s poorest districts.

Democratic lawmakers in the state House and Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro have proposed a similar investment in this year’s budget, which is due June 30. But Republicans, who control the state Senate, have not committed to the spending.

Education advocates told Spotlight PA they are optimistic about proposed increases to education funding. Along with the extra money for poor schools, Shapiro has proposed doubling student-teacher stipends to $40 million, according to the budget plan.

The program, now in its first year, currently provides $10,000 stipends to student-teachers on a first-come, first-served basis.

“If this program continues, I would be shocked if we did not see a dramatic uptick in the number of college students coming out of college and getting their first-time certificates for being an educator,” said Aaron Chapin, PSEA’s president.

A big district with unique problems

The School District of Philadelphia, which serves Pennsylvania’s biggest city, enrolls nearly 200,000 students and operates 331 schools.

The Penn State report found severe teacher shortages in the district, and also gave it low marks for teacher quality and levels of attrition. In the current school year, there were 644 vacancies across the district, and last school year, 23% of teachers had emergency permits, according to the report.

Laura Boyce, executive director of the teacher advocacy nonprofit, Teach Plus Pennsylvania, said underfunding could be the cause of a lot of these issues. But she emphasized that more research is needed to fully understand the scope of the problem.

“The districts that are suffering the most from the teacher shortage are those that have the largest adequacy gaps, that are the most underfunded by the state,” Boyce said.

An adequacy gap is a concept state lawmakers introduced to address the 2023 court ruling that found Pennsylvania hadn’t invested enough money in poor school districts. Defined as the difference between the amount a district spends per student and the amount that the district would need to spend to serve each child at an acceptable level, the metric now informs new education spending.

Lawmakers have estimated that Philadelphia’s school district has the biggest adequacy gap in the state, at more than $1.2 billion total.

Boyce said adequacy gaps lead to districts offering lower teacher salaries and having poorer working conditions, which make it difficult for them to compete for teachers.

In addition to the larger national trends she named — declining prestige of the teaching profession, student behavioral issues, and teacher attrition — she identified inequity as a core concern. “If you have just a reduced supply of teachers, not all districts are experiencing it the same, and those with the fewest resources are going to be the ones who are having the hardest time both recruiting and retaining teachers,” Boyce said.

Shortages have created a new reliance on emergency certified teachers in Philadelphia. As a potential solution, some school districts are looking for ways to encourage emergency certified teachers to get more certifications, Boyce said.

The issue is urgent. Students internalize staff shortages and feel like they are part of the problem when the real issue is systemic, according to Kate Sundeen, a teacher at the Academy at Palumbo high school and political liaison for the School District of Philadelphia.

“As much as we say, ‘It’s not about you’ to the students, the students are like, ‘Well, then why isn’t it changing?’” Sundeen said.

Rural counties have lots of land, few teachers

Rural counties also feel the strain of teacher shortages, Fuller said.

Warren County School District, located in northwestern Pennsylvania, enrolls nearly 3,800 students and operates nine schools. According to the Penn State report, during the period reviewed, Warren, like Philadelphia, had a severe teacher shortage, lower quality teachers, and high levels of attrition.

This school year, there are only four vacancies across the district, but as of last year — the most recent year with complete data — 22% of teachers had emergency permits.

Shortages particularly hurt technical and special education, as well as advanced math and science courses, according to Gary Weber, the superintendent of Warren County School District. The district encompasses almost the entire county.

Weber thinks the shortage issue dates all the way back to the 10% cut to the state’s basic education budget under Republican Gov. Tom Corbett in 2010, in the midst of a serious post-recession shortfall.

The move, he said, caused his district to furlough many teachers. He thinks the state then saw a trickle-down effect in which Pennsylvania colleges and universities stopped offering teaching programs because there were fewer available jobs across the commonwealth.

Weber said it’s especially difficult to find teachers certified in specialized subjects such as physics.

“We used to have, 20 years ago, 50, 60, 70, 80 applicants. We’re lucky if we have 10 at this time. In many cases, we might have two or three. And in some cases, we’re going out and trying to find people,” he said.

Fuller said rural school districts like Warren often face recruiting challenges because they have fewer people around.

“Unless a district is relatively close to prep programs producing a fair amount of teachers, then it is hard to find enough teachers to hire. Research shows that teachers work where they went to high school or where they went to college,” he said.

Teachers in big rural counties also struggle with commute times. Warren’s single primary school district, for instance, covers almost the entirety of the county’s nearly 900 square miles. Schools are spaced out around the district, so even teachers living inside county lines may have to travel long distances for work.

Rural Blair County has similar staffing problems, according to teachers who shared their experiences with Spotlight PA.

While Penn State’s study found that Blair County’s overall teacher shortage wasn’t as bad as others — it was rated as having a “high” shortage as opposed to a “severe” one, like Philly and Warren — its supply of new teachers, teacher quality, and rate of attrition all got low marks.

Dan Drumm, a music teacher in the county’s Spring Cove School District, said he’s wary of encouraging his elementary students to become teachers.

Students aren’t oblivious to debates over educational politics, testing, expenses, safety, and other issues, Drumm explained.

“It’s the culmination of all these things together that make the profession undesirable for a lot of people,” he said.

As a potential solution, some schools are starting “Grow-your-own” programs to get high school students interested in the profession.

“You are attracting those who are already in the community, already connected to schools, and creating high-quality, low-cost pathways for them into the profession,” Boyce said of the initiative.

Some schools also offer formal pathways, like Career and Technical Education programs, for students interested in becoming teachers.

Other schools take a more homespun approach.

Social studies teacher Joe Logan, who has worked at Central High School in the Spring Cove district for 24 years, first ran his “Future Teachers Club” in the 2021-22 school year. In meetings, Logan talks with students about teaching, getting an education degree, and local opportunities. He started the club to replicate the inspiration he got from his high school teachers.

“I’d like to be that same kind of catalyst for the students that are looking at getting into education,” he said.

Elena Eisenstadt is an intern with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association. Learn more about the program. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.

Philadelphia teachers union votes to authorize a strike

2025-06-18T00:24:08+00:00

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Members of the Philadelphia teachers union voted to authorize a future strike Tuesday, flexing their political muscles amid contract negotiations with the school district.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers said 94% percent of members in attendance at a meeting Tuesday evening voted to give leaders the power to call a strike if the union and the school district fail to reach an agreement by August when their contract expires.

The likelihood of a strike is unclear. But if PFT leaders do call a strike of their 14,000 members, it could disrupt the opening days of the new school year. The 2025-26 school year begins August 18 for staff and August 25 for students.

The union and district return to the negotiating table Wednesday. Christina Clark, a district spokesperson, said in an email Tuesday that district officials are “optimistic that we will reach an agreement on a successor collective bargaining agreement.”

PFT President Arthur Steinberg said in a statement that the union already “has made progress toward an agreement that demonstrably improves members’ working conditions.” But key demands remain, specifically changes that would address the district’s staffing shortage “that has left teachers, counselors, and other school staff juggling duties beyond their own job descriptions.”

The district started the school year with 347 teacher vacancies.

Tuesday’s vote signals that the union is taking stock of its political power in the city. It’s the PFT’s first strike authorization vote since the district regained local control from the state.

When the school district was under state control from 2001 to 2018, the PFT was barred from striking and teachers went without an active contract for five years. As a result, union leadership says teacher salaries have lagged, which has contributed to teacher churn.

The average Philly classroom teacher salary in 2024-25 was $85,719, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

In February 2024, the union and district were on good terms. Both parties agreed to a one-year contract extension that included raises and retention bonuses well before the previous contract’s expiration date in August 2024.

The district may have some additional resources to offer — but not for several years. Mayor Cherelle Parker and members of City Council reached a budget agreement this month that would increase the district’s share of property tax revenue from 56% to 56.5% in 2030. Parker said that increase will provide an additional $12 million per year for teacher salaries.

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

New Philadelphia budget ‘sets up our schools for major cuts’ as deficits loom, councilmember says

2025-06-12T18:48:26+00:00

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Philadelphia’s new $6.8 billion city budget does little to help what many call the city’s chronically underfunded school district close its looming deficits — and public education advocates say the city could have done more.

The final budget — which reflects a deal between Mayor Cherelle Parker and City Council leadership — passed 15-1 on Thursday. It includes some significant wage and business tax cuts as well as Parker’s signature housing initiative, but it does not deliver a meaningful funding increase to the school district.

By not adding new money for the school district, “this budget sets up our schools for major cuts in the coming years,” Councilmember Kendra Brooks said. Brooks was the lone no vote on the budget.

The final budget looks nearly identical to what Parker originally proposed for schools in March. It increases Center City parking fees, which Parker’s office says would add $4 million to district coffers. And it will increase the school district’s share of the city’s property tax revenue from 56% to 56.5% in fiscal 2030. Parker’s office estimates that shift will mean $12 million in new funding to the district, albeit all at once five years from now.

It also includes $500,000 to “fully cover the credentialing costs for current Career and Technical Education teachers” employed by the district, according to a statement from Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson.

But the district is grappling with a growing annual deficit that is slated to reach $466 million in 2027 and $774 million in 2030. And while Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget would send some $160 million more to Philly schools in fiscal 2026, it’s unclear whether schools will get that increase.

The school district’s budget is $4.6 billion.

For fiscal year 2026, the district is planning to use 40% of its “rainy day” fund to cover a $306 million budget hole, which district leaders say is the result of decades of unconstitutional underfunding by the state.

Donna Cooper of the education advocacy group Children First told Chalkbeat that given the size of the city’s funding surplus, it could have easily afforded to change the district’s share of property taxes this year rather than waiting until 2030. She added that the City Council should have demanded the change take place sooner.

Last year, the city increased the district’s share from 55% to 56%, which Parker’s office said added $24 million for the city’s schools. Parker has said she would like to gradually shift the district’s share of property taxes to 58% over time.

“It makes absolutely no sense to me,” Cooper said. “I personally cannot conjure up the logic that would enable people to argue that there’s not enough money to do it this year, and certainly no reason to even say it should wait till 2030.”

Cooper said because Philly is the only school district in the state that cannot raise its own tax revenue, it’s at a political disadvantage during budget negotiations. Of the district’s budget, $2 billion comes from the city, $2.4 billion from the state, and nearly $180 million from the federal government, although President Donald Trump has proposed cutting some federal education spending.

“We really need Council to unite behind the cause of the school district, because it is the obligation for them to do it,” Cooper said.

Asked why the City Council did not significantly increase school funding this year, Council President Kenyatta Johnson cited “the uncertainty” of potential cuts coming from the Trump administration.

“As we move forward, we’ll look at the school district’s finances and how they are operating,” Johnson said. “If we have to make adjustments to make further decisions financially to support the school district we’ll evaluate that in the future.”

Early on in the budget negotiation process, Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who chairs the education committee, said he was mulling the possibility of putting that property tax shift in this fiscal 2026 budget. But the proposal did not survive the negotiation process.

While the city waits for state lawmakers “to develop a fair funding formula to equitably and properly fund our schools, we in Philly have to find more creative and immediate ways to invest in our students, teachers, and everyone who makes Philly schools excellent,” Thomas said in an email.

Brooks said “multiple Councilmembers and parents across Black and brown neighborhoods advocated” for an increase in the property tax revenue that goes to the district “in order to boost public school funding,” but were unsuccessful.

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

Concerns grow over potential plan to close Philadelphia schools

2025-06-10T20:17:43+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district has pledged that any future school closures — which officials have said are likely — will be markedly different from the last, brutal battle over shuttering local schools more than a decade ago.

Rather than impose the district’s closure plans onto Philadelphians, officials have said that moves to close, colocate, or repurpose schools would be guided by local community members and experts. They also pledged the process would be data-driven and transparent.

“This isn’t the district’s plan. This isn’t the Board of Education’s plan. This is Philadelphia’s plan,” Deputy Superintendent of Operations Oz Hill said at a November community meeting. “These are our children that have to live with this plan.”

But several parents and community leaders participating in the district’s formal advisory groups say the facilities planning process has already become opaque. After sitting through meetings filled with PowerPoint presentations that lack crucial financial or school-specific data, some advisory group members have called for an overhaul of the district’s approach and more clarity.

“It’s been extremely frustrating how little our input actually gets heard,” said Elaine Simon, former co-director of the Urban Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the community leaders advisory group. “Meetings are overly structured and artificial, because we never get information or understanding of what their process actually is.”

Advisory group members said they took time off work and rearranged their schedules to attend the meetings, often scheduled for the middle of the day. But to Simon and several other members of the parent and community leader groups who spoke with Chalkbeat, the time has felt wasted by bureaucratic presentations and unspecific brainstorming sessions. Many worry the district is using them to add credibility to a flawed process, without considering their feedback about how to prevent closures in the first place.

The district’s final facilities plan is due in December, but the district has missed some of its own deadlines related to various parts of the process.

In an email, Alexandra Coppadge, the district’s chief of communications, said the district’s aim is to create a facilities plan that supports communities and student achievement, maximizes the use of school buildings, and provides more access to programs like prekindergarten and arts classes.

“The District is committed to completing a facilities plan that includes deep and thoughtful community engagement,” Coppadge said. She added that the district plans to host additional listening and community engagement sessions and will share more data in the coming months.

Since January, Simon and other advisory group members have met with district staff for an hour around once a month on Zoom, with one recent meeting scheduled in-person at the district office.

The advisory board members Chalkbeat spoke with emphasized that they want the process to go well. As the district tries to address a budget deficit, deteriorating infrastructure, and some school buildings with hundreds of empty seats, several members said they understand the district’s challenges and hope to contribute to a thoughtful solution.

“We do want a facilities plan,” Akira Drake Rodriguez, an assistant professor of city planning at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of one of the advisory groups, told the school board last month. “But we want one that prioritizes community needs and not just the district’s.”

Philadelphia district officials indicate school closures are likely

School districts across the country, including Denver and New York City, have been mulling school closures to cope with enrollment drops since the pandemic. But some people in those communities have urged districts to invest in their neighborhood schools and keep up regular building maintenance, rather than resort to closures.

Around 115,000 students now attend Philadelphia district schools, marking a 12% drop from a decade ago. Though enrollment grew slightly last year, several schools have hundreds of empty seats, while others are at capacity or are overcrowded.

District officials have said school closures are on the table. But they’ve stressed that they plan to avoid repeating the mistakes of the last round of closures in 2013, when 23 schools closed. That process decimated community trust in the city’s schools. And district officials readily admit it had a negative impact on students. The performance of displaced students declined, the performance of students attending schools where those displaced students were reassigned also declined, and student absences increased.

“It was not worth the cost,” Deputy Superintendent Hill told families last year.

This time, officials say the aim is to improve students’ learning environments, not just save money.

Last year, the board hired a public relations firm at the cost of $179,500 to facilitate community outreach and feedback sessions, and hosted more than 30 in-person public listening sessions. More than 500 people participated, according to the district. But several of those meetings that Chalkbeat attended consisted of mostly district representatives, with few parents or other members of the public in attendance.

Then, last November, the district launched its advisory group process, asking community leaders, parents, and educators across the city to attend regular meetings with district officials.

But those meetings have been extremely disappointing, Rodriguez told Chalkbeat. “We don’t ever get our questions answered,” she said.

Generally, advisory groups spent at least half of each meeting listening to district presentations of information that could mostly be found on its website, according to several group members Chalkbeat spoke with.

Though district representatives attended the meetings, several members echoed Rodriguez’s concern, saying their requests for more detailed information went unanswered.

Rodriguez said meetings have focused more on closing and colocating schools, instead of maintaining buildings. She wants the district to avoid closing schools entirely. Ultimately, she worries that her participation may be used to rubber-stamp a plan she does not agree with.

Other advisory members who don’t want closures say the focus on school closures and colocations in some meetings have made them worry the district has already decided that some closures are inevitable.

“At best, we are being given a window into a process,” said Adam Blyweiss, a member of the parent advisory group and a teacher at Jules E. Mastbaum High School. “At worst … we are being given the data-driven tools to effectively have us be the hatchet man instead of the district.”

School district behind on its own deadlines

The district has already missed some of its own deadlines to share key information, leaving advisory group members concerned that any proposal will be extremely rushed.

In May, the district was set to share a community update about its plans. But at that month’s board meeting, that didn’t happen.

Reporters were scheduled to receive a briefing about a new data website about the district’s facilities in April, with a public launch scheduled for Monday, April 7. The district told advisory group members that it would provide them with data in April too, according to an official document Chalkbeat obtained. But neither reporters nor advisory group members ever got access to the website. Advisory group members that Chalkbeat spoke to said their April meetings were cancelled.

Coppadge said the district plans to provide an update on the facilities planning process at its June board meeting. She said the district “held the release” of the data tool “in order to not disrupt our focus on accelerating academic achievement and state testing,” and that it plans to release the tool later this month.

Some advisory group members say that delay has undercut their ability to provide feedback and recommendations.

“We don’t have enough information,” said Kristen Goessling, director of participatory research at Pennsylvania State University and a member of one of the advisory groups. “Where is the data? What are we actually considering?”

Goessling said she understands that school closures are a sensitive issue. But she worries that the district’s concern about how it presents information could undermine its ability to form useful partnerships.

“I have more confidence than I can contain about us solving this problem,” said Goessling. “But we are not looked at as resources. We are looked at as obstacles.”

Mayor Cherelle Parker has also missed her own related deadlines. In December, Parker announced her administration would convene a committee of elected officials and labor and business representatives to review the district’s planning process. Parker said that committee would be formally introduced last winter. But today, no such committee exists.

The city’s Deputy Chief Education Officer Sharon Ward said in an email that Parker is “finalizing the membership list and intends to announce the group soon.”

The district has now begun gathering advisory group members in person at its headquarters.

Melanie Silva, a parent of a student at Rhawnhurst School who is also a member of the parent advisory group, attended the first round of those meetings on Monday. She said the meeting was the first time she saw preliminary data about potential schools that may be considered for closure or colocation. The district insisted information shared remain confidential.

Silva said it was useful to finally see some data, but it largely consisted of summary scores that rated the condition of buildings and the vulnerability of neighborhoods, without explaining what the scores were based on. It was the kind of information Silva thought the district would have prepared before starting its community engagement process.

To Silva, the experience leads to a bigger question about the district’s approach to potentially closing schools: “It’s like, do you want to be transparent or not?” she said. “Do you want people to know or not?”

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