Chalkbeat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Johnson said she wants to see “corrective action taken when necessary,” and to update outdated policies and staff training.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The soundtrack to Philly’s waning gun violence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resisting the lure of drill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cassidy Brown mixes one of his songs.

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

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

Dancing to new beats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tacori Aaria Mateen stands for a portrait.

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

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

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

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

Visuals by Kriston Jae Bethel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

City faces grim reality: ‘Guns are plentiful’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 wants more continuity for kids with autism. It also plans to close schools.

2025-12-02T15:44:19+00:00

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Many Philadelphia school district families with children in autistic support classes have had the same frustrating experience: As their kids have grown up, they’ve had to switch schools at least once to access support services.

That’s because Philly has a limited number of autistic support classes, which provide additional educational services for some students with autism and other disabilities. Though the school district distributes those classes across its more than 200 schools, many only have autistic support for certain grades.

That can mean, for example, that a student is assigned to their neighborhood school for grades K-2, but then has to switch to a different school to access autistic support for third grade. District officials, advocates, and families all agree: Those transitions can be particularly difficult for those with autism and other disabilities.

“They get used to the teachers, they get adjusted to the room, they get adjusted to the school,” said Jen Fischer, program coordinator at Vision for Equality, a Pennsylvania-based advocacy organization for people with disabilities. “For some people, just when that happens, they’ve got to move.”

Since Chief of Special Education and Diverse Learners Nathalie Nérée joined the district two years ago, reducing such transitions for students with disabilities has been one of her priorities, she said.

“My goal — and it has been very clear to my team, to all schools — is that we build a continuum of programs within all of our schools,” said Nérée. Nérée said students at only one or two schools last year had to change schools for this school year to access autism support.

But creating continuity is no easy task. The district is expanding autistic support offerings. It’s also planning to close schools — and the autistic support classes in them — as part of its facilities planning process. District officials have not yet announced which schools may be closed or colocated. Yet some worry such changes could force students with autism and other disabilities to change schools once again and further disrupt their education.

In a city where families of students with disabilities often feel that there are few desirable schools, “it’s a battle of your life for each transition,” said Luisa Velasquez-Maher, a mother of a student with autism in the district and an education advocate. Ultimately, “less transition means less stress,” she said.

Nérée said she is not part of the team creating the facilities plan. However, she said she has met with them extensively to share the vision “that all of our students will have the opportunity to attend any school that they want across the city.”

But, she added, the breadth of services the district can provide is sometimes limited by cost and coordination challenges.

To build out more programs for students with disabilities, Nérée said, “it’s going to take time.”

Number of autistic support classes limited but growing

A decade ago, families sued the district over its policy of automatically transferring students with autism to new schools without significant parent involvement. The district settled and agreed to notify parents in advance of any transfer and provide them with an opportunity to discuss the decision.

Since then, the number of students with autism in the district has more than doubled, according to state data. Last school year, there were around 5,000 students with autism in Philly schools.

Not all of those students participate in autistic support classes. Some may instead participate in general education classes or receive other forms of assistance, like a one-on-one aide.

Last school year, around 4,000 students enrolled in one of the district’s more than 500 autistic support classes, according to district data. That number continues to grow, Nérée said. The district added about 33 new classes in August to meet the increased need.

The classes provide specialized instruction to help students build skills in communication and behavior along with math and reading. The state limits the number of students that can be assigned per autistic support teacher, and how many grade bands can be mixed in each classroom. (In high schools, autistic support classes include a mix of students in all grades.)

However, neither state nor federal law dictates how support classes must be distributed throughout a school district. That means those decisions are largely up to Nérée and her team.

Nérée said that each winter, her team examines where students may need autistic support classes the following school year and which grade bands they fall into, including coordinating with the city’s early intervention provider to determine how many kindergartners may qualify. The district then opens new classes or changes the grade bands a school serves based on that information.

But it’s tricky to track exactly where students will have autistic support needs by the beginning of the school year. Some families move around, or join the district over the summer. Some students also move from autistic support to general education, while others are found to be eligible for the program as they age.

That can mean regular changes in how many students the district needs to find available autistic support spots for, said Nérée. “We’re trying to put things in place so that our students can go to any school they desire, and that they feel welcome and they’re supported, and that their needs are met.”

Several advocates Chalkbeat spoke with said they’ve noticed improved continuity for students since Nérée joined the district.

Still, more than 30 of the district’s 164 elementary and middle schools do not have any autistic support classes, according to a list of school programs the district shared with Chalkbeat. That includes several elementary schools considered highly desirable, like William M. Meredith and Penn Alexander.

As well, around 25 elementary schools only have autistic support for students in grades K-2, even though most of them enroll students up to at least fifth grade, and many go to eighth grade. Other schools only have autistic support classes for higher grades.

Schools without autistic support still have other offerings, like a special education teacher or aide, Nérée said.

Jamiel Owens, an advocate who works with parents of students with autism in the Philadelphia area, said he appreciates the ways the district has worked to provide more consistency and support for families.

But fully addressing the challenges of transitions would mean providing more resources for families, better trained teachers, and more options for students with disabilities, he said.

He said he feels the district is still trying to fit students with autism into a school system not primarily focused on serving their needs, “instead of looking at how we can actually reshape the school system.”

Why school closures can harm kids with autism

School closures have been found to be disruptive for all students in various ways. Researchers recommend creating robust support systems for students who must change schools.

Many advocates say that kind of support is even more urgent for students with autism or other disabilities. Changing schools, or having a flood of new students join their schools, may be even more destabilizing for them than other children.

“A lot of people think transition is only when a young adult goes into adulthood right after high school, into the new world,” said Owens, who has a son with autism who graduated from the district. “But every year — every grade achieved and going to the next one — is a transition stage. How are you preparing for that?”

District officials say the point of the district facilities plan, which will lead to closing schools, is to better distribute district resources to provide more opportunities for all students.

Though district officials have not yet shared details about which schools could close, Superintendent Tony Watlington has said repeatedly that the final plan will reduce the number of grade bands to limit school transitions.

But the proposal to close schools is ringing alarm bells for some parents of students with autism. Some say the harm of closures — which would inevitably affect students with autism and other disabilities — is not worth the risk.

“When you move kids that have issues with flexibility, [who] need patterns and routines — which is a very classic need of an autistic child — you change their whole world,” said Marissa Post, a parent of a child with autism in the school district.

“They have to learn new routines. They have to learn new settings. They have to redo skills that they already mastered in whatever setting they were in previously,” said Post, who’s also an advocate who works with families.

Post said she also worries that schools with many autistic support classes may appear underenrolled because of how the state limits the number of students assigned to each autistic support teacher.

The district has not shared how it is factoring autistic support classes into the facilities plan. District officials said they reviewed building utilization data with principals before publishing the data they say will inform school closures.

Spokesperson Christina Clark said that as the district implements the facilities plan, it will continue to open classrooms as needed “to make sure that students’ needs are met.”

Luisa Velasquez-Maher, the parent of a student with autism, said she hopes the facilities planning process takes the needs of each community into account and considers the needs of families with students with autism and other disabilities.

So far, she said she’s worried that hasn’t been the case. She’s gone to community meetings where she said information has been limited, and she has found the data the district is using to inform its decisions difficult to parse.

But she said she also understands the district’s need to address underutilized school buildings and better distribute its limited resources.

She hopes officials ask questions sincerely, listen to community members, and craft a plan that preserves strong support for students with autism. “If that’s their response, I will help,” she said.

Carly Sitrin contributed reporting.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where to get free food in Philadelphia

Mercy Neighborhood Ministries

1939 W. Venango St.

Philadelphia, PA 19140

215-222-4393

Food distribution program

Wednesdays at 7:30 a.m.

Saturdays at 10:00 a.m.

We Love To Give and Beloved St. John

4541 N. Broad St.

Philadelphia, PA 19140

267-433-2227

Grocery distribution

Saturday, Nov. 8

Noon–2 p.m.

Saturday, Nov. 22

Noon–2 p.m.

Saturday, Dec. 13

Noon–2 p.m.

Saturday, Dec. 27

Noon–2 p.m.

TCRC Community Healing Center food distribution sites

215-791-0645

First African Baptist Church

6700 Lansdowne Ave.

Philadelphia, PA 19151

Second and fourth Mondays of the month

9 a.m.–1 p.m.

Nazarene Baptist Church

3981 Nice St.

Philadelphia, PA 19140

Wednesdays

10 a.m.–1 p.m.

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

Northeast Baptist Church

4744 Tackawanna St.

Philadelphia, PA 19124

Wednesdays

Noon–3 p.m.

Faith Assemblies of God Church

1926 Margaret St.

Philadelphia, PA 19124

Thursdays

10.a.m–1 p.m.

Temple University Community Garden Field

Northeast corner of Broad and Diamond Streets

Philadelphia, PA 19122

First and third Fridays of the month

10.a.m–1 p.m.

Ujima Friends Peace Center

1701 Lehigh Ave.

Philadelphia, PA 19132

First and third Saturdays of the month

9 a.m.–noon

Germantown Friends Meeting

47 W. Coulter St.

Philadelphia, PA 19144

Every third Sunday of the month

Noon–3 p.m.

Community members can also get clothing and books.

People’s Emergency Center

325 N. 39th St.

Philadelphia, PA 19104

267-777-5880 (main office)

267-777-5477 (community resource hotline)

Food cupboard

Saturdays

10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

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

Prevention Point Philadelphia

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

Philadelphia, PA 19134

215-634-5272

Snacks and sandwiches

Monday–Friday

Breakfast

Tuesdays

10 a.m.

Hot lunch

Wednesdays

Noon–2 p.m.

Community night

First Thursdays of the month

5–8 p.m.

First Redemption Evangelical Church

4400 N. Broad St.

Philadelphia, PA 19140

215-324-3775

Food pantry

Thursdays

10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

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

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Free pop-up produce markets

Pediatric Primary Care, Cobbs Creek

225 Cobbs Creek Parkway

Philadelphia, PA 19139

215-476-2223

Wednesdays

9 a.m.–noon

Karabots Pediatric Primary Care Center, West Philadelphia

4865 Market St.

Philadelphia, PA 19139

267-425-9800

Thursdays

9 a.m.–noon

Mighty Writers food distribution

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

Mighty Writers West

35th and Fairmount

Philadelphia, PA 19104

215-387-1066

Monday–Friday

11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

Mighty Writers El Futuro

1025 S. Ninth St.

Philadelphia, PA 19147

215-602-0236

Tuesday–Friday

Noon–1:30 p.m.

Mighty Writers North

23rd and Seybert

Philadelphia, PA 19121

610-263-5379

Tuesdays and Thursdays

Noon–1:30 p.m.

Lucien E. Blackwell Community Center

761 N. 47th St.

Philadelphia, PA 19139

Tuesdays

2–3 p.m.

First and third Wednesdays of the month

2–3 p.m.

John Street Community Center

1100 Poplar St.

Philadelphia, PA

Thursdays

1:45–2:45 p.m.

Broad Street Love

315 S. Broad St.

Philadelphia, PA 19107

215-735-4847

Lunch

Monday–Friday

11:30 a.m.–1:15 pm.

St. Francis Inn

2441 Kensington Ave.

Philadelphia, PA 19125

215-423-5845

Seated meals

Monday–Thursday

4:30–6 p.m.

Friday–Sunday

11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

Takeaway breakfast

Tuesday–Wednesday

10–11 a.m.

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

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

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

Philadelphia’s youngest learners aren’t getting support services they’re legally entitled to

2025-10-20T16:57:47+00:00

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

When Kimberly Halevy’s son Joshua was 3, she started hearing from his preschool that he was acting out. He rarely participated in circle time and had trouble playing with other kids.

Halevy’s friend had recently opened the preschool, and she liked that someone she knew took care of her son. But eventually, the preschool said it would only allow him back if he had a 1-to-1 aide to address his “disruptive” behavior, Halevy said.

At first, Halevy thought getting him that aide would be straightforward. But she now describes the effort to get her kid support through Philadelphia’s federally mandated, publicly funded early intervention system as exhausting.

Kimberly Halevy, 41, plays with her son, Joshua, 4, at their home in Philadelphia, PA. on Sunday, September 28, 2025.

Though state evaluators found Joshua should receive multiple forms of therapy each week, it took months for any services to begin, Halevy said. Then, once providers contacted her, she said it became a “guessing game” whether her son would receive the home-based occupational therapy and specialized instruction he qualified for every week.

“I kept being mad at myself for not pushing,” Halevy said. “But now I realize that it’s just the program.”

Across Philadelphia, young kids like Joshua are waiting months and sometimes years for early intervention services that they are legally entitled to, according to families, therapy providers, and advocates Chalkbeat spoke with.

Federal law states a child must receive services as soon as possible after an evaluation team completes their Individualized Education Program, or IEP. Pennsylvania has interpreted that to mean 14 days. But one provider said the list she can access of children waiting for speech therapy — one of several early intervention services — is sometimes more than 2,000 families long.

Early intervention providers are under strain nationwide, with not enough funding or staffing to meet the need. But in Philadelphia — home to 16% of the state’s early intervention population — one player is largely responsible for the system: a 170-year-old nonprofit called Elwyn that the state pays to manage the publicly funded program.

As Philly’s early intervention system struggles to meet the needs of all kids, some providers and advocates say neither Elwyn nor the state officials who oversee the program are doing enough to ensure kids get services on time.

In response to Chalkbeat’s questions, Elwyn President and CEO Charles McLister said Elwyn does not comment on specific cases, but the organization works quickly to assess children and provide them with services. “For the vast majority of cases, services are provided within the defined window,” said McLister.

But McLister acknowledged that there can be delays due to family communication, transportation, scheduling, provider availability, and severe staffing shortages across the sector.

Erin James, press secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Education, said in a statement that the department stays in close contact with Elwyn throughout the year “to remind them of their legal obligations.”

James did not respond to questions about service delays for Philadelphia families. But she said that early intervention programs often lack resources. “Current funding levels for EI [early intervention] services are not sufficient because the population of students who qualify for EI services has been increasing for years,” James said.

Elwyn in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In Philadelphia, the program’s delays are a key reason many of the city’s most vulnerable kids fall behind before they even start kindergarten, advocates say. Data from early intervention program reports the state publishes shows Philly children in early intervention programs lag behind their peers elsewhere in key growth areas, like developing social emotional skills.

“The whole idea of having to wait more than the required time is really putting kids at a disadvantage,” said Inella Ray, director of parent advocacy and engagement at the advocacy organization Children First. “Because when kids don’t have the support that they need, in today’s current education or environment, they get pushed out.”

Parents face delays accessing early intervention services

Early intervention is part of the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which dictates that all children with disabilities must have access to a free and appropriate public education. Though each state creates and manages its own program, all kids through age 5 who are identified as having a developmental delay or disability are eligible.

In Pennsylvania, the Department of Education oversees local early intervention programs for preschool-age kids. In almost every county, families get connected with services through an intermediary unit, a kind of regional education service agency.

But in Philadelphia, things work differently. The state pays Elwyn a combination of state and federal dollars to administer the city’s preschool early intervention program, along with a much smaller program in Chester. Last fiscal year, its contract was worth around $90 million. Elwyn is in charge of assessing children, developing their IEPs, and subcontracting with a network of providers for services they qualify for.

When Halevy’s kids’ preschool said her son needed an aide, the preschool owner gave Halevy advice: phone Elwyn. So she did, and she was relieved when the organization told her they could fit Joshua in to begin his evaluation later that week.

That was July 2024. She hoped Joshua would have services in time to be back at preschool by the following September. But soon, Halevy said she began hitting roadblocks.

In August, she said she didn’t hear much from Elwyn. Like other early intervention programs statewide, Elwyn often takes a two-week service break at the end of summer — one of many scheduled break periods during the year.

But then when she did hear back that September, she learned Elwyn wouldn’t consider providing a 1-to-1 aide without observing Joshua in his educational environment. But the preschool said he couldn’t return to class unless he had someone there to specifically support him.

At the end of September, when evaluators wrote Joshua’s initial IEP, they documented that they discussed adding an aide to assist Joshua at preschool. But they wrote that because they could not observe Joshua in his educational environment, they did not have enough information to support that recommendation. “[T]he family is in a difficult position,” the team wrote on the IEP, which Chalkbeat has reviewed.

Joshua’s IEP states that he should receive occupational therapy and specialized instruction each week. The law requires services to begin within 14 days. But more than a month after, Joshua still wasn’t receiving services, Halevy said.

Siblings Maya, 3, and Joshua, 4, play at their home in Philadelphia, PA. on Sunday, September 28, 2025.

At the time, Halevy was stretched thin. She was also working to get services for her 2-year-old daughter, who struggled with speech, through the separate early intervention program that serves children up to age 3 run by the city.

For Halevy, sorting out her daughter’s services in the birth to 3 program was simple. Service providers quickly began contacting her and therapists started showing up for sessions. But for her son, nothing.

“One day, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going on with Josh?’ and I start calling every number I had at Elwyn,” said Halevy.

It wasn’t until two more months later, in November, when he finally began to receive occupational therapy, she said recently after reviewing text messages. In December, she said his special instruction began.

Early intervention IEPs not always followed

Elwyn’s Philadelphia program is the largest in the state, serving around 11,000 preschool-age children, according to the most recent data from the 2023-24 school year. The organization first won its contract for early intervention services in Philadelphia in 1998.

But its outcomes for kids are behind the rest of Pennsylvania.

The state requires early intervention programs to report data on how kids progress in certain areas, like social emotional learning and acquiring new skills. State program reports show that for the last five years of data, children in Elwyn’s Philadelphia program have been less likely to progress in all three growth categories compared with the state average.

Margie Wakelin, a senior attorney at the Pennsylvania-based Education Law Center, said her team has assisted more than 80 Philadelphia families in the last year whose kids’ education was disrupted at least in part because they couldn’t access appropriate services from Elwyn. The vast majority of those children, she said, were Black and Brown kids affected by poverty.

Some families hire attorneys to help them access the services they’re entitled to, or get pro bono representation from organizations like the Education Law Center. Many who win their cases get compensatory education, often in the form of money the family can use to pay for services after the case is over.

But that doesn’t make up for lost time as children quickly age out of early intervention. Research shows that children’s brains develop more rapidly between birth to 5 than any other time of their life. Many families, Wakelin said, have also had their children suspended from preschool or made to only attend partial days because of their disabilities.

“It’s such a critical period for kids to have access to high quality education,” said Wakelin. A system that identifies children as needing services but doesn’t follow through, she added, is “really failing our kids.”’

McLister, Elwyn’s CEO, said the organization has learned that, in some cases, children are suspended from their preschool programs because of learning or behavioral needs. “Elwyn is not part of this decision making and often learns about it after the fact,” he said. He added that the organization is developing tools “that will help us understand the frequency in which this happens” and is creating additional resource materials for families.

State reports show that Elwyn’s program is successful in some areas, like evaluating 97% of kids within 60 days, the state-required timeline. But that’s just the first step in what advocates say often becomes a month-long process to get services.

Kimberly Halevy, right, and her son Joshua enjoy treats from an ice cream truck after a recent session with a special instructor.

Though the law is clear that kids should receive services within 14 days of their IEP being written, the state does not publish information on how long kids wait for services after an evaluation, or how many service interruptions they’ll experience when providers are no longer available.

When it comes to Elwyn’s performance, CEO McLister said that students’ growth data does not account for the unique challenges of providing services in Philadelphia. The children Elwyn serves have higher needs than the state average, he said, with higher incidences of developmental delays and a greater prevalence of multiple other challenges, such as limited English proficiency, economic disadvantages, and other social risk factors.

“For younger children, these factors produce more modest gains,” said McLister.

McLister emphasized that Elwyn has been successful in evaluating the vast majority of children on-time, and said the most common reason an evaluation falls outside the 60-day window is a parent cancelling an initial evaluation appointment and needing it to be rescheduled.

He said delays in getting kids services are often the result of scheduling challenges and staffing shortages — 95% of service issues related to speech and language services, he said, are due to a lack of staff. He said other delays occur when families move or change their child’s preschool enrollment, and when providers return kids to the “needs list,” meaning they stop service for that child, which happens “for a variety of reasons.”

For Joshua, getting a consistent special instructor, a position meant to support Joshua’s learning, has been impossible, Halevy said. Her text history, which she reviewed recently, documents the challenges: The first special instructor who contacted her never visited and stopped responding to texts, she said. The next person was more helpful and saw Joshua a few times, but then abruptly quit. Now, after more than a month of no special instruction, a new provider comes mostly regularly, Halevy said.

Access to occupational therapy has been slightly better, Halevy said. For the first several months of service, Joshua’s occupational therapist showed up inconsistently and seemed rushed, Halevy said. Now, after working out a schedule, she consistently comes around once a week.

Early childhood intervention needs more funding, some say

These and other challenges aren’t unique to Philadelphia families. But preschool operators and early intervention providers say there are particular and longstanding problems in Philly.

Two years ago, Sharon Neilson, former director of the Woodland Academy Child Development Center in West Philadelphia, was part of a group pushing to bring attention to problems in the city’s early intervention program. Council members held a hearing about parents’ challenges accessing services, and Neilson and other providers met with Elwyn.

At the time, Neilson said, she was hopeful that things would improve. But since then, she said, “we’ve actually seen it get worse.”

Neilson, who now works as support staff at Woodland Academy, said of the 22 children enrolled at the preschool, about four currently receive services from Elwyn, and three more are going through the process of getting evaluated.

The preschool helps families navigate the process, in part because submitting required paperwork and scheduling evaluations can create additional barriers, she said. But even with additional help, in her experience it still usually takes months for kids to be evaluated and services to begin, she said.

“I think that’s the saddest thing for me,” Neilson said. “The families are very frustrated because they don’t know what to do — they just know that they need help for their child, but it’s just very hard to navigate.”

Officials say a lack of resources is largely to blame. Over the past decade, the number of preschool-age children in Pennsylvania receiving early intervention services has grown by a third, and funding hasn’t kept up.

Pennsylvania Department of Education spokesperson Erin James said that is why Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed increasing funding for preschool early intervention by $14.5 million in the state budget. However, months past the budget deadline, lawmakers remain at an impasse over the budget and early education providers are further strained.

One provider who contracts with Elwyn said concerning inequities exist in Elwyn’s program. (Chalkbeat is not naming the provider due to her fears of retaliation from Elwyn.) It’s an accepted norm, the provider said, that kids in nicer neighborhoods get picked up for service much faster than those in poorer neighborhoods.

“There’s an access and equity issue across the board,” said the provider. “And that’s exacerbated by the shortage of providers.”

Asked about those access and equity concerns, McLister said that to address some related challenges, this year Elwyn is implementing more targeted training for staff and plans to develop a family resource center. He said the organization has also employed internal speech language pathologists to assign to high-priority cases.

Dotan Halevy, left, plays his guitar with his daughter, Maya, 3, at their home in Philadelphia, PA. on Sunday, September 28, 2025.

When families reach out to Elwyn, McLister said staff provide them with documentation and verbal explanations of how the process works to ensure families understand their rights, next steps, and how to give consent for evaluations.

The organization also periodically notifies providers of historically underserved ZIP codes to encourage providers to serve kids equitably across the city, and includes provisions in its contracts meant to “promote fairness and accountability.” McLister said Elwyn places subcontractors on corrective action plans if the organization “detects patterns of non-acceptance that disproportionately impacts underserved areas.”

As for Halevy, she says her family has gotten relatively lucky. They were able to get Joshua started on an evaluation quickly. And she’s been able to get new therapists when others stop showing up.

But her family’s biggest piece of luck, she said, is that her husband recently got a new job with better health insurance. She plans to use that to get some of the services her kids need. That means she no longer will completely rely on Elwyn.

She just wishes she could erase the months of waiting and worrying about why Joshua’s services took so long to start.

“Basically, what happened is we fell through the cracks,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Esperanza aims to build an ‘opportunity community’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pennsylvania families struggle to feed kids due to SUN Bucks benefit delay

2025-07-31T20:28:39+00:00

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Families across Pennsylvania are still waiting on money meant to help pay for kids’ meals while school is out as the state says it is experiencing “technical difficulties” distributing the funds.

The federally funded SUN Bucks program provides eligible families with $40 per summer month for each child, beginning in June and ending in August. An announcement last week from Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration said 1.3 million children are expected to qualify for the benefit this summer.

The program website initially said that the state would begin issuing the benefit in mid-July, and that families could expect to receive the funds by the end of the month.

But with the new school year just weeks away, families have yet to receive those dollars.

The delay has left some parents scrambling to find money and resources to feed their kids, many of whom would usually get meals at school during the school year.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Human Services said the delay was caused by technical difficulties processing student data, which is necessary to determine whether families are automatically eligible for the benefit. The department discovered the problem when testing the system ahead of its planned benefit rollout in July.

The spokesperson said staff have worked to resolve the issue and are now aiming to begin payments starting the week of Aug. 4. As of Thursday, the DHS website said families should expect to receive their funds in mid-August.

Shaquana Sutton, a mom of four who lives in North Philadelphia, said she has had to rely on help from family while she waits for the SUN Bucks.

“I was counting on mid-July, and it never came,” said Sutton. “The kids go back to school August the 25th. You know, they’ll be back in school by time the SUN Bucks come.”

The SUN Bucks program launched last summer with many delays nationwide, including in Pennsylvania. But at the time, Pennsylvania officials told Chalkbeat funds would be distributed sooner the following year.

This year, several states continue to experience delays, according to Kelsey Boone, senior child nutrition policy analyst at the national nonprofit Food Research & Action Center.

But Boone said the more concerning development is that some states opted out of the federal funding for the program altogether this summer. In Tennessee, for example, the program ended this year after Gov. Bill Lee declined to continue the state’s participation.

“While Pennsylvania’s rollout is delayed, the important takeaway is that the state opted in and is working to get those benefits out,” said Boone.

Pennsylvania children who already receive free and reduced-price school meals or other federal food benefits are automatically enrolled in SUN Bucks. Other households that need to apply can do so here by Aug. 31.

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.

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.”

Philadelphia students blast district leaders over response to immigration enforcement fears

2025-02-27T23:34:01+00:00

Philadelphia students, educators, and community members blasted school district leaders Thursday about their response — or lack thereof — to President Trump’s immigration enforcement threats.

Superintendent Tony Watlington did offer some details Thursday about how the district has tried to prepare staff for how to handle immigration enforcement issues. But he did not engage directly with the criticism.

Local school leaders who have publicly criticized Trump administration efforts to remove restrictions on immigration enforcement related to schools have drawn the ire of the White House.

As a result, school superintendents and board members are now confronting a crucial decision: Do they speak up against policies with which they disagree and risk losing vital federal funding or becoming mired in expensive lawsuits? Or do they refrain from making public statements in the hopes of flying under the national radar, and still risk losing federal funding?

The latter has been Philly school leaders’ approach since Trump took office. But community members made clear on Thursday that this strategy has a cost.

“I am tired of my school district constantly making me and those around me feel unimportant,” said Luis Ojeda, an Academy at Palumbo student, who told district leaders that he was born in the U.S. and his parents are immigrants. “Kids are in class, worried for their parents and for themselves, and can’t focus. … We need to know what you will do to protect us.”

Dajana Qoshlli, a 14-year-old freshman at Central High School, tearfully told board members that they “had failed to do the bare minimum” and were not living up to their stated values. Fear and uncertainty about immigration arrests is “causing parents to not send their children to schools anymore” and is impacting student attendance rates, Qoshlli said.

It’s unclear from recent attendance data obtained by Chalkbeat the extent to which there is at least a correlation between recent changes in immigration enforcement and student absences district-wide. Board member Wanda Novales asked Watlington to report such attendance data to the board.

“By choosing to not take a side, you are still choosing a side,” Nina Chen, another Palumbo student, told board members.

Watlington did not offer a direct response to the student speakers but did give a cursory overview of the district’s school safety protocol.

School staff who encounter immigration enforcement agents are to immediately contact the district’s general counsel, “obtain documentation” if they have the necessary signed subpoena or warrant, and “await further direction.” Staff are then to convene a safety team meeting and complete an incident report, Watlington said.

“We are certainly committed to maintaining safe and welcoming schools,” Watlington said.

Watlington said the district has held training sessions for principals and assigned a mandatory online course for all school district employees. He added “schools that have a greater concentration of impacted students are getting additional touches,” but did not elaborate.

There have been no confirmed incidents of federal immigration enforcement at Philadelphia schools. However, rumors about Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity have proliferated on social media, inciting fear in immigrant communities.

Pennsylvania Acting Education Secretary Carrie Rowe told lawmakers this week that she was aware of confirmed reports of ICE agents “not within the schools, but in their vicinity” in recent weeks.

In Chicago, charter school administrators said Thursday that an adult accompanying two students was detained by federal immigration enforcement officials during school dropoff.

The board also approved a resolution opposing the congressional GOP budget proposal, which district officials said would result in cuts of $82.2 million for the district if it’s enacted.

“The loss of these federal funds will have an enormous impact on all of our nation’s elementary and secondary school students, particularly those from low-income families, English language learners, and students with disabilities who attend high-poverty schools that have historically been underfunded,” the resolution states.

District releases toolkit for immigrants, refugees

After much public pressure, the school district released an immigrant and refugee toolkit earlier this month that lays out the state and federal laws protecting student data.

This toolkit also reiterates that “schools are prohibited from providing any outside agency, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD), with any information from a student’s school ﬁle unless required by a judicially issued subpoena or exigent circumstances exist.”

The toolkit also doubles down on the district’s support of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

A petition circulating among Philly educators calls on the district to hold “Know Your Rights” workshops for students and families to disseminate information, and to require “clear action plans” from school staff and administrators to “prepare for ICE interactions at school, and how to support students whose caregivers have been detained or deported.”

It also calls for more support for immigrant students, including a “more robust newcomer program,” additional bilingual counseling assistants, and the revival of the district’s Multilingual Assessment Center, which advocates say has been dismantled.

District teacher Kurt Ostrow said the district has required some schools to cancel some “Know Your Rights” training in recent weeks.

Ostrow said he was “troubled” to hear that: “I just can’t understand why in a democracy our public schools wouldn’t want students to know their rights.”

Here is the district’s response to frequently asked questions about its immigration response, according to the immigrant and refugee toolkit:

Can a school or staff person inquire or report a student’s immigration status to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)? No.

Does the District participate in immigration enforcement? No. The District does not conduct, participate, or enforce immigration actions.

What should I do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents come to my school? Advise the agent that before proceeding with their request school personnel must ﬁrst notify and receive direction from the Oﬃce of General Counsel. DO NOT Provide any information about students, families, or staff unless directed by the Office of General Counsel. The Principal or designee must immediately contact the Office of General Counsel at (215) 400-4120 (It may ring up to 8 or more times depending on the time of day. Do not hang up, it will reach an attorney).

What should I do if federal immigration agents request to enter the school to speak to a particular student? School staff would follow District policy on questioning of students by law enforcement or other lawful authorities. These guidelines include verification and documentation of the interviewer and parental notification efforts. The School administration should contact the Office of General Counsel at (215) 400-4120, to obtain necessary legal advice on how to proceed in compliance with state and federal law.

Are school Safety Officers required to enforce immigration laws or participate with ICE actions? School Safety Officers should not take action to assist or to impede immigration enforcement actions. If a School Safety Officer encounters an ICE agent on school grounds they should alert the school administrator.

This story has been updated to reflect the board’s vote to approve the resolution regarding the congressional GOP budget proposal.

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

Philly students and families are stuck in a ‘decade of stalled progress,’ report says

2025-02-25T20:52:01+00:00

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Philadelphia families and children are mired in an underresourced and bureaucratically complex system that is not meaningfully meeting their needs and hasn’t been for a decade, according to a far-reaching new report authored by education advocacy group Children First.

Children First researchers examined ten years of data from the city’s school district, early childhood sector, child health care field, juvenile justice space, and more, and determined Philly families have been stuck in a “decade of stalled progress.”

As of this year, the report found:

An estimated 47% or 152,000 children in the city came from families who were struggling financially to meet their needs.
Some 65% of students did not pass third grade reading assessments, while 3 in 5 eighth graders didn’t pass the state standardized math test.
The number of children starting school without the required vaccinations has increased fourfold.
More than 48% of young people report feeling sad or depressed, and over 67,700 children need access to mental health services.

“We were pretty shocked by what we found,” Donna Cooper, executive director of Children First, said at an event at the school district’s headquarters on Tuesday. “We were surprised when we looked back over the decade that the economic condition of families has worsened by and large.”

The report comes at a time when the Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal funding from school districts, considered deep cuts to Medicaid, and boosted Republican-led plans to gut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, among other government cost-cutting efforts.

“All of that will make the lives of children worse,” Cooper said. “As there’s a national conversation about ‘Is the federal government doing too much?’ Looking at the reality that children face in Philadelphia, the answer is a resounding no. It’s not doing enough.”

Parents like Regina Brown experience the reality of those data points every day. In January, one of Brown’s sons was sent to a juvenile detention center on a gun charge. She said she fought for years to get him services in the school district to help him deal with his learning disabilities and emotional challenges but was unsuccessful. Now, she said, she’s fighting to see him returned to her home safely.

“I felt like they were just tired of him and wanted him out of the school,” Brown said at Tuesday’s event. “I want him to understand that he made bad choices, but he’s not a bad person. That he can come back from it.”

Here are some of the takeaways from the report:

Student demographics are changing

There are fewer Black and white children living in the city now than in 2014 — though Black children still represent the largest child demographic — and the number of Hispanic and Asian American children has grown.

Hispanic children are the fastest growing group of newcomers to Philadelphia. The report determined there are nearly 10,500 more Hispanic children in Philadelphia since 2014 – an increase from 20% to 24% of the child population. The number of public school children whose first language is Spanish increased by 51% since the 2018 school year, according to district data.

That has meant the demand for district language resources, translation, and Spanish-speaking support staff has risen sharply while the supply has struggled to keep pace. Immigrant rights advocates are expected to bring these concerns to the school board meeting on Thursday as the Trump administration’s focus on deportations continues to cause fear and confusion in Philly communities.

Hundreds of thousands of Philly children live in poverty

Nearly half of the city’s children come from families who can’t afford to meet their needs without going into debt, the report found. An estimated 110,852 public school students, or 54% of the city’s student body, live in poverty — enough to nearly fill two of the city’s sports arenas, according to the report.

Despite an overall decrease in the percentage of students living in poverty in the last nine years, the number of children who rely on SNAP benefits has increased by 7,500 children since 2019. Similarly, the number of children benefitting from the federal government’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, reached a five-year high of 31,619 in 2024. Those benefit programs have been targeted by the Trump administration for cuts.

The number of children experiencing homelessness has nearly doubled, reaching a high of 5,799 in the 2024 school year, according to the report, though community groups say they identified more than 10,000 homeless students last year.

Philly students are struggling academically

Students are also still recovering academically from the school closures during the COVID pandemic. The report states 65% (8,044) of third graders in the city’s traditional public elementary schools cannot read proficiently. State test score results and national test data bear this out.

The schools with the fewest students who can pass the reading test overwhelmingly serve the city’s highest-poverty communities, the report found. Meanwhile, in the two traditional public elementary schools with the highest income rates, Greenfield and Meredith schools, nearly all third graders passed the standardized reading test.

But there were some small bright spots: Hispanic students surpassed their pre-pandemic math achievement levels, and fourth grade math scores improved — a trend Superintendent Tony Watlington has linked in part to the district’s investments in new curriculum.

Philly high schools’ career and technical education programs — which mostly serve students from low-income backgrounds and have bipartisan support from state lawmakers — are also struggling to meet community demand, according to the report’s findings.

The number of Philadelphia students in CTE programs fluctuated but “virtually saw no change” over the last decade, researchers found. Meanwhile, more than 200 of the state’s teacher vacancies are for CTE positions, and an estimated 27,000 students are on CTE waitlists, according to the report.

Students’ mental and physical health is a pressing issue

Among the most pressing issues affecting students in and out of the classroom is their physical and mental health.

One in five children experience a mental, emotional, or behavioral health disorder, the report states. City students who considered and attempted suicide in the past year continued to rise post-COVID, the researchers found.

Donna Fields, a school nurse at Franklin Learning Center, public school parent, and parent advocate with Children First, said she’s seen an increase in students having panic attacks, nosebleeds, and other anxiety-related issues exacerbated in part by school classrooms that are at times, stiflingly hot, overcrowded, and poorly ventilated.

“Physical alterations are just the norm at this point,” Fields said.

Cooper also raised a growing concern about children’s disease immunity and the impact that politics has had on children’s vaccination rates. From 2015 to 2024, the non-medical vaccine exemption rate of Philadelphia kindergarteners quadrupled, from 0.6% to 2.4%, according to the report.

“The appointment of RFK Jr. presents an entirely new challenge for the Philadelphia School District,” Cooper said. Robert Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic, was confirmed to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this month.

The early childhood field can’t meet families’ needs

Starting to address these systemic issues begins with the youngest learners, advocates and experts said at the Tuesday event. While Philly’s free preschool programs provide opportunities to thousands of children, many families have found them confusing and difficult to navigate, and chronic staffing shortages have limited the access and availability of high-quality prekindergarten.

According to the report, child care providers have had to close classrooms and turn away 3,855 children in 2024 because they don’t have enough staff. Tiffany Chavous, CEO of Somerset Academy Early Learning Center, said she’s been trying to open a new classroom to meet the demand but hasn’t been able to find enough educators and caregivers to staff it.

The report found infant care costs in Philadelphia increased by 22%, and toddler care rose 20% from 2013 to 2024. In 2024, the average family spent almost 24% of their household budget on infant care, more than three times the federal recommendation of 7%.

Recommendations: Spend more money on schools and social services

The Children First report calls for a wide-ranging combination of state and local investments as state lawmakers begin their budget negotiation process.

For the school district, the report recommends investing in teacher training programs, classroom supplies, high-impact tutoring, reducing class sizes, and reaching out to engage families.

Parents who spoke at the event called for the district to reduce bureaucracy, simplify the processes to find good schools and get students enrolled, improve its communication, and provide more direct services to meet young people where they are. Parents said Tuesday they want more case managers, social workers, translators, and school staff to support them and their children.

Parent Donna Fields said from her perspective as a nurse, the district needs new school facilities that are safe, comfortable, and free of environmental hazards.

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

Early childhood is ‘magic’ for this Philadelphia school leader

2025-02-18T20:30:08+00:00

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There are days when Patricia Houston comes home exhausted and emotionally drained from her job as Director of Children’s Community School, a nonprofit preschool and early childhood education center in a racially diverse but rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of West Philadelphia.

Then, she’ll reach into her pocket and find … a random piece of cheese. And the stress melts away.

“Every day you go home with some weird stuff in your pocket,” Houston said. “There are so many rewards and so much magic in it.”

Houston has been working in the early childhood and early intervention field for some 27 years at different schools and in different roles. She’s been a babysitter, nanny, teacher, assistant director, and now a director. She approaches her job with a focus on nurturing children’s social-emotional development.

Paying attention to that social-emotional development has taken on a new urgency in recent weeks. Houston said her school community comprises many LGBTQ+ families who are watching the new Trump administration attempt to remake education to reflect conservative values and target anything under the umbrella of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

For Houston, maintaining her school as a safe haven for her students became paramount.

Post-COVID, Houston said a lot of her fellow educators and even the school’s leadership were burnt out and wanted to leave the field. Houston briefly considered stepping away herself but then she got asked to consider staying on as the new director.

“I didn’t say absolutely. I was hesitant,” Houston said.

If she had it her way, Houston would be an anthropologist, traveling around the world to study how different cultures nurture their children. But these days, she’s found there’s a lot to learn in her own backyard.

As a Black woman serving a mostly white student body, Houston said, “It’s actually felt somewhat empowering to be in a community where we could have these conversations,” about race and equity in a way that is productive and not “shame-y,” she said.

Patricia Houston is the director of Children's Community School in West Philly.

And she is endlessly inspired by the educators around her who are also working to build a stable home in a rapidly changing society.

“How invested the teachers are is something that is really rare, and it’s really special,” she said. “It’s really powerful to see that in action. That’s what kept me here.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What has your experience been like as a director of a school?

I never in my life thought about being a director of a school. I just love working with kids and being in the classroom and playing with them and engaging them.

The school was in a transitional phase following COVID. This has been pretty typical in [early childhood education], where a lot of a lot of veterans in the field said “Oh, I’m going to go explore somewhere else a little bit.” COVID was a big burnout for a lot of people. One thing that motivated me to stay during that turnover period was how important it is to keep quality preschools open, to build and empower educators to be inspired to fight for this basic right of children to have access to safe havens that offer quality care.

Part of what also motivated me to stay is that it was something familiar. I grew up in a very large family, and my parents died when I was younger, and so from the time I was a teen, I was co-raising my siblings with my other siblings. My siblings are doing so great now, so I know that there’s an outcome [for all kids], and it’s far away, but it’s not so far.

How is your school community doing? Especially in light of the Trump administration’s executive orders targeting “gender ideology” and any school subjects they deem “woke.”

I just have this really strong belief in this community. Everybody’s been working together, putting their resources together. I think it’s a really beautiful thing.

[The executive orders] are on our minds. We’ve talked about it loosely as far as what the next steps might be to protect the space for children and families. We’ve already begun making steps to plan to ensure everyone’s safety. I think it is something else that’s motivating each of us to push harder to make sure that our space is stabilized so that no matter what happens, we can keep coming together as a community.

Some things that we have done that are going to help with this are creating more clear channels of communication in the school, working together as a team to do a lot of reparative and [restorative] work, just making sure we’re mentally prepared, and we have plans in place. There’s only so much we can control.

The school’s neighborhood in West Philly is also rapidly gentrifying. What have conversations been like about how the community is changing?

The school is predominantly white, and we’re trying to diversify. It’s interesting because we have a school around the corner that’s predominantly Black, and they’re working on diversifying the opposite way.

Myself and their director, we’ve met and have tentatively planned some events where we’re sharing a yard together, or the kids from here are going on a field trip to their school and vice versa.

I’m not sure if this is specific to West Philly, but I think that it is something that has a West Philly vibe, is that some of the parenting styles are a little bit more permissive, free, and less structured, in a sense. The children are given more autonomy.

What’s been interesting about it, and how it links to social-emotional development, is that for some of these children, when they’re coming into school, I notice “Oh, this child is actually seeking some boundaries.” I’ve observed that many of the children need a bit more scaffolding to understand how to be in community with others. So we try to keep our classrooms more free and open and play-based, but also recognize we need to set a firm boundary there. That is why their behavior is escalating, because they need to know, this is where you can stop. There’s a balance of what each of those children need, and we try to keep both of those worlds available in the same classroom.

Have you noticed behavioral changes since COVID? We’ve heard many pandemic babies and toddlers are having a hard time adjusting to social settings.

Most of the children need a lot more social-emotional support than pre-COVID. There’s a lot more anxiety behaviors. Children are going to feed off of the energy of what’s around them.

We do work really hard to make sure we’re noticing how kids are internalizing the world around them and any events that are happening. We’ll send out information to the families saying, “So this event just happened, and this is how you can talk about this with your child.”

When Trump was elected, some people were not happy about that. And so some kids were like, “Now, a bad guy is running our country?” And so having conversations with the kids about, well, what is a bad guy? Explaining that nobody’s really a bad guy, but people can make decisions where they’re not thinking about others.

We say there’s a lot of people who are going to protest, and they’re going to say, “We don’t like that decision that you made. We have a different idea. Listen to our different idea.” And the person might listen or they might not. We just try to break things down to their level. We want to make sure that they don’t think that they’re living in an unsafe world.

During COVID, we talked about so many things with the kids about what was going on in the world, and helping them internalize it. It’s a lot that they’re taking in, and it is forming how they’re thinking about the world.

What brings you joy during turbulent times?

I’m an outdoor person. I love to be outdoors. I hike a lot. I go on hiking and camping trips quite often. I always spend time in nature. I hula hoop. And I reflect a lot. I always think it’s important to be aware of the emotional tolls of what you’re doing and to be able to name them and realize what the origin of some of the stress is and come up with a plan for how you’re going to navigate it. And really knowing what my values are and what I’m grounded in.

The work is so rewarding, and to me, it feels like the most important work in the world. I do focus on that. When you help a child through a very complex behavior or challenging behavior, you’re guiding a kid through something to get an outcome, and then seeing that outcome and the rewards that it has for the child and the family and a child’s social interactions with their peers. There’s just something so great about that because I know that that is going to help change their life forever. As an ECE teacher, you don’t see the kids when they’re grown up. You don’t always know the impact that you might have had on a child.

There’s so much magic in this field. If you’re taking little kids on walks, or you’re going outside with them as a grownup, you rediscover the world every day. You’re constantly reminded as you’re showing it to them, like, this is amazing. This is cool. That is awesome, how the clouds are doing that.

Is there anything you would change or improve about the early childhood space?

One thing in this field is that you don’t really get paid much, and that is a huge emotional toll. I remember a long time ago, having a workshop through school where somebody came in and said, “You don’t get paid a lot in this field, and here’s some ways that you can budget your money, and here’s some tips to help you.” And I think that’s something that would be helpful for early childhood educators to have a little bit more of.

There’s been times throughout the years where financially, I’m like, this is just not sustainable. But my heart is just in it. I just know it’s my purpose to be in this field.

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

Students, parents express anxiety over potential ICE arrests in Kensington

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

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

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

Leer en español

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fear about ICE arrests rises in Kensington

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

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

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

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

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

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

ICE can enter schools using certain warrants

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

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

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

Resources

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

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

These local organizations are also providing frequent updates.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philadelphia school officials urged to add more teacher training amid ICE raid fears

2025-01-31T00:09:38+00:00

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Parents, students, and community members urged Philadelphia’s Board of Education and school district officials to share more information and resources regarding the Trump administration’s threat of immigration raids and its policies targeting transgender people.

“Your required teacher training for how to engage with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is useless,” former teacher Alisha Davis told board members at its monthly meeting Thursday evening. Davis said she participated in the district’s training in 2022 but has forgotten most of the training. She said all the district’s teachers need a refresher.

In the wake of the president’s order clearing the way for immigration arrests at schools, rumors about ICE agents being spotted near various city schools have run rampant on social media and in Philadelphia parent groups.

District spokespeople said all of those reports were false. A few educators granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of their comments told Chalkbeat they are receiving messages from some of their students who say they are afraid to come to school and are asking if their absences would be excused.

On Thursday, Watlington reiterated the district’s policy that it will adhere to the 2021 sanctuary schools resolution enacted to protect students and families from arrests by ICE agents on or near school property.

Superintendent Tony Watlington reiterated the district's support for immigrant students at Thursday's school board meeting.

“The district will comply with required laws, and school leaders have been provided guidance about how to protect our immigrant students’ rights,” Watlington said.

He said all school staff are instructed to immediately contact the district’s general counsel office, obtain the necessary subpoena or warrant documentation from ICE agents, and “await further direction.”

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

Families are encouraged to update all emergency contact information for their students.

“The federal government has promised to deport some of our students and deny the humanity of others. So our schools really need to do more in their defense,” Central High School teacher Tom Quinn told board members. He was also referring to Trump administration orders targeting the rights of transgender people in schools. “The district needs to immediately retrain all employees on these policies and to give our students and families the assurance they need to send their kids into our care.”

Vaux Big Picture High School student Matias Merino told board members that students also need more mental health resources to deal with the onslaught of uncertainty. Students and teachers “want to be prepared for the worst situations in the coming years,” Merino said.

Charter school owes the district $30 million

Representatives from West Philadelphia Achievement Charter Elementary’s school community spoke at Thursday’s meeting in defense of their school.

According to a December order from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, WPACES owes the district some $30 million for enrolling hundreds of students more than its agreed-upon cap of 400 students as written in its charter, which remains unsigned by the school. According to the latest available data, WPACES currently has 653 students enrolled.

Stacy Gill Phillips, founder and CEO of WPACES, testified Thursday that “we formally requested the additional students” and kept the district informed of their enrollment trends for years but struggled to get a meeting with district officials.

“The district ignored the request. We asked for a meeting to resolve the issue. No response,” Phillips said. “Taxpayers should not be forced to pay the school district $30 million for students it did not educate. WPACES spent those funds on the children’s education, and that should not be an issue of litigation.”

Board President Reginald Streater said Thursday that “we recognize the significance of this matter for both the charter school and the school district and remain open to discussions through the proper mechanisms in consideration of all issues at hand.”

A dangerous and unsafe field at Olney High School

Dozens of students, school staff, and parents at the meeting advocated for much-needed improvements to Olney high school’s football field and athletic complex. Student athletes told board members that the fields are riddled with holes, are unsafe, and students don’t have access to bathrooms or fresh water.

“We run on dirt instead of an actual track,” Olney student Anthony Pugh said.

Brandon Holub, football and track coach at Olney, said the lack of security around the fields has meant students are unsafe when practicing in the evenings and have had their equipment stolen.

This past football season, Holub said, he was holding a practice session when “eight grown men” approached them on the field.

“They were looking for one of my athletes. I asked them why they were there. They said they were there to beat up the student,” Holub said. “There was nothing stopping these individuals from harming our athletes and staff. No fences, no cameras.”

Drones for student safety

One of the more controversial contracts the board approved Thursday night was for $38,000 to Influential Drones LLC to purchase drones to monitor students at dismissal and special events.

The district’s Drone Patrol Program started in January 2023 at John Bartram High School. Since then, five students have become certified and received paid internships with the district’s school safety office to monitor football games, according to district reports.

According to the contract, the district’s school safety office will measure success by reporting the number of schools using the drones and any year-over-year change in “serious incidents at schools, and athletics and special events supported by the program.”

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

Philadelphia school leaders say they have protocols for immigration enforcement in Trump era

2025-01-22T22:12:44+00:00

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Philadelphia school officials reiterated their support for immigrant students after the Trump administration rescinded protections that kept federal immigration enforcement agents from targeting schools and other “sensitive” locations.

According to Nathalie Nérée, the district’s chief of special education and diverse learners who spoke at a City Council “Trump preparedness” hearing Wednesday, officials are leaning on the school district’s 2021 sanctuary schools resolution that’s designed to protect students and families from immigration arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on or near school property.

Nérée said protocol for school staff is to immediately contact the district’s general counsel, “obtain documentation” from ICE agents if they have the necessary subpoena or warrant, and “await further direction.”

The district has also “developed a comprehensive immigrant and refugee toolkit to guide staff on handling immigration related concerns,” she said. It is also providing ongoing professional development for teachers, administrators, and other school personnel about how to respond to ICE agents, Nérée said, who added that the district is still analyzing the orders from President Donald Trump.

Shortly after taking office Monday, Trump issued an executive order declaring that sensitive spaces like schools, churches and hospitals were no longer protected from immigration enforcement actions except in cases of imminent public danger. As a result, advocates are urging school officials nationwide to clarify what they plan to do if ICE agents try to operate in or near school buildings.

Further details about the district’s plans had not been shared by spokespeople as of Wednesday. But questions about the city’s preparedness for stepped-up immigration enforcement only intensified after Mayor Cherelle Parker announced Wednesday that Amy Eusebio had resigned from her job as the head of Philadelphia’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.

On Wednesday, City Council members pressed the district, noting immigration raids could begin imminently.

“How will the school district of Philadelphia respond to people knocking on school doors and trying to take children?” Councilmember Anthony Phillips asked district representatives. “How soon do you think the school district will have an adequate response to something of that nature?”

Concerns about Philadelphia schools’ response to immigration enforcement have persisted for some time. In 2021, the immigrant rights group Juntos released a survey showing that 75% of Philly educators “had no training” in how to respond if ICE came to schools.

The 2021 Philadelphia Board of Education’s sanctuary schools resolution also directed the superintendent to develop a plan within 100 days to inform and train teachers, administrators and staff how to respond to ICE, should they ask about students or enter school property.

“We have created a detailed emergency response plan to safeguard the emotional, physical and well-being of our students who may be affected by federal immigration enforcement actions,” Nérée told the City Council.

Strawberry Mansion High School Principal Jeannine Payne said that the issue of ICE agents came up last week at the district principals’ regular January meeting, where Nérée “made it clear you are not to let them in the school” without specific warrants.

But Payne said she would feel more assured if she had more information on “what is my script, what recourse do I have” to effectively deal with someone who presents themselves as a government official. “I hope there’s a plan to better equip us,” Payne said.

Erika Guadalupe Núñez, executive director of Juntos, told the City Council on Wednesday that the district has failed to follow its own policies and protect its immigrant families as called for under its 2021 sanctuary resolution.

“I’m here to address the district’s failure to fully implement sanctuary schools and the serious consequences this has for our community,” she told City Council members. “To this day, none of these proposed measures [from 2021] have been fully implemented, leaving our community even more vulnerable than we were five years ago.”

Since 2016, Philadelphia has designated itself as a sanctuary city. That means the Philadelphia Police Department does not collaborate with ICE agents in sharing information, arresting, or detaining undocumented immigrants.

At the same time, Philadelphia schools have not been totally immune from federal immigration enforcement.

In 2020, ICE agents arrested a mother outside of her child’s South Philly school. And in 2023 a school principal threatened to have a student and his family deported. The school district ultimately entered into a settlement regarding the principal’s actions and promised to provide more staff training.

Philly families have not necessarily been assuaged by the district’s protocols.

“There are immigrant families that have called and made [us] aware they are scared to take their children to school,” said Rosanna Matos, early learning program engagement specialist for the early childhood education advocacy group First Up.

Matos urged council members to consider protections for prekindergarten providers and child care centers which are also losing their sensitive status due to Trump’s executive order.

Sim Loh, public policy specialist with the early education group First Up, also raised concerns about how the Trump administration’s policies could exacerbate early childhood staffing challenges.

“We have educators from mixed-status families who say they might want to leave the field,” Loh told council members.

Kristina Moon, a senior attorney with the Education Law Center PA, told council members that all traditional public and charter schools “must commit to comprehensive training” about immigration policies.

“We are hearing from immigrant and LGBTQ+ students that they fear for their safety and worry their schools will not protect them,” Moon said.

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

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

After feds find poor response to antisemitic incidents, Philadelphia district agrees to changes

2024-12-19T23:42:47+00:00

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A federal investigation has determined that the Philadelphia school district has not adequately addressed incidents of antisemitism and other examples of “harassment based on shared ancestry” that occurred in and around schools recently.

In a resolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights stemming from a complaint filed by some parents and Jewish organizations in May, the district agreed to publicly declare its intolerance of harassment and discrimination on its website, post a statement in every school, and review and revise its anti-harassment policies by Jan. 9.

The district must also send the revised policies to all school administrators, who must “distribute, convene, and discuss the revised policies and procedures with site-based staff.” It must also train staff annually, and provide age-appropriate training and information on racial and ethnic discrimination to all students in grades 6-12.

The agreement underlines growing tension and hostility inside and outside of Philadelphia classrooms surrounding the Israel-Hamas war that began in October of last year. Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian educators and families have repeatedly demanded the district and board of education do more to protect students and teachers experiencing harassment for any protected views.

In the agreement, the federal government noted that Philadelphia school leaders can and should take more direct action than they have so far. Officials with the Office for Civil Rights said the district “refused or failed to produce” some vital information regarding its handling of the complaints.

“In all incidents, the District did not provide any documentation showing that anyone at the school or at the District assessed whether the incident created or contributed to a hostile environment on the basis of shared ancestry,” the resolution agreement letter reads.

The district also appears not to adequately collect records of such incidents, as required under federal law.

In response, officials issued a statement saying the district “strives to create welcoming and inclusive environments that allow our students to feel safe and heard. The District takes all complaints of bullying, harassment, and discrimination seriously, including allegations of Antisemitism and Islamophobia.”

The statement continues, “OCR has recognized areas where the District has shown its commitment to this important work and also identified areas needing additional attention and improvement. The voluntary resolution agreement outlines ways in which the District will continue to improve upon its processes.”

Though officials redacted the names of specific individuals and schools in the agreement, details appear to refer to several far-reaching complaints made against various educators, district officials, and students across the district and on social media. These include actions taken by three pro-Palestinian teachers at Baldi Middle School, swatstikas drawn on Masterman school property, and a school project about Palestinan solidarity and resistance art in Northeast High School teacher Keziah Ridgeway’s class.

The incidents cited range from allegations of students shouting “heil Hitler” at Jewish students and teachers in various schools, to a student calling a Jewish student antisemitic slurs and putting that student in a headlock and throwing them into a trash can.

There are also complaints about a Jewish student allegedly being falsely accused of “trashing” the school prayer room and “verbally assaulting Muslim girls who were inside,” and a concern from one teacher about a school district official wearing a Palestinian flag pin, among other instances.

In announcing the agreement, OCR issued a statement saying that the district did not demonstrate that it fulfilled its obligation under Title VI — the federal statute that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin — to “evaluate whether a hostile environment existed” or that it “took steps reasonably designed to eliminate any such hostile environment and prevent its recurrence.”

Notably, the agreement does not address a separate OCR complaint brought by three teachers at Baldi Middle School. That complaint alleges that leaders at their school have discriminated against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, infringed on the free speech rights of those supporting Palestinian people, and improperly disciplined educators who have publicly offered support for Palestinian rights.

Pro-Palestinan speakers, including many Jewish students and parents, have congregated at every school board meeting since the summer to demand that the board and district take complaints about anti-Palestinian incidents as seriously as they take complaints about antisemitism.

Andrew Goretsky, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Philadelphia branch — which brought the original complaint — said in a statement Thursday the agreement is “a vital acknowledgment of the challenges faced by students and their families.”

“We are hopeful that the district’s commitment to implementing much-needed measures will create a more inclusive environment where Jewish students, and indeed all students, can feel safe and supported in Philadelphia schools,” Goretsky said. “We look forward to seeing these commitments realized.”

This story has been updated to include a comment from the Anti-Defamation League.

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

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

Philly schools traumatized by opioid crisis use settlement money to remind kids ‘they’re special’

2024-12-05T11:00:00+00:00

This story was reported in partnership with Kensington Voice and made possible by the Philadelphia Journalism Collaborative.

Kensington’s Willard Elementary School is getting its first playground. It’s also getting something less whimsical: a bullet-resistant fence.

Both have an unusual funding source: drug companies that fueled the opioid crisis in the school’s backyard.

Willard Principal Diana Garcia said that every child across Philadelphia should get 30 minutes of play time outside. But students in Kensington miss out. The neighborhood lacks safe, green spaces. Instead, face-to-face with the city’s opioid crisis in one of its most impoverished neighborhoods, students are surrounded by gun violence, drug use, trash, and used needles.

Garcia has a blunt way of putting the situation: Kids in Kensington “don’t have basic human rights.” But the play space will help “students feel safe, reminding them that they are kids, that they’re special,” she said.

The crisis that schools in the neighborhood are enduring and trying to redress is traumatizing students. As drugs have ravaged the community, many families have chosen to send their kids to schools outside the neighborhood.

Enrollment in the district as a whole has dropped by about 16% since 2013. But the fall has been even more steep in Kensington schools: Enrollment at Russell Conwell Middle School, for example, fell by 80% from 2014 to 2023. Willard’s enrollment has dropped by half.

Staff and students leave Frances E. Willard Elementary School after dismissal.

Six schools in Kensington are purchasing a variety of improvements using money from multiple lawsuits filed by state and local governments against drug manufacturers and distributors for their role in generating the opioid crisis. They’re using the money to pay for safety fencing, a new fitness center, playground updates, a bilingual climate specialist, and more. The school leaders hope these changes will provide more secure and beautiful environments for students who have had to endure so much. They also hope the money will help students succeed in school and beyond.

These Kensington schools are receiving about $333,000 each out of the $20 million that Philadelphia received in 2023. In addition to Willard and Conwell, the schools receiving this funding are Gloria Casarez Elementary School, Lewis Elkin Elementary School, Jules E. Mastbaum High School, and John H. Webster Elementary School.

All six schools enroll mostly Black and Latino students, and 100% of students at these schools are economically disadvantaged.

An initial vote this summer by a state trust overseeing how local governments use opioid settlement dollars said the plan for money earmarked for Kensington schools didn’t comply with national guidelines.

Philadelphia officials defended the plan during an October hearing. Keli McLoyd, director of Philadelphia’s Overdose Response Unit, argued that Kensington children are particularly vulnerable to the risk of opioid use and overdose.

State Sen. Greg Rothman, a Republican who is on the state trust, voted against the Kensington school spending in the summer. But after touring the neighborhood, he said he felt differently.

“If you had asked me this morning how many kids live in Kensington, I would’ve said, ‘There are no kids in Kensington,’” he said. “I just saw [a school] a half a block from where we were walking.”

Ultimately, the state officials reversed course and agreed to the spending on schools. Still, school principals in Kensington say the funding is a drop in the bucket for what students need.

“The kids in this neighborhood deserve every penny that comes their way to make anything better for their lives,” Garcia said. “I don’t know if the folks who make decisions understand what our five to nine year olds have to endure just to make it to school.”

Schools want families to be safer in Kensington

After gathering input from parents, students, and educators, and feasibility studies by the school district, each school devised individual spending plans.

Awilda Balbuena, the principal of Gloria Casarez Elementary, said because the opioid settlement money represented one-time aid, they had to spend on items that don’t require ongoing funding.

Garcia said her number one priority was increasing safety.

In addition to a new playground, Willard is using a large chunk of the settlement money on a new fencing made from material resistant to bullets and high enough to deter trespassing and encampments.

The new fencing, Garcia said, will help make families feel safer “and that’ll help relieve some burdens and some trauma, that will allow them to learn better.”

Casarez Elementary is expanding its playground, replacing cement with AstroTurf, and planting trees in its school yard. It’s also getting a cover over its play structure to protect kids from the rain. The trees and seating underneath will offer respite in a school yard with no shade, said Balbuena.

Balbuena said her families say they don’t go to the nearest park, McVeigh Recreation Center, out of safety concerns. And whenever she asks for feedback from her families, they say, “‘We need a bigger schoolyard. Our kids need a place to play,’” Balbuena said.

Witnessing the schoolyard expand, Balbuena said, “They can feel that their voices were heard. That’s empowering.”

Casarez is also building a sensory wellness room — a space designed to calm kids who are exposed to trauma and chronic stress and students with sensory needs like those with ADHD and autism.

While Balbuena expressed gratitude for the funding, she said it’s not enough.

“I hope no one thinks for one minute that the $2 million that was awarded to the six schools is going to, for one minute, erase what our kids have seen during this opioid epidemic,” Balbuena said. “This is a band aid to an open chest wound.”

Vivian Virola-Romero, the new climate specialist, left, and Principal Sherri Arabia in the office at John H. Webster School.

At Webster Elementary, Principal Sherri Arabia has myriad plans for the settlement money.

Most of the school’s opioid settlement funds is paying for a bilingual climate specialist for the next two years. The role was filled by a climate support staff member, Vivian Virola-Romero, who already has relationships with several parents.

The climate specialist’s overarching goal is to get more parents involved at the school. That includes pulling in more parent volunteers to be in the school building and to act as crossing guards, increasing use of the family resource room, and increasing the 20% attendance rate for back to school night, according to Arabia.

In addition, Virola-Romero will organize so-called “walking buses” — parents that escort groups of students to school and back.

The settlement dollars will turn into gift cards for parents to serve as stipends for helping out. That strategy worked before the pandemic, according to Arabia.

“We’ve been trying to get volunteers, and we have nothing to offer them to volunteer at our school,” she said.

It’s hard to get parents in the building, Arabia said, because “they’re working. A lot of children get picked up by babysitters, grandparents.”

Students head home from Frances E. Willard Elementary School after dismissal.

But Arabia has high hopes for Virola-Romero, who will greet parents as they walk in the building and show them what the school has to offer.

Webster is also using the opioid funds for a Saturday school program. Like the other principals, Arabia said the intent is to give students safe spaces, help them learn a bit more, and “making sure our students are safe and loved,” Arabia said.

Arabia said her plan is to keep the climate specialist position beyond the two years that will be paid for using the opioid settlement money. But it depends on the school’s budget.

Vivian Virola-Romero, the new climate specialist, poses in her office at John H. Webster School.

Money will help students discover careers, healthy habits

Mastbaum High School used to enroll more kids from other parts of the city. No longer.

“We just kind of slipped out of mind with a lot of the community,” Said David Lon, Mastbaum principal.

Mastbaum is funding a new drum line for students. It’s also building a new fitness center in its old locker room. The previous fitness center is full of broken gym equipment. Lon said students need more spaces where they can practice healthy habits.

Mastbaum has also hired three staff members for three years through the Kensington nonprofit 12PLUS. They will help students get jobs, apply to college and financial aid, and provide mentorship for two years after they graduate.

Principal David Lon discusses plans for opioid settlement funding at Jules E. Mastbaum High School's current locker room, which will be transformed into a new fitness center.

The 12PLUS staff will provide the logistical support that many families need, Lon said.

It’s difficult just to get students to graduate, and then Mastbaum mostly loses touch with them once they do, Lon said. So hiring the new staff members is like an “investment in their future.”

“To be able to place a student upon graduation into the Navy shipyard, and right off the bat, they’re making $30 an hour, on a pathway to ... a six-figure salary,” Lon said. “This will be an intensive layer of support to ensure that they are getting critical scaffolds to reach those dreams that they have.”

Overall Lon said his plan for the opioid dollars was aligned with “the spirit of recovery.”

“That’s the spirit of providing beautiful utility to students that walk through a community where many aspects of beauty have been stripped out of it,” Lon said. “And is it all of the money that we would maybe deserve in an ideal universe? Probably not, but it’s a start, and we’re thankful for that start.”

This story has been updated to clarify that the funding was the result of multiple lawsuits by state and local governments.

Pennsylvania changes culturally responsive teaching guidelines, raising concerns

2024-11-27T21:30:17+00:00

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The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s recent decision to rescind guidelines about culturally relevant teaching practices has some Black educators in Philadelphia worried about the impact on teacher recruitment in a district where the student body is already far more diverse than its mostly white teaching force.

Earlier this month, the state settled a lawsuit with a conservative advocacy group by agreeing that prospective and practicing teachers will no longer be required to adhere to guidelines that included developing awareness of how their own “unconscious biases” could affect their approach to teaching and their expectations of students.

The settlement didn’t ban cultural competence training, and the department promptly issued new – albeit optional – guidelines that preserve much of what existed before. The new guidelines also expand the recommended training for teachers to include trauma awareness and technological competencies.

But Black educators in Philadelphia say the settlement agreement has them concerned their state is moving backwards even as members of the incoming Trump administration have threatened to withhold federal aid from districts that engage in any initiatives that could be construed as promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, known as DEI, which is a frequent target of the right.

Crystal Edwards, principal of the W.D. Kelley Elementary School in North Philadelphia, sees the state’s move as yet another attack on learning about and appreciating the history of African Americans – a situation that is only likely to get worse during a Trump administration, she said.

“Teachers don’t have to learn to respect Black children, and America voted for that,” she said.

Aliya Catanch-Bradley, principal of Bethune Elementary School, said that educators must “make sure the history and cultures of students we serve are in the literature and books they read and in the media that surrounds them so they can see themselves in the educational context.”

Leaving culturally-responsive teaching practices up to individual districts “is unfortunate in a state that has so many small districts and a high incidence of book banning of international and multicultural texts,” Catanch-Bradley said.

Sharif El-Mekki, head of the Center for Black Educator Development, said the Pennsylvania settlement could be an unfortunate harbinger of what to expect during a second Trump administration.

“It’s the same playbook they use all around the country,” he said, “they try to erase progress.”

However, districts such as Philadelphia say they will continue to build culturally relevant practices into their professional development programs. Monique Braxton, a spokesperson for the district. said in a statement the old guidelines were “never officially released to school districts to implement.”

Despite the settlement, Braxton said “our curriculum and professional learning will continue to be focused on the implementation of high quality instructional resources to accelerate student achievement … and being inclusive of the students that we serve in Philadelphia.”

Conservative group calls settlement a ‘triumph’

The settlement reached last week was a result of an April 2023 lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Society on behalf of three school districts and several parents and students. The suit challenged the state’s “Culturally-Relevant and Sustaining Education Program Framework Guidelines,” known as CS-RE, which were adopted in November 2022 after a long campaign by the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium.

CS-RE was meant to require school districts to actively consider “what does it mean for underrepresented groups in the state to feel more included in educator systems,” El-Mekki said.

But the lawsuit alleged that the mandated guidelines were part of a “woke” curriculum and violated teacher First Amendment rights. In its complaint, the plaintiffs said that making teachers aware of their “unconscious biases” was a “highly ideological belief” and represented “compelled speech.”

The Thomas More Society described the settlement as a ‘triumph.”

Conservative groups have often gone to court to force changes in education policy, including a campaign to ban any explicit DEI initiatives in school districts and to limit affirmative action in college admission.

The settlement agreement also comes as Philadelphia — and the rest of the country — struggles with a teacher shortage crisis. Philly schools have hundreds of positions still unfilled on a permanent basis months into the school year and another 1,100 teachers with emergency certifications, meaning they are not fully qualified in the subjects or grade levels they are teaching.

One of the drivers of this crisis has been a steady decline in the number and proportion of teachers in Philadelphia who are Black. More than 50% of city students are Black, but less than a quarter of teachers are, and just 4% are Black men – although that number is twice the national figure of 2%.

El-Mekki said that among Black males who go to college, education is among the most popular majors. The problem is that inequities in K-12 education have impacted Black males to a greater degree than other segments of the population. A recent study by the Schott foundation found that while more Black students are graduating from high school, fewer are attending college, especially males.

That, he said, is due in part to how they feel they are treated during their own education.

“There is a reason” that more African Americans don’t go into teaching, El-Mekki said. What they experience during their own schooling makes them less likely to enter the teaching profession themselves. And the attrition rate among Black teachers is higher than for other groups, he said.

“That speaks to how educators of color experience their colleagues and supervisors,” he said. “We all have to take collective responsibility, and not just assume people of color aren’t interested. There are reasons, and we have to be mindful of how we listen and how we act.”

The Center for Black Educator Development has been working for more than a decade to increase the number of Black teachers in the country. The group has run its annual conference in Philadelphia since 2015.

Culturally-responsive teaching is valuable for everyone, Black educators say

Training about cultural differences is valuable for all teachers, not just those who are white. Makiah Burroughs, who is Black, grew up in Philadelphia and attended mostly charters; El-Mekki was her principal at Mastery-Shoemaker. Burroughs said she’s seen the need for culturally responsive teaching firsthand.

During her own schooling in Philadelphia, she said, most of her teachers were white. “A lot of the teachers quit,” she said. “They were overwhelmed. They couldn’t understand the kids.”

Fortunately, she said, her own teacher education at the University of Virginia included training on being culturally aware, which she said was invaluable “in helping me be the best teacher I could be.” Most of the children she worked with during her student teaching were white and from rural areas.

“It was a big process for me, putting all that effort to align with those students in Virginia and being able to understand them culturally, socially, and emotionally,” she said.

Now, Burroughs is a freshly-minted educator, teaching literacy skills to second graders at Mastery Mann Elementary School in West Philadelphia. “To come back to Philadelphia and for culturally relevant training to not be a requirement my state of Pennsylvania seems crazy to me,” she said.

She and other Black educators are wary of what may happen during the second Trump administration.

Ismael Jimenez, the Philadelphia’s director of social studies curriculum, said he feared the Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress could try to use a threat to withhold federal education aid as a “cudgel” on districts that maintain DEI initiatives or continue to promote culturally relevant teaching

The Pennsylvania case making culturally relevant teaching optional, along with a newly emboldened federal government “might create an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship” among educators here, he said.

“The culturally relevant piece, even the symbolism of that history being taught, is a threat to many within the society,” Jimenez said. The “triumph” here, he said referring to the Thomas More society’s statement, seemed to be the right for teachers to avoid being self-aware.

While promoting equitable teaching practices is part of the Philadelphia Board of Education’s Goals and Guardrails, Jimenez noted, the city is “still venturing into the waters” of culturally relevant education.

It did so after discovering that “one of the major concerns of parents and community members” was a lack of cultural sensitivity on the part of some people who work in the district’s schools.

“In a city like Philadelphia half the demographic is Black students,” said Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, Philadelphia’s chief of curriculum. “We can never not teach about who they are. It’s going to make it difficult if there are no spaces to learn about the students you are responsible for educating,”

Edwards, the Kelley principal, did hit on a note of optimism: “We have a long way to go, and we’ve come a long way, and it’s important to acknowledge how many victories we have won.”

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

Philadelphia school district extends funding for students experiencing homelessness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet the hearing highlighted ongoing frustrations with the current system.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Focusing on ‘joy’ in Philly schools will reduce racial discipline disparities, group says

2024-08-07T19:14:31+00:00

A Philadelphia group wants schools to focus more on being places of joy as a way to overhaul the culture in district schools, and it’s relying on parents and community voices for help.

Lift Every Voice, the organization behind this year’s Joy Campaign, is backing the creation of a “joy-based budget” for schools to bolster access to recess, the arts, counselors, and the district’s program to bolster student mental health known as the Support Team for Educational Partnership. The blueprint would also create a Chief of Joy position in the district; in June, the City Council adopted a resolution exploring the creation of this position in Philly schools. The group says this approach to budgeting and community input is crucial for reducing things like disparities in student discipline.

The district has its own federally funded restorative justice program called Relationships First that focuses on student empowerment and engagement. But Lift Every Voice wants its work to be broader by auditing whether collective punishments like enforced quiet times and limited recess in schools contribute to inequities and an anti-Black environment. Parent surveys conducted by Lift Every Voice from earlier this year show that student mental health and school climate and environments are still major concerns that the district must address, the group says.

Ultimately, it envisions schools “as places our kids want to be.”

“The school system is a closed system that doesn’t want to be told what to do and we’re starting to force them to come to grips with our voice that’s not going away,” said Wes Lathrop, Lift Every Voice’s organizing director.

Councilmember Kendra Brooks, who co-sponsored the June resolution, sees the campaign as a way to help schools embrace cultural differences, and as a way to to reduce disparities and biases, including those held by adults.

“We have to find a way to embrace the model and make it part of the normal cultural norms,” Brooks said. “A project we’re taking on has to be embedded. The only way we do that is consistency and sustainability, and oftentimes we haven’t seen that.”

Lathrop sees community involvement in restorative justice as a two-way street, pointing to the importance for all citizens of having students who are well-prepared for the job market and post-graduation life: “Parents can be a real guiding powerful force to really shape the future of the district.”

Susan McLeod, a Philadelphia public schools parent, got involved with Lift Every Voice because of issues her child was facing. She feels crucial decisions are made in the district without any parent involvement, such as announcements of district school closures more than 10 years ago that took her completely off guard. The group has helped her feel empowered on her own and her child’s behalf.

“It’s important for us to lay this foundation for our kids to have a better learning experience as young as elementary school,” McLeod said.

Racial disparities in student discipline represent one particular concern. The district has adopted practices rooted in restorative justice, an approach to discipline that emphasizes conflict mediation between students and other forms of resolving conflicts as alternatives to student suspensions and expulsions.

Overall suspensions have declined in Philadelphia public schools recently: The percentage of students with at least one suspension in a school year has dropped from about 11.5% in 2013 to about 5.7% in 2023. But over that same period, Black and Hispanic students were suspended at higher rates relative to their total enrollment than white students, according to data from the District Performance Office.

The district’s Relationships First initiative started in 2019 and expanded in 2023 to include more schools. It’s focused on developing students as leaders in restorative justice efforts and trains teachers to guide students in that work.

“Folks have the opportunity to engage in restorative conversations … and to be able to provide alternatives to suspension across the entire district,” said Luis Rosario, assistant director of school climate and culture for the district. “I do think it’s a testament to the leadership of our school district to move in that direction.”

These efforts dovetail with another led by Healing Futures. Healing Futures is operated by the nonprofit Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project that receives case referrals from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office in place of a legal charge. In programs that last a minimum of eight weeks with mentor participation, students attend weekly discussions about their values and community and how to take accountability for the harm created by the student’s actions.

“We want to make sure that as many different perspectives of a situation can come into the room and offer their insight and support collectively,” said Hanae Mason, who is shadowing Healing Futures as part of her work as a Stoneleigh Fellow to improve systems serving youth.

Building students’ agency and perspective can take different forms and lead to various outcomes.

Mary Libby, former principal at what’s now the Marian Anderson Neighborhood Academy, worked to introduce restorative justice practices and noticed students taking on more responsibility after formal restorative sessions. Students led the push when the school decided last year to rename itself in honor of singer and local civil rights activist Marian Anderson, Libby said.

“In order for us to collectively move forward in a restorative and inclusive way, we need to trust and let the kids lead that process,” Libby said.

Malachi Grogan, an incoming seventh grader at Anderson who helped lead efforts to change the school’s name, is proud of the trust he has created with his peers where he can now lead restorative or cooling conversations.

“If we talk about it then we can get to know how people are feeling,” Grogan said. “And if we don’t know how people are feeling, how are we supposed to help them?”

Correction, Aug. 8, 2024: This article has been updated to clarify that Healing Futures is not led by the district attorney’s office, but is part of the nonprofit Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project. It receives case referrals from the district attorney’s office but is not part of city government.

In Philadelphia, community violence comes to school

2024-06-18T19:22:47+00:00

This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.

Russell Conwell Middle School is housed in a 98-year-old building in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. The school’s brick walls and locked metal front doors serve as a fortress for its 176 fifth- through eighth-grade students, who are being educated in one of the city’s most dangerous areas.

On a recent day, a few minutes before Conwell’s 2:30 p.m. dismissal time, a handful of Philadelphia Police Department cars swarmed Jasper Street, which borders the school. Officers walked up and down the street peering into the windows of parked cars as students started leaving the school yard. The officers refused to say what they were investigating, but confirmed that it did not involve the school.

Community violence, including gunfire, is often so close that it can be heard from classrooms, said Katoura Jones, 12, a Conwell sixth grader. “When I hear gunshots my anxieties start,” she said, standing outside the school building at dismissal.

On a daily basis, such crime and confusion play out on the streets that border Conwell, a magnet school that draws students from across the city. In May, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker ordered the city to remove encampments erected there by unhoused people and those with addictions. While Parker declared the initial cleanup a success, many who were displaced moved to nearby sidewalks, including those adjacent to the school.

The urban dysfunction swirling around Conwell has resulted in its having a national distinction: the school with the most shootings near its building during the last ten years — 386. Using the Gun Violence Archive, The Trace analyzed shootings within 500 yards of schools nationwide from 2014 through 2023 and found that five of the top 10 schools were in the School District of Philadelphia.

The five Philadelphia schools among the nation’s 10 nearest to the most gunfire are all in Kensington, home to one of the nation’s largest open-air drug markets and homeless populations. They are the extremes, and even schools significantly further down the list are located near regular bursts of gunfire.

“I’ve often said that Kensington is extremely violent, and is probably one of the most violent pockets in America,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said, referring to the area as the “opioid corridor,” during an interview with The Trace.

A week later, on June 10, Bethel announced that 75 officers recently graduated from the Police Academy would soon be deployed to Kensington as part of Parker’s recent public safety plan.

Russell Conwell Middle School has a national distinction: It's the school with the most shootings near its building during the last ten years.

“I’ve watched what has happened to our children down there. Our kids cannot play in that area,” Bethel said during the news conference at police headquarters. “Our kids cannot walk to school down there.”

Then, he commented on this story. “There was a report by The Trace ... that Conwell Middle School and Willard (Elementary School) … are No. 1 and No. 3 in the nation with having the highest level of shootings around their schools,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, that’s absolutely unacceptable.”

The violence takes a toll on these schools in ways both sudden and gradual. Bethel, who oversaw school district security from 2019 until he became police commissioner, noted that Conwell’s once 800-plus student body has dwindled to a quarter of its size, while at Frances E. Willard Elementary School, just two blocks away from Conwell, the city had to put “bulletproof blankets” across the windows to keep kids safe.

Despite the danger level in these school communities, the vast majority of the gun violence does not take place directly on school property. Still, the gunfire is too close for comfort, said Katoura, the Conwell sixth grader, during an interview alongside her mother, Mary Speight.

“Sometimes, when I’m in my tutoring class I hear gunshots going off, and I’m the closest one to the window because that’s where I sit,” Katoura said. “They tell us to get down, but that’s when all we hear is screaming and yelling. That happens pretty often.”

Speight shook her head. “They don’t send nothing home,” she said. “That’s why me and my son walk her to school, and we make sure we come and get her,” she added, as Conwell Climate Manager James Washington approached and attempted to stop the interview. Principal Erica Green then showed up, asking that the interview be conducted across the street.

Green said she was too busy to speak to a reporter at dismissal time, but said she would do so later by phone. Attempts to reach her were not successful.

“They’re very overprotective of the kids,” Speight said, after observing the interaction. “I do want them to keep my child safe and the other children safe.”

The entrance to Russell Conwell Middle School.

Ann Santiago was parked in front of Conwell waiting to pick up her son, Adrian, 12. While she said she was aware that the neighborhood was troubled, she did not know that Conwell held the national distinction of being the school closest to the most gunfire since 2014.

“Scary,” she said, softly. “It’s not the school’s fault, basically it’s the neighborhood itself. I used to live around here many, many years ago, and it wasn’t like this. Kensington was very popular with a lot of stores and you would never see zombies,” she said, referring to the drug users nodding off between injections.

Santiago said that, despite the surrounding environment, she’s pleased with the education her son, who has autism, is receiving and the security measures that are in place. “I first thought that the security program was overwhelming and too much — you have to wait outside until they bring your kid out!” she said. “But now I actually do like that.”

Ricardo Ruiz, whose son Justin is a Conwell sixth grader, said he was satisfied with the school and its security measures. “It’s a good school. They take care of the kids, they do what they got to do,” he said, noting that the doors are locked. “But I wish they had more police officers around, that would work.”

In May and June of 2023, Conwell was chosen to host two hearings of the Philadelphia City Council’s Public Safety Committee because the school “is in the heart of Kensington and the opioid crisis,” Principal Green said in a message posted on the school’s website.

Sneakers hang on an electric line near Russell Conwell Middle School.

At those hearings, Councilmember Quetzy Lozada, whose 7th District includes Kensington, discussed her proposal to create a Marshall Stabilization and Recovery Plan to combat blight, crime, and drug abuse in Kensington and the surrounding area, named after the U.S. plan to rebuild Europe after World War II. Her resolution noted that in 2022, 22 percent of all city homicides and 25 percent of all shootings took place in Kensington.

This February, Lozada joined three other Kensington councilmembers to form the Kensington Caucus to work on solving systemic problems. And in April, Mayor Parker signed a bill sponsored by Lozada that imposes a curfew on Kensington businesses without liquor licenses.

Meanwhile, Bethel said the city’s infusion of additional officers to the high-crime area last year has helped reduce shootings and homicides by double digits. With the arrival of 75 additional officers, that positive trend should continue, he said, noting that restoring law and order in Kensington will take time. “I do not believe that overnight we’re going to take care of an issue that has been there for decades,” he said.

After viewing The Trace’s school shooting data, Lozada said she’s visited all five schools in the top 10 and maintains “an open line of communication with each principal.” She added that her initiative created a “24-hour cleaning pilot around each school” to remove needles and waste from students’ paths. “No child should have to grow up in these conditions.”

Los estudiantes inmigrantes de Filadelfia no están recibiendo el apoyo que necesitan, dice un grupo que aboga por ellos

2024-04-01T21:12:00+00:00

Read in English.

Zulma Guzmán llegó a Filadelfia desde El Salvador en 2019 y forma parte de la comunidad hispana del sur de Filadelfia. Pero le ha costado sentirse cómoda como madre de tres estudiantes en las escuelas públicas de la ciudad.

Dijo a través de un intérprete que la falta de servicios de traducción en las reuniones oficiales de la escuela hace que no se sienta bienvenida. Cuando ella y otros padres que hablan español han pedido servicios de interpretación, dijo Guzmán, a menudo les han dicho que “traigamos a nuestros estudiantes o hijos o a otra persona de la comunidad para que nos interprete”.

Además, dijo que batalló para encontrar a alguien en las escuelas de sus hijos que la ayudara a saber qué recursos tiene disponibles como miembro de una una familia recién llegada.

La experiencia de Guzmán es común. De hecho, refleja quejas sobre importantes deficiencias en cómo el distrito apoya a los inmigrantes, refugiados y solicitantes de asilo recién llegados, según los resultados de una encuesta recogida por Juntos, un grupo que defiende los derechos de los inmigrantes, y compartida con Chalkbeat.

En las 152 respuestas de maestros, administradores y orientadores de 56 escuelas, solamente un 17% dijo que había suficientes Asistentes de Orientación Bilingües o personal bilingüe para atender las necesidades de los estudiantes en todos los idiomas que hablan. Solo un 19% dijo haber recibido adiestramiento específico para trabajar con recién llegados que abarcara más que las interacciones con el Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas de Estados Unidos. Y solamente un 33% cree que sus escuelas están preparadas para comunicarse con los recién llegados y sus familias.

La incapacidad de las escuelas de Filadelfia para ofrecer el tipo de apoyo que los estudiantes inmigrantes y sus familias quieren ha sido un problema durante años, y refleja los retos que enfrentan las escuelas en todo el país con el reciente aumento de estudiantes recién llegados e inmigrantes.

Los portavoces del distrito no estaban disponibles para hacer comentarios sobre la encuesta de Juntos el jueves, y dijeron que no estarían disponibles para responder a las peticiones de Chalkbeat hasta la próxima semana.

Filadelfia tiene dos academias para “recién llegados” en el Franklin Learning Center y la Escuela Superior Frankford que se supone que ayudan a estos estudiantes. En estas academias pueden inscribirse los estudiantes de los grados 9 a 12 que hayan llegado a Estados Unidos en el último año. Se supone que reciban “un curso acelerado” y apoyo específico para que “para que puedan y se pueda esperar” que se pongan al día con sus compañeros.

Pero incluso estas academias diseñadas para ayudar a los recién llegados a adaptarse pueden no ser suficientes para atender las necesidades de esos estudiantes. Según los datos proporcionados por el distrito, la organización Juntos dijo que en 2023 había 1,032 estudiantes recién llegados, pero solamente 70 estaban matriculados en los dos programas para recién llegados y quedaban 120 asientos vacíos. Y es posible que los asientos vacíos no sean el único problema.

Ashley Téllez es estudiante de duodécimo grado en el Franklin Learning Center y organizadora junior en Juntos. Su familia es de México, pero ella nació y se crió en el sur de Filadelfia y ha estado en primera fila en la academia para recién llegados de su escuela. Ella dijo que en práctica, los estudiantes de estos programas no reciben el apoyo que necesitan.

Señaló que a los estudiantes recién llegados se les mantiene separados de la población estudiantil general, y que ella solamente ha tenido una clase con un estudiante recién llegado en una ocasión mientras ha estado en la escuela superior. Téllez dijo que estas barreras que mantienen separados a los estudiantes recién llegados les privan de hacer conexión con sus compañeros y dificultan su capacidad para hacer amigos, unirse a clubs y participar de lleno en la comunidad estudiantil de Filadelfia.

“Hay tantos estudiantes que viven a una hora, 45 minutos de distancia y vienen a las escuelas para estos programas y no se les da el acceso a la educación que se supone que deben recibir”, dijo Téllez.

‘Estos sistemas no velan por ellos’

En 2021, la junta escolar de la ciudad aprobó unánimemente una resolución para tener “escuelas santuario” prometiendo proporcionarle capacitación al personal sobre cómo responder si los oficiales de ICE se presentaran la escuela, y cómo relacionarse en general con las familias para atender y proteger a los estudiantes recién llegados a sus escuelas.

Guadalupe Méndez, organizadora juvenil de Juntos, dijo que el grupo envió la encuesta para darle seguimiento a la capacitación obligatoria que se supone que deben recibir los maestros.

Ella dijo que los resultados de la encuesta, así como las conversaciones que ella y otros miembros de Juntos han tenido con los estudiantes y maestros de toda la ciudad, muestran que la capacitación no es tan sólida como se había prometido. Juntos había hablado con algunas personas que recibieron la capacitación “y no les toma más de 20 minutos repasarla”, dijo Méndez.

Méndez creció en el sur de Filadelfia y al igual que Téllez, su familia es de México. Aunque ella es mayor que los estudiantes con los que trabaja en Juntos, las cosas no han cambiado mucho en el sistema de escuelas públicas para los estudiantes que hablan español, a pesar de los “maestros buenos con buenas intenciones” que tuvo.

Méndez dijo que según los datos del distrito, para los casi 23,000 estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en las escuelas de Filadelfia, solamente hay 131 asistentes de orientación bilingües. Estos asistentes prestan servicios de traducción, ayudan a las familias a conectarse con los recursos de la ciudad y ayudan a las familias que no hablan inglés a entablar relaciones con los líderes, maestros y comunidad de sus escuelas.

Sin embargo, la cantidad relativamente pequeña de estos asistentes limita su capacidad para ayudar a las familias, dijo Méndez.

Los estudiantes con los que ha hablado que han llegado al distrito todavía aprendiendo inglés “no pueden creer que no haya apoyos”. No pueden creer que estos sistemas no velen por ellos”.

Méndez dijo que el distrito define a los estudiantes “recién llegados” como aquellos que han llegado al país en el último año. Pero con frecuencia eso no es suficiente tiempo para aprender un nuevo idioma, ponerse al día con las tareas de clase y sentirse integrado en sus escuelas, dijo.

Juntos le he dicho al distrito escolar que debe expandir la definición de recién llegado a “cualquier estudiante que haya llegado recientemente (en los últimos tres años) a Estados Unidos, y puede incluir, entre otros: asilados, refugiados, menores no acompañados, menores indocumentados, estudiantes inmigrantes y otros niños inmigrantes y menores de edad”.

El grupo también quiere que el distrito establezca programas para recién llegados en las escuelas intermedias y que añada al menos un nuevo programa de escuela superior en el sur de Filadelfia, donde viven muchos estudiantes recién llegados.

Estudiantes interpretan para los recién llegados

Felipe Mejía-Cuba, estudiante de Filadelfia y voluntario de Juntos, recuerda que hace dos años estaba trabajando en un restaurante con un estudiante recién llegado cuando un día, en medio de un turno, el estudiante insistió en que Mejía-Cuba llamara a un hospital para que lo ayudara a obtener servicios de salud.

Mejía-Cuba dijo que el estudiante, que asistía a la Escuela Superior Horace Howard Furness, le dijo que su escuela no podía ayudarlo y que necesitaba formularios y vacunas para poder permanecer en la escuela.

Esa es una experiencia común para muchos menores bilingües, a quienes se les pide traducir reuniones y documentos para amigos y familiares.

“Esa fue la primera señal de alarma que encontré”, dijo Mejía-Cuba. “Descubrí todas las desventajas y toda la falta de atención a las que se enfrentan los estudiantes recién llegados”.

Mejía-Cuba dice que ser mentor de otros estudiantes de su edad le ha ayudado a entender mejor los recursos disponibles para los residentes de Filadelfia que hablan español y a encontrar su lugar en su comunidad.

“El yo que soy ahora sería capaz de ayudar al muchacho en el sótano de aquel restaurante”, dijo Mejía-Cuba.

No quiere que sus primos recién nacidos y parientes en el sistema de escuelas públicas tengan las mismas dificultades que tuvo él: “La batalla no es solamente para los que están en las escuelas ahora, es una batalla para las próximas generaciones.

Téllez, la estudiante de duodécimo grado en el Franklin Learning Center, dijo que se siente afortunada porque puede hablar cuando algunos de sus compañeros no pueden hacerlo por ser indocumentados o tener familiares indocumentados y le temen a las autoridades federales de inmigración.

Ella y Mejía-Cuba dijeron que aunque se están graduando, quieren que el distrito escolar mejore para los que vienen después de ellos.

“Realmente crecí con estas ideas de cómo las escuelas pueden ser y el poder que tengo como estudiante para conseguirlo”, dijo Téllez. “Aprendí que tengo voz y que puedo usarla para lograr un cambio”.

Carly Sitrin es la directora de Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Para comunicarte con Carly, envíale un email a csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Traducido por Milly Suazo-Martinez

Migrant students in Philadelphia aren’t getting the support they need, advocacy group says

2024-03-28T18:46:11+00:00

Leer en español.

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Zulma Guzman came to Philadelphia from El Salvador in 2019 and is a part of South Philadelphia’s Hispanic community. But she’s had a difficult time getting comfortable as the parent of three students in the city’s public schools.

She said through an interpreter that there’s been a lack of translation services in official school meetings that makes her feel unwelcome. When she and other Spanish-speaking parents have asked for interpreter services, Guzman said, they’ve often been told to “bring our students or children or another community member to interpret for us.”

In addition, she said she struggled to find people at her childrens’ schools to help make her aware of the resources available to her as a member of a newcomer family.

Guzman’s experience isn’t uncommon. In fact, it reflects complaints about significant shortcomings with how the district supports newly arrived migrants, refugees, and those seeking asylum, according to survey results collected by Juntos, an immigrant rights advocacy group, and shared with Chalkbeat.

In the 152 responses from teachers, administrators, and counselors at 56 schools, just 17% said there were sufficient Bilingual Counseling Assistants or bilingual staff members to meet students’ needs in every language they speak. Only 19% said they had received newcomer-specific training that covered more than just interactions with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And only 33% said they believe their schools are equipped to communicate with newcomers and their families.

Philadelphia schools’ inability to provide the kind of support that immigrant students and their families want has been a problem for years, and reflects challenges schools are facing nationwide with recent increases in newcomer and migrant students.

District spokespeople were not available for comment about Juntos’ survey on Thursday, and said they would not be available to respond to Chalkbeat’s requests for comment until next week.

Philadelphia does have two “newcomer” academies at Franklin Learning Center and Frankford High School that are supposed to help these students. Students in grades 9-12 who have arrived to the U.S. within the past year can enroll in these academies. They are supposed to receive “an accelerated course of study” and unique support “so that they are able and expected” to get up to speed with their peers.

But even these academies that are tailored to help newcomers acclimate may not be enough to serve students’ needs. According to data provided by the district, Juntos said in 2023 there were 1,032 newcomer students, but only 70 were enrolled in the two newcomer programs, and that there were 120 spaces remaining. And empty seats may not be the only issue.

Ashley Tellez is a senior at Franklin Learning Center and a junior organizer at Juntos. Her family is from Mexico, but she was born and raised in South Philadelphia and has had a front seat to her school’s newcomer academy. She said in practice, students in these programs are not getting the support they need.

She said newcomer students are kept separate from the general student population, and she’s only had a class with a newcomer student once in her high school career. Tellez said these barriers that keep newcomer students apart starve them of connections with their fellow students and hamper their ability to make friends, join clubs, and fully participate in the Philadelphia student community.

“There’s so many students who come to the schools for these programs who live an hour, 45 minutes away, and aren’t given the right access to education that they are supposed to be getting,” Tellez said.

‘These systems don’t look out for them’

In 2021, the city school board unanimously approved a “welcoming sanctuary schools” resolution promising to provide training to staff on how to respond if ICE officers were to show up on school grounds, and generally how to engage with families and provide and protect newcomer students in their schools.

Guadalupe Mendez, a youth organizer with Juntos, said the group sent out the survey to follow up on that mandatory training teachers were supposed to be getting.

She said the survey results, as well as conversations she and other Juntos members have had with youth and teachers across the city, shows that training is not as robust as was promised. Juntos had spoken with some people who received the training “and they don’t take more than 20 minutes to go over it,” Mendez said.

Mendez grew up in South Philly — like Tellez, her family is from Mexico. Although she’s older than the students she works with at Juntos, not much has changed for Spanish-speaking students in the public school system, despite the “good teachers that had good intentions” who taught her.

Mendez said that, according to district data, for the nearly 23,000 English learner students in Philly schools, there are only 131 bilingual counseling assistants. These assistants provide translation services, help families get connected with resources in the city, and help non-English speaking families build relationships with their school leaders, teachers, and community.

But the relatively small number of these assistants restricts how much they can help families, Mendez said.

The students she’s talked to who’ve come to the district while still learning English “can’t believe that there are no supports. They can’t believe that these systems don’t look out for them.”

Mendez said the district defines students who have “recently arrived” as those who have come to the country within the past year. But that’s often far from enough time to learn a new language, get caught up on classwork, and feel integrated into their schools, she said.

Juntos has told the school district it should expand the newcomer definition to “any students who have recently arrived (within the last three years) to the United States, and may include but are not limited to: asylees, refugees, unaccompanied youth, undocumented youth, migratory students, and other immigrant children and youth.”

The group also wants the district to set up newcomer programs in middle schools and add at least one new high school program in South Philly, where many newcomer students live.

Students act as interpreters for newcomer students

Felipe Mejia-Cuba, a Philadelphia student and volunteer with Juntos, remembers working in a restaurant two years ago with a newcomer student when one day, in the middle of a shift the student insisted that Mejia-Cuba call a hospital to help him navigate the health care system.

Mejia-Cuba said the student, who attended Horace Howard Furness High School, told him his school wasn’t able to help, and that he needed forms and vaccinations to help him stay in school.

That’s a common experience for many bilingual young people, who are tasked with translating meetings and documents for friends and family.

“That was the first red flag that I encountered,” Mejia-Cuba said. “I found out about all the disadvantages and all the neglect that the newcomer students are facing.”

Mejia-Cuba said being a mentor for other kids his age has helped him better understand the resources available to Spanish-speaking Philadelphians and find his place in his community.

“The me that I am now would be able to help that kid in the basement of that restaurant,” Mejia-Cuba said.

He doesn’t want his newborn cousins and relatives in the public school system to have the same struggles that he did: “It’s not just a battle for who is in the schools now, it’s a battle for generations to come.

Tellez, the senior at Franklin Learning Center, said she feels lucky because she’s able to speak out when some of her fellow students may not be able to because they are undocumented or have family members who are undocumented and fear federal immigration authorities.

She and Mejia-Cuba both said though they are graduating, they want the school district to improve for those coming up behind them.

“I really grew up with these ideas of what schools can look like and what power I have as a student to achieve that,” Tellez said. “I learned that I have a voice and I can use my voice to create change.”

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

Philly police will notify schools about students found at traumatic events under pilot program

2024-03-25T21:06:42+00:00

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One day earlier this school year, a fifth grader came to school and was acting a little off. His motivation was down, his attention elsewhere, and his behavior unsettling.

It turned out he was traumatized because he had seen his father murdered the day before, said Brandy Blasko in the district’s office of school safety.

Unfortunately, this kind of scenario is not that uncommon in Philadelphia schools. In response, the city school district and police department have unveiled a $1 million program to help students deal with such trauma.

The program, announced by officials at a Monday press conference at the Philadelphia Military Academy, is called Handle With Care. It will train 300 police officers and 100 educators to sharpen their awareness of students’ exposure to violence and help them cope with trauma. It will be piloted in 15 schools starting next school year that are in the 22nd Police District, which covers parts of North Philadelphia.

While the program has been long in the works, it’s taken on new urgency in the wake of two shootings involving students leaving schools earlier this month in which one was killed and another 10 injured.

Handle With Care is a child-protection program first piloted in West Virginia and now used there statewide, as well as in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and elsewhere. The program starts with police who respond to a call and arrive at the scene of a traumatic event, from the execution of a search warrant to violence or sudden death. If a child is present at the scene, the police collect the child’s name and where they go to school, then notify the relevant school officials.

This system allows teachers and others to offer support, postpone tests or other academic work, and refer the child to nurses or counselors, among other responses. The program will also provide training to police and school personnel about the impact of trauma on children and how to respond to it in school, and officials will follow up with families.

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, who used to be the school district’s police chief, said it had been “a dream of mine for a long time” to bring such a program like Handle With Care to Philadelphia.

He noted that violence can impact schoolchildren even if they are not directly involved. In 2021 in the 22nd district’s 4.3 square miles, 300 people were shot and 70 killed.

“We’re starting here, in one of our most challenged communities,” Bethel said, adding that he eventually wants to use the program in the entire city.

But Bethel also said that children are exposed to all kinds of trauma-inducing events, from witnessing car accidents to being in a household with domestic violence. Such circumstances, if not addressed, can lead to discipline problems, dropping out, and criminal activity, he said.

“When we do something different, we can change that trajectory,” he said.

Children who have witnessed violence “have to sit in class carrying this burden on their shoulders,” said Jayme Banks, the school district’s deputy chief of prevention, trauma and intervention.

“Their level of stress interferes with their ability to succeed, to form positive relationships, to make friends,” Banks said.

Bethel said the communication between police and school officials would be year-round, even when school is not in session.

At Monday’s press conference, two students from the Philadelphia Military Academy attested to the need for the program.

Nadia Porter, who is the school’s command sergeant major, said that the programs will be “very useful” because “a lot of kids are not seen as trauma victims, but as problem starters.”

Kaheem Bailey-Taylor, the brigade commander who mentioned the two recent shootings in which one student died and 11 were injured, received an honor from his ROTC program for going to the aid of a student who had been shot at a birthday party.

“This program will bring some hope to the youth,” he said.

Referring to the student who witnessed his father’s death, Blasko said that at first, “No one knew why he was acting that way,” she said. “Now they will.”

The grant funding for Handle With Care in Philadelphia is from the U.S. Department of Justice. The 15 schools that will participate in the Handle With Care pilot program are:

Richard R. Wright.
Robert Morris.
Paul L. Dunbar.
James G. Blaine.
William Dick.
Ethel Allen.
Tanner G. Duckrey.
Edward Gideon.
William D. Kelley.
General George G. Meade
High School of Engineering and Science.
Philadelphia Military Academy
Vaux Big Picture High School.
Murrell Dobbins Career & Technical High School.
Strawberry Mansion High School.

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

Philadelphia district wants more school-based health clinics but state funding is an issue

2024-03-05T21:06:08+00:00

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For many Philadelphians like Mitata Gbondo who have young children, going to the dentist can be inconvenient, costly, and even scary.

So when a dental clinic opened at William D. Kelley Elementary School, which her son attends, Gbondo jumped at the chance to get a free teeth cleaning for herself and her son. She walked up to the third floor of the school at noon on a Thursday, and entered a fully functioning dental office with candy-colored walls and a picture of a smiling toothpaste mascot.

“This experience has been awesome,” Gbondo said.

School-based health clinics, like the dental office at William D. Kelley, are expanding rapidly across the country. Experts say students — especially those who live in low-income communities — who’ve had access to free and comprehensive checkups, screenings, and even behavioral therapy, do better academically and emotionally.

According to data from Education Plus Health, a nonprofit advocacy group that lobbies for more school-based health centers in Philadelphia, in 2022-23, three out of five students who attended a school with a center improved their attendance from the previous school year.

But these clinics are often underfunded, understaffed, and usually can’t operate without the financial support of a hospital, community health partner, or university.

Some 23 states have passed legislation to try to stabilize funding for school-based health centers by dedicating state dollars to the centers in their budgets every year. But Pennsylvania is not one of them.

“We don’t have a robust system of school-based health centers at all,” said Kendra McDow, the School District of Philadelphia’s medical officer.

The district is trying to change that. McDow said it is looking for health care partners to help start new school-based health centers in one or two district schools over the next three years. After that, they want the number to grow, McDow said.

The dental clinic at William D. Kelley Elementary School is staffed by students and faculty from Temple University's Kornberg School of Dentistry.

There are more than a dozen school-based health centers in Philadelphia and 30 in total across the state, according to Julie Cousler, executive director of the Pennsylvania School-Based Health Alliance and Education Plus Health advocacy groups. The majority of them are at private or charter schools. As with school-based health centers nationwide, the ones in Philadelphia schools are funded by a mix of federal aid, insurance reimbursements, philanthropic donations, and some one-time state grant money.

Only three Philadelphia district schools (Building 21, John B. Stetson Middle School, and Vaux Big Picture High School) have comprehensive school-based health centers with nurse practitioners. Edward Gideon Elementary School has a planned clinic that hasn’t opened yet, and Kelley has the dental clinic.

Meanwhile, New York state has 252 centers in schools (146 of those are in New York City), according to the state health department, and Delaware — the first state to mandate centers in every public high school — has more than 50. Newark, New Jersey just opened its first school-based health center in 2023. But recent funding cuts in New York and Delaware have put those centers in jeopardy.

Cousler and McDow said the centers are vital for Philadelphia students in particular because living in cities near several highways, industrial facilities, and other sources of pollution can trigger or exacerbate chronic health problems like asthma. Those chronic health issues can cause students to be frequently absent from school or make it difficult for them to concentrate in class, McDow said.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21% of children in Philadelphia have asthma — more than double the national rate.

“We have high rates of asthma, high rates of uncontrolled asthma, high rates of hospital visits because of asthma,” Cousler said. “We have high rates of mental health distress among kids and high rates of kids not getting the services they need. So we just have to start going to where the kids are.”

McDow said if Philadelphia officials want to make school-based health centers “really work for our city, we have to have funding.” And she said that would mean state-level legislation.

School-based health centers would not get a dedicated funding stream from the state in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s newest budget proposal.

“Right now, there really isn’t any support for school-based health centers and that’s why it’s hard to sustain them,” Cousler said.

The dental clinic is open to all public school students in kindergarten through eighth grade as well as their families regardless of insurance status.

‘A hub of what families would need’

In the early 1990s, under former governor Robert P. Casey, Pennsylvania received a series of grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to launch a network of school-based health centers in high-need areas, according to Cliff Deardorff, who was the first public health program administrator for the grant for the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Between 1987 and 2001, the foundation spent $40 million nationwide on school-based health centers.

Deardorff said there was a lot of momentum around the new initiative.

“It was exciting. This was a new idea for Pennsylvania,” Deardorff said. “We were starting something that we hoped would make a difference.”

But when the grant funding ran out, nearly all of those centers closed. Today, Deardorff said, only one of those original school-based health centers exists.

Deardorff said building community trust around any kind of health center is crucial to keep patients coming back, staff employed, and insurance reimbursements flowing.

“To give somebody a chance to start something like this up, and then, poof, it goes away” was painful, Deardorff said.

But he said he’s hopeful state lawmakers, prompted by advocates like Cousler, might avoid the financial mistakes of the past.

Crystal Edwards, William D. Kelley Elementary’s principal, said it’s been an “honor” to have the dental clinic in her building. She said she’s seen firsthand the good it has done for her students, their families, and even her staff members who can all use the clinic’s services regardless of their insurance status.

“We try to be a hub of what families would need to make sure that their children are not just physically safe, and educationally safe, but psychologically safe and emotionally safe, and I’m just proud to be able to give that to the community,” Edwards said.

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

Homeless students needed help. Schools showed them the door.

2023-08-29T09:00:00+00:00

This story was published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, a newsroom that investigates inequality.

The two boys should have been in elementary school. But for 71 days, the Bristol Borough School District in suburban Philadelphia would not enroll them.

Attorneys for the students later explained they were newcomers. They first lived with a relative in New Jersey but couldn’t stay without risking her Section 8 housing voucher. They next moved into Bristol Borough’s district boundaries, the attorneys said, where the boys shared a single room with their mom in a family friend’s home, without a lease or a legal right to remain.

Twice, their mother visited Bristol Borough offices to enroll. Twice, district staff turned her away: Without proof of age, immunizations and address, they said, the boys could not attend.

On the third try, she named the federal law that guarantees equal educational opportunities to children without stable housing, including those without normally required paperwork. “My boys should be protected under the McKinney-vento act,” she emailed.

The district advised her to enroll elsewhere.

The Bristol Borough case is one of dozens reviewed as part of a Center for Public Integrity investigation that shows the federal law promising to provide homeless children with equal access to education, while ironclad in theory, can prove paper thin in practice.

Public Integrity obtained nearly 1,000 pages of documents, exchanged between 2019 and 2023, that provide a revealing window into a rarely discussed component of the law: the homeless enrollment dispute process. They show families wrestling with Pennsylvania school district personnel over where children have a right to enroll and which services they ought to receive.

Nationwide, there’s little information about how schools settle disagreements over which students qualify for aid. That can include transportation from outside of district boundaries to ensure students have stable schooling even when they lack stable housing.

The Pennsylvania records reveal the tension between the generosity of the education provisions in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and the constraints on local officials ultimately in charge of implementing a law that comes with minimal funding — and no teeth.

The law urges public schools to embrace homeless students, regardless of whether they reside within a school district’s boundaries. But when families say they don’t have a permanent home, some school district officials suspect residency fraud.

When those arguments escalated, certain districts doubled down, deploying a private investigator or school police to rebut the families’ version of events.

Suburban school districts in particular can be quick to interpret the law narrowly and to expend resources investigating whether families who seek help are opportunists or fakers, a review of dispute records and internal emails from the Pennsylvania Department of Education suggests. Many conflicts unfolded in Philadelphia-area schools, which are among the country’s most segregated. On average, the spending gap between wealthy and poor districts in Pennsylvania is among the widest in the nation.

Families caught in several disputes alleged their children were locked out of school for weeks, even months.

“I am appalled!!” one woman wrote to state authorities after she learned her grandson would be disenrolled from Abington School District in suburban Philadelphia. “How does sleeping on someone’s sofa and your children sleeping on air mattresses or paying your last dollar at a hotel, considered stable living conditions. I believe having a permanent address would be stable living conditions.”

A letter from the district argued her grandson experienced “no causal event that caused homelessness” but simply moved out of the district when a lease ended.

In a statement, district spokesperson Allie Artur wrote that Abington is “confident that its professionals comply with applicable laws with respect to homeless students” but declined to comment on specific cases due to privacy laws.

In the Bristol Borough case, the district argued that the information they received about the family’s living situation led them to believe that the students had stable housing.

Michael Santos, who serves on the board of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, said Public Integrity’s reporting surfaces rarely-discussed problems in how school districts implement McKinney-Vento, signed into law in 1987.

“You have to basically pull teeth to get these cases,” he said. “It’s not easily available, precisely because it does shine a light on some of the noncompliance issues that may be in violation of federal law.”

Hidden hardships

What Public Integrity found in Pennsylvania is likely the tip of the iceberg there.

Federal figures suggest more than 27,000 students experienced homelessness in Pennsylvania during the 2020-2021 school year. The state education department estimates that thousands of them encounter a barrier to their enrollment, attendance, or educational success” each school year, but the agency refused to answer questions about how it defines barriers or calculated that figure.

Disputes over homeless education services are not unique to Pennsylvania.

Public Integrity obtained summaries of roughly 20 concerns about homeless education that families brought to the attention of Maryland education officials in the 2022-2023 school year. Those records show Maryland students also missed school days, experienced difficulty arranging transportation and faced suspicions of residency fraud.

Across the nation, families filing paperwork to dispute district decisions likely represent the minority of those experiencing barriers at school.

Advocates said they suspect homeless families prioritize urgent needs like earning money over complex administrative appeals. Others may feel ashamed to admit they struggle with housing or fear that self-reporting as homeless could invite unwelcome scrutiny.

Nonetheless, Pennsylvania families can escalate concerns unresolved at the district level to state officials or homeless education specialists known as regional coordinators, who can play a pivotal role in the lives of students seeking McKinney-Vento protections.

Records show coordinators sometimes urged school districts to enroll students they initially rejected. Other times, they sided with district administrators who deemed kids ineligible.

Documents obtained by Public Integrity describe fewer than 60 disputed cases that reached state officials from 2019 to 2023.

Eric Hagarty, who served as acting secretary of education in Pennsylvania from April 2022 to January 2023, thinks lack of power is the reason relatively few families appeal McKinney-Vento disputes.

“Students experiencing homelessness don’t have lobbyists and high-paid attorneys who can spend their time trying to work the system,” he said. “And it’s those vulnerable populations that are not best served, even though everyone has the best intentions of serving them.”

Legal aid groups have long argued that the need for their services far outstrips their capacity to provide them. And families who advocate for themselves may not receive consistent treatment from schools.

Federal homeless education guidance recommends general processes rather than mandating specific steps. Who decides disputes, which evidence to consider and how to compensate families whose rights are violated — all of that is left up to states and schools.

When the process fails, children pay the cost.

“Students experiencing homelessness don’t have lobbyists and high-paid attorneys who can spend their time trying to work the system.”

Though federal policy requires schools to keep children enrolled while disputes are considered on appeal, in at least six instances Public Integrity reviewed in Pennsylvania, parents and other concerned adults said children missed days, weeks or even months of classes because districts did not enroll them or arrange transportation to school during periods of housing instability.

In one dispute, a teenager was alleged to have missed about three months of school when the Sharon City School District, where he resided temporarily with an aunt, did not enroll him.

A school principal wrote that he would be “more than willing” to enroll the student once his relatives completed enrollment paperwork — a requirement that McKinney-Vento specifically says cannot be used to keep homeless students out.

A regional coordinator questioned why the district in western Pennsylvania thought a teenager forced to move between relatives’ homes in search of a safe place to live was not covered by the law.

“If this 14 year old who was unstable in his living situation and fleeing an abusive and unsafe home was not an ‘unaccompanied homeless youth’ last spring — who would be?” the regional coordinator, Wendy Kinnear, wrote to the principal.

The Sharon City School District did not answer Public Integrity’s questions about the dispute.

A delayed enrollment is exactly the scenario federal law is seeking to prevent, said Santos, who used to work as a legal aid attorney representing homeless families.

“The law is very clear: While the dispute resolution is pending, you’re supposed to keep the child enrolled. The whole idea is to provide school stability, so that the student doesn’t lose school days,” Santos said. “So if they’re actually refusing, from the get go, and not telling the families that they have the right to appeal, that’s a problem.”

The district was not alone in doubting if students experienced homelessness. Local educators regularly marshaled district resources to argue students were stably housed.

Public Integrity identified 11 cases in which districts subjected students who claimed they were homeless to residency investigations. District officials tasked school safety officers to make phone calls or pay visits to shared residences, hired a private investigator, filmed daily routines, interviewed temporary hosts or tracked a family using a license plate reader.

The Cheltenham School District north of Philadelphia hired a private investigator and conducted “comprehensive surveillance (multiple locations, multiple days of the week over the course of different weeks, before school, after school, etc.)” to investigate where one family resided, according to the dispute record. State officials reviewing the case agreed the family lived out of district and was not homeless.

Surveillance often targets students who say they are “doubled up” — that is, sharing a friend’s or relative’s housing for lack of better options.

Those children are deemed homeless under McKinney-Vento, which covers students “sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason.” The law places no time limit on how long a student may be eligible for federal protections.

Still, disagreements over this definition are the root of many conflicts. Advocates for homeless youth say the law is inclusive, shielding students regardless of their specific situation. But some school districts see room for argument. Is a family still homeless if they are not seeking permanent housing? What if there’s no record of an eviction? Districts peel off families around the edges of the federal definition — and a few squarely covered by the law.

Public Integrity’s reporting relies primarily on public records. We were unable to contact many of the families who disputed homeless education services. We withheld the names of families we could not reach or who did not consent to be interviewed.

Documents show school district personnel also sometimes struggled to contact students’ guardians and then faulted families for the lapsed communications. School staff may not have full understanding of their students’ housing and, even when well-informed, may find that a given situation is not easy to categorize.

Most dispute records either provided some evidence to suggest a student might be experiencing homelessness or revealed too little information to judge the student’s eligibility.

A handful of disputes reviewed by Public Integrity described disruptions to housing that seemed to fall outside the scope of McKinney-Vento, such as a family who said they sold their home voluntarily rather than due to hardship.

Most districts declined to discuss specific disputes. Regional coordinators, who investigate disputes on appeal, referred questions to state officials when reached for comment. The Pennsylvania Department of Education also would not discuss specific incidents or make Storm Camara, the state’s homeless education coordinator, available for an interview.

Taj Magruder, a spokesperson for the state Department of Education, said in a statement that the agency is “committed to providing equitable and inclusive educational opportunities for students experiencing homelessness” and has “a robust and groundbreaking set of standards and practices that ensure the highest level of quality.” The statement also touted an independent monitoring system and said districts out of compliance with federal law must implement a correction plan by the next school year.

But Hagarty, the agency’s former acting secretary, said the department has limited levers to compel compliance. School systems, he and others interviewed for this story said, exercise local control of education.

Doubled up, shut out

A 2022 Public Integrity investigation added to long-standing evidence that many students who qualify for federal homeless education programs at school likely aren’t receiving those services, in part due to misunderstandings about the definition of homelessness itself.

The analysis estimated that 300,000 students annually may have met the U.S. Department of Education’s definition of homelessness but went uncounted in pre-pandemic school years. Identification is critical because it’s a first step that might have allowed those students to remain in school systems where they no longer had a permanent residence, get tutoring or receive referrals to agencies that provide housing and medical care.

Advocates for homeless youth said confusion about McKinney-Vento eligibility — such as when a student is considered doubled up and when they should be categorized as an unaccompanied homeless youth — are major reasons children slip through the cracks. Available data in Pennsylvania shows that school administrators categorize about two-thirds of homeless students as doubled up.

In western Pennsylvania, the family of a middle school student protested when the district he attended balked at keeping him enrolled after he was forced to relocate following his mother and stepfather’s divorce.

The boy, who has autism, oppositional defiant disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, temporarily moved in with his grandmother in a neighboring school district.

An aunt, Jenny Minchoff, wanted him to remain enrolled in the Greenville Area School District, where he received full-time special education services and had long-standing relationships with staff members.

“Moving into another school district and all of the accompanying changes would be incredibly disruptive to [his] well-being,” Minchoff wrote to the district homeless student liaison in August 2021.

Under the McKinney-Vento Act, the family made the case for him to stay as a doubled-up student. But Greenville staff did not see it that way.

District staff determined he had stable housing and contacted the neighboring school system to begin the enrollment process there. The family didn’t know until the new district called the child’s grandmother, asking her to pick up an enrollment packet, Minchoff said.

With help from an outside education consultant and intervention from a regional coordinator, Minchoff was able to re-enroll her nephew. But, frustrated by the experience, she switched him to an online charter school months later.

In a statement provided to Public Integrity, the Greenville district wrote that staff adhere to McKinney-Vento guidelines, and that “on occasion, this involves consulting our Regional Coordinator for additional guidance and clarification regarding homeless situations.”

“I feel as though they withheld a lot of information,” Minchoff said of the district. “It makes me wonder how many other kids are not getting the treatment that they legally deserve.”

Surveilling students

When families try to explain they are sharing housing temporarily, some district officials react by screening for fraud.

Records show school districts regularly interview guardians about where they are living and require families to submit documentation to prove it.

Administrators at Southeast Delco, a suburban Philadelphia district in a county crisscrossed by about 20 local school systems, said their concerns about residency fraud are the product of geography. A single multi-building apartment complex may span more than one school system. Brenda Wynder, the district’s superintendent, said families sometimes list a relative’s address on enrollment forms to move a child into their preferred district.

District staff were adamant that they do not investigate a student’s residency once they say they are experiencing homelessness. But the district requires families to prove where they live and why because it is a “resources issue,” said Jeffrey Ryan, the district’s McKinney-Vento liaison.

“We obviously have district taxpayers who want the district’s funds expended for district students,” Ryan said, “not, in this example, the Philly kid who’s just using the address.”

In addition to hiring private investigators and interviewing parents directly, the Cheltenham School District outside of Philadelphia also contacts parents’ landlords or employers and maintains “a residency information line for members of the community to leave tips regarding possible non-resident students,” Cheltenham spokesperson Kevin Kauffman said in response to an emailed list of questions.

Cheltenham opened 26 residency investigations in the 2019-2020 school year at a cost of about $2,500, he said. The same year, the district spent $5,000 on homeless education services.

Kauffman said residency investigations are not used to screen students for homelessness. But Public Integrity reviewed records on one case where the district used surveillance techniques on a father who thought he and his children could be eligible for homeless status.

The family had been living with his mother, whose home was in the school district. He said it was a burden for her, and so the family relocated to a girlfriend’s apartment in Philadelphia, where he worried they could not stay indefinitely because of her Section 8 voucher.

The district didn’t want to let the children remain at their schools. Camara, the state coordinator, reviewed the case and agreed with the officials.

“He wants a better school district for his kids; so do many folk,” Camara wrote in early 2020. The family’s living arrangement, “from what you’ve stated here, is by choice!”

A 2018 WHYY investigation of residency enforcement by suburban Philadelphia districts found evidence that poor children and students of color were most affected. Attorneys with the Pennsylvania-based Education Law Center said that also plays out for families experiencing housing instability: School systems, they contend, selectively target families for residency investigations based on their class and race, especially Black students in mostly white schools, and demand families submit multiple documents to prove where they live.

School districts “are not putting families who own single family dwellings through the same hoops,” said Paige Joki, an attorney with the Education Law Center, which advocates for equal public education. “It’s anti-poor. It’s that you live in a shared dwelling.”

Magruder, the state Department of Education spokesperson, did not answer a question regarding whether Black students in Pennsylvania are more likely to be the subject of residency investigations or challenges to their McKinney-Vento status. Public Integrity was unable to determine whether the state requires school districts to report any demographic data about the residency investigations they conduct.

When McKinney-Vento ends

Families who initially receive McKinney-Vento services may later find themselves at odds with a school system that previously welcomed them, even if their housing remains tenuous.

Public Integrity reviewed at least seven cases in which districts contended that families who previously received McKinney-Vento now had stable housing, even as the families argued they should be eligible for services.

Meghan O’Connor, a mother of four in suburban Philadelphia, experienced this challenge firsthand. In 2018, she and her family were displaced from their rental in the Colonial School District by an oil accident that ruined virtually all their possessions, she said.

The O’Connors struggled to find a new place amid rising home prices and a lack of rentals for larger families. They moved in with one relative, then another in an adjacent district.

O’Connor’s two older boys, Colonial students since they were kindergarteners, were deemed eligible for McKinney-Vento and continued attending their schools. Her oldest thrived. Once a shy child, he gained confidence, O’Connor said. She credited his success to devoted teachers and an individualized education program that accommodated his stutter.

But in May 2022, a notice on district letterhead told the family their residence was now considered permanent. It didn’t feel that way to O’Connor: Her husband sleeps on a couch most nights, she said, while she shares a bed with her three youngest children. Only her oldest has his own bedroom, a holdover from before the accident.

“It’s not a permanent solution at all,” she said.

A statement the district sent to Public Integrity said the decision “had nothing to do with the amount of time they had not lived in the District, but rather that the circumstances no longer met the standard of homelessness under state law.” The statement argued the O’Connor family chose to live with family in order to save money although their previous home was repaired and available to rent.

O’Connor said the landlord did not offer her family the rental after repairs made it livable and there was nowhere else her family could afford to go.

The family appealed the decision, but in August the state sent word that officials agreed that the children were not eligible for McKinney-Vento. O’Connor enrolled her younger son in Catholic school, funding tuition with financial aid from the school and support from relatives. Her oldest now attends school online.

The boys have not transitioned easily. Her oldest son’s teachers tell her he speaks constantly of missing friends in the Colonial school system. She is less familiar with his new individualized education program and worries it might not be as thorough. Her younger son has struggled to catch up to the Catholic school curriculum; he’s switching to the online charter her oldest attends.

A Colonial School District statement said the school system “strictly adhered to the law.”

“The district understands and is empathetic to the educational challenges homelessness creates,” according to the statement. “While we favor removing as many barriers to education as possible, we must balance this approach with our responsibility to the taxpayers who fund that education.”

‘Being punished for poverty’

The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s 2023 report on the matter estimates that 4,544 students — 17% of all homeless students for whom data was available — experienced “barriers to enrollment, attendance, and/or academic success” in the 2021-2022 school year.

State officials declined to answer questions about how to interpret the data.

According to a brief methodology, the estimate relies on reports from local, regional or state staff who “worked to resolve a barrier situation,” such as missing immunization records. The document does not cite specific barrier incidents or explain when they are deemed to be resolved.

But the report does explain that some barriers are “actually rights regarding school enrollment for students experiencing homelessness,” a shortcoming the report said would be addressed “via ongoing professional development, on-call [Local Educational Agency] technical assistance, and annual monitoring visits.”

Other documents reveal the limitations of those methods to reform schools.

The Montour School District in the suburbs of Pittsburgh disenrolled or denied enrollment to an average of 20 students per year because of residency issues, district staff told an independent state monitor evaluating McKinney-Vento compliance in 2023. While turning those families away, the monitor said the district “failed to follow through with nearly every recommendation” from a previous audit.

The Montour district also did not conduct staff training about the law’s requirements and provided scant evidence that it properly notified families of their right to dispute the rulings, the audit found.

The monitor wrote that they were “very concerned that there will be little or no follow through to demonstrate program compliance.”

In November 2019, according to a dispute record Public Integrity obtained, a mother wrote a letter pleading with the Montour district to continue enrolling her children. The family shared housing with friends or stayed in hotels when money allowed, she said.

District staff used a license plate reader to identify a property the mother leased in a neighboring school district. The mother said she used the address for mail but didn’t live there.

“My children have had a very rough year, and right now their only sense of security is in Montour,” she wrote.

“Being punished for poverty just does not seem right,” she added.

It’s unclear how the case was resolved. In an email exchange, a regional coordinator said she believed the family was not homeless, but state coordinator Camara suggested an eviction from 2019 made the family McKinney-Vento eligible.

Neither the Montour School District nor the state Department of Education responded to multiple requests for comment about the monitoring report and the dispute incident.

“If the process is so convoluted, most families just give up,” said Santos, now associate director of U.S. policy at RESULTS Educational Fund, a nonpartisan anti-poverty group. “They’re like, ‘We honestly do not have time for this. I’m barely getting by. I have to go to work. I cannot take time off work to actually talk to the school and deal with this.’”

Despite this, records show that students’ guardians seeking McKinney-Vento assistance tried to parse the plain language of the law for themselves, without attorneys or advocates.

A mother explained to the state Department of Education that she withdrew her children from their current school because the family planned to enter a shelter east of Pittsburgh. But when the shelter gave those rooms to someone else, she said, her family was instead left sleeping in the parking lot of a Burlington Coat Factory. The mother enrolled her children in the Gateway School District, but received a form arguing they had “no right to enrollment” due to “lack of any evidence” of residing within its boundaries.

“We are basically being denied enrollment due to not having a physical address and can’t get an address until we get into a shelter or into a section 8 house,” she wrote to the state. “I thought homeless laws and disability laws protected children and made it to where they could continue going to school no matter my situation however I guess that’s not the case.”

Aaron Smith, a social worker in the Gateway School District, said he sent the family the state’s “Procedural Safeguards Notice of Denial of Enrollment” form because staff wished to clarify whether the children should remain in a previous district. The form said the children could attend Gateway pending a final decision, not that they were disenrolled immediately.

“I don’t like the form either, but it’s just the standard form we’re supposed to use,” said Smith, who recalled that area shelters were at capacity when he started working with the family. “If I got that [form], I’d be upset because it looks kind of legal. It’s kind of threatening and intimidating.”

Smith said the incident had a positive resolution: The children continued attending Gateway, and the family later transferred to a charter school in another district when they found permanent housing.

‘The kids are not the only priority’

In Bristol Borough, where the two boys missed more than 70 days of school, their mother asked a district administrator to reconsider enrolling them. “If the school district does not agree with me you must give me something in writing that says that I have a right to appeal the school’s decision,” she wrote in an email.

Bristol Borough did not enroll the children. Instead, the small school system overlooking the Delaware River border that divides Pennsylvania from New Jersey sent a uniformed school officer to the address where the parent said her family was living — a move that could threaten a temporary living situation.

What happened next is disputed. An attorney for Bristol Borough wrote that the apartment’s resident at first denied that the newcomers lived with him, then confirmed that they paid him rent. Attorneys with the Education Law Center, which represented the family in a complaint to the state against the district, said the friend in fact confirmed their clients lived with him temporarily due to economic circumstances. They maintained their clients did not have a lease.

What is certain is the outcome. It was not until January 2020, after the boys’ mother enlisted the help of Education Law Center attorneys, that the two children enrolled in Bristol Borough.

The attorneys argued Bristol Borough should provide $21,300 in educational services to each child to compensate for missed school days.

An attorney for the district replied his client was “led … to believe that the children were not homeless” but were leasing a property. Plus, he argued, Bristol Borough did not violate federal law by choosing not to enroll the children because it “cannot be considered to be omniscient about a family’s living situation” and “can only be aware of the information presented to it.”

It is not clear from records shared with Public Integrity whether Bristol Borough ever awarded the children compensatory education services. Asked for comment, the district’s superintendent said he was not a district employee during the dispute and had no knowledge of it.

Camara, the state’s homeless education coordinator, reviewed the case and concluded that Bristol Borough had already met its obligations under McKinney-Vento.

In a case summary, Michelle Connor, a regional coordinator, wrote that the district official who initially did not enroll the family “looks out for fraud as much as the well-being of the students.”

“This is not to say she does not care; but she cares equally for both,” she continued. “The kids are not the only priority.”

Racial slurs, dress codes, few Black teachers: How Black girls say Philly schools are failing them

2023-05-04T11:00:00+00:00

Black girls in Philadelphia public schools say they’re routinely subjected to racism from fellow students, teachers, and school administrators, and it colors every aspect of their school experience.

That was one of several “overarching” themes found in five student focus groups hosted by the Education Law Center and highlighted in “We Need Supportive Spaces That Celebrate Us: Black Girls Speak Out About Public Schools,” a report from the nonprofit advocacy group released Thursday. Black girls bear the brunt of systemic inequities in school and throughout society, yet they are under-represented in research and investment aimed at students of color, the center said.

How to fix a problem that’s so pervasive? Having more Black teachers and staffers in schools would make a difference, the group’s attorneys said, based on student input in the focus groups. The report also focused on the importance of using a curriculum that makes Black students feel comfortable expressing their views, as well as criticisms of certain dress codes in schools and the role of police in schools.

“We cannot create equitable education spaces without intentionally considering the needs of Black girls and addressing the interlocking systemic barriers to accessing a high-quality education,” the report said.

For its report, the Education Law Center lawyers talked to some 20 Black girls who attended public middle and high schools, most of them in the Philadelphia area. Some attended neighborhood schools, some went to charter schools, and some were in educational programs at juvenile justice facilities. In every setting, students reported anti-Black racism in practice and in policy.

The students described being subjected to racial slurs, being singled out for discipline because of their race and gender, and a lack of access to appropriate support and resources. The findings align with research showing Black girls are singled out or punished more often and more harshly than their peers for similar behaviors.

“The girls we met with spoke consistently about pervasive, anti-Black racism, which shaped all aspects of their educational experience,” Education Law Center staff attorney Paige Joki, one of the report’s authors, said in an interview.

Joki said the group focused on Black girls in its report because they are “uniquely harmed” by various prejudices and inequities in society, and also because they often get ignored by research and data-based studies. She also said that the report “really confirmed for us the importance of addressing barriers,” and that the Black girls said they had universally negative experiences regardless of school demographics.

“Black girls deserve schools that are supportive and affirming and well resourced,” Joki said. “These spaces are possible.”

Black teachers and ‘affirming’ curriculum are crucial

Research has shown Black students learn better from teachers who look like them, though some students don’t get taught by a Black teacher for years.

Black teachers have made a difference for Kerla Milius, a junior at Philadelphia’s Northeast High School.

There aren’t many of them at the school, but they have banded together to support each other and avoid being “overshadowed,” said Milius, who is outreach coordinator for the Philly Black Students Alliance.

“That’s inspired us [students] to stick together,” said Milius.

Meanwhile, the girls interviewed for the report said they felt uncomfortable, and sometimes unsafe, in classrooms with no other people of color. One said she didn’t think her school was “built” for her because “there are very few Black teachers.”

The focus groups themselves were all led by Black women, which made for an intergenerational bonding experience, said Joki. “There was a lot of discussion about when students were able to be educated by a Black teacher for the first time and how special that was,” she said.

That ties in with another of the report’s recommendations: Schools should adopt a “culturally responsive and affirming curriculum.” All the girls expressed a desire to learn about Black history, beyond the history of racism and oppression.

“It is very uncomfortable to be the only Black student in class when you are talking about slavery,” said one girl quoted in the report.

“A Black teacher often either supplements or supplants a curriculum that is problematic,” said Sharif El-Mekki, founder of the Center for Black Educator Development. Learning is “undermined” if students are taught that Black history “begins with enslavement,” he told us. “It’s important that we have people that actually know history” and can tell students about positive contributions Black people have made, he said.

El-Mekki also sharply criticized school policies for layoffs that hit the newest hires hardest, since they tend to affect teachers of color more than white teachers.

In fact, the girls interviewed noted examples of Black teachers facing discrimination, and were on the lookout for such instances, the report said.

Dress and grooming codes were another source of angst for the girls in the focus groups. “Every single student was able to share with us a way they had been harmed by their school’s dress code,” Joki said. Bans on certain hairstyles or head coverings create discrimination and make students feel unwelcome, she said.

In schools with uniforms, a Black girl may get sent home because of the way the uniform fits, the center found. One girl said her uniform made her feel “sexualized” and “grown.”

The girls said having police in schools made them feel unsafe, rather than protected. That’s in line with research showing that Black girls are more likely to be arrested or get in trouble at school than white girls, said Joki. “They were keenly aware that they would be subjected to racist stereotypes,” she said. “They were treated like Black women despite being Black girls.”

The report recommends that schools do away with discriminatory dress codes and remove police from schools.

Joki said she’s optimistic the report will help bring about “some overdue change in our schools.” It comes as Pennsylvania deals with a Commonwealth Court judge’s February ruling that the state’s school funding system is unconstitutional because it shortchanges children in low-income districts.

“I’m hopeful that will bring needed resources to our schools,” Joki said.

More school counselors would improve juvenile justice system for girls, Philadelphia DA says

2023-03-31T19:02:49+00:00

Philadelphia’s juvenile justice system needs an overhaul to more fairly treat girls who are arrested and provide them with effective services and prevention programs, according to a new report from District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office.

Far fewer girls in the city are arrested than boys, the report found, but they are more likely to be arrested for incidents that occur in school or at home — one in three, compared to one in five boys.

“Girls without question are in a unique position in the juvenile justice system,” Krasner said at a Thursday press conference releasing the report. “They are arrested in small numbers, and they are arrested for very different kinds of offenses.”

One of the main recommendations from Krasner’s office involving education is that there should be a ratio of one counselor per 250 students in city schools, down from the current ratio of one per 650. In March, the Philadelphia Board of Education passed a budget that provides additional counselors to the highest-needs schools, although it doesn’t go as far as what the report calls for. Doing so would require hiring 240 more counselors at a cost $17.4 million.

The report — “Overlooked or Overscrutinized: A Case Study of Girls’ Justice in Philadelphia and Implications for the Design of a Fairer System” — studied all juvenile arrests in 2019.

In addition, the report said that every school should have two counselors on staff, regardless of its size, “with at least one of these counselors identifying as a woman to ensure that girls have a safe space if they do not feel comfortable confiding in male-identifying counselors.”

The student-counselor ratio was decimated due to budget cuts a decade ago and has not been fully restored.

The study looked at all 2,242 youth arrests in 2019, and followed all the cases through their disposition as of the end of 2022, said Adam Serlin, one of the report’s authors.

He said that nationally, 69% of the juveniles arrested are boys, but in Philadelphia, 81% are boys. The data also shows a stark racial imbalance: While about half of the city’s population is Black and 23% Hispanic, 95% of the girls arrested are Black or brown.

Black girls in particular “are overpoliced,” said Philadelphia Public Defender Keisha Hudson. “They are perceived as more mature, more aggressive. They’re perceived as adults, in our schools in our justice system, and they’re treated that way. So I think this is an important first step.”

While boys make up the majority of youth in our system, “the number of girls is growing at a rate that should concern us all,” Hudson said.

“The most practical implication of this is … the existence of fewer programs and services for girls in the juvenile justice system,” he said. Most of the existing programs are for boys only.

The “gender skew” also leads to much less research on girls.

Students protest for change in the system

A group of about 50 students, male and female, rallied outside the building across from City Hall where the Krasner press conference was held. They demanded reforms to juvenile justice in the city.

“They are putting girls in jail for fights in school,” said Kendra Vandewater, executive director of the nonprofit YEAH Philly, which stands for Youth Empowerment for Advancement Hangout. It works with young people who have been impacted by violence to offer them services and reduce arrests. The group chanted “free our youth” and “stop judging kids as adults.”

Kassidy Tingle, 20, one of the protesters, said that she was arrested for drug possession at age 17 when she was a student at Camelot Academy, an alternative school for students who leave traditional high schools for disciplinary or attendance reasons. She said she was called racial slurs by the police and not given the help she needed.

“They take advantage of their authority and don’t respect us,” she said. “They don’t see us as humans.”

The data shows that more girls are arrested for assault than any other reason, 44%, said report co-author Ciara Sheerin. That’s nearly double the rate for boys. And a major reason so many girls are arrested is a provision in state law that labels as a felony any assault on a member of a “protected class.”

Under the law, Sheerin said, teachers and other school staff, including school resource officers, are considered a protected class. So a student who pushes a teacher or a school resource officer, even if there is no injury, has to be charged as a criminal assault, she said.

Marsha Levick, head of the Juvenile Law Center, noted that she wrote a law journal article 20 years ago on this topic. “It’s dismaying to note that ... things haven’t changed,” she said.

“It’s not enough to give everyone the same,” she said. “What we’ve learned over time … is that when we think about the involvement and interaction of girls with the justice system, they have very specific needs. And we can’t assume that what works for boys will work for girls.”

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

Philadelphia’s early childhood education workers ‘on the brink of a breakdown’ advocates say

2023-03-16T18:17:30+00:00

Citing “inadequate” wages and warning of an impending mass exodus from the field, early childhood education advocates in Philadelphia and statewide say their sector is “on the brink of a breakdown.”

Those advocates are urging state lawmakers and Gov. Josh Shapiro to add more funding for childcare and early childhood education in the state budget this year. Without more money, they say employees will leave, programs will close, and children, families, and businesses in Pennsylvania will face “devastating consequences.”

Shapiro’s proposed budget includes $66.7 million in early childhood education funding. But advocates said that’s far from enough. They are calling for $430 million for increasing wages and expanding programs across Pennsylvania.

Roughly 50% of early childhood educators surveyed across the commonwealth said they were “unsure” or “intending to not be working in their jobs in five years,” Start Strong PA, a statewide early education advocacy group, said in a new report.

(The report was funded through a grant from the William Penn Foundation. Chalkbeat receives funding from the William Penn Foundation.)

Losing those workers would mean smaller programs with fewer teachers. That would leave more families in need of child care without an option, and keep more parents — especially women — out of the workforce, advocates say.

Sheila Moses, a former early childhood teacher, said Thursday at the Northeast Philadelphia YMCA, she had to leave her job as an educator because of the low wages.

“The tension I experienced as a single parent was overwhelming,” said Moses, who spoke at an event to promote the report hosted by the Start Strong and Children First advocacy groups. “I worked full-time and still needed welfare to support my family.”

The Start Strong report said that the child care sector in Philadelphia “is in crisis.” Its analysis found that 83% of Philadelphia-area programs have a staffing shortage, with 616 open positions across the city and 2,831 children on waitlists.

Using 2021 earnings data, the most recent available, the report also found that in all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, early childhood teachers’ earnings “failed to meet the cost-of-living” and were not sufficient to cover “basic necessities like housing, transportation and food.”

Wages varied across the state. The highest earners were in Union County, who make up to $31,320 annually, while teachers in Elk County earned as little as $15,408 per year.

In Philadelphia County, the estimated full-time hourly rate for these teachers was $14.37 for annual earnings of $29,884.

The report’s authors said early childhood workers earned less annually than housekeepers, hair stylists, landscapers, and retail workers.

Donna Cooper, executive director of Children First, said at the event Thursday that early childhood programs are losing teachers to businesses like Amazon that can pay higher wages and offer more immediate healthcare benefits.

Milagros Battiti, an early educator at KinderAcademy in Philadelphia, said at the event she’s been “struggling to provide basic necessities for myself” on her current earnings of $30,000 a year.

When her mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2022, those struggles multiplied and she fell under the federal poverty line.

“I am not the dream I envisioned or worked hard towards,” Battiti said. “I’m just surviving day by day.”

Chalkbeat Philadelphia Senior Writer Dale Mezzacappa contributed to this story.

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

Pennsylvania has nearly the worst education ‘opportunity gaps’ in country

2022-10-13T00:39:45+00:00

Pennsylvania ranks nearly the worst in the nation for educational opportunity gaps based on race and income levels, according to a new report finding a large difference in access to a quality education between students of color and white students.

The state also has a large educational opportunity gap between students from low-income families and their wealthier counterparts, the study showed.

“We know that even within high-poverty schools, there is a race gap,” said David Lapp, the director of policy research for Research for Action, a Philadelphia-based organization focused on issues related to equity in education that produced a dashboard showing the differences in opportunity. Such a gap is not as prominent nationally as it is in Pennsylvania, he said.

According to the group’s state-by-state dashboard and a study of Pennsylvania based on it, racial gaps loom wide here.

Researchers compiled an average opportunity score to rate access to quality education. Pennsylvania scored 65% overall — 70% for white students, 53% for Black students, and 58% for Hispanic students.

Among the 50 states, Pennsylvania ranked 49th in the Black-white opportunity gap, 50th in the Hispanic-white opportunity gap, and 49th in the gap between students from low-income families and their wealthier peers.

“White students are provided greater access to educational opportunity compared to white students in most states, and Black and Hispanics [are provided] less opportunity than in other states,” said Justis Freeman, one of the report’s authors.

What’s known as the opportunity gap widened from 2015-16, when the group released its first dashboard, to 2017-18, the latest data collected by the federal Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.

While the concentration of Black and Hispanic students in high-poverty schools appears to be a primary factor driving gaps, “racial disparities often exist even within subgroups of schools with similar levels of poverty,” according to a report on Pennsylvania that accompanied the release of the updated dashboard.

In most areas that can be measured, “Pennsylvania is defined by educational inequity,” Lapp said.

Overall achievement data for all students put Pennsylvania among the top half of states on the dashboard, but that ranking masks the wide gaps based on race and income both in achievement and opportunity, he said. The findings “shift the responsibility to policymakers” to tackle the causes of persistent and widespread educational inequity, he said.

The findings are based on federal data collected before COVID precautions shut down campuses. “This is the final baseline for what we know about schools from before the pandemic,” Lapp said.

Nationally, the dashboard showed 63.6% of white students having access to quality education compared with only 54.2% of Black students and 59.5% of Hispanic students. While 64% of students who are not low income had access, only 57.9% of low-income students did, as measured by eligibility for subsidized meals.

Research for Action categorized quality education as having access in three broad areas — credentials and experience of educators, rigor of curriculum, and school climate as measured by data such as absenteeism and frequency of punishments like suspension.

The three areas included 14 indicators.

The Pennsylvania report cited two factors that likely contributed to the state’s wide gaps: Black and Hispanic students are disproportionately enrolled in high-poverty schools while white students are disproportionately enrolled in low-poverty schools. When white students are enrolled in high-poverty schools, those schools tend to score better on the opportunity index than those enrolling mostly students of color.

The release of the updated dashboard comes as Pennsylvania awaits a decision on a challenge to its school funding system, which currently results in the widest spending gaps in the nation between wealthy and poor districts.

Commonwealth Court judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer is expected to release a decision before the end of the year after hearing testimony from educators and experts during a four-month trial. Plaintiffs in the case include six school districts, several parents and two statewide advocacy groups.

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

This is a critical moment for early childhood education

2021-12-07T11:50:00+00:00

The importance of early childhood education has never been lost on Philadelphia, from its push for pre-kindergarten five years ago to its ongoing efforts to expand access in vulnerable communities.

But the pandemic has shone an even brighter spotlight on the need to prioritize high-quality instruction for the city’s youngest learners. After schools shuttered due to the coronavirus, the School District of Philadelphia saw its kindergarten enrollment drop sharply — about 30% compared to the previous year. That’s three times the national average. First grade enrollment also declined 8%.

Additionally, goals to expand pre-K to more students were hampered by the pandemic. The aim for PHLpreK was to fund slots for 6,500 students a year, but the effort is funded by the city’s beverage tax — the revenues from which declined about 15% during the pandemic.

This comes amid a backdrop of disappointing achievement and vast racial disparities in test scores. A report earlier this year found just 32% of third graders in Philadelphia read on grade level, with gaps among racial groups and low scores for students learning English and those with disabilities.

Educators find themselves grappling with teaching 5-year-olds who have had no formal educational experience and 6-year-olds who maybe have remained in preschool an extra year.

Chalkbeat is meeting this critical moment with a guide featuring stories explaining the state of play in early childhood in Philadelphia. Reporter Ann Schimke examines how behavioral issues that grew out of the pandemic are impacting efforts to limit suspension among early learners. Ann will also look at the likelihood of universal preschool coming to Philadelphia. Dale Mezzacappa writes about how one child care facility is facing the staffing shortages that are hampering centers nationwide. Samaria Bailey looks at the importance of parental involvement in early learning. And Johann Calhoun talked to an early childhood educator about introducing students to school for the first time this year.

Check out the stories in the guide below.

Preschool suspensions and expulsions have dropped in Pennsylvania. Here’s why that progress is in jeopardy.

Jane Stadnik regularly gets calls from Pennsylvania families whose young children are about to be suspended or expelled from preschool, often for things like throwing toys, pushing over furniture, or repeatedly running out of the classroom.

As a family resource specialist at the PEAL Center, a statewide advocacy group for children and youth with disabilities, her job is to help such families access therapy or other support so children can stay in their classrooms.

In Pennsylvania, as in many other states, preschool suspensions and expulsions in public schools have decreased in the last several years. Despite this trend, such removals still happen, and disparities based on race, gender and disability status persist. Some advocates fear the pandemic could stall or reverse recent gains.

Read the full story.

Pennsylvania could get universal preschool. Here’s how.

More than half of Pennsylvania 3- and 4-year-olds don’t have access to public preschool programs. There simply aren’t enough slots, even with slow-but-steady state funding increases over the past several years.

Advocates say federal money will be key to creating a universal preschool program in Pennsylvania — one capable of reaching the state’s nearly 300,000 preschool-age children. Now, for the first time, that federal influx is a distinct possibility as lawmakers debate President Biden’s massive social spending bill, which includes billions for preschool nationwide.

“If something like Build Back Better goes through, that’s a lot more money that’s going to be available to serve a lot more kids.”

Read the full story.

Child care staffing shortages across Pennsylvania persist, but solutions taking shape.

While staffing has always been an issue in the industry due to its persistently low pay and often stressful working conditions, shortages have never been as bad as they are now. During the pandemic, 255 of just over 1,000 total centers in the state permanently closed.

The state helped providers continue to pay staff for several months in 2020, but that didn’t last long. Many workers found that they could make more money working at Target or Walmart or Starbucks, among the companies that have raised wages in an effort to maintain their own staffing levels.

“It’s a hard job. Children are a lot of work, you have to have a big heart, a lot of empathy, a lot of patience. It’s a lot easier to hand out a cup of coffee.”

Read the full story.

Parental involvement crucial for Philly’s early learners, advocates say.

With remote learning, many parents took on the role of part-time teacher to their children. Now, with most students attending full-time in-person school — some for the first time — some child advocates in Philadelphia say that parental support is more important than ever.

“Parent engagement helps create that safety net for children and that safety net includes making sure there is a space and opportunity to learn those skills at home.”

Read the full story.

For many of her students, this year is their first school experience.

Olga Rosario, is a dual-language kindergarten teacher at Lewis Elkin Elementary School in Kensington. This school year, she is closely observing the development of early learners.

Rosario is focused on re-establishing classroom norms, routines and expectations. It’s a challenge. (So, too, is getting kindergartners to keep their masks on.)

“Due to the pandemic, many of my students did not attend preschool last year; therefore, kindergarten has been their first school experience, so children are learning how to behave and engage as students.”

Read the full story.

In landmark school funding case, Pennsylvania lawmakers try to block evidence of racial disparities

2021-07-08T01:51:31+00:00

As a trial nears in a landmark fair funding case, Republican legislative leaders want to block evidence that Pennsylvania’s Black and Hispanic students fare worse on traditional measures of academic achievement than their white peers.

At a Wednesday hearing, attorneys for House Speaker Bryan Cutler and Senate President Jake Corman told Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubilirer that the evidence is irrelevant because the plaintiffs in the case are not alleging intentional racial discrimination.

Patrick Northen, who represents Cutler, accused the other side of highlighting the racial disparities in educational outcomes to “appeal to the sympathies of the court and the court of public opinion.”

Six school districts, joined by several parents and civil rights groups, filed the suit nearly seven years ago against the state government. They allege that Pennsylvania’s school funding method violates its state constitutional mandate to provide a “thorough and efficient” system of education for all students, and denies them their rights under the “equal protection” clause.

Those in districts with high poverty rates and low property wealth have been shortchanged, the plaintiffs contend, as Pennsylvania’s system puts much of the funding burden on local taxes. That has led to some of the biggest gaps in per-student spending between rich and poor districts of any state in the country.

Despite adopting a fair funding formula in 2016 that would distribute state education aid based on poverty rates, student needs, local property wealth, and median incomes, the legislature has not applied the formula to most of the funds it distributes.

Black and Latino students make up about a quarter of the state’s K-12 population, but half of Black students and 40% of Latino students attend school in the poorest fifth of the state’s districts, according to the plaintiffs. They say the relative lack of resources results in larger class sizes, fewer qualified teachers, more buildings in disrepair, and fewer opportunities for after-school activities, including sports, along with other disadvantages that contribute to worse educational outcomes for students of color.

“While students of all races experience underfunding, the quintile of districts with the most concentrated numbers of African American and Hispanic students are $1.4 billion more underfunded than the shortfall in districts with the fewest students of color,” plaintiffs say in their brief. Some 80% of students of color attend school in districts that would receive more funding if the state distributed its revenue according to its own funding formula.

But Northen said this case is about students in districts where income and property values are low — not about race. “I don’t think you can say because certain racial or ethnic groups disproportionately reside in those districts, that somehow provides evidence of the complaint they have filed,” he said.

Jubilirer questioned Northen on this, wondering why the plaintiffs cannot focus their case “on an identifiable class of students who reside in school districts with low income and property values.” Later she added: “In a vacuum, at this point for me to try to limit how evidence can or cannot be presented or what might be said or not said about that evidence at trial is challenging.”

Attorneys for Cutler and Corman also said that much of the evidence on record dates back to the original court filing in 2014, and they need additional information and data on recent developments, including the impact of COVID-19 on districts’ ability to serve their students.

Representing the plaintiffs, the Education Law Center’s Maura McInerney said this demand is a delay tactic. She noted that many more recent depositions and interrogatories provide updated information on the conditions in low-wealth school districts.

“It’s clear the demands of respondents [for updated information] will never end,” she said. Meanwhile, “the education of hundreds of thousands of students is at stake.”

Kenneth Huston, president of the NAACP Pennsylvania State Conference, one of the plaintiffs, said he was “shocked” by the motion to preclude any evidence of the system’s impact on children of color.

“We are hopeful that the motion will be dismissed, and that all issues relevant to fair funding for all Pennsylvania schools will move forward,” Huston said in a statement. “Our fight for justice on this issue is one deeply embedded in our state constitution and civil rights laws, and one we do not take lightly.”

There has been continuous legal activity and delays in the case, including earlier attempts by legislators to have the case thrown out. It is the latest in a series of fair funding cases brought in Pennsylvania over the past 30 years and the only one that has gotten this far.

In April, Jubilirer scheduled the trial to begin on September 9.

On Wednesday, she did not indicate when she would rule on the latest motions.

Pennsylvania wants to allow districts to delay standardized testing until fall

2021-02-23T22:19:09+00:00

Pennsylvania Education Secretary Noe Ortega has informed the U.S. Department of Education that he wants to allow districts and charter schools to delay administering state exams until September, taking advantage of an option offered when federal officials told states on Monday that they must resume testing this year.

Acting Assistant Education Secretary Ian Rosenblum sent a letter to chief state school officers Feb. 22 telling them to administer standardized tests for 2020-21, despite the disruption caused by the pandemic and the prevalence of virtual learning. The department did not offer states the option to avoid giving tests entirely but offered flexibility, including the ability to give the tests later in the year rather than in the spring, as is customary.

“State assessments and accountability systems play an important role in advancing educational equity, by enabling states, districts and schools to use data to target resources to the students with the greatest needs,” Rosenblum’s letter said. “In addition, parents need information on how their children are doing.”

In response, Ortega on Tuesday posted on the department’s website a draft letter to Rosenblum stating that 320 of the state’s nearly 750 districts and charter schools are offering remote-only instruction due to state health guidance regarding the spread of the coronavirus in their areas. He said it would be “impossible” within the next six weeks to balance health concerns while “safeguarding … the validity of any assessment results.” The letter asks federal officials to issue one of the permitted waivers on the testing requirement.

Noting that the all-remote districts and charters enroll disproportionately high numbers of students who are economically disadvantaged, English learners, Black and Hispanic, or have special needs, Ortega said that the complex logistics of administering the tests in the spring would result in lower test participation and therefore defeat the purpose.

“The very student groups that have faced the greatest historical disadvantages will be systematically underrepresented in any near-term statewide assessment administration,” Ortega’s letter to Rosenblum said. “To be clear, Pennsylvania feels a moral imperative to assess students as one means of understanding and documenting learning loss; however, the assessment administration itself should not serve to aggravate or confound the issue.”

In Philadelphia, the district has remained entirely virtual as have most of its more than 80 charter schools, which together enroll more than 200,000 students.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools across Pennsylvania — and the nation — to shut down in March, a few weeks before the scheduled administration of the state standardized test, the PSSA. Since Rosenblum’s letter, several states including Michigan and Colorado took immediate steps to suspend the usual testing or substitute local assessments to fulfill the requirement.

Many civil rights groups told President Joe Biden’s administration that they opposed waiving the tests entirely, saying such assessments are necessary to expose entrenched educational inequities among different student groups and help direct resources where they are most needed.

While affirming that view, Education Voters of Pennsylvania, a leading advocacy group, issued a statement saying it agreed with Ortega’s position.

The group said the decision allows educators “to focus their time and energy for the remainder of this school year on teaching and supporting students” and on determining how to invest “one time federal funding to help mitigate the harm that Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable students have experienced” due to the pandemic.

The public is invited to weigh in on Ortega’s letter to Rosenblum by emailing RA_EDESEAWaiver@pa.gov.

Philadelphia widens free internet eligibility for families with children in school

2020-12-18T23:46:59+00:00

Do you have Internet Essentials? Take this survey about the quality of your connection.

Philadelphia has expanded eligibility for PHLConnectED, its program to provide free internet access to families with school-age children.

City officials intensified outreach this week to families who now qualify for the program.

Under the new guidelines, all families who participate in public benefit programs with income qualifications, such as food stamps, will be eligible. Students who receive special education services or are learning English also qualify.

“We want to connect as many families as possible to reliable internet access,” said Mayor Jim Kenney in announcing the outreach campaign. “As digital learning continues, access to high-speed internet is more important than ever.”

Among the main beneficiaries of the expansion are customers who were enrolled in Comcast’s low-cost Internet Essentials program — especially those who fell behind on their payments — before the pandemic forced most learning online and Comcast began offering free access to new customers.

Even at $9.95 a month, the cost can prove too much for families who are struggling with other obligations, especially those who lost jobs during the pandemic.

“Throughout this process, we’ve also learned that many families already have internet service, but struggle to afford it,” said Chief Information Officer Mark Wheeler. Those already enrolled were not eligible for the two-months-free offer Comcast made last spring to new customers when some virtual learning began for almost all the schools in the city.

About 7,000 people signed up for the Comcast offer between April, when the offer was made, and August, when PHLConnectED started as a joint venture with the city, school district, internet service providers, and several foundations and non-profits. The $17 million program promised free internet until June 2022 to eligible households with students enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade in the Philadelphia school district, as well as at most charters and some private schools.

Those 7,000 families have since been notified that they could enroll in PHLConnectED and receive free internet through the end of the 2021-2022 school year. That group accounts for more than half of the 12,000 families PHLConnectED has enrolled since its August launch, according to officials.

As part of PHLConnectED, the city designated three organizations to employ “digital navigators” who track down families, tell them about their eligibility, and help them complete the multi-step process.

“Most of the people I have talked to on the phone about Internet Essentials and PHLConnectED, they don’t know where to start,” said Miyo Imai, a digital navigator for the ExCite Center of Drexel University.

Besides Drexel, the other organizations with digital navigators are Community Learning Center, an adult literacy organization, and SEAMAAC, an advocacy group for immigrants.

Even before PHLConnectED started, Drexel and the other organizations had been reaching out to clients trying to help them with their internet connectivity and to obtain Chromebooks or other devices.

Signing up for PHLConnectED requires several steps, and many families just didn’t follow through.

“They have to take the initiative,” said Imai, who is a Drexel student studying computer science and psychology. “In the beginning, we weren’t getting very many calls, and we weren’t sure how to get the word out there.” It’s a Catch-22, she said — promoting a program online doesn’t work if people aren’t online.

“It was hard to get the word out to people who really needed it,” she said. The city turned to advertising through other means, which helped somewhat, she said.

But altogether, she estimates that she only succeeded with about 10 families to complete the process from beginning to end.

To sign up for the program, families can call a 24-hour, 211 hotline. They get a promotional code from the district or their participating school, which they must then activate before receiving the equipment they need to get online. Some families, such as those with less stable living situations, get hotspots through T-Mobile if that will better serve their needs.

Imai and other navigators said many families are in situations where other life challenges take priority over signing up for internet access.

“We have people coming back to us who don’t know how to set it up once they get a kit from Comcast,” Imai said, “Some have data plans on their phone, so we can send them links. But with other people, it is harder. They’ve never seen a modem or a router, they don’t have any idea what to do with them. There is such a range of people’s experiences with tech.”

Other people have called the Drexel navigators to say that their internet speeds are “ridiculously low. “One woman said she couldn’t open up a single web page,” she said.

Existing customers whose bills are in arrears will not have those obligations forgiven, but have not had their service cut off and will be able to receive free service through June 2022.

Before the expansion, eligible families included those with no access or access only through mobile phones, anyone experiencing housing insecurity, or those who had students who spent their days with caregivers at locations without access.

Philadelphia to widen eligibility for free internet access for students

2020-12-10T19:41:33+00:00

City officials plan to expand eligibility for PHLConnectED, a program that provides students in Philadelphia with free internet access for remote learning.

Next week will be designated “PHLConnectED Week” with expanded outreach to families, said Otis Hackney, the city’s chief education officer. City officials will release details then about who else will be eligible for the program.

Thousands of families still are not connected to the internet, he said, though he couldn’t provide an exact figure. When the program began in August, city officials estimated that 18,000 families needed internet access. Since then, they said that they have reached about 12,000 families, including more than 7,000 who had signed up for a Comcast promotion before the official launch of PHLConnectED.

“We’re using this week to continue promotion of PHLConnectEd with new opportunities to sign up,” he said, speaking at Superintendent William Hite’s weekly availability with reporters.

Since the program began, city officials have learned more about why families continue to lack internet access. One problem is that some families start the process to receive wired access or a mobile hotspot and then don’t complete it. A large proportion of families fail to take the next step, Hackney said.

The week will include incentives, including contests and gift cards, and increased communication with those families and others, he said.

“We’ve targeted those families who started the process but not yet completed it,” he said.

Hackney said that the program is working with district and charter schools and the Catholic Independence Mission Schools to pinpoint those in need.

Initially, Hackney said, the city tried to find families who had no access at all. Now city officials are reaching out to those who have some access, but it’s sufficient to support multiple students in the same home. In that case, they may also offer mobile hotspots to the family.

Some students may have access in their homes but spend their school day with caregivers who have spotty internet connections or no access. Those students also would be candidates for mobile hotspots.

PHLConnectED, funded through a combination of public money and private contributions, including by Comcast, promises free internet access through June 2022.

During Thursday’s availability, Hite also said the district is working with Children’s Hospital and the city’s department of health on a rapid coronavirus testing plan for when school buildings might reopen. He said the district will likely contract with a third party to administer the testing, which will be mandatory for any student or staff who is symptomatic.

The district is hoping to contract with an organization with mobile sites that can prioritize areas of the city that have been hardest hit by the virus. He said a plan will be finalized in the next couple of weeks.

Coronavirus relief method cost poor districts millions, report says

2020-12-08T02:49:54+00:00

When the state of Pennsylvania distributed $174 million in federal coronavirus relief to schools, it used a formula that shortchanged districts with large numbers of low income Black and Latino students, a new report shows.

By its calculations, Philadelphia alone would have received $30 million more.

The education advocacy groups that conducted the analysis, Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and Education Voters PA, said that they hoped to influence how any future federal COVID relief funds are allocated to schools.

“This is a pretty simple story about getting the allocation of these funds backwards,” said Stephen Herzenberg, president of the Keystone Research Center, the parent group of the budget and policy center. “And when you step back and think about the context in which this happened, the pandemic, the [coronavirus] relief, but also the country’s wrestling with its history of racial injustice … there’s a tone deafness to the distribution of these funds that is stunning. We cannot make this mistake again.”

The groups say that it made the most sense to distribute the funds according to the state’s basic education funding formula, which is weighted toward districts with the highest needs. That formula takes into account the number of low-income students and English language learners, as well as the concentration of poverty, taxing capacity, and other district conditions, which vary widely in the state.

Had this method been followed, Philadelphia would have received $43.6 million instead of $13.7 million, according to the analysis. The district could have used the money: Philadelphia schools may have to lay off or furlough staff to balance its budget this fiscal year, its chief financial officer told the board of education last week.

Pennsylvania received $5 billion of $150 billion distributed to states as part of the CARES Act, as the federal coronavirus relief bill is known. Of that amount, the state was required to distribute $470 million to school districts, charters, and private schools based on their federal Title I allotment, which considers the portion of students from low-income families.

But there was a pot of another $200 million with no requirements for how to allocate it. Of that amount, $26 million went to charter schools and $174 million to school districts.

That $174 million, designated as school health and safety grants, was distributed according to a method Republican legislative leaders devised. Each district, regardless of size, received $120,000 (charters got $90,000), with the rest distributed based on enrollment.

“The purpose of setting a baseline amount was to protect smaller school districts, ensuring that they received a sufficient amount to assist with COVID-19 health and safety mitigation,” said a statement from Neal R. Lesher, the communications and policy director of the House Appropriations Committee. “The rest of the funding was distributed based on the per pupil membership of the district, as the need for cleaning, PPE, technology and other expenses logically grows with the size of the district.”

Apparently, the Republican-controlled legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, disagreed on how to allocate the funds, another reflection of the state’s deep partisan divide and largely urban-rural split. Wolf’s office issued a statement in response to the groups’ analysis: “This allocation was mandated by the General Assembly. The governor has always supported additional education funding through the Fair Funding Formula,” a reference to the basic education formula.

Resource disparities among districts in the state rank among the starkest in the nation; for instance, it is common to see well-funded and mostly white districts abut those that are mostly Black, Latino, and poor, with more needs but far less per student to spend.

Whether Pennsylvania districts are equitably and adequately funded is a “longstanding and devastating problem” in Pennsylvania, said Susan Spicka, president of EdVotersPA. A major fair funding lawsuit is now making its way through the courts and is expected to go to trial sometime next year. The plaintiffs, six school districts and several parents, want the state to contribute more towards education and to distribute it more equitably.

When the fair funding formula was adopted in 2015 after 25 years without a reliable and predictable system, it was applied only to new funding. Districts were guaranteed no less than they had received the year before, even if their enrollment had gone down. This benefited many rural districts, including some that are poor, but it hammered urban ones, which tend to educate more students of color.

“I don’t think it is ever a good idea to allocate money to schools without a formula that keeps equity in mind,” Spicka said.

At a virtual press conference Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and Education Voters PA convened, Steven Rodriguez, superintendent in Pottstown, one of the poorest districts in mostly affluent Montgomery County, said that the overall funding system in Pennsylvania, “has made second-class citizens of urban students.”

“When I compare my school district ... and think about what happened in the spring, that’s a pretty obvious example,” he said, noting that schools with greater resources “were able to immediately move into a virtual format. They had the curriculum, they had the setup, they had the technology. And even those who didn’t had families that were able to support in a better way than our families were.”

He said a lot of urban districts “still have families that don’t have internet in their homes, they don’t have a level of technology to fully support students doing virtual education, and quite frankly, need to work. So while on the one hand I can say I’m glad that $400 million was spent equitably, I’m very disturbed about the fact that $174 million was spent in a way that I’m not sure why it was spent that way, and I think that citizens need to ask that question.”

According to the groups’ analysis, the distribution method resulted in the districts in the poorest quartile receiving less per student than more affluent districts. Those needy school systems received a total of $36 million, rather than the $90 million it would have gotten had the basic education funding formula been used.

The 25% of school systems with the highest share of Black students also lost out, receiving $34 million instead of the $76 million. Those with the lowest share of Black students received $55 million. It was a similar story for districts with large number of Hispanic students — they received $33 million instead of $82 million.

Philadelphia officials had no comment as of press time.

“At some point,” said Spicka, “you have to realize some school districts are so desperately underfunded, and have so few resources, that the focus in Harrisburg should be leveling up these districts so every kid in Pennsylvania can succeed in school and in life.”

Brave new world: Students from immigrant families in Philadelphia give inside view on adjustment to remote learning

2020-12-04T23:07:30+00:00

This article was produced with support from Resolve Philly, the organization that leads Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on economic mobility.

In mid-March, some 200,000 Philadelphia students were sent home from their public schools due to the coronavirus, with hopes they would return two weeks later. That didn’t happen, and the buildings have been shuttered ever since.

From Northeast to Overbrook to Furness, students had to adapt to learning online, largely from their homes. For thousands of students from immigrant families in Philadelphia public schools, including 13% who are English Language Learners, the shutdown has posed unique challenges. There can be language barriers or confusion about the new technology. There is concern about juggling jobs with children’s course loads. There is fear about the virus, which disproportionately strikes communities of color.

But there are also victories, grace, even a touch of enlightenment. A pair of brothers cozily study on a pillow bed handmade by their mother from African fabric. Others enjoy sharing lunch as a family, eating recipes passed down by great grandparents. Many have grown closer in this isolation.

Here are the stories of three immigrant families who spoke to Chalkbeat Philadelphia about this singular time in their education experience.

It all happened so fast.

“I had stuff left in my locker. I had my personal books in my locker, my dance clothes for my dance team in my locker. I expected to be sitting [out] for a week or two and come back,” recalled Ramirrah Reid, a junior at George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science, of her last days attending school.

But then the principal sent out an email saying the district was shutting down. “That was my sophomore year,” Ramirrah said, “and I didn’t really get to experience it at all.”

Ramirrah Reid, left, and her younger sister Samya Demercado.

“It all happened so fast ... I expected to be sitting [out] for a week or two and come back.” -Ramirrah Reid, George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science

For 16-year-old Ramirrah, school is now a laptop that she uses in her home in Overbrook Park, where she lives with her siblings as well as her mother and grandmother, both of whom immigrated from Jamaica in the 1990s. As the eldest of three children, she has also taken on the role of tutor and teacher while her mother is at work as a nurse.

On a recent morning, Ramirrah watched an astronomy lesson on space missions while her sister, Samya Demercado, sat on a living room sofa in her pink and white pajamas and played a game on the cell phone. Samya had a half day and was done with school a little after 10 a.m.

“My mom, at first she was here with us, taking care of my grandmom but she just recently started going back to work so it’s just me with my siblings,” Ramirrah said. “It’s kind of a lot because I’m doing my work, then I got to make sure they’re doing their work.”

Ramirrah is juggling everything at home while still fulfilling the requirements of what she called “hardcore” classes — Honors Pre-Calculus, Honors Physics, AP U.S. History, and an English 101 dual enrollment course at the Community College of Philadelphia.

According to the African Cultural Alliance of North America (ACAN), an organization that assists African and Caribbean immigrants, virtual learning has brought on an extra burden for families. The organization provides tech training for business owners and says they are working on a grant to help families adjust to virtual learning.

“There have been a lot of issues with digital learning in the African and Caribbean community,” said ACANA CEO Voffee Jabateh. “We do get parents having difficulties...issues like trying to log onto Zoom and not having the proper internet. In some cases, parents do not have the proper tools. Some of them only know how to go online over the phone. The parents might not know how to follow up or check their work, they only take their [students’] word for it.

Reporter Samaria Bailey and immigrant students appear on The Source with Andrea Lawful Sanders - WURD Radio

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Ramirrah said before returning to work, her mother supervised her younger brother and sister. Now, although she has stepped into the role, she is just as, if not more, bothered by the fact that she can’t be near her close friends. While Ramirrah is not shy, she does sometimes keep to herself and felt like school “really brought me out of my shell.” She tries to stay positive, avoids thinking about the stress and keeps herself busy. But some days it’s not easy.

“I prefer to be in school - just the whole school experience – going to different classes, meeting new people, going places after school with my friends,” she said, crying. “I don’t think I’ve ever come straight home after school.”

“Going virtual,” she continued, “I’m missing out on most of my high school experience.”

Ramirrah’s sister, Samya, said she felt similarly, like remote learning has taken something from her. When she was a second grader last year at Overbrook Educational Center, she was in the annex building. This was supposed to be the year that she moved up to the big building, where she could see all the older students, including her brother, walk to lunch in the cafeteria.

Ramirrah Reid, left, and her younger sister Samya Demercado shown studying together at home.

“But, now I’m in my house. I’m not in the building,” she said. “I feel furious because I want to see all my friends. I can’t see any of my friends and how funny and crazy they are.”

Samya has been struck by the heavy workload she’s expected to finish every day and turns to her teacher or sister if she needs help. The computer puts a strain on her eyes, she said, so much so that sometimes she feels as though they are “burning.” Ramirrah says she also gets headaches sometimes. Their brother, on the other hand, prefers learning at home without the distraction of classmates.

But virtual learning has brought on some residuals that they enjoy. Ramirrah and Samya have come to appreciate their grandmother and mother’s food, especially recipes passed down from their great-grandmother. Before, they might have eaten the school’s breakfast and lunch or ordered takeout meals. Now, they eat more of their family’s native foods – including special Jamaican sourced frankfurters, tin mackerel with boiled dumplings, and porridge.

“Sometimes what I will do is come down and make them something to eat because I don’t want them to be sitting around the computer all day, eating chips and stuff,” said their grandmother, Marlene Johnson. “I think I feel more for the children because sometimes you can see that they are confused. [But] they do their work.”

Learning at home has been an adjustment for all of Aracely Isidoro, an immigrant from Mexico, and her four children. But the sacrifice is perhaps steepest for her oldest, Jazaret.

The 18-year-old is an advanced construction student at YouthBuild Philadelphia, an accelerated program for nontraditional students to finish high school. Learning at home means she might miss out on one of the most important pieces of her program — the hands-on training needed to eventually earn a certification in her field. Jazaret watches the local coronavirus cases rise and restrictions on in-person learning remain in place, and she feels uncertain about her future.

“It’s complicated to get your certificate without having any experience,” said Jazaret. “We are going to get our diploma [but] we might not get certified because we don’t have the required hours or the hands-on experience.”

Juntos, a community-led Latinx immigrant organization based in South Philadelphia, said such uncertainty has come to mark the experiences of countless families and called on the School District of Philadelphia to do more.

“We have seen parents weigh between taking a job or leaving their children home alone, older siblings becoming teachers for their younger siblings, all while families fight for internet access to ensure their children are able to attend classes and then resolve issues that come up with the online platforms all in a language that is not their own,” Juntos said in a statement.

Learning inside the family’s three bedroom home in South Philadelphia, Jazaret misses having a “seat partner” who she could ask questions of in class. Jazaret described her new version of class as “in my bed … just staring at the computer.”

From left, Jazaret Isidoro embraces her younger brother Francisco. Her sister Angie is to the right and her brother Alan Perez is at the rear.

“When [we] go to normal school, if you have a question, you ask your seat partner. Now, it’s really difficult because we don’t know each other because our cameras are off.” -Jazaret Isidoro, YouthBuild Philadelphia

“Now, it’s really difficult because we don’t know each other because our cameras are off. We don’t have that connection or communication,” she said, adding that she sees a change in her siblings, too. “Normally, [I’m] used to after school, after three, the kids come in, they are full of energy but now it’s quiet.”

Her brother, Alan Perez, an 8th grader at Andrew Jackson School, also attends class in his bedroom. He said he initially liked the idea of virtual learning because he didn’t always enjoy learning in a school building. “I was actually pretty happy that we weren’t going back. I didn’t really like going in person. I thought it was nice to have freedom to roam around the house on breaks,” he said.

“My feelings have changed drastically.”

Alan knows that he procrastinates without someone watching him, especially when his mother is downstairs, and not able to mind him. So he admits he sometimes doesn’t pay attention in class. “It’s like, since I’m not being watched, I drift off doing my own thing…mostly playing video games,” he said. “I do feel I am learning. I still am able to turn in my assignments correctly.”

Jazaret and Alan said they also assume tutor roles for their two younger siblings, Angie, a fifth grader, and Francisco, a third grader. Their mother, who doesn’t speak English, said through a translator that their stepping in has been a huge help, as has a nearby church that offers tutoring two days a week.

“It’s very hard for me and my kids. I also didn’t study in Mexico, so the method of learning is very different and also much more advanced,” she said, noting that Jazaret and Alan’s help with the younger kids “makes it easier [but] it’s still complicated.

“In the case of my younger son - he has a hard time focusing on the task at hand. The teacher will send a message if the younger child is missing homework but there is no additional support,” she said.

One of the silver linings to having school at home for the family is the growth of their relationships. Jazaret and Alan observed that Angie and Francisco, who’ve been mostly immersed in American customs, are now more exposed to Mexican food and language.

“My younger siblings, they are speaking more of their native language, instead of English, which is good. During lunch or breakfast, we are eating more of our native food than normal school. They are eating better now. Here, we eat what we normally eat and our own fresh food, compared to the school’s processed food,” said Jazaret. “That’s one of the great things that came out of it. You have more time to connect or talk to your family than you would normally.”

When the Mohammed brothers, Aunullah and Mohammed-Muftahu, awake in the morning, the first thing they do is pray the Fajr prayer, one of the five daily Islamic prayers. They then shower, eat breakfast, and by 8:30 a.m., they are logged into their laptops for school. This is their regular routine, and according to their mother, Halimatu Mohammed, it has been slightly modified for virtual learning – as have other parts of their lives.

Mohammed, originally from Ghana, has to balance supervising her sons’ learning with her work as a visiting scientist at Northeastern University, including writing scientific papers and editing journals.

Brothers Aunullah Mohammed and Mohammed-Muftah Mohammed attend class on their laptops at their mother’s seamstress work table.

“I have to put a lot of these things on hold. Or, the majority of my work is done when they are asleep at night,” said Mohammed, who moved to the U.S. in 2000. “Whereas, I was a little bit relaxed on the sleeping time, now I have to be a lot stricter. I realized having a calendar for each child helps out a lot.”

Kou Dolo, an ACANA social media consultant, said the pandemic is a challenge for many working parents, including African and Caribbean business owners who have had to bring their children to work. She observed one instance recently while visiting a store along a majority African business corridor.

“There was a student in the store during [business] operations and people kept coming in and out and she was basically in class online and there were a lot of distractions [and] asking the teacher, ‘Can you please repeat?’” said Dolo. “I spoke to the president of the small business owners association and he talked about how they can’t leave their kids alone, they don’t have a babysitter, they have to bring their child to work with them.”

An active parent, Mohammed serves as a parent representative board member for her sons’ school, Independence Charter School - West, and regularly contacts their teachers to ensure they are on or ahead of target. At home in their Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood, such engagement translates into what the eldest, 12-year-old Aunullah, described as a mom who is stricter than the teacher.

“I can’t get as loose as I want to because in school there’s certain things that I can do, that I can’t do in here. At school, if you want to stand up, you can stand up. Here, if you stand up, you have to sit down, and you have to pay attention in class,” he said. “Mom is stricter when it comes to school. She takes it really serious.”

Aunullah Mohammed lies down on the pillow bed handmade by his mother, while attending class on his laptop.

On a late November afternoon, while Aunullah participated in a science lesson on the four hemispheres of the Earth, a piece broke off of his headphone jack. It’s the fourth pair he’s had. Seated nearby, his 9-year-old brother, Mohammed-Muftahu, listened intently to a Spanish class while the teacher reviewed the terms for the three meals of the day.

The brothers sat at a table usually used by their mother for some of her seamstress work. Mohammed observed the boys, providing direction in her Ghanian language, Hausa, while also tending to their three-year-old sister. At one point, she urged Aunullah to put his headphones back on, to which he responded with a minor protest.

“I don’t like it,” he said. Both sons wore casual clothes, as opposed to a uniform that they would normally have worn if they were in the school building.

At other times, they attend class in their rooms, planted on a pillow bed Mohammed recently handmade using an African-printed fabric, an effort to make them feel comfortable while online.

The issues they’ve experienced are similar to those reported by other families – computer freezes, sound failures, screen fatigue, wandering minds, and some sibling discord.

“I was in the room doing my class [and] he kicked me out while I was lying down,” said Mohammed-Muftahu, pointing out one of his brother’s antics. “When I’m not looking, he will come in my class and start [throwing] his hand up. It’s annoying. Sometimes, he types all of this stuff in the chat and the teacher says stop but it’s not me.”

Aunullah admitted that he is prone to distractions and will play games while his teacher is prepping lessons or if he finishes his work early.

Ms. Mohammed said the games were initially a problem, but through a rewards system she’s created, she’s been able to rein it in. She describes the entire experience as an adjustment – from the all-day management of the kids while tending to her own business to the constant buying of headphones and having to visit the school for supplies. But on a broader plane, she describes it as a “blessing.”

Because they are home more, the children are learning more of her native language — and she’s learning different sides of their personalities.

“I deeply appreciate it now that my kids will actually…initiate the conversation in my language and now it’s like a competition for them. I really love hearing them speak it,” she said. “These times are affording that and it’s allowing me to know my children. I feel like I’m a lot closer to them.You get to learn the different personalities of the kids. So, it’s like a blessing in disguise.”

Pennsylvania has left soaring special education costs to districts, report says

2020-12-03T22:26:35+00:00

Over the past decade, school districts in Pennsylvania have been forced to shoulder most of the escalating costs of educating students with disabilities due to meager increases in state aid, according to a report from the Education Law Center and PA Schools Work.

An increase in state aid — $50 million for the 2019-20 school year — has been “insufficient” to reverse a “decade-long trend of state neglect,” the report said. This school year’s figures aren’t available.

Between the 2008-09 school year and the 2018-19 school year, special education costs grew by $2 billion, while state special education aid grew by only $110 million. The 2018-19 year is the latest for which full aid and expenditure figures are available.

In Philadelphia, the cost of educating students with disabilities doubled over that 10-year period, to more than $617 million from about $304 million. Yet its increase in state special education aid was only $20 million.

Reasons for the huge increase in costs include inflation, steeper personnel costs for health care and pensions, and a 14% increase in the number of special education students. There is a national trend toward identifying more students with complex needs, which often results in the hiring of additional personnel, such as one-on-one aides. In real dollars, the special education 10-year cost increase in Pennsylvania amounts to 38%, according to ELC’s figures.

Another factor that hurts districts in Pennsylvania is special education payments to charter schools. Under the state’s formula, the amount paid to charters for their special education students is often artificially high and does not relate to the actual cost of educating those students.

Philadelphia superintendent William Hite, who had not yet read the report, said Thursday, “That’s the case we’ve been making since I’ve been here.”

Inadequate funding from the state “has been a historic problem in Philadelphia,” he said. “We’ve had to shoulder the costs of a lot of things, particularly given our student demographics. We have greater concentration of poverty, greater numbers learning to speak English, and those with special needs, and we shoulder all of that....there is not sufficient revenue at the state level.

In Pennsylvania, school districts get most of their revenue locally. While the national average for sharing education costs is a fairly even split between states and local districts, in Pennsylvania districts shoulder around two-thirds of the burden, or 62%. Federal money only accounts for about 5%.

Between 2008-09 and 2018-19, the state share of special education funding has dropped from 32% to 22%, while in Philadelphia it has dropped from 42% to 24%.

Hite said the fair funding lawsuit proceeding through state court deals with the issue of whether the state is paying its fair share of education costs.

“All of that is part of what we hope will be heard during that lawsuit,” he said.

Six districts and several parents are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which challenges both the adequacy of state education aid and whether the available funds are distributed in an equitable manner. Philadelphia as a district chose not to officially join, but one parent in the city is a plaintiff. The governor, state education officials, and state legislative leaders are the defendants. It is expected to go to trial next year.

A spreadsheet released with the report shows that almost all districts in the state have been forced to bear a higher proportion of special education costs.

The Education Law Center advocates for students with disabilities and for education equity in general. PA Schools Work is a coalition of groups representing educators, parents, and communities.

In a virtual classroom, how do you care for kids threatened by gun violence?

2020-09-30T05:15:20+00:00

This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit which covers guns in America.

On a screen full of faces, the lone black square rang alarm bells for the Philadelphia teacher. The boy on the other side hadn’t turned on his camera and his microphone was muted. According to the rules for remote learning at John B. Stetson Charter School, the student was supposed to keep his laptop camera on during class. The teacher alerted Edwin Desamour, the dean at the middle school.

A few days later, during a meeting with the student and his mother, Desamour discovered that the 13-year-old student and his mother had been without a consistent home since the school reopened in late August. They’d been bouncing from space to space, staying with friends and family — and the student was keeping his camera off and staying quiet in class to avoid bothering his hosts. “The kid said, ‘I don’t want to make too much noise on the computer in someone else’s house,’” Desmamour explained. The boy had also figured that if other students couldn’t see he was relocating, they wouldn’t ask him about it. “He didn’t want kids to see that he was changing houses,” Desamour added.

The school had adopted uniforms so kids wouldn’t have to explain why they didn’t own the newest pair of jeans, but teachers hadn’t considered that students might feel judged for their backdrops during virtual classes. “Before, you got teased for clothes,” Desamour said, “and now it’s because a kid sees the background of your house.”

With school districts around the country operating remotely to avoid spreading COVID-19, teachers and administrators are confronting a full range of complications caused by virtual learning. In Philadelphia, educators have tried to address a specific challenge: When kids aren’t spending time in classrooms, it’s harder to keep them safe. Close to 1,450 people have already been shot in the city this year, eclipsing the total for all of 2019. The violence has taken an especially cruel toll on Philadelphia’s children. On the first day of classes for public schools, a quadruple shooting left two teens dead and two more wounded. Jaheim Lamarre and Zahquesz McFadden, both 17, were two of the 13 children killed by gun violence this year, and among the 111 children injured by gunfire.

Absenteeism spiked in many urban districts after schools abruptly switched to remote learning in the spring. Now, experts are worried that thousands of young people may again go without the benefits of the classroom during the new academic year.

Children learn critical emotional and social skills at school. “If we leave kids to their own devices, many of them are going to suffer,” said Anna Harvey, director of The Public Safety Lab at New York University. “Kids need a lot of adult support to thrive.”

“Physically being in school is protective, particularly for young men. It reduces the extent to which they become involved in violent incidents,” Harvey said. School places children under the supervision of adults and keeps them occupied for hours during which disputes might otherwise escalate.

The threat of gun violence was very much on Desamour’s mind when he counseled the student who was reluctant to turn on his camera. Stetson Charter School serves three neighborhoods in North Philadelphia. Forty percent of area residents live in poverty, compared to about 25 percent citywide. Those same neighborhoods have been the backdrop for much of the city’s violence. The three policing districts that closely overlap the neighborhoods served by Stetson account for 110 of the 335 homicides in the city this year, according to Philadelphia Police Department data. Rivalries between neighborhoods, and sometimes just an unfamiliar face on the block, can be a recipe for more violence.

Moving from one neighborhood to another can pose a threat to a child’s safety, Desamour said. Still, picking up on the cues that a child is moving and may be at risk is a challenge when school staff can’t see the student on screen. He and his staff insist that students keep their video switched on, partly so they can spot signs that a child may be at risk.

Outside of his duties as middle school dean, Desamour has spent the last decade working in street-level violence intervention. He uses what’s often categorized as the credible messenger model. Desamour was convicted in connection with a fatal shooting at 16 and spent eight years in prison. He says he served part of the stretch in the same cell as his father.

In Philadelphia, as in other cities, gun violence is highest during the summer months, and when in-person education slammed to a stop in March, “it felt like summer started early,” Desamour says. Desamour approached a local drug dealer who had recruited one of the teenage boys he mentors. At first, he says, the boy was just transporting drugs, but he was soon asked to look out for rival crews, and to fend them off with a gun if needed. Desamour was able to convince the dealer, a man who knows Desamour’s background, to leave the boy alone. But as the pandemic has choked off jobs in the city, dealers have found it easier to enlist new workers, Desamour says. “We were struggling to keep a hold on the kids.”

When COVID struck Philadelphia, it complicated all the city’s struggles — its pre-existing conditions. The School District of Philadelphia teaches more than 200,000 students, and officials say that gun violence has touched almost all of them. “They know someone in the family or someone in the community who has been shot or killed,” said Jayme Banks, the district’s director of Trauma-Informed School Practices. As they prepared to resume classes, administrators realized that they had to contend with the murders and nonfatal shootings that had surged in its wake. “We couldn’t open school and act like this hadn’t occurred,” Banks said.

During the summer, Banks and the district’s mental health staff began preparing to provide remote support for children emotionally wounded by the violence on the street. The district named its plan “Healing Together.” One of its central components was to train teachers how to spot children who might be dealing with a crisis.

In addition to their regular classes, students’ weekly schedules now include a 30-minute block that essentially functions as group therapy. Teachers ask the kids to respond to prompts that are designed to reveal things about their well-being without being too intrusive or embarrassing them in front of their peers. It can be as simple as describing their day or something they’re looking forward to. As the students give their responses, the teachers scan for indications of trauma or stress occurring off-screen. “Teachers can look and see the kid slipping through the cracks. They will look at their expressions. They will look at participation — someone, for example, who is in their favorite class, but is not showing their face,” Banks said.

Like many aspects of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 crisis, schools have approached trauma needs in a piecemeal fashion. Local districts act with great autonomy in how they teach, grade, and administer discipline; behavioral health is no exception. Early in the pandemic, while governors were ordering classrooms to close, few states provided specific guidance on how to handle the behavioral health services that are often provided on school grounds. In the districts that contract with private providers rather than employ their own social workers, it wasn’t clear if those third-party firms could even bill for video-conferencing sessions that felt dramatically different from the in-person therapy for which they were hired.

“This is a stress test on how our education system does big responses,” said Michael Kelly, a board member of the School Social Work Association of America. “And it’s been a wake-up call that those capabilities aren’t there.”

Philadelphia’s public schools have social workers on staff, paid for through federal Medicaid funding that the district long ago earmarked for this purpose. Going into the current academic year, the district added social workers so that each campus would have a social worker assigned to it. Still, virtual counseling is an imperfect substitute for the person-to-person interactions that happen during normal schooling.

“When a kid comes through the door, you know something’s off,” Desamour said. “We can do preventive things before this kid explodes. A lot of times, the kids won’t initiate the contact, you have to recognize it and reach out. But online, it’s hard to capture those things.”

The pandemic has also compromised some of the privacy that schools could offer when students needed help. Where does a child go to talk about problems at home, when they are at home? “The kids don’t know who is listening, and they will sometimes say, ‘I don’t want to talk about that because my mom is here or my brother might hear me,’” Kelly said.

Most worrisome are the students who have fallen out of touch with the school system. The district estimates that 18,000 homes where its students live are not connected to the internet. Similar technology gaps have exacerbated the inequities of remote learning in other cities. And then there are occurrences that school officials across the country didn’t imagine. In Washington, D.C., smoke alarms have routinely interrupted online classes, leading the Fire Department to launch a citywide push to remind families to replace the batteries in their smoke detectors.

Philadelphia schools don’t expect to hold in-person classes until mid-November, at the earliest. Until then, Desamour and his teachers and social workers are masking up and walking through the neighborhoods where his students live, bringing help to students and families who’ve shown signs they may need it. And they are finding at least one silver lining.

School buildings can be intimidating places for parents in poor communities, Desamour says: “They are thinking that at the school there are all these smart people. They don’t give themselves enough credit and speak up for themselves or their kids.” When a meeting happens at the kitchen table or on a stoop, the dynamic shifts. Parents open up and talk more — and teachers and social workers get a better feel for their students’ lives.

“We are all in the predicament where we have to talk to each other now,” Desamour said. “We should have been talking before, but now we have to.”

Philadelphia district launches equity initiative

2020-09-15T22:59:12+00:00

Superintendent William Hite announced Tuesday the launch of an equity coalition, a comprehensive initiative to end racist practices in the Philadelphia School District, with plans to confront issues ranging from selective admissions policies to educators’ implicit bias.

The coalition “is an organized effort to uproot systems of inequity,” Hite said in a briefing for reporters. The initiative will begin with committees made up of educators and other district employees, and it will eventually include parents, students, and community members.

“We are starting this effort with a laser focus on race and racism, because...it is the root to all systems of oppression,” said Sabriya Jubilee, the district’s director of planning who is helping to lead the initiative.

The equity coalition will focus on a wide array of problems, including the racial achievement gap, selective admissions policies, teacher diversity, and the underrepresentation of Black and Latino students in advanced courses. It also will look at issues related to special education students, immigrants and English language learners, gifted programs, and LGBTQ students.

Hite said that this will be a planning year for the coalition and that any policy changes — including in the admissions process for selective schools — will not take place until next school year.

District leaders also announced the creation of an office of equity within the central administration.

Estelle Acquah, the director of special projects, said the district also plans to offer professional development“with an anti-racism focus,” and will enhance curriculum “through the lens of cultural responsiveness.”

“Overall, the coalition will define what equity means within our district and develop a systemwide equity lens through which we will make policy changes,” said Acquah. It will also “evaluate equity as it relates to the district’s organizational structure.”

The district announced the formation and leaders of committees on logistics, developing partnerships, systems change and research, professional learning, and communications.

“Simply put, the lives of each and every child that are connected to the school district of Philadelphia depend on this work of the equity coalition,” said April Brown, principal of the Laura Waring Elementary School in Center City, who will head the professional learning group. .

The project will be complemented by the Equity Partners Fellowship, which includes a class of 20 “equity fellows,” described as a year-long experiential learning opportunity for school staff — including central office administrators, school-based teachers, principals and support staff, and high school students. The fellows, who will be named and begin work this year, will lead equity groups within their school or office and mentor future cohorts, Acquah said.

The goal of the fellowship is to “build an army of equity champions across our district,” she added.

The admissions policies for magnet schools have resulted in the underrepresentation of Black and Latino students at the city’s most selective high schools, Central and Masterman. Alumni of the schools have demanded changes.

At the same time, the process this year is likely to be different because the pandemic upended the traditional metrics used to assess student qualifications, Hite said. No standardized tests were administered last year and grading policies were thrown into turmoil after school buildings closed in March. Attendance also is harder to measure in a virtual environment. Figuring out what to do this year is a separate undertaking, he said.

Philadelphia, the poorest big city in America, is a mostly Black and Latino district surrounded by mostly white, affluent suburbs, an example of the systemic racism and segregation common to metropolitan areas.

“There is disparity in housing, access to resources, and nutrition and health care, there are significant concentrations of poverty in and around the city of Philadelphia,” he said. “Those are all things that we can lament,” he said. “But as a district, there are also things that we can do to ensure that at least when children are in schools or in this organization, they have every opportunity to achieve, and it’s not going to be based on who they are, or where they live.”