Chalkbeat

The Philadelphia mayor’s plan for year-round school is taking shape. What will it look like?

2024-05-06T11:00:00+00:00

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A plan to put in place Mayor Cherelle Parker’s promise to lengthen the school day and year — her signature education proposal — is taking shape.

But what that will look like in practice is still very much in flux.

Last week, Superintendent Tony Watlington told the City Council during an education budget hearing that a “beefed up” extended-day program will start in September in an unspecified number of schools, mostly consisting of “fun and engaging” after-school activities. In the 2025-26 school year, the district plans to offer a year-round schedule in up to 20 pilot schools, he said.

The first step of implementing Parker’s vision is adding programs and offerings this summer. But changing school districts’ traditional calendars to fully adopt year-round school is a different animal. It has typically meant shortening summer vacation and adding four week-long breaks during the school year. That shift, if it ever occurs, will not begin for well over a year, based on Watlington’s timeline.

It is very rare for year-round school to actually add instructional days. And the strategic plan adopted by the district last year cast doubt on the power of reallocating school days to improve academic achievement.

Putting in place an extended schedule — as opposed to offering more robust summer options — will need buy-in from the district’s unions, parents and other stakeholders, including agencies that now provide after-school and summer programming.

Cost has also not been discussed, though Watlington said he is seeking philanthropic help. And there are practical considerations linked to expanding programming at any particular school, such as whether it’s air-conditioned. Most city schools are not. (Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts just donated $200,000 to install air conditioners in 10 schools.)

“We have to create a demand and build partnerships,” Watlington told the council.

Watlington has mentioned the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City as one model he’s studied. Its Promise Academy charter schools’ schedules run from September through July, with week-long breaks in October, December, April, and June. The schools don’t have a longer day, but do have extensive after-school activities, and they also offer after-school and summer enrichment programs for students in New York City district-run schools within the zone.

During her campaign, when she discussed her reasons for supporting year-round school, Parker emphasized the benefits and flexibility it would provide to parents more than the potential academic benefits for students. But she didn’t clarify exactly what she had in mind.

Since taking office in January, she has changed how she talks about the issue. She now describes her vision as giving more educational opportunities to the city’s children outside regular school hours while keeping them safe.

“School is the safest place they’ll be … Ward and June Cleaver, the Cosbys, is not the reality our children are living in,” Parker said last month at an education conference, referring to the bygone popular television shows “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Cosby Show,” which presented ideals of American family life.

Philadelphia has previously tried one model of year-round school — albeit on a very small scale. In 2000, Grover Washington Middle School in Kensington operated on a shorter summer vacation with longer breaks during the year.

The goal was to reverse the effects of “summer slide,” or the decline in students’ achievement levels after the long summer break. But just four years later, the district’s then-CEO Paul Vallas ended the program, saying that its negligible academic benefits didn’t justify continuing it.

Here’s what to know about Parker’s push for year-round schooling and how it compares to other cities’ initiatives:

What’s new — and returning — for students this summer?

Both the city and the district already have extensive summer programming.

But the Summer Achievers program, which will be new this summer, could be especially significant. That’s because the 20 schools that could eventually participate in the 2025-26 pilot for year-round school will likely be drawn from the 62 schools where Summer Achievers programs will take place.

In Summer Achievers, in the mornings, students will receive instruction from district teachers in English Language Arts and math, while the afternoons and Friday will include camp-like activities and field trips. The program will also feature music, art, and sports, as well as social-emotional learning. The district is calling it a “school meets camp” experience.

This idea isn’t entirely new. A version of such a program was offered by the district starting in the summer of 2021, as schools began reopening after COVID.

Summer Achievers will be held between June 25 and Aug. 2. (For the program’s final week, the camp activities will take up full days and there will be no academic instruction.) While children in Summer Achievers will receive breakfast and lunch, families will be responsible for transportation.

The list of providers include the Greater Philadelphia YMCA, the University of Pennsylvania, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and Sunrise Philadelphia. Summer Achievers is based on pilot programs held over the past three summers, funded in part by the William Penn Foundation. (Chalkbeat receives funding from the William Penn Foundation.)

A statement from the Office of Children and Families described Summer Achievers as “a model for what summer programming can look like … in a full-day, year-round program moving forward.”

Another new program for this summer is called “Young Entrepreneurs” and is for rising ninth graders. It will run from June 25 to July 25, and will focus on developing business skills as well as providing instruction in English Language Arts and math.

The school district already offers a considerable array of summer programming for young people between the ages of 5 and 18. They range from a two-day-a-week virtual program for students entering kindergarten to month-long courses for high schoolers to make up credits for courses they failed.

Several emphasize particular skills and interests, including music – there’s an option to join a summer orchestra and a summer drumline.

Others are focused on particular populations, including a longstanding “extended school year” program for students with disabilities to shore up their skills and a “newcomer academy” for English learners.

The city recreation department runs camps around the city, and the Office of Children and Families oversees nearly 100 programs run by Boys’ and Girls’ clubs and other organizations called “It’s a Summer Thing!”

In addition, Deputy Mayor for Children and Families Vanessa Garrett-Hartley said the city is planning to provide up to 8,000 summer employment opportunities and career exploration activities for young people ages 12 and up.

It’s “work based learning, internships, job shadowing,” Garrett-Hartley said.

What will year-round school mean for teachers?

Teachers remain wary of what officials might ultimately come up with, a sentiment rooted in last year’s mayoral race.

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said in an interview that Parker never discussed her proposal for year-round school with the union before making it a centerpiece of her campaign.

Without having more details, he said, his members have expressed concerns about how it may affect their jobs and schedules.

Some are also parents, he noted, “and if they have to work during the summer, this will totally impact their families and they don’t want to do that.”

In Philadelphia, the Belmont charter school network has its own extended-year program. Teachers in the network who sign up to teach over the summer get a few weeks off between the end of the regular academic year and the start of summer programming. They also get two weeks off before going back to Belmont in the fall.

But if parents have children in different schools on different schedules, year-round school could present more of a problem than a help.

All teacher participation in summer programs are voluntary; it is unclear what will happen if school schedules are changed. In the meantime, Jordan is praising the addition of enrichment activities and field trips to students over the summer, because many city children never have the opportunity to visit attractions like the Franklin Institute or the Constitution Center.

“All of this is going on around them and they are just not aware of it, and parents don’t have the funds to take them to museums, they can be costly for one child much less for three or four,” Jordan said.

What are the next steps for year-round school?

The logistics are daunting and the cost considerable. But one city councilmember said that after asking Watlington about it during budget hearings, she thinks the district is moving too slowly on the initiative.

“It wasn’t as well thought out as I thought it would be,” said Cindy Bass, who represents the 8th District in Northwest Philadelphia.”It’s hopeful, aspirational, not concrete.”

“This is the mayor’s directive. I was expecting more substantive detail,” Bass added.

Parker has separately proposed giving the school district a larger share of the city property tax, increasing its share from 55% to 56%, which she said would raise $129 million over five years. Bass said that money should be used for year-round schooling.

The school district already spends $42 million on summer and after-school programming, although COVID aid that helped pay for it is about to expire

Sharon Ward, the deputy chief education officer, said city, district, and other officials are meeting to hash out the details for this summer and for the future.

Echoing Parker’s comments from last year’s mayoral campaign, she noted that parents want more safety and enriching programs for their kids that are “more aligned with their work hours.”

Ward also said that “additional academic enrichment” will be a part of whatever’s developed, and that the city will learn from the activities already available to students.

“We’re working on it. We’re not starting from scratch,” Ward said.

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 officials face budget questions

2024-04-30T21:22:49+00:00

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Philadelphia City Councilmembers on Tuesday questioned Superintendent Tony Watlington and his staff about ongoing facilities issues, teacher vacancies, resources for unhoused students, and more as they begin to shape the city’s budget for public education.

The district and school board have already held several meetings and votes on their $4.5 billion budget, but Tuesday’s hearing was the first time councilmembers could publicly interrogate Watlington, Board of Education President Reginald Streater, and other district staff. The city’s budget process is ongoing and no vote was taken at Tuesday’s hearing.

Over several hours, councilmembers pressed the district to present a comprehensive facilities plan, do more to keep students safe from gun violence, and fill teacher vacancies among other issues.

Philadelphia’s school district only controls some 10% of their budget, with the remaining 90% divided up in union contracts and under the control of city and state leaders – that means the Council’s relationship with Watlington is critical. Whether councilmembers trust his leadership and financial decisions can drive their budget decisions.

Tuesday’s hearing also comes on the heels of controversial political maneuvering this week that secured Mayor Cherelle Parker’s school board nominee, Joyce Wilkerson, over the heads of council leadership.

Parker delivered an impassioned speech at the start of the hearing, urging councilmembers to look past the school board nomination drama and work with her.

“I didn’t usurp a process,” Parker said. “I respect this institution, I respect the body.”

But she added her administration’s agenda could just as easily be “torpedoed” by Council President Kenyatta Johnson’s leadership.

“I can’t do it without you. And you can’t do it without me,” Parker said. “I don’t want to fight. I want to get things done.”

Here are some takeaways from the hearing:

‘We can’t just let kids disappear’

To start the hearing, Watlington provided a similar presentation to ones he’s delivered on multiple occasions to the school board, and in his “State of Public Education” address. The highlights are: Yearly revenue is falling behind expenditures, student achievement is making some limited progress, the number of students dropping out has fallen since last year, and Watlington is continuing to follow his strategic plan.

However, councilmembers and Watlington agreed, the district is not where they want it to be academically.

“Scores are still too low,” Watlington said.

Watlington said he intends to “shine a big, bright, spotlight on our dropout problem.” He said he’s added an assistant superintendent to his team who will focus on dropout prevention to “find every single kid’s record,” and hold face-to-face meetings with them and their families.

“We can’t just let kids disappear,” Watlington said.

Facilities concerns are ongoing

Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, chair of the education committee, led the line of questioning on the condition of school facilities.

“I think the most severe catastrophe that we’ve seen are the issues related to our facilities,” Thomas said. Several schools have closed in the district over the past year due to damaged asbestos and other environmental hazards. Watlington said Tuesday only 47% of schools in the district have adequate air conditioning.

Thomas and Johnson, the council president, pressed Watlington to produce a facilities plan for the district sooner rather than later.

Watlington said his office has been working to produce a comprehensive facilities plan, but that plan has been delayed. He previously estimated that renovating and modernizing the school district’s infrastructure, whose buildings on average are 73 years old, would cost nearly $8 billion.

Watlington told Thomas “we intend to move quickly,” but stopped short of laying out a timeline for when that plan would be produced.

According to Watlington’s opening presentation, the district is currently compiling a “data warehouse” on their facilities conditions and plan to launch a facilities plan “project team” starting this December.

Recruiting teachers remains a ‘struggle’

Councilmember Kendra Brooks asked Watlington about competitive salaries for teachers, paraprofessionals, custodial staff, and other school employees.

Watlington said he is “confident” the district has the resources to meet the district’s hiring demands, but he did not give data on the vacancy rate in the district.

“I would not have come to work as superintendent if I thought I was going to walk into a place that was going to implode,” Watlington said.

Still, he cautioned “we are going to continue to struggle” recruiting teachers in Philadelphia as the country battles an ongoing teacher shortage.

Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke asked what Watlington has heard in exit interviews the district has conducted when teachers leave their positions in the city. Watlington said the primary reasons teachers leave are low pay, a lack of support at the school level, and some struggles with classroom management.

Year-round school will start slowly

Councilmember Cindy Bass asked Watlington about ongoing plans for year-round school — one of Parker’s mayoral promises.

Watlington said for now, year-round-school will mostly resemble “beefed up” out-of-school opportunities and summer programming, but in the 2025-26 school year, the district will be piloting longer days and an extended academic year in some select schools.

Watlington would welcome forensic audit

During the six-hour hearing, councilmembers also asked about selective school admissions, improving communication between the district and public, and other issues.

Johnson asked if Watlington would “welcome” a forensic audit of the district, and Watlington said he would. Johnson also expressed an interest in involving more faith-based organizations in schools to help with students facing trauma due to gun violence.

On the district’s new $70 million curriculum package that launched this school year, 83% of teachers reported in a recent survey that they felt they are “equipped to deliver” it, Watlington said. But he also said that many teachers didn’t feel they had enough time with the new materials before the school year started. For the English Language Arts curriculum rollout scheduled for next academic year, the district is starting training now to prepare teachers. Training will also be offered in the summer, he said.

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

Philadelphia will stop the teacher shuffle between schools known as ‘leveling’

2024-04-16T18:36:13+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district will stop shifting teachers around between schools after the academic year starts, a dreaded practice known as “leveling,” Superintendent Tony Watlington announced Tuesday.

The longstanding procedure reassigns teachers based on actual enrollment for each school, instead of predicted enrollment. But teachers and parents have long complained that the annual teacher shuffle at the end of October disrupts and harms student progress as well as school stability.

This school year, 59 schools lost teachers under leveling, according to the district, and 88 teachers changed schools.

In a letter to parents and a video posted on social media Tuesday, Watlington said the district “will reallocate up to $8.8 million from Central Office cuts and energy savings to fund the discontinuation of leveling in any schools or classrooms after the beginning of the school year.”

Christina Clark, a spokesperson for the district, said it’s the district’s intention to eliminate leveling permanently “unless there are significant funding reductions.” During the pandemic, the district suspended leveling only to bring it back.

“We are committed to investing in and protecting our classrooms to the extent we can,” Clark said in a statement.

To make sure that all schools are staffed appropriately from the outset, Watlington said the district will do more outreach to families over the summer to get more accurate enrollment data. If it can estimate more precisely how many students actually show up, it can make sure that enough teachers are assigned to each school, he said.

Education, city officials and parents welcomed Watlington’s news.

“We’re relieved and excited that the district and Superintendent Watlington listened to the parents and community members’ cries to stop leveling,” said Emily Pugliese, co-president of the Houston Elementary Home and School Association, Philadelphia’s equivalent of a PTA; Houston lost a teacher through leveling last October. “We’re really hopeful we’ll see the end of it forever and our students won’t have to go through the damaging process of losing a teacher and being in a classroom with too many kids.”

Why parents worry about the teacher shuffle

During the leveling process, some schools gain teachers, if their enrollment has been underestimated, and others lose them if it has been overestimated.

Because teachers are allotted according to strict class size limits — 30 students in grades K-3 and 33 above that — the lack of two or three students could mean the difference between losing a teacher and keeping one. It could mean the difference, for example, between having two fifth grade classes with 17 students each, or one with 33.

But due to requirements of the teachers contract, if a school loses a position, which teacher relocates has been based on seniority rather than on a principal’s judgment. This meant that if the fifth grade was not large enough to support two teachers, it would be the second grade teacher who has less seniority who is reassigned, resulting in disruption for more than just fifth grade students.

The leveling practice also doesn’t take into account whether the rising fifth grade in the school is large enough to accommodate two teachers the following year, leading to further instability.

The practice has occurred in Philadelphia since the 1970s, but in recent years there have been efforts to dial it back. The district suspended leveling during the pandemic but resumed it in 2022.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan said Tuesday that Watlington’s decision would promote school and classroom stability. Katherine Gilmore Richardson, the City Council’s Democratic majority leader, issued a statement saying she supported the district’s decision, as did Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, the chair of the education committee.

“I have spoken with countless families on how their children have been impacted by leveling,” Gilmore Richardson said, adding that smaller class sizes in early grades were particularly beneficial for students of color and those from low-income families.

The district’s federal pandemic aid is ending and it faces a budget shortfall without significant funding increases. But the $8.8 million cost Watlington said is sufficient to stop leveling is a tiny fraction of the district’s $4.5 billion budget, and he made sure to say the money was coming from savings elsewhere. The district cannot raise its own funds and is dependent on the city and the state for most of its revenue.

In the midst of a statewide teacher shortage, the district started this school year with more than 200 vacancies for teacher positions, although it’s not clear how many of those positions have remained vacant throughout the year.

Clark said the district started this school year with “the most teachers of any fall in the last eleven years, and our teacher applications for open positions is significantly higher than this time last year.” She said Watlington’s team is confident the rate of filled positions will be even higher in the fall. Clark did not say whether the district has filled all its vacancies for this year.

Leveling has long been a sore subject for parents who say the practice harms students and is something the district should be able to avoid.

During testimony to the City Council in February, Seleny Fernandez, a parent of a 7-year-old at Clara Barton Elementary School, testified in City Council about her concerns that leveling had on her children’s education.

“A lot of those kids, they have big problems learning,” Fernandez said, “And then if you [take] away their teachers, what is going to happen? More problems.”

Fernandez’s husband, Luis Ramirez, told the council that at Clara Barton, their daughter was regularly in classes of 28 kids or more. He argued that this situation in the richest nation in the world “cannot be a money problem.”

“As a concerned parent, I get emotional because my daughter is in this mess,” Fernandez also said.”To me leveling is the same thing as looting. The school district is coming to my school and looting us of the most valuable resources.”

This story has been updated to include comments from a spokesperson for the school district.

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.

Philadelphia teachers will get bonuses, 5% raises in approved contract extension

2024-03-08T00:30:00+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education voted to approve a one-year contract extension for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers that includes raises, retention bonuses, and more.

The contract was approved unanimously at a meeting Thursday night. The extension “reflects the deep respect we have for all of our PFT members,” Superintendent Tony Watlington said before the board vote.

Watlington emphasized that the extension was agreed to well before the contract expiration date of Aug. 31 and represents a “good faith partnership” with the union. It’s a significant departure for a union and district known for down-to-the-wire negotiations.

He said he expected that collaborative spirit to help with his reform blueprint for the district known as Accelerate Philly.

The district and the teachers union reached a tentative agreement on the contract extension late last month.

District Chief Financial Officer Mike Herbsman said he hoped the contract, which includes a raise and bonuses designed to attract job candidates, would “have a significant and meaningful impact on our ability to recruit and retain teachers.” The district opened the school year with 200 vacancies.

Union membership voted overwhelmingly to ratify the contract Wednesday evening; 84% of those present, or 2,096 people, voted yes, while 16%, or 399 members, voted no. Those who voted against the contract, including Building 21 teacher Eric Hitchner, said the contract didn’t go far enough to secure improved working conditions for teachers.

The contract will cover more than 14,000 district employees, according to Grant-Skinner.

Notably absent from the agreement is anything altering the current sick leave policy, which detractors say punishes teachers for taking their allotted 10 sick days.

Here’s what’s in the new contract extension:

All PFT-represented employees — including teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, and others — will receive a 5% salary increase in September 2024.
Employees eligible for “step” increases (raises based on years of experience) will still get those.
PFT-represented employees will also receive a “retention and re-engagement bonus” of $1,200 paid by June 2024.
The Designated Schools Program — which provides $2,500 bonuses to teachers who work in schools with staffing challenges — will be extended to run through Aug. 30, 2025.
Watlington (or another district leader) and a union representative will meet regularly to discuss the superintendent’s five-year strategic plan.

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.

11 young people have been shot in Philadelphia this week

2024-03-07T15:17:34+00:00

Eleven Philadelphia students were shot at bus stops less than a mile from their schools this week in separate incidents that have sent shockwaves through schools across the city.

Eight of those students, all between the ages of 15 and 17, were injured by gunfire on Wednesday afternoon at the intersection of Rising Sun and Cottman avenues in Northeast Philadelphia at a SEPTA bus stop down the street from their school, Northeast High School, according to city police.

On Monday, Dayemen Taylor, a 17-year-old Imhotep Institute Charter High School student, was killed in a shooting that injured two other young people at a different SEPTA stop at Ogontz and Godfrey avenues.

The incidents were among four shootings this week on or around SEPTA buses, a setback coming as city data shows gun violence is declining overall in Philadelphia. Nearly 55,000 students use SEPTA to get to and from school every day.

Philadelphia School District Superintendent Tony Watlington announced in a statement Wednesday night that Northeast High, which educates over 3,200 students, would be going remote through the rest of the week. Watlington said an emergency crisis response team will be on-site at the school “to support our students with grief counseling and whatever emotional assistance they need.”

Watlington also dispatched counselors to Kennedy C. Crossan School, an elementary school across the street from Wednesday’s shooting.

Jayme Banks, the Philadelphia School District’s deputy chief of prevention, intervention, and trauma, told Chalkbeat on Thursday the emotional impact of the shootings has reverberated throughout multiple nearby schools and student populations. The district will be providing counseling services for four or five other schools this week in addition to Northeast High School, Banks said.

Some Crossan students were leaving their building and witnessed the shooting on Wednesday, Banks said. There were some George Washington High School students aboard one of the SEPTA buses who also saw the eight students shot.

“People are affected in many different ways, and it’s important that we give them the space and time to process all of it,” Banks said. She added that the “trauma is so pervasive that we have to pour our resources and supports into everyone. Every student, family, teacher and community member.”

In a press conference Wednesday night, Watlington said he was “just absolutely heartbroken and angry that innocent children walking home from school would be impacted by gun violence.”

He said his office is “absolutely committed” to “improving outcomes” for students so that “when parents send their children to school, they can expect them to return safely to them.”

Kevin Bethel, Philadelphia’s police commissioner who used to serve as the district’s chief of school safety, said Wednesday “it is hard to sit here and see, in three days, 11 juveniles shot, who were going and coming from school.”

Banks said as the district and city plan a broader response to gun violence, “the impact has to be greater than therapy alone. We really need to pour [support] into our community so that everyone can heal together.”

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

Philadelphia’s ‘State of Public Education’ improving but has a long way to go, schools chief says

2024-01-30T21:19:34+00:00

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The “State of Public Education” in Philadelphia is not as strong as it could be, Superintendent Tony Watlington said in a sweeping address Tuesday.

In the first speech of its kind in Philadelphia, Watlington celebrated some incremental successes since he became superintendent in June 2022: Student attendance is up, the four-year graduation rate is up, dropouts are decreasing, and teacher attendance is also improving. But he cautioned that the district is facing many challenges, including a looming budget shortfall of more than $400 million, declining enrollment, low test scores, aging facilities, and a persistent teacher shortage.

With no ability to raise taxes on its own and with federal COVID aid set to run out, Watlington’s ability to appeal to representatives in Harrisburg and City Hall will be crucial to getting the chronically underfunded district more money to address different issues.

And Tuesday’s event — which began with remarks from Mayor Cherelle Parker and was attended by a host of state, federal, and local elected officials — was a public attempt to make the case for adequately funding Philadelphia students.

Watlington, who came to Philadelphia from North Carolina, said in an interview before the address that in his nearly two years leading the district, he has perceived a “crisis of confidence” in a city he described as “hard on itself.”

“All the children are not well, it is no secret,” Watlington said in his speech. Citing modest improvements in several areas, he added: “Is it enough? Absolutely not.”

Speaking at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, Watlington presented data showing the district is improving on some markers from 2021-22 to 2022-23:

Student attendance is up from 57% to 60%.
The teacher attendance rate is up from 77% to 84%.
The four-year graduation rate is up from 71% to 74%.
The number of students who dropped out fell from 3,917 to 3,652.

But state test scores show students are still struggling in the classroom; even with small gains last year, most students are still scoring below proficient in reading and math. In Algebra I and Biology, performance has also declined post-pandemic; just one in five students scored proficient in Algebra I last year.

Watlington said he wants to “establish deep partnerships” with district families, caregivers, and community members, and be more transparent with budgeting.

Watlington’s presentation reiterated much of what he said when he finished out his first full year in office. But now, with Parker in charge, changes to the district may be coming.

Parker has expressed more openness to charter schools, which now educate a third of the city’s students. But the Board of Education has not approved a new charter school in six years, and it and the district’s charter office has been accused of racial bias in disproportionately moving to close charters that have Black leadership.

The first hint of a possible political shift on this issue came at last Thursday’s board meeting, when members reversed their previous decision not to renew the Southwest Leadership Academy charter school.

Parker’s presence at Watlington’s speech could signal she wants to take a more hands-on approach to public K-12 education than her predecessor, Jim Kenney. She has the power to appoint all nine members of the school board, and can remake it from scratch if she wants. Current board members’ terms expire on May 1.

So far, she has given no hints about her intentions, although she spoke well of Board President Reginald Streater.

Philadelphia mayor says ‘crumbles of funding’ are inadequate

Watlington said in his speech he is trying to prove to Parker, and to state and federal lawmakers, that under his leadership the district will be a responsible steward of any new funding. He highlighted decisions to reorganize his office, overhauling math and language arts curriculum, eliminating vacant positions, and shaking up his leadership team in an effort to trim administrative staff and focus more on crucial priorities like dropout prevention, facility improvements, and high-impact tutoring.

Parker pledged to work to bring more school funding to the city. She also called out elected leaders attending Tuesday’s event, including several members of Congress, state legislators like House Speaker Joanna McClinton, and City Council members including Council President Kenyatta Johnson.

Philadelphia’s children are “given crumbles of funding when they really do deserve a whole loaf” Parker said of the state’s current school funding system.

Parker commended Watlington for his five-year strategic plan, known as Accelerate Philly, which the school board adopted last year. But she said it’s the job of policymakers and elected officials to “make sure we have the dollars in order to get it done.”

Still, Parker cautioned that “this is going to be a tough year,” and expressed concern about whether city taxpayers should be expected to shoulder more of the burden for schools. She placed her faith in state education funding reform in the wake of last year’s Commonwealth Court decision that the current system is unconstitutional.

In her remarks at the event, Parker did go out of her way to express her continued support for another of her campaign platforms – year-round school, a potentially budget-busting initiative that would require massive union buy-in. In his speech, Watlington expressed some support for extending the school day and year.

The district’s presentation on Tuesday concluded with a “call to action” by Kathryn Epps Roberson, president and CEO of the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia — a source of private philanthropic funding for the district. Epps called Watlington’s five-year blueprint an “audacious approach” to school reform and improvement.

She also announced the Fund’s intent to raise $40 million by 2028 to support Watlington’s plan, including $6 million in year one.

“This has to be a public and private effort,” she said.

That money will provide stipends to people to participate in Parent University, an initiative Watlington intends to revive that helps parents shore up their skills and learn how to better help their children with schoolwork. It will also fund a high-impact tutoring pilot program in up to eight schools, help with teacher recruitment and training, and underwrite swimming programs, among other priorities.

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.

Philadelphia school board reelects president, faces $407 million budget hole

2023-12-08T00:45:39+00:00

Philadelphia Board of Education President Reginald Streater will continue to lead the board for the time being — at least until mayor-elect Cherelle Parker makes her personnel decisions.

Streater and Board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez were re-elected to their positions in the board’s annual officer elections Thursday evening. Streater and Fix-Lopez both won with 6-2 votes. Streater and Fix-Lopez were first elected to their roles last year in a significant leadership shift for the board.

Board members Cecelia Thompson and Lisa Salley nominated and voted for each other for the roles of president and vice president respectively. Both members have previously raised concerns about the board’s transparency.

It’s unclear how long Streater and the rest of the board will keep their seats. Their terms expire when outgoing Mayor Jim Kenney leaves office in January. Parker will have the power to appoint all nine members of the board.

A spokesperson for Parker declined to comment Thursday. On the campaign trail, Parker would not say what she plans to do with the board, but told Chalkbeat she “will be looking for people with a deep commitment to our city, the children of our city, and [who] share my vision for public education in this city.”

Rough financial waters ahead for Philadelphia schools

Regardless of who’s on board for the next mayor’s term, they will be confronted with a multi-million dollar budget deficit.

Chief Financial Officer Michael Herbstman gave board members an updated five-year budget outlook for fiscal 2024 through fiscal 2028 that includes additional projections for new union contracts and other costs.

According to Herbstman, just before the pandemic, the district was facing a looming deficit of nearly $300 million due to years of “insufficient funding” from the city and state. Through “effective and efficient use,” of federal pandemic funding, “the district temporarily delayed the inevitable,” Herbstman said. That led to a balanced budget in 2023 and the same projected for 2024.

But with that pandemic aid set to run out, the district is facing a $407 million budget gap for fiscal 2025. And Herbstman said that deficit is likely to grow every year, leading to a $702 million deficit projected for fiscal 2028.

Those projections could change if the state revamps its school funding formula. Earlier this year, a Commonwealth Court judge ordered the state to do so, in order to bring its funding system into constitutional compliance.

The school district has no taxing authority and is 99% dependent on state and city dollars for its operating fund, Herbstman said, meaning “how high we can climb” will depend on state and local officials.

Herbstman said if the state pitches in an additional $357 million and the city adds an additional $144 million in fiscal 2025, the district could make meaningful progress towards adequate school funding over the next five years.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said he and other district officials are trying to signal to state and city policymakers that “we are being good stewards of the public tax dollars,” in the hopes of securing increased funding in this coming year’s appropriations process. Watlington pointed to recent credit ratings reports that he said demonstrate the district is headed in a positive financial direction.

“We’re starting with the best financial investment grade credit rating that we’ve had in nearly a half century. That’s really important,” Watlington told reporters at a Thursday briefing.

The budgeting process will be “more transparent” this year, Watlington promised. He said their plan will involve more parents, students, and community members in the budgeting process through surveys and focus groups from November to March.

Board extends contract for reading services

The board also voted to approve an extension worth roughly $477,600 for the district’s contract with Curriculum Associates for the organization’s PHONICS for Reading instructional materials.

A note on the board’s website said the extension would go towards continuing to provide teachers and students with disabilities in grades 3-8 access to curriculum that’s “been successfully used” since last school year “to significantly improve the reading levels of students” in 77 schools.

Schools across the country have been reckoning with the way they teach students to read, and Philadelphia schools will be getting their own English language arts curriculum overhaul for all students starting next school year.

During the 2022-2023 school year, 2,010 students in 77 district schools had access to Phonics for Reading, according to district data. And those students “on average demonstrated significant improvements in reading fluency and comprehension, with many students moving up a grade level during this year,” the district said in its note

However, results from the most recent state standardized tests show the majority of district students are still not reading on grade level.

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

Philadelphia schools consider remote learning if SEPTA workers strike

2023-10-27T14:57:05+00:00

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Update: As of Friday afternoon, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported SEPTA and its collective bargaining unit, Transit Workers Union 234, reached a tentative contract deal to avert a strike. This deal will have to be put to a vote of the union’s more than 5,000 members.

A looming public transit worker strike could leave thousands of Philadelphia students without reliable school transportation, meaning that more than three years after the pandemic began, remote learning may be coming back.

If members of Transit Workers Union 234 walk out when their contract expires at midnight on Tuesday, Oct. 31, several highly-trafficked train, bus, and trolley routes would be suspended, city officials have warned.

Nearly 55,000 students use SEPTA to get to and from school. In the event of a transit workers strike, the district would be unable to find suitable transportation for those students, Superintendent Tony Watlington said in a Friday statement.

“We are fully committed to ensuring that learning continues for all students in the event of a SEPTA strike,” Watlington said. “While the ideal would be to maintain in-person learning for all students, please know that staffing challenges or other conditions that may result from a strike could require some or all of our schools to shift to hybrid or 100% virtual learning.”

Because of an ongoing national shortage of drivers, “providing transportation support to all students who would need it during a strike would not be an option,” Watlington said.

As a result, Watlington said the district is also “considering relaxing absence and attendance policies such that students who are late or absent due to SEPTA-related travel challenges will not be marked late, or will be excused upon receipt of a note from the parent or guardian.”

Noting that school staff also rely on SEPTA to get to work, Watlington said the district is also considering “temporary reassignments, extended overtime and relaxation of start and end times” for educators and other school employees.

“The District will monitor staffing at each school daily and deploy educator and Central Office staffing supports for specific schools that may need additional coverage,” Watlingon said.

The district provides free transportation via yellow buses for students in grades 1-6 living at least a mile and a half from the school they attend. Older students in grades 7-12 ride SEPTA. Students with disabilities may have different accommodations through their individualized education program, or IEP.

Students in district, charter, and private schools ride for free on SEPTA buses, trains, and trolleys. The district subsidizes the cost and pays SEPTA directly, and then is reimbursed by the state.

This isn’t the first time a potential transit worker strike has threatened to disrupt Philly students’ learning. In 2021, a deal was reached narrowly avoiding a strike. The last SEPTA strike was in 2016 and lasted six days. SEPTA has been called “the most-strike prone transit agency in the nation.”

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

Back to school in Philadelphia has students and teachers feeling excited — and the heat

2023-09-05T16:54:39+00:00

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First grade teacher Holly Lau crouched down so she could speak with her new student Jahlil Porter at his level.

“It’s our first day, too,” she said reassuringly to Porter, who was sporting a colorful backpack but looked a bit lost after showing up to his first day of school Tuesday at Bluford Elementary School. It was something of a fresh start for Bluford as well — it was a charter school last year but has returned to district control.

Lau was generous with her hugs, and then led her students into the building between a line of cameras and dignitaries including Mayor Jim Kenney, Superintendent Tony Watlington, and state Sen. Vincent Hughes marking the first day of school for Philadelphia’s more than 113,000 public school students.

If Jahlil was jittery, so was his mom. “I’m a little nervous,” said Yvette Williams. “I just hope everything goes well for our kids.”

More than 500 students at Bluford avoided the disruptions to the start of the school year caused by extreme heat. Students at 74 other schools in the city without air conditioning or in need of electrical system upgrades weren’t so lucky.

The first day of school at Bluford Elementary School on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

With temperatures projected to soar above 90 degrees this week, the district informed families over the weekend that those schools would operate on an early dismissal schedule Tuesday and Wednesday, and that “any decisions about Thursday or Friday will be communicated by 12 p.m. on the day before.”

The news underscored the challenges Philadelphia schools face when it comes to infrastructure, following a year when several schools closed due to fears about asbestos.

After his first year leading the district, Superintendent Tony Watlington has big plans for year two, even as he wrestles with such long-standing challenges. He’s hoping to put his five-year strategic plan into action. A new math curriculum is hitting classrooms. And the district is planning a new “two-way communication system” to give parents more access to district staff.

In addition, the district has tweaked its much-maligned lottery admissions process for selective schools. And its new safety plan aims to keep students safe from the ongoing gun violence in the city.

On Tuesday, Watlington projected optimism.

“Every year teachers, students … get a chance to have a fresh start no matter what happened in the last year,” he said. “If you had a good year you can make it even better. If you made some mistakes last year we can improve on them.”

Watlington added that “the same is true with superintendents I’m told.”

Bluford Principal Tangela McClam, a graduate of the Philadelphia district, had good news Tuesday for parents gathered in front of the school wondering about dismissal times. The school day would end at 3:09 p.m., she said, not at noon.

Like Watlington, she expressed high hopes for the future of Philadelphia public schools.

“I am delighted to be able to lead a school that is returning [to the district]” McClam said. “We’re calling … for all of our community members, parents, families, and friends to help us as we launch successful citizens and prepare them for the next generation in Philadelphia.”

Tangela McClam, left, the principal of Bluford Elementary School, stands next to other school administrators and elected officials while students enter the building on the first day of school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 5, 2023.

Asbestos, heat, and teacher vacancies remain concerns

Still, Philadelphia has a long way to go toward becoming “the fastest improving large urban district in the country,” which Watlington has said is his overarching goal. One hurdle will simply be ensuring students have safe school buildings to learn in.

The district will, in all likelihood, continue to uncover flaking asbestos this year, Watlington said. Although the district is still crafting its “master swing space plan” to ensure displaced students are able to learn in-person, disruptions should be expected.

Though some students at Frankford High School and all students at Universal Vare Charter School will be learning in other buildings this year as the district remediates damaged asbestos, the district has made progress with other schools that had been closed at the end of the previous school year.

In an effort to lessen the extreme heat affecting school buildings, the district has invested $285.7 million to “improve electrical and HVAC systems” in 23 schools and installed over 800 window air conditioning units and over 1,400 hydration stations, according to a statement from Oz Hill, the district’s chief operating officer.

Teacher and school staff vacancies are also persisting into the new school year.

According to the district, staffing is at 95.3% this year, meaning there are still more than 400 vacancies among the 9,000 positions for teachers and counselors. Last year, the school year started with about 200 vacancies.

District spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said last year the district had 225 yellow bus drivers; this year, she said, 210 have been hired so far. About 33,000 students are transported to school on yellow buses, she said, a number that includes district, charter, and private school students.

Under state law, the district must provide or pay for transportation for all students who live more than a mile and a half from the school they attend. The younger ones and those in special education require yellow buses; older students get free SEPTA passes.

A test for one Philadelphia school

This year will be pivotal to Bluford’s success as it transitions from its status as a Renaissance charter school back to district control.

In 2021, the Board of Education voted not to renew the charters of Bluford and nearby Daroff, which had been run by Universal Companies as part of a decade-old strategy of turning over existing district schools to charter operators in the hope of improving them.

Daroff has closed altogether. But the district is promising to engineer a turnaround at Bluford, which under Universal had fallen short of academic goals and had financial problems.

“I’m hoping for a good school year,” said Sharady McDuffie, the parent of two fourth graders at Bluford.

McClam said that the school is expecting 505 students, although only 95 had been signed up when she arrived to take over the school in the summer. She held various outreach events and said that so far about 400 are officially enrolled.

On Tuesday, McClam gathered unregistered students into the auditorium to fill out paperwork and get them cleared for class.

The school was named for astronaut Guion Bluford, the first Black person to travel to space and who attended the school when it was called the Hanna School. Keeping the school’s namesake in mind, McClam said the motto this year will be “launching successful citizens.”

A student holds onto a guardian’s hand during the first day of school events, at Bluford Charter School, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 5, 2023.

Meanwhile, at a “meet and greet” event last week at Ellwood Elementary School — one of the 74 schools on a revised heat schedule this week — dozens of students and their parents showed up to meet their teachers and collect goodies such as backpacks, water bottles, and pencils.

Ellwood, built in the 1950s, isn’t as up to date as it could be when it comes to infrastructure. But it has gotten new windows and doors. The school is installing air conditioning, but it’s not yet operational. And parents and students are still holding out hope for a strong school year.

Assistant Principal Edward Davies said that the focus for Ellwood this year is “maintaining what we have and making gains.” It was easy to find excited students around him.

Eris Brown, 7, is entering second grade. Her favorite subject, for now, is art. But she has big ambitions. “I hope to learn everything,” she said.

Berlyn Stanford, 6, is entering first grade and likes school because “I get to play with toys. I can meet new friends and I like gym class.”

Kiyon Harris, 8, who is entering second grade, spent a long time talking to physical education teacher David DiEva about his plans for the year, hands on hips and ideas flowing. He said he’s looking forward to “a lot of math, and reading, and I like activities and sports,” he 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.

Q&A: Philly schools chief Tony Watlington touts positive attendance, fiscal trends in his first year

2023-08-23T20:16:33+00:00

One year into his tenure, Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington’s methodical approach is focused less on grand oratory and more on incremental steps towards achieving his goal of creating “the fastest improving large urban district in the country.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Watlington highlighted an increase in student attendance of three percentage points, a bump in teacher attendance of seven percentage points, a 265-student decline in the number of dropouts, and a rosier fiscal outlook for the district since he took over last summer .

Watlington said he is now focused on improving student safety, repairing and upgrading school buildings, bolstering district communication with families, and launching a $70 million curriculum overhaul, starting this year with math.

“We’ve got the momentum, we’ve got the wind behind us now,” Watlington said. “We are going to accelerate reading and math performance this year now that attendance is up and the dropout rate is down … there’s an energy in our schools, there’s an energy in the bellies of our teachers and our principals.”

This coming school year, he’s pledged to increase the number of Safe Paths programs from seven to 13 schools, and update or replace 150 security cameras at schools that have them. On the academic front, he is planning to pilot a high-impact tutoring program at up to eight schools. As part of his five-year-strategic plan approved by the board, he also aims to build community support for a future year-round school pilot, which is presumptive mayor Cherelle Parker’s major education policy proposal.

Watlington is still facing serious challenges. Historic underfunding has left Philly schools in dire need of facility renovations and modernization. Student enrollment has declined, according to recent district data. Teacher vacancies are up. And gun violence is continuing to plague school communities: During the last school year, 199 students were shot in Philadelphia and 33 of those shootings were fatal, according to the district.

As the new school year approaches, some 85% of district schools have the new math curriculum materials they are scheduled to begin teaching this year, Watlington said. Though the district hired 700 new teachers and counselors for the upcoming year, the district’s teacher workforce is only staffed at 95%, he said. That means there could be more than 400 vacancies among its approximately 9,000 teacher positions that still need to be filled before the school year starts Sept. 5.

“We’ve still got work to do,” Watlington said of teacher hiring. He said the district has had to look outside of Pennsylvania to “expand our recruitment footprint, speed up the onboarding time, so we can get people hired quicker.”

Watlington’s low-key approach has been markedly different from Philadelphia school leaders in the past like Paul Vallas, who declared the need for a dramatic turnaround and immediately instituted new policies and initiatives upon arriving in the city. In temperament and leadership style, Watlington is more like his immediate predecessor, William Hite.

In his first year, Hite had to deal with significant state budget cuts and presided over wrenching, permanent school closures, which sparked community anger that led to saving some of the schools slated to be shuttered.

Watlington has had billions in federal COVID aid to help him get through his inaugural year at the district — although a “fiscal cliff” is looming for 2024-25, when that aid ends.

Watlington sat down with Chalkbeat on Wednesday to reflect on his first year in office and discuss his goals for the upcoming school year and beyond. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced during your tenure?

One of the biggest challenges continues to be the facilities in our district. We’re having to work really hard … to basically right the wrongs of systemic underfunding over a long period of time.

We’re not putting our heads in the sand, we’re not hiding in the corner complaining. We’re just stepping up to the plate.

[The district operations team] has been working hard on developing a master swing space plan so that when we have another school closure [due to damaged asbestos] — not if, but when we have another school closure in the school district, we can get our kids back in in-person learning much quicker than we did at Frankford High School.

We’ve been working throughout the summer to start planning for a project team that will launch this fall. That project team will help us identify how to, within our existing resources, build our long-range plan to bring all of our schools up to 21st century standards. It won’t happen overnight, but this year, we’re gonna tackle those tough issues with a lot of internal and external people.

What is your number one priority for the district this year?

We’re going to partner with our parents and really ramp up and improve our communication and parent engagement efforts so that we can improve reading and math performance.

Bottom line, our kids need to be able to do reading and math on grade level. It is super critically important. And we know we can make significant improvements. We have to make good investments. We are focused on what the research tells us and we all have to wrap our arms around our young people together as a city and say we must and we can do better.

What do you think success looks like for the Philadelphia school district?

Success for the school district is when we increase the third grade on grade level reading performance. We’ve got to get more of our young people [access to] algebra in middle school because it’s a gateway to higher level math in high school. And when they get to high school, we need our kids to graduate in four years, prepared to go into building trades, the community college, or a four-year institution where they don’t have to take remedial courses. That’s how we’re defining success.

How do you ensure you’re being a leader rather than a crisis manager?

The number one way … we keep our district from being a district that operates in crisis [is] we have to have a roadmap, a strategic plan, because … it tells us clearly: What specific priorities and strategies are we going to align all of our resources to?

The strategic plan is designed in such a way that we don’t do everything at one time. … We won’t do a haphazard job. … One of the reasons why we’re not implementing the year-round schools [model] this year is because we’re going to take this year to build parent and community interest, and we’re going to take the time to build the best model for Philadelphia. … We’ll launch that in 24-25 versus this school year.

[Another] way we stay out of crisis mode is we constantly take a look at our budget and our data to see what’s working, what’s not working. It’s simple: this strategic plan will help us to put more resources into where we’re getting a return on investment, and things that aren’t working, quite frankly, we’re going to stop doing them. That’s why we’re not continuing with certain curriculum programs in our school district. We’re not getting the return on investment.

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.

Passing a budget, praising a plan, telling a charter school no: Philadelphia’s long board meeting

2023-05-26T16:17:26+00:00

At a jam-packed meeting running deep into Thursday night, Philadelphia’s Board of Education adopted the district’s budget, reviewed Superintendent Tony Watlington’s proposed strategic plan, rejected a charter school application, and more.

But while Watlington presented a hopeful vision for the district through his strategic plan, dubbed “Accelerate Philly,” the running theme of the meeting was doing more with less. Officials said without more funding and resources, it would be nearly impossible to accomplish some of their loftiest goals.

Asked by a board member if the district has the staffing to make all of the programs in his strategic plan a reality, Watlington replied: “The short answer is no.”

“We don’t have the resources and the infrastructure” to accomplish everything the district needs to do, Watlington said. He added his administration is looking at how they can “massage” the resources the district has “before we ask for more,” from the state.

Still, board member Leticia Egea-Hinton said Watlington’s five-year strategic plan “certainly fills me with not just hope, but expectation” that the district can make gains in student achievement, safety, and well-being.

Board praises strategic plan work from educators, students

Watlington presented to board members the same summary of his five-year strategic plan his office published on Wednesday. After members of the public implored the superintendent and the board to release the plan to the public before discussing and voting on it, the board delayed its vote on whether to adopt “Accelerate Philly” from Thursday’s meeting until June 1.

One of the plan’s most notable elements is its year-round school pilot; Democratic mayoral nominee Cherelle Parker supports a move to year-round schooling in some form. Other proposals in Watlington’s blueprint include:

Replacing all security cameras at the 150 schools that have them.
Piloting a controversial “Opengate weapons detection” system for middle schools.
Expanding the Safe Path Program where adults are hired to monitor the streets surrounding schools to ensure students can walk home safely.
Recruiting and retaining certified school nurses for all schools.
Launching a “two-way communication system” to respond to parent and community member inquiries. Watlington said that many community members have complained they would reach out to the district and never hear back. Under the new two-way system, Watlington said, everyone who reaches out should expect a response.

The plan also proposes expanding the ninth grade On-Track (also referred to as Success Networks) program in an effort to boost graduation rates and reduce the number of students who drop out. According to Watlington, 3,609 students have dropped out of Philadelphia schools this academic year so far. As of October 1, 2022, total enrollment in Philadelphia public schools was 197,288, according to district data.

Board President Reginald Streater and other members largely praised the plan on Thursday and acknowledged the “sweat equity” from educators, students, administrators, and community members that went into writing the plan.

Board member Lisa Salley asked how the district will track its progress putting the plan into action. Watlington said he will create a new team within his office and will employ “external folks” to “advise a small and minimal staff” who will make sure the plan is carried out.

Watlington said he intends to give an update every January on how the district is making progress on the plan.

Board member Chau Wing Lam, speaking first in Chinese, also drew attention to the fact that there is nothing in the plan about “cultivating the diversity of the students in our system.” Lam said she would have liked to see specific attention paid to improving the district’s delivery of language offerings.

New $4.45 billion budget funds teachers, counselors

Watlington’s long-term vision got an early boost from the board’s Thursday vote to approve a $4.45 billion budget for fiscal 2024 that includes funding to:

Hire additional counselors for the highest-need schools.
Add 15 new safety officer positions.
Hire more general education teachers and special education teachers.
Purchase the new two-way communications system Watlington has touted among other costs.

Still, district officials said the money they have is not nearly enough to fund the district’s needs. Estimates from the Education Law Center and Public Interest Law Center have said “fair funding” for the city’s schools would require an additional annual funding of $1.1 billion and $318 million from the state and city, respectively.

And making progress on all of Watlington’s proposals in his strategic plan will become more difficult as the district approaches an anticipated fiscal cliff after 2024 when federal COVID relief money is scheduled to run out, Chief Financial Officer Michael Herbstman warned.

Millions in spending for new curriculum, tech, admissions

The board also voted to approve more than 70 separate items, including:

$50 million in contracts with various vendors for new curriculum in math and language arts.
$72 million for Apple and PC computers for all district instructional staff, school leaders, students and staff.
$289,000 for Accenture, LLP to conduct an audit on the district’s much-maligned lottery admission process at selective schools.
$500,000 to Teach For America to hire new teachers.
Millions more for summer programming, special education services, and other items.

The full list of action items can be found on the board website here.

The board also voted to approve an agreement with the city to reopen West Philadelphia’s Sayre Pool, which has been at the center of a citywide debate over swimming access for Black and brown children.

Board rejects charter high school application again

Notably absent from the strategic plan presentation was any board discussion of charter schools.

As written, “Accelerate Philly” does not include any proposals, programs, or policies specific to charter schools, although some initiatives appear to be broadly inclusive of all schools under district purview.

Charter expenditures in the district are increasing at “a much greater rate” than expenditures on traditional public schools, board member Joyce Wilkerson noted.

Watlington subsequently said the “elephant in the room” is that charter enrollment is rising as traditional public school enrollment is falling.

However, the school board voted Thursday to deny Global Leadership Academy International Charter High School’s application to open a standalone high school this August. The board cited issues with curriculum and dissatisfaction with the performance of other charter schools in the city under the Global Leadership Academy (GLA) name.

This is the second time the board has denied GLA’s application to open a high school. The school revised and resubmitted its application in April.

Peng Chao, the acting director of the district’s Charter Schools Office, said despite applying to open the new school for the 2023-2024 academic year, Global Leadership Academy did not “identify a school leader or include updated information regarding staffing a brand new charter school.”

There is a “growing concern about the viability of those start dates,” Chao said.

Chao also said the two current GLA K-8 schools in Philadelphia had “mixed outcomes” when it comes to academics. The application said the proposed high school should be evaluated as a separate entity from those schools.

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

Transparency watch: Public gets time to see Philadelphia schools chief’s strategic plan after all

2023-05-24T22:48:48+00:00

This story has been updated to include additional information about curriculum contracts the Philadelphia Board of Education is due to vote on May 25.

Less than 24 hours before the Philadelphia Board of Education was due to vote on Superintendent Tony Watlington’s as-yet-unseen strategic plan, the board postponed the vote until June and released an executive summary of the plan to the public.

The executive summary says the plan will include a pilot program to “incentivize” teachers to work in “hard to staff schools,” the relaunch of “Parent University” — a program to give parents and caregivers courses in academics, financial literacy and other areas — and a $70 million update for the district’s core curriculums in math, reading, and science, among other proposals.

The board was previously scheduled to vote on the plan at Thursday’s board meeting. But two days after Chalkbeat reported that the public had yet to see the plan, Watlington said he will now present the proposal for review Thursday, and the board will vote on it June 1. If the board approves the plan, it will begin July 1.

Pressure has been building on Watlington to unveil the plan to the public before the board’s vote on it. The plan will be the culmination of Watlington’s work in his first year in office, and could guide the district through pandemic recovery, a growing asbestos crisis, and a gun violence epidemic that’s killed more than 20 students this academic year so far.

“We’re going to ask the Board to take some time to kick the tires, look under the hood, and ask our community to do the same thing,” Watlington said of the plan in an interview Wednesday. “This is going to be our North Star for the next five years and beyond, and I want to make sure we’re very thoughtful about how we begin this work.”

The summary says Watlington’s strategic plan is intended to be a “living document that can be updated by the Administration as needed based on progress monitoring, emerging trends, new internal evidence, or external research.”

The executive summary is light on specific, prescriptive policies. Many of the ideas involve launching new advisory groups, audits, updating websites, and reviewing the current policies.

And there’s no price tag for the plan yet.

“In the process of costing out this plan, we know that current funding is inadequate,” he said.

He highlighted a February ruling from Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer that the wide gaps in spending between wealthy and poor districts in the state makes Pennsylvania’s current school funding system unconstitutional.

However, Jubelirer did not prescribe a specific remedy, and securing more state aid is likely to take time. Republican legislative leaders haven’t said whether they will appeal.

“I think it’s easy in Philadelphia to get immune to what historic underfunding really means,” Watlington said.

Aside from comments about his five-year plan, Watlington also said he was confident about his future even though the next mayor can appoint an entirely new school board, which could in turn hire a different superintendent.

Cherelle Parker, the Democratic nominee for mayor who’s a heavy favorite to win November’s election, has not indicated her intentions regarding school board appointments.

Although she doesn’t exercise direct control over the district, she’s promised that her plan for education will “transform how we think about public schooling.”

Two leaders’ dovetailing plans for year-round schedule

The summary says the plan includes five priority areas: safety and well-being, family and community partnerships, accelerating academic achievement, recruiting and retaining “diverse and highly effective educators,” and “high-quality, cost-effective operations.”

One of the most high-profile proposals in Watlington’s plan — one likely to have a substantial cost — is a pilot for year-round school. Parker’s most far-reaching education proposal during the campaign called for the same.

Watlington said he wants to pilot “a year-round and extended day school calendar” in up to 10 schools. Beyond that, he had few details.

It’s too early to say whether year-round schooling means extending the academic school year or the school day, or both, Watlington said.

“I want to slow down and roll out the strategy, cost out what it would cost us, and then we want to take the time to build support and do an information campaign with various school communities,” Watlington said. “I don’t want to just assign schools to do this.”

Parker’s plan was also short on specifics. On the campaign trail, she promised to “create full-day, full-year education for all students in Philadelphia.” She also wants schools to be open from 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. for “before and after-school enrichment,” but has not elaborated on those statements.

Any change in school schedules “is something that would have to be negotiated,” Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan said in an interview.

Asked whether year-round schooling was a major component of his plan before Parker made it a keystone of her platform, Watlington demurred.

“I think it’s coincidental, but inherently good” that both he and Parker are talking about the idea, Watlington said. “What we do together is more important than ‘who came up with the idea?’”

But Jeron Williams II, a Central High School student who sits on one of the committees that helped develop the plan, said “never once did we discuss year-round schooling.” Jordan, who also participated in the process, said the same thing.

Incentives for teachers will require union negotiations

Another component of the plan would create a pilot to give some teachers and principals “retention incentives” for teaching in schools where staffing has proven difficult.

But the executive summary does not provide further details, such as whether those incentives would take the form of bonus pay or something else.

Such incentives would also have to be negotiated with the teachers’ union. Jordan said that the district used to have a program that offered salary boosts to teachers who took particularly difficult assignments, but that only covered about 25 teachers at its peak, and that teachers generally didn’t like it.

The summary doesn’t provide details about Watlington’s proposed $70 million changes to curriculum. However, the agenda for the board’s May 25 meeting includes votes on contracts with various vendors for new curriculum in math and language arts that add up to $50 million; another $20 million contract for science materials was originally included on the agenda but withdrawn as of late Wednesday. Those contracts are related to Watlington’s plan, a board spokesperson said.

Watlington also highlighted a proposal to pilot “learn to swim” programs in “different parts of the city,” but did not provide further details. Students and members of the public have stressed that helping young people — especially Black and brown children from low-income backgrounds — learn to swim and giving them access to pools provides various benefits.

“The fact that we can’t do this all over the city does not mean that we should not start somewhere,” Watlington said of the swimming pilot, “I’m hopeful that we can grow that over time.”

In general, Watlington said he’s optimistic that he will have the buy-in necessary for his strategic plan to get the board’s approval and get his proposals done.

“I think the future is bright for Philadelphia and the school district of Philadelphia,” Watlington said. “I’m excited to be here and we’re gonna do some great things. I really believe our best days are ahead of us.”

Damaged asbestos will close school into next year

New details about Watlington’s plan came on the heels of news Wednesday that Frankford High School would remain closed for the rest of the school year and into next year because asbestos remediation at the century-old school building was more extensive than originally thought.

In addition, the district has been “unable to quickly identify a nearby swing space that could be prepared in time for this school year to accommodate our students and staff, as well as meet all the programmatic needs,” Oz Hill, the district’s deputy chief operating officer, said in a letter to the school community. All but Frankford’s special education students are learning virtually.

As with his strategic plan, Watlington placed the blame for such asbestos-related school closures on historic underfunding for the district, as well as prior leaders’ failure to “care for our facilities like we should have.”

The summary of Watlington’s strategic plan does call for a “facilities master plan project team.” Last November, the district paused its work on a blueprint for infrastructure upgrades; Watlington said at the time that he wanted to ensure that such a blueprint matched his strategic plan.

“We’re going to be in this asbestos space over the long term,” Watlington said. “Unfortunately, because of historical underfunding we don’t have shovel-ready swing spaces” that school community members can support or commute to.

District officials told reporters at a briefing Tuesday they were making progress in their building inspection process.

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.

Philadelphia’s school board is about to vote on a strategic plan the public hasn’t seen

2023-05-22T21:53:35+00:00

Just three days before the Philadelphia Board of Education is scheduled to vote on a sweeping five-year plan for schools from Superintendent Tony Watlington, the public has virtually no idea what’s in it because the district hasn’t released it.

The plan will include a year-round school pilot program, the district confirmed last week, but officials have not released any additional details. A version of year-round school is Democratic mayoral nominee Cherelle Parker’s signature education proposal, but she has also failed to elaborate on what she has in mind.

The Philadelphia school district is grappling with systemic problems. A growing asbestos crisis is closing school buildings. Gun violence has claimed the lives of more than 25 students this school year. And test scores are stubbornly low. With all these problems plaguing the district, Watlington has repeatedly touted his strategic plan as a way to make progress on pressing issues.

The plan made headlines before Watlington even took over the district. Roughly a year ago, the board approved a $450,000 contract for a consulting firm to help him craft the plan. But as of late Monday, officials had not shared the plan, or even a basic summary of what it calls for, with the public.

Alexandra Coppadge, the district’s chief of communications and customer service, said in an email Monday that several people had already seen versions of the plan.

“Throughout the strategic planning process, the District continues to collaboratively engage with key stakeholder groups including: the Board of Education, elected officials, Union leadership, principals, Assistant Superintendents, and District office staff to vet and provide feedback on the research-based strategies,” Coppadge said.

Transparency concerns have been a major pain point for the district. School board members have admitted they’re struggling to engage with the communities they serve. At last month’s board meeting, members approved a $336,000 contract with a consulting group to improve the board’s communication with the public.

The public also isn’t getting answers from Parker about her plans for education.

At her first press conference Monday morning since winning the Democratic nomination, Parker sidestepped a question on what she meant by year-round schooling. She has not said whether she wants students in school for 200 or 210 days instead of Pennsylvania’s legally-mandated 180, or whether — like many districts that have a year-round schedule — she means that the district should shorten summer vacation and add three-week breaks throughout the school year.

Parker did say that in a conversation with Gov. Josh Shapiro before the press conference, “we talked about being innovative and creative with our schedules for education and how we deliver public education In the city.”

In one of the most affecting moments, she choked up when asked how she felt breaking the “glass ceiling” should she become the first female mayor in the history of the city. Parker is heavily favored to defeat Republican candidate David Oh in November.

She also said wants to “find a way to add value to motivate, inspire, and encourage a generation of girls to say, you know, ‘wow, no one can put me in the box. Right? You know, I really can be whatever … that makes me feel really good.’”

While she has talked about the importance of educational attainment, her most direct impact on schools would be through the mayor’s power to appoint all nine members of the Board of Education, who in turn hire the superintendent.

Parker hasn’t said whether or not she would keep the current board members or seek to appoint new ones who align with her educational vision. And while she talked about having “quality seats” for every child, she has not spoken directly about whether she would seek an expansion of charter schools, which now educate more than 60,000 students in the city.

Watlington’s strategic plan meanwhile, is in many ways his audition to prove to the new mayor that he has the district’s issues under control.

The school board has spent at least $1.6 million on consultants since Watlington took over the leadership of the district. The $450,000 contract approved last May by the school board — before Watlington was even sworn in — was used to hire Joseph and Associates, a Tennessee-based education consulting firm, to assist with his transition to the district and help develop his blueprint for leading Philadelphia schools.

It’s unclear how much of a role the consulting firm played in writing the plan. The firm did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

In addition to the $336,000 communications contract, the board last month also approved $881,500 in spending with a group called K12 Insight to improve the district’s “customer service.”

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.

Philadelphia superintendent to pitch year-round school pilot as likely next mayor talks up the idea

2023-05-18T22:28:01+00:00

Philadelphia’s top education official and its likely next mayor are coalescing around a big idea for education: year-round school. But so far, neither of them wants to say how it would work.

The most consequential and far-reaching proposal in Democratic mayoral nominee Cherelle Parker’s plan for education is to keep schools open year-round. And Superintendent Tony Watlington will include a proposal for a pilot program on year-round schools in his five-year strategic plan that is not yet public but that Board of Education members are scheduled to vote on at their May 25 meeting.

Parker and Watlington aren’t alone in their interest in shaking up the traditional school calendar. In the wake of the pandemic, several school leaders and state lawmakers are looking to extend their school years as a way to give struggling students an academic boost. Year-round school can take many forms and it is used to try to address various issues, from academics to overcrowding.

District spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said Thursday that Watlington “has included the pilot of year round schools in his five-year strategic plan, which will be presented soon.” Orbanek said that Watlington was interested in the idea before the primary election, which Parker won on Tuesday. She declined to provide further details.

In her campaign platform, Parker said she would combine the longer school year with more before and after-school activities. And her website puts more emphasis on a year-round school schedule as a way to help parents than its impact on academics. But otherwise, her platform doesn’t focus on the details of how her idea would work in practice.

“Philadelphia students need to be prepared for a modern economy, but Philadelphia’s public school system is stuck in the past,” she said on her campaign website.

A Parker spokesperson said Thursday that Parker’s team had not seen Watlington’s proposal.

On Thursday, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro told us that Watlington “shared those ideas” about year-round school with him previously, although he didn’t have any details about what Watlington would propose.

Shapiro said he is open to any “creative ideas” to address students’ mental health needs and improve learning environments including extending the school year or adjusting school start times.

“I want to be thoughtful about how we do this,” Shapiro said, “so the Commonwealth is not dictating a one-size-fits-all approach to every district, but rather allowing districts to sort of consider what they think would be best.”

Year-round schooling gets mixed reviews

Using a year-round calendar does not necessarily mean having more than 180 days of instruction, which is what the majority of states (including Pennsylvania) have set as the minimum for a school year.

The National Association of Year Round Education advocates for districts to implement the “balanced calendar,” which shortens summer vacation and adds longer breaks called “intersessions” during the school year. The group’s suggested calendar uses a 30-day summer break and breaks for fall, winter, and spring of 15 days each, plus a three-day break for Thanksgiving.

This strategy keeps 180 instructional days, but uses them “more efficiently,” said David Hornak, the association’s executive director and superintendent of the 5,000-student Holt School District in Michigan. He said about 4% of school districts educating some two million students nationwide use some form of this calendar.

After a long summer break, according to Hornak, teachers generally spend the first 20 to 40 days in school reteaching students to compensate for summer learning loss. With traditional school calendars, “schools are asked to remediate learning gaps that they are contributing to,” Hornak said.

The “balanced calendar” schedule also “improved educator morale and has a positive impact on the teacher burnout problem” as well as teacher and student attendance, he said.

“I have yet to meet an educator who wants to return to the regular calendar,” Hornak said.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has declined to comment on Parker’s plan or Watlington’s pending pilot proposal. A change to year-round schooling would require the district to rework its contract with the teachers’ union; the contract expires in August 2024.

Many districts across the country have tried year-round schooling over the years, with varying levels of success.

The Los Angeles school district tried year-round schools as enrollment grew in the 1980s, but by 2015, just one school still used that type of calendar, according to Education Week.

At least a few school districts have abandoned this approach or at least cooled on the strategy recently. In January, officials in Virginia’s Chesterfield schools recommended phasing out their year-round school trial run, after disappointing academic outcomes.

And a school district in Wisconsin is also ending its year-round school calendar after nearly a decade; officials said the schedule didn’t seem to benefit test scores or student behavior.

Paul von Hippel, a professor of public policy at the University of Texas who has researched year-round schooling, said there’s evidence that adding instructional days has a positive impact. (Parker, who has a 10-year-old son, has also said the elementary school day is too short and wants to keep school buildings open from 7:30 a.m. until 6 p.m.)

But he has not seen evidence that the balanced calendar approach has led to better student outcomes.

And it’s typically very difficult for school districts to add days to the school year, even when there is a year-round calendar. Only about one in every 1,000 schools in the U.S. has calendars that stretch the school year beyond 180 days, and most of them are charters, he said.

The Los Angeles district was among several California cities that implemented a year-round schedule similar to the balanced calendar called Concept 6. That schedule had just 163 days of instruction, although the school days were longer, he said.

Research showed that students on Los Angeles’ Concept 6 schedule did not benefit academically, von Hippel said, adding that it is “disruptive of family life and teachers tend not to like it.”

There are some “high-performing education systems” elsewhere, including in England and South Korea, that have more than 200 days in the school year, he said.

But in the U.S., von Hippel said, “I don’t think you will find a large district that has gone to 200 or 210 days.”

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 Philadelphia Bureau Chief and can be reached at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board approval of contracts worth $183 million prompts transparency debate

2023-04-21T19:31:43+00:00

Long after people had left the school district auditorium, Philadelphia’s school board voted Thursday night to approve roughly $183 million for vendor contracts, including $336,000 for a consulting group to improve the board’s communication with the public.

Those contracts covered school building repairs, IT and technology equipment, office supplies, preschool programs, and water and sewer systems.

For years, outspoken members of the public and some education advocates have demanded more transparency from the board when it comes to their appointments and deliberations. Now, with multiple schools closing due to damaged asbestos, and gun violence claiming the lives of 23 students and wounding another 84, the board’s public approach to these and other crucial issues could help determine whether Philadelphia’s next mayor reappoints some, all, or none of the board’s current members.

Not long after he took over the district last year, Superintendent Tony Watlington drew public ire when the board (at his request) hired a consulting firm for $450,000 to help with his transition and guide the creation of a long-term strategic plan for Philadelphia schools.

While the 54-item consent agenda ultimately passed with little debate, board members Lisa Salley and Cecelia Thompson raised concerns about the process behind the $336,000 communications contract with Public Consulting Group in particular.

Thompson said she “wasn’t even aware” that the board was going through a selection process for communications vendors.

“We dont keep minutes, there’s no written documentation on what occurs … there’s no accountability,” Thompson said. “That should be a public conversation, not this secret stuff.”

Salley noted that the district has often been accused of “lack of transparency.”

“Strategic communication in general is very poor for the board and the district as a whole,” Salley said.

Public Consulting Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez said the contracts went through the usual request for proposal process. Several people from the board and district reviewed multiple vendor contracts, and ultimately decided to move forward with the ones that appeared on the consent agenda.

“The process is not over, we are in this final step of work, collectively making a decision,” Fix-Lopez said before the vote. “That is what happens when we vote for an action item.”

Funding for the contracts approved Thursday night came from a variety of sources including operating and capital funding from last year and next year’s budget as well as federal and state grants.

Board President Reginald Streater said the board followed the district’s procurement process “to the tee.”

Board member Leticia Egea-Hinton defended the Public Consulting Group contract and said the board needs urgent “help” connecting to the school community. “I don’t think we can wait much longer,” she said.

But those comments came too late to mollify Lisa Haver, founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools and a frequent critic of the board’s transparency efforts. Speaking at Thursday’s board meeting during the public comment period, she blasted the communications spending, which included $881,500 for “customer service” with a group called K12 Insight, as well as the $336,000 contract.

She questioned why the district was spending such money “to assist professionals and board members to do what they were hired or appointed” to do.

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

$8 million for technology equipment through the state’s COSTARS cooperative purchasing program.
$11 million for replacing roofs at several schools
$32 million for “office supplies.”
$3.5 million to amend a contract with The Home Depot for “cleaning and custodial supplies.”
$9.3 million in contracts with the city water department and Vicinity Energy for water services and steam heat.
$79 million in federal and state grants for prekindergarten programs at community-based partner sites.
$6 million for boiler repairs.
$12 million to extend contracts with vendors doing HVAC repairs.

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

Students march on Philadelphia City Hall, district HQ to protest school selection process

2023-03-28T21:45:48+00:00

Carrying signs with messages like “keep the teachers” and “save our schools,” more than 50 students from Science Leadership Academy at Beeber rallied outside City Hall Tuesday afternoon to protest Philadelphia’s revamped high school admissions process.

Two years after the district unveiled that new process, there are roughly 800 vacant spots next year at 12 of the district schools that require students to apply. Without a full complement of students, the schools could lose teachers and face cutbacks in extracurricular and other activities.

“We’re here to protest how the school system is pretty much messed up,” said Daniel Vergara, a sophomore at Beeber.

Not filling all the available seats in the school “means students are losing out on an education that they’re totally eligible for,” said Miriam Corrales, also a 10th grader. And Matthias Duncan, a senior, said that the changes could result in larger class sizes.

“Teachers shouldn’t be cut. It’s unfair,” said Jade Perry, another Beeber senior.

The ongoing criticism from students and others comes after a similar protest last week in which students and educators said that the district’s admissions lottery, which officials overhauled in 2021, is essentially endangering the survival of several themed and innovative high schools in Philadelphia.

At Thursday’s Board of Education meeting — immediately following last week’s protest — Superintendent Tony Watlington announced that the district would audit the lottery system with an eye toward refining and improving it.

The 2021 changes to the admissions system centralized the admissions process and eliminated the role of school principals in recruiting and admitting students. District leaders said the new system would make admissions more equitable for students of color. Last year, there were early indications that the share of Black and Hispanic students at the city’s four most-selective high schools increased for this year’s ninth grade class.

In a statement last month, the district said the revised system would “eliminate subjectivity and potential actions of implicit bias from the school selection process.”

Last week, Watlington said that 316 students who have qualified for admission to at least one of 12 schools but have not yet enrolled for next year would be offered a seat. He also said he would allocate $3 million to ensure that no high school will lose more than two staff members, “subject to principal discretion.”

But those changes haven’t quelled all of the anger about the system. A petition started by students to protest the admissions system, which circulated after Watlington announced changes to the lottery last week, is scathing.

“Our education is at stake!” it says. It goes on to say that having a lower enrollment at certain high schools “will cause class sizes of 35-40 students, 2-10 teachers to be lost, less funding for schools, fewer electives, and numerous other consequences. Why must the youth suffer from the incompetence of the School District of Philadelphia?”

As of Tuesday afternoon, the petition had about 250 signatures.

The students want the elimination of state standardized test scores as one of the criteria for admissions. They are also demanding “a sufficient school budget” and “adequate resources for learning.”

At Tuesday’s City Hall rally, the students heard from student speakers, as well as Councilmember Kendra Brooks, whose daughter graduated from Beeber, and state Rep. Amen Brown, a Democrat who is running for mayor.

“I’m proud to see so many young people out here rallying,” Brooks told the group. “We need the voice of those most impacted by this to stand up and fight.”

The students then marched up Broad Street to the school district’s headquarters to continue their protest.

Assistant Superintendent Tomas Hanna said the district appreciates the students’ passion and hears their concerns. He also said a committee that includes parents, teachers, and students is examining the admissions process.

Keeping a human element in school admissions

In the current system, which the district introduced for the class that is now in the ninth grade, students list five schools they want to attend, and are entered into lotteries for all of which they qualify. That means some students may be accepted to more than one school and others to none.

Watlington and the board said that the 2021 change was made in the name of equity. Yet last week, Watlington also said it is important not to “completely eliminate the human touch” from the admissions system.

Under the old admissions process, the district said in a statement last month, “Students were selected who did not meet the established criteria for the school. We also know at some schools there is not sufficient space, and students who did meet the criteria for the school were not selected.”

Tanya Wolford, the district’s director of research, told the Board of Education at its Thursday meeting that in the 2018-19 school year, 2,429 students accepted an offer to attend one of the selective schools, even though only 1,270 met the minimum admissions standards.

Board of Education President Reginald Streater cited his own experience Thursday to illustrate the perception in the community of the prior system’s unfairness. He attended Germantown High School more than 20 years ago – and had no complaints about his experience – but said that his mother told him it would be futile to apply to Central or Masterman because “you had to know somebody” to be accepted.

But the Beeber students and other critics, including some teachers, say the new system hurts those it was designed to help if it results in schools that can’t meet their usual enrollment. At Beeber, 83% of the students are economically disadvantaged and 80% are Black or Hispanic.

“We need an education that is well-funded and well-rounded,” the Beeber petition says. “Our education should not be jeopardized because the people in power will not admit that their attempt at equity failed.”

While the most selective schools have strict requirements, many smaller high schools established relatively recently, including U School and the LINC, often recruit students who don’t have stellar academic records but school leaders think could benefit. That could account for some of the students who attend these schools without meeting all the requirements on paper.

Video by WHYY Movers & Makers.

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.

As students and teachers slam the district, Philadelphia school board passes $4.5 billion budget

2023-03-24T17:33:08+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education approved a nearly $4.5 billion preliminary budget on Thursday that officials said isn’t enough to properly fund the district. They also got an earful from frustrated students and teachers.

At a board meeting that lasted more than six hours, members reviewed district presentations and heard from more than two dozen student and community speakers about a variety of problems and concerns. These include over 3,000 student dropouts, rapidly decaying facilities, an inadequate funding formula, and — perhaps most damning of all — a growing number of students who say they don’t feel heard or cared for by district leaders.

“Will you continue to be the detriment of Philadelphia’s students? Or will this be the wake-up call where you pay attention to their wants and needs, their thoughts, feelings, and emotions?” Jeron Williams II, a Central High School student, asked board members.

Amid the challenges outlined at Thursday’s meeting, Superintendent Tony Watlington and Chief Financial Officer Michael Herbstman presented a $4.45 billion preliminary budget and accompanying five-year outlook. The board approved the proposed budget 9-0.

That budget doesn’t include capital costs for renovating or rebuilding school facilities, Herbstman cautioned, and a more detailed final budget is scheduled for a vote on May 25.

Still, Watlington and several board members noted more money is needed to address the district’s most pressing concerns. The Education Law Center and Public Interest Law Center estimate “fair funding” in Philadelphia would require an additional $4,976 per student. That would mean an additional $1.1 billion and $318 million annually from the state and city, respectively.

With that kind of money, Watlington said, the district could “update aging facilities” and address asbestos and lead concerns, raise teacher salaries and provide “comprehensive professional learning” opportunities, among other changes.

Watlington and Board of Education President Reginald Streater said the next step will be to aggressively lobby city and state government officials for more funding. They said the school district only controls some 10% of their budget. The remaining 90%, including salary and benefit costs, is in the hands of negotiated contracts and city and state leaders.

Streater said the board and Watlington are having to “rebuild a district that was pulled apart piece by piece,” following decades of funding cuts.

“That’s important for the public to understand the scope,” Streater said. “We’re doing the best we can with what we have.”

Herbstman’s financial outlook for the district in fiscal 2024, which begins July 1, projects a 6.1% increase in revenue, but expenses are projected to increase 6.9%. And after September 2024, Herbstman said, federal COVID relief aid for schools will run out and the district will be facing “a significant deficit.”

“Absent major changes each subsequent year the annual deficit will continue to worsen,” Herbstman said.

Another long-term issue is the state of school infrastructure, which has been the subject of clashes between the district and city officials recently. Oz Hill, the district’s deputy chief operating officer, said that while the district has received 91 nominations for needed facility renovations, “the truth of the matter is we probably can only fund … a fraction of those projects.”

That kind of backlog did not sit well with board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez.

“I will be long gone from this earth and our students will still not have libraries, they still will have asbestos in their schools, teachers will still be working in 100 year old buildings … if we don’t get our young people the $1.1 billion they’re constitutionally owed from this state and $318 million from the city level,” she said.

Though the centerpiece of the board’s Thursday agenda was the budget, board members altered the schedule to accommodate a frustrated and rancorous crowd. They demanded board action on issues with the lottery admission system, charter school reform, asbestos in buildings, and what they called poor communication from district leadership.

“You’re killing us,” Kristin Luebbert, a teacher at The U School, told the board Thursday, referring to the unsafe physical condition of schools. “Our building issues have been decades in the making, but now is the time to make a plan to fix them.”

According to a district presentation Thursday, 3,373 students have dropped out of the public school system as of February — on par with last year’s count. The most recent district data shows there are about 197,300 students enrolled in Philadelphia public schools.

That prompted Sophia Roach, the school board’s sitting student representative, to ask what — if anything — the district is doing to bring the dropout rate down.

In response, Watlington did not offer details, but said “we are putting in place supports and processes to better address this issue.” He said he would have to do “a deeper dive” to look into what individual schools are doing to retain and support students.

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

Philadelphia school leaders urge parents to register their children early for kindergarten

2023-01-19T22:22:08+00:00

Tony Watlington still remembers crying on his first day of kindergarten, as he looked out the window of his classroom and watched his mother and uncle drive away after they dropped him off.

His misery “lasted about eight minutes,” he said. “Then I loved school.”

The Philadelphia superintendent told that story Thursday as he and other school officials urged families to enroll their children for kindergarten next year — and to do so early, if possible, so that both parents and the district can plan.

“Kindergarten plays a critical role in setting the foundation for success in school,” Watlington said at the Potter-Thomas Elementary School in Kensington, during a launch event for this year’s Thrive at Five campaign.

Research shows that children who attend kindergarten have better academic skills, better social-emotional and behavioral skills, and higher confidence levels throughout their school careers, he said.

The district would like parents to register their children by May 31, although applications are accepted after that, all the way into the fall after school starts. All children who turn five years old by Sept. 1 are eligible for kindergarten next year.

One major incentive for parents to enroll their children early: Kindergarten seats in a given school might fill up quickly, and those who register later might not get their child a seat at their neighborhood school.

Kindergarten is not mandatory in Pennsylvania, and not fully reimbursed by the state, and many districts still offer only half-day programs. Amid fiscal problems in the district, former Superintendent David Hornbeck in the 1990’s nevertheless worked to make all programs full-day.

Diane Castelbuono, the district’s deputy chief for early childhood, said that kindergarten enrollment declined in district schools from roughly 9,880 students in 2019-20 to 7,140 in 2020-21 — a 28% drop —but then jumped by 9% in 2021-22.

At the same time, kindergarten enrollment lagged behind enrollment in the first grade by about 600 students in 2021-22, which indicates the likelihood that not all eligible children enrolled in kindergarten that year.

Historically, about 35% of parents who enroll their children in kindergarten register in the summer and fall, Castelbuono said, but the district is hoping this year to reduce that percentage.

Public school enrollment is down nationally, especially in the elementary grades, Castelbuono noted, but officials are hoping to buck that trend here. This year, about 9,000 students have enrolled in kindergarten. The district’s goal is for between 10,000 and 11,000 students to enroll in kindergarten for the 2023-24 school year, she added.

Mia DeJesus, a kindergarten student at Potter-Thomas Elementary, helped promote kindergarten’s long-term benefits at a Jan. 19 event with Philadelphia school leaders.

During Thursday’s Thrive by Five event, Watlington and Castelbuono got help from Mia, a kindergarten student at Potter-Thomas Elementary, and her mother Jasmine DeJesus.

“Kindergarten is important on many levels,” DeJesus said. It helps her daughter “think outside the box, with things I can’t teach at home.”

Kindergarten has helped Mia with problem-solving, and she can now count to high numbers, DeJesus added.

“I know sight words and letters from A to Z,” Mia said.

She then climbed on a chair to reach the microphone and added: “If you want to go to kindergarten, you have to be five.”

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 seeking another consultant to help with restructuring

2022-12-09T22:03:58+00:00

Less than six months after hiring an outside firm for $450,000 to advise him on ways to improve the school district, Superintendent Tony Watlington is seeking to find another consultant to position Philadelphia “to be the fastest improving urban school district in the country,” according to a request for proposal obtained by Chalkbeat.

The document says the district seeks a consultant to review Philadelphia’s organizational structure to see how it compares to “the 25 largest urban school districts and the five urban school district[s] that are improving the fastest on The Nation’s Report Card.”

That refers to the biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress. Results released in October showed Philadelphia performing near the bottom among large urban school districts in 2022 in fourth grade math, eighth grade math, fourth grade reading, and eighth grade reading.

The district issued the request Dec. 6 and set a Jan. 17 deadline. The consultant would begin in April and work through April 2024.

Last April, Watlington and the board of education came under scrutiny for hiring the consulting firm Joseph and Associates to help with the leadership transition and aid in developing a five-year strategic plan. Joseph started work in June and will work through the end of this school year. The strategic plan is due next spring.

Watlington is conducting what he called a comprehensive, three-phase transition with committees charged with developing a five-year strategic plan by next spring. His transition team has made 91 recommendations for improving the district.

Some critics of the Board of Education and district policies wondered why yet another consultant is necessary.

“Why do we need more consultants and management companies and these out-of-town companies when we have a staff,” asked Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, who regularly questions board and district policies.

But Michael Casserly, who retired after heading the Council of the Great City Schools for nearly three decades, said hiring consultants is common practice.

“My experience is that superintendents hire a variety of consulting firms for all kinds of things,” he said. They do it because they have a lean central office or are looking for an “outside more independent or objective review” in an effort to build public trust, or both, he said in an interview. “It’s really not that unusual.”

Watlington, who became Philadelphia’s school superintendent in June, has never run a district this large. He came from the Rowan-Salisbury school district in North Carolina, which had an enrollment of 18,000, a fraction of Philadelphia’s 119,000 students in district schools and 70,000 in charter schools. Before that he rose from custodian to history teacher to chief of schools in the 72,000-student Guilford County school system in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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 hits pause on blueprint for school building upgrades

2022-11-18T18:57:46+00:00

Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington said the district has paused the process it’s developed to decide on upgrades to school facilities, in order to align it more closely to the district’s future five-year strategic plan.

During a school board meeting Thursday, Watlington said the facilities planning process will be put on hold until the district adopts that strategic blueprint, but added that building work that’s already been approved will proceed.

The district’s “facilities planning process” sets long-term priorities for building and other infrastructure upgrades. In April, Philadelphia officials unveiled an interactive map that let people learn about specific conditions at neighborhood schools. And in May, the district announced public forums where people could discuss the best way to repair and upgrade the city’s aging public schools; the average Philadelphia school building is about 75 years old.

However, those moves occurred before Watlington took over as superintendent in mid-June. Since then, Watlington has focused much of his attention on trying to create that five-year roadmap for schools by — among other things — gathering input from the public and different groups and officials. The district aims to adopt that roadmap next year.

Watlington has a near-term goal of making Philadelphia one of the fastest improving large school districts, and a long-term goal of being the most improved.

Although district plans to upgrade facilities have stopped and restarted before, Watlington characterized the new pause as not just another delay.

“The difference now is that we are moving in a direction to be very clear about what our academic strategies will be,” he said Thursday.

For example, he said, if the district’s work on the five-year plan discovers a need for more advanced placement classes, career and technical education programs, or even a reconfiguration of the current K-8 structure into a middle-school format, that would dictate how and where money would be spent.

Watlington noted that he would “absolutely” consider the possibility of reconfiguring grades at schools if warranted.

“We have to take the time to identify the specific strategies and what we are going to do differently in the school district of Philadelphia to get much improved outcomes,” he said.

Watlington transition team makes recommendations to improve Philadelphia schools

2022-10-20T23:41:48+00:00

Student achievement, communications, school repairs, and district funding are some of the top challenges for Philadelphia schools targeted in a 91-recommendation report released Thursday by a transition team formed three months ago by Superintendent Tony Watlington.

The report from the team, composed of more than 100 local and national educators, parents, and union and non-profit leaders, was presented before the school board meeting. The team was charged with identifying strengths and weaknesses in the district that Watlington wants to see become one of the fastest improved in the country.

Key areas for improvement

The report pointed to three main issues:

A need for improved communication and customer service strategies. Recommendations included launching a two-way communications and discussion management tool, as well as developing a customer service training program and establishing a process for communicating the district’s priorities.
Greater coordination and collaboration within the district to operate more efficiently. The plan recommended maintaining work groups to solve problems, creating opportunities for teachers to collaborate, and establishing a development team to find partners for the district.
Shared accountability and evaluation for student outcomes. The team’s report recommended developing tools like dashboards and infographics for use by students, families, and staff. Other recommendations including launching more frequent data collection for non-academic areas and increased daily monitoring of different areas related to schools in an effort to track progress.

Of the 91 recommendations, 58 are considered short-term and should be accomplished over the next year or two, and 33 should be implemented over the next three to five years.

Though he doesn’t know how much the district would need financially to accommodate the recommendations, Watlington is prepared to seek more local and state money to fund improvements from City Hall and Harrisburg.

The team identified the following strengths for the district: establishing fiscal stability, dissolving the former School Reform Commission, staff’s efforts to support the students, and public and private partnerships.

Watlington said he will address the recommendations in the five-year strategic plan that’s scheduled to be released in Spring 2023.

The one recommendation Watlington said that he’d never considered was adding a small group of principals to his leadership team.

“That caught my attention, because I’ve never read that before in a transition team report, and have never done that or considered it but it’s one that really caught my attention,” Watlington said.

Sub-groups studied critical topics

The team was broken into five sub-groups that studied student achievement, operations, anti-racist district culture, community engagement and communications, and well-rounded school experiences for students.

The student achievement sub-group stressed the need for an alignment of district people, the ability to articulate a clear curriculum, and the need to launch a textbook adoption process in ELA/English that includes teachers, principals, and special education leadership.

The operations sub-group recommended the district implement a transparent budgeting process, execute a master facilities plan, and develop a teacher career ladder.

The culture sub-group recommended the district create equitable access to criteria-based schools and develop an anti-racist learning center.

The community engagement sub-group would like the district to expand its organizational capacity, and re-envision the district’s approach to data and information gathering.

The school experiences sub-group recommended every school have a no-cost, after-school program and ensure all students have access to after-school athletic programs.

The team was led by co-chairs Andrea L. Custis, former president and CEO of the Urban League of Philadelphia, and Guy Generals, president of Community College of Philadelphia.

According to the district, 14% of the team members were school leaders, 11% local education experts, 9% parents, and 7% were national education experts. Seventeen students provided feedback as transition team advisors.

The team included familiar names, such as Uri Monson, district chief financial officer; Henderson Lewis Jr., former superintendent of New Orleans Public Schools, and Camika Royal, associate professor of urban education at Loyola University and author of “Not Paved for Us: Black Educators and Public School Reform in Philadelphia.”

Support for the transition leaders was facilitated by former Nashville superintendent Shawn Joseph and former Washington County Public Schools superintendent Elizabeth Molina Morgan. A month after Watlington’s hire, the school board approved $450,000 to pay Joseph’s firm, Joseph and Associates, to help with the transition.

“Absolutely. I think it’s worth every penny we’re spending,” Watlington told Chalkbeat Thursday. “It’s premature to say right now, but very likely, we’ll be able to reduce the forecast of that contract. I feel really good about the work that’s happened today. And I think we’ve been very good stewards of the public’s tax dollars.”

Five-year plan due in spring

In the next phase of Watlington’s transition process, Joseph’s firm will craft along with the superintendent and other district staff a five-year strategic plan in the spring of 2023.

Watlington ended the first phase of the transition process earlier this month by releasing his findings from his 100-day listening and learning tours, in which he met with parents and teachers on what needed to be done to improve the district’s learning environment. The tour got mixed reviews from parents who either thought the sessions were helpful in getting to know Watlington personally or, conversely, felt the superintendent didn’t answer their questions.

“The tour gave me the opportunity to learn what people really think and what we aspire to be in the future. I want to say thank you to the nearly 3,000 individuals who took the time to be engaged in the process,” Watlington said at Thursday’s school board meeting.

There was no presentation of the Board of Education’s system of accountability called “goals and guardrails” at Thursday’s board meeting in order to focus on the transition team’s report.

Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly stated Watlington never considered developing stronger partnerships between schools and the superintendent and the district.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s what Philadelphia parents think of Watlington’s listening sessions

2022-09-12T20:42:14+00:00

Editor’s note: This article was updated to properly attribute material that appeared verbatim in a Philadelphia school district press release.

Not long after Philadelphia parent Stacey Mandel left a virtual listening session on July 27 with new Superintendent Tony Watlington, she found herself asking: Were Watlington and other school district leaders actually listening?

What spurred that question was a follow-up email she got asking her what specific actions she would like to see from the district. But the email came from a woman at a public relations firm working on behalf of the district, not the district itself.

“It’s being handled by PR professionals, not educators. The language used in parent communications sounds beautiful, but feels like smoke and mirrors,” Mandel said of the process, adding, “She asked for specifics in terms of actions we would like to see. I thought all of us were pretty clear during the session. I believe she was present during the session as well.”

Mandel is one of dozens of parents and educators who have participated in sessions where they could share their thoughts and ideas about what the district does well and where improvement is needed. The sessions are part of Watlington’s first 100 days on the job — he took over as superintendent in mid-June — and are expected to wrap up this month.

The district’s special admissions process, building safety, and staffing seem to be top concerns expressed by parents and teachers. Many families said the district has done a good job sharing clear directions about things like how to sign up for the 80 sessions and where to attend them. While some said Watlington didn’t directly address the issues they raised, others came away saying that the superintendent was friendly.

Parents also raised concerns about the district’s $450,000 contract with consulting firm, Joseph and Associates, which previously came under fire over the summer from those who see it as a poor way to use district resources.

Watlington will reveal his takeaways from the sessions in October.

According to the district, Watlington held 63 listening sessions, including meetings with advocates and community leaders, in his first 60 days. Over 28 sessions, Watlington was also in contact with 370 teachers and staff members, 380 school leaders, and 170 central office staff members.

The school district has barred media from attending these listening sessions, which have taken place online as well as in person, but Chalkbeat spoke with several people who have attended them.

In addition to the input from families and educators about what the district needs, Watlington will also hear from his 80-person transition team that includes community and education leaders, who will develop reports and recommendations for him.

Watlington and the transition team will evaluate the district’s capacity to achieve the school board’s vision through its “goals and guardrails” framework through November. Then Watlington, Joseph and Associates, and district staff will develop a five-year strategic plan by May 30.

Mixed response from parents

Parent Jenny Aiello, who has two children in district schools, highlighted concerns expressed about the consultant. Aiello said people pressed Watlington on why he isn’t relying more on people in Philadelphia to show him the ropes.

She said at one point Watlington did repeat his defense of the decision to hire Joseph and Associates, which is based in Tennessee. Watlington has previously said the consultant would help him “hit the ground running,” while the school board called hiring such a consultant “best practice.” (Shawn Joseph, president of Joseph and Associates and a former superintendent of Nashville, Tenn., schools, did not respond to requests for comment from Chalkbeat.)

Another issue that led people to push back on Watlington, Aiello said, was the number of teachers he has on his transition team. When Watlington highlighted the number of teachers on the team, and asked the audience whether people thought that was sufficient, Aiello said, “The participants thought he should have at least half of that group be teachers because they’re the ones who know the district.”

Aiello also said the sessions she attended did not have moderators and in general didn’t conform to what she was told about how they would be structured.

But Eugene Desyatnik, a parent of three students of neighborhood schools, who attended an in-person session said that when he raised concerns about facilities and the district not accepting free help, Watlington “listened, wrote down notes and genuinely seemed committed.”

Watlington said that “where he came from [his prior job in North Carolina] it was no Rockefelller-rich district, but the grass was mowed, buildings were cooled and clean, and he expected nothing less here,” Desyatnik recalled, adding that this observation from Watlington made him feel “surprisingly optimistic.”

District parent Adam Blyweiss, who also teaches graphic design at Jules E. Mastbaum Area Vocational Technical School, attended an online listening session in July for district staff, and another online session last month for parents and families, coordinated with community and parent groups. He said he was able to access both without any problems.

The staff session brought up working and learning conditions in buildings that Blyweiss felt were never adequately addressed under former Superintendent William Hite. Issues that staff discussed with Watlington ranged from aging buildings and the district’s African American history curriculum to support for English-language learners and teacher planning time.

Blyweiss said Watlington’s curiosity and personality seem sincere. But Blyweiss is concerned that regardless of how the superintendent presents himself, the district might be in a similar position to where it was a decade ago, when Superintendent William Hite took over. He said he doesn’t know how Watlington and the district will deal with the last decade’s worth of “wishful thinking, sensible ideas, and painful mistrust.”

“I feel like we’re once again staring down conditions for educational upheaval,” Blyweiss said “The last time we had a new superintendent at our doorstep with a plan for transition involving dispassionate outsiders, we lost more than schools, staff, and students. We lost a little bit of the city’s soul.”

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

New superintendent, 200 staff vacancies as Philadelphia returns to school

2022-08-29T22:30:06+00:00

Schools opened Monday for 114,000 Philadelphia students in a district still facing a staff shortage and struggling to recover from the effects of the pandemic, which resulted in closed school buildings for more than a year and student learning loss that is still being assessed.

Despite these challenges, new Superintendent Tony Watlington exuded optimism and confidence as he, Mayor Jim Kenney, and other officials celebrated the first day of classes.

“I love the first day of school,” Watlington said at the Paul Laurence Dunbar School in North Philadelphia. “We’re going to do our very best, our absolute very best, every single day, to create life-changing opportunities … so that our children can experience life-changing outcomes.”

As a reminder of the variety of hurdles schools face, Watlington announced late Monday that 100 schools would close three hours early on Tuesday and Wednesday due to concerns about severe heat.

In many ways, Dunbar represents the difficulties and the promise of the new year that will pose major tests for Watlington in particular, who took over for former superintendent William Hite in June. Located in the heart of North Philadelphia, the school has a nearly 100% poverty rate. Last year, it enrolled only about 250 students, putting it at half capacity. Enrollment declines in cities across the country have emerged as a significant concern for many schools.

Mayor Jim Kenney, left, and Superintendent Tony Watlington, second from right, stand with education and government leaders to ring in the first day of school in Philadelphia Monday at Paul L. Dunbar School in North Philadelphia.

“The pandemic has had a lingering effect on us, and may continue to present some challenges,” Watlington said.

At the same time, the district expects 350 students to enroll at Dunbar this year, an increase of roughly 40% from last year, Assistant Superintendent Ariel Lajara said. The school is reportedly fully staffed. And the school is joining the city’s community school initiative that aims to provide better services and support to students in need.

To welcome students back, Watlington visited six schools across the city, including one that became the first in Philadelphia’s history to fly the LGBTQ pride flag, a few months after it was renamed for an LGBTQ civil rights leader.

Citywide, there are still around 200 teacher vacancies, Watlington said, adding that all classrooms will be staffed this week with “credentialed” educators. He said the schools are 98% staffed, a slight improvement from the 97.4% figure he used last week.

Recruitment is continuing, he said, including through the website Teach in Philly.

“We want to really make sure to understand what our children are telling us,” Watlington said. “We’re trying to make sure that this year we attend to the learning loss they experienced and we also want to help them to reacclimate to a normal school year, if there’s such a thing as a normal school year.”

Kenney, meanwhile, praised Watlington as “the best choice” to lead the district forward.

Daniel Mina, in his second year as Dunbar’s principal, echoed the emphasis on a “fresh start” and said it is important for teachers and other members of the school community to tend to students’ emotional as well as academic needs.

“One of our school priorities here at Dunbar is joy,” he said. “We know in order for your children to love school, not only do they have to be physically and emotionally safe, but more than that, they have to feel joy at school.”

Dunbar is one of three new community schools, which work in close partnership with the city to help families receive needed social services. The community schools program, launched in 2017, is a signature initiative of the Kenney administration and City Council President Darrell C. Clarke. Along with Dunbar, Add B. Anderson Elementary and Frankford High School were added to the program this year, bringing the total to 20.

Maxwell Akuamoah-Boateng, the city’s director of operations for community schools, said that they have been working all summer to consult parents and residents, manage partnerships with non-profit organizations, and develop a plan for what would most benefit Dunbar.

An important component is “out of school time,” he said, citing the importance “of engaging kids on a social level” and keeping them “off the streets.”

His office will be working with teachers and staff “to see what they are already doing that is working and what we can do to supplement that,” Akuamoah-Boateng said.

Members of Temple University’s athletic teams welcomed Dunbar students on their first day, cheering on students as they walked on a red carpet at the school door. Temple is one of Dunbar’s partners in the community schools program.

Kensington school first to fly pride flag

Elswhere, Gloria Casarez Elementary School in Kensington made history Monday as the first district school to fly the pride flag in honor of its namesake, who was an advocate for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community in Philadelphia.

In an effort to remove the names of racist historical figures from school buildings, the Philadelphia Board of Education voted in May to change the name of the school to honor Casarez, who attended the school when it was Philip H. Sheridan Elementary School. Sheridan is considered one of the most famous Union generals of the Civil War, but is also well-known for overseeing horrific campaigns against Native Americans.

Gloria Casarez Elementary School in Kensington made history Monday as the first district school in Philadelphia to fly the pride flag, in honor of its namesake.

Casarez, who was the city’s first director of LGBT affairs, died in 2014 from breast cancer.

“Like Gloria, each of you is a leader and a change maker with the power to positively change the school and your community,” Tricia Dressel, Casarez’s wife, told students at the school Monday. “Today you walk through those doors and hallways with pride, for you are the teachers and students of the absolute best school in the city of Philadelphia.”

Watlington said the school’s renaming was a “very bold step” towards ensuring that “students and families feel empowered, valued and respected.” The current head of the city’s Office of LGBT Affairs, Celena Morrison, said Monday’s events at the school represented a monument to Casarez’s legacy.

And Casarez Principal Awilda Aguila Balbuena used the occasion to stress the importance of representation to the students: “When we are able to see people, we are better able to understand and grasp who they are.”

Like at Dunbar, the number of students at Casarez Elementary seems to be on the rise. Around 465 students were greeted by school leaders on their first day back to class, an increase from around 415 last year, according to Casarez Assistant Principal Julio Nuñez, an increase of about 12%. The play area was filled Monday morning with students lined up by grades, with their teachers in front.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

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 reintroduces test score requirement for magnet admissions

2022-08-17T12:52:36+00:00

Philadelphia school district officials announced Tuesday they will resume using state standardized test scores as a criterion for admission to the city’s most selective high schools for the class that will start ninth grade in September 2023, but the acceptable minimum scores are being reevaluated, they said.

The cutoff score on the state test — the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment or PSSA — for each magnet school “will be adjusted this year in light of the learning loss and other challenges our students have experienced,” Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said in a letter to parents Tuesday. Historically, minimal acceptable scores for the most selective schools have been in the 88th percentile or higher.

“There is a place for the PSSA as a standardized measurement criteria for the school selection process, but we realize that it’s just one test score achieved on one day,” Watlington said. “Multiple measures of student performance are always preferable.”

The new PSSA cutoff scores for magnet school admissions — for students who took the test last spring and will be applying for admission this fall for entrance in 2023-24 — will be made public by the end of September, according to a district statement. The application window is between September 16 and November 4.

Philadelphia’s selective admissions policy that directs Philadelphia’s best students into a group of prestigious magnet schools is a hot-button issue in the city. Families of all backgrounds covet admission to these schools, and they often make decisions on whether to stay or leave the city based on expected access to selective schools like Central and Masterman. The district’s move to once again make test scores part of the admissions process will likely stir controversy among parents and educators.

The district will also continue to use a centralized lottery system for qualified students to determine who can attend the city’s most selective schools. The district adopted this system last year for the current incoming class as an attempt to increase participation among students from historically underrepresented schools and neighborhoods, and to remove any “implicit bias” in the process. Previously, principals at magnet schools traditionally made final admissions decisions.

Students qualify to enter in the lottery based on their grades, attendance, and now, their standardized test scores. Each school has somewhat different criteria.

The district’s announcement of its plans for the 2023-2024 school selection policy comes just over a week after a federal judge dealt a setback to plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit challenging the new system.

In 2020, the district removed the test score requirement for magnet admissions out of necessity: The PSSA, generally given in April, was not administered in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. For several of the most selective schools, it substituted a controversial MiWrite writing test, but that requirement will now be eliminated.

The PSSA was administered this past spring, albeit in an environment significantly affected by COVID.

The district has not provided data on whether participation dropped. But some principals expressed concern that students may have opted out of the tests because they didn’t think they would be used in admissions decisions.

Most selective admissions start in high school, and students apply in the fall of eighth grade for high school and the fall of fourth or fifth grade for a few selective middle schools. That means seventh grade PSSA scores are used for high school admissions, while third grade or fourth grade PSSA scores are used for middle schools.

However, the district said any student who missed the 2022 PSSA could submit the results of an alternative test, such as the TerraNova and the Educational Records Bureau. These have long been used by private and parochial school students who apply to these schools.

The district plans to hold three meetings where families can get information about the admissions system. Virtual meetings will take place Aug. 25 and Sept. 1, and there will be an in-person meeting Aug. 30. The application window for admission to schools for 2023-24 opens Sept. 16 and closes Nov. 4.

Diversity in the spotlight at top Philly public schools

In a statement to Chalkbeat, district officials said the lottery system had been “successful” in meeting its goals — encouraging participation, increasing access, and removing bias — and had changed the demographics at the district’s four most selective schools.

At the four most selective of the 21 criteria-based schools and programs — Central, the Carver High School of Engineering and Science, Masterman, and Academy at Palumbo — the new policy gave preference to students residing in six ZIP codes in North and West Philadelphia with large proportions of low income students of color, which had the lowest residential representation of students attending these schools.

For those four schools, “the percent of offers that were allocated to students from the identified ZIP codes ranged from 11.1% at Central to 13.5% at Masterman,” according to a district statement. “Those same zip codes accounted for less than 10% of total enrollment at these four schools from 2017-18 through 2020-21.”

In the statement, the district also reported that under this system, 11,479 eligible eighth grade students applied to the 19 selective high schools and magnet programs located in two neighborhood schools, double the number from years prior.

The ZIP code preference also significantly increased the diversity of the qualified applicant pool for the four most selective magnets, the district said. However, district officials did not indicate whether it had studied or determined how the lack of PSSA test score requirement affected the size of the qualified applicant pool.

In his letter, Watlington said that he would appoint a group to review the selection process for the 2022-2023 class and provide recommendations going forward.

In April, three parents whose children failed to be admitted to their first-choice schools sued the district in federal court, calling the new admittance criteria “a blatantly unconstitutional race-based system,” primarily citing the ZIP code preference.

The plaintiffs, who are represented by attorneys connected to conservative causes, including the America First Legal Foundation, argued that the new policy violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.

On Aug. 8, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Chad F. Kenney ruled that the plaintiffs, whose children are white, Black, and biracial, denied a preliminary injunction to bar implementation of the new system. Kenney ruled that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed because they “have failed to show a reasonable probability of eventual success on the merits because they have not shown any evidence that the changes to the admissions policy have had a racially discriminatory impact.”

At Masterman and Central, the city’s two best known magnets, Black and Hispanic students are underrepresented while whites and Asians are overrepresented, an imbalance that drew backlash following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

Tuesday’s selective admissions announcement represents Watlington’s first major policy decision.

“As the new superintendent, I want us to communicate clearly and take the time to engage a diverse project team in careful and thorough analysis of the school selection process,” said Watlington. “This approach will strengthen our decision making in preparation for the 2023-2024 school selection process.”

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.

Correction, 11/9/2022: A new policy gives admissions preferences to four of the district’s most selective high schools to students from six ZIP codes that currently account for less than 10% of the enrollment at those schools. Due to incorrect information provided by the school district, a previous version of this story said those students accounted for less than 1%

Here are 80 people who will advise new Philly schools superintendent

2022-07-12T21:34:02+00:00

Amid criticism of paying an out-of-town consultant firm almost a half million dollars to help him transition into his new role as superintendent of Philadelphia schools, Tony Watlington announced a transition team of 80 community and education leaders on Tuesday.

Guy Generals, president of Community College of Philadelphia, and Andrea L. Custis, president and CEO of the Urban League of Philadelphia, will serve as co-chairs leading the transition and will head five subcommittees.

Watlington said he is intentionally bringing the large group together with district leaders to examine “complex issues that will help me assess five specific areas of the School District of Philadelphia.” The list includes parents, principals, and unions, grassroots and non-profit leaders.

Watlington is in the middle of his 100-day entry plan that includes a listening and learning tour, where he’s engaging with parents and teachers. The transition team includes local and national education and industry leaders.

Sheila Brown, former deputy superintendent of Boston Public Schools, and Malika Savoy-Brooks, chief academic officer for Philadelphia schools, will oversee the student achievement group.

Henderson Lewis Jr., former superintendent of New Orleans Public Schools; Uri Monson, chief financial officer for the district; and a yet-to-be named special adviser will lead the group assessing the logistical operations, recruitment, and retention efforts.

Camika Royal, associate professor of urban education at Loyola University and author of “Not Paved for Us: Black Educators and Public School Reform in Philadelphia,” and Sabriya Jubilee, chief of the district’s office of diversity, equity, inclusion, will lead the the unit overseeing anti-racist district culture and teaching.

James Earl Davis, interim dean of the School of Education at Temple University, and Kathryn Block, chief of communications at the district, will lead the community engagement and communications team.

Andrea Kane, professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania, and Evelyn Nuñez, chief of the district’s schools office, will lead the enriching and well-rounded school experiences group.

Lead consultants Shawn Joseph and Elizabeth Molina Morgan will facilitate support for the transition leaders. In May the school board agreed to pay Joseph’s firm $450,000 for its services.

Watlington has defended the price tag and his selection of Joseph. “The time frame warranted me to make some recommendations and some steps sooner rather than later, so that I can hit the ground running on Day One,” he said.

But criticism of his move to hire Joseph has been heavy.

“I am surprised that a new administration would want to start off with news of an expensive and broad engagement contract, especially because communities have been sounding the alarm for months about core priorities — facilities, staffing, safety, and mental health,” Councilwoman Helen Gym said.

From mid-August through November, Watlington and the transition team will evaluate the district’s capacity to achieve the board’s vision. Then Joseph and Associates will develop along with Watlington and other district staff a five-year strategic plan by May 30.

“Our point is to ensure that every child, every student, has the opportunity to be ready for college, to be ready for careers and to be ready for life,” Custis said. “Philadelphia has its challenges. We all know that. But I believe that we can overcome those.”

The transition team

More than 80 Philadelphia parents; teachers; principals; union, educational, city, business, non-profit, and grassroots leaders; and district staff make up the transition team that will cover five areas: student achievement; operations; anti-racist district culture; community engagement and communications, and enriching and well-rounded school experiences. Below are the team members.

Student Achievement

Ayesha Imani, CEO/founder, Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School

Bill Dagget, founder, International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE)

Chris McGinley, former member, board of education

Christina Grant, state superintendent for the District of Columbia

Constance Evelyn, former superintendent, Valley Stream School District

Ginny Field, teacher, Loesche Elementary School

Jerry T. Jordan, president, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers

John Spencer, principal, McCloskey Elementary School

Maura McInerney, legal director, Education Law Center

Olga Doubrovskaia, parent, Southwark Elementary School

Otis Hackney, chief education officer, City of Philadelphia

Richard Gordon, principal, Paul Robeson High School

Sean Conley, assistant superintendent, School District of Philadelphia

Stacy Holland, executive director, Elevate 215

Operations

David E. Thomas, associate vice president of Strategic Initiatives, Community College of Philadelphia

Dean R. Robateau, executive vice president, McKissack

Donna Cooper, executive director, Children First

Elizabeth Arons, CEO, Urban Schools Human Capacity Academy

Fran Burns, COO, Connelly Foundation

James Murray, principal, William Rowan School

John Bynum, 32BJ

Kimberly A. Lloyd, president/CEO, Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corporation

Larisa Shambaugh, chief talent officer, School District of Philadelphia

Maria Bailey, 32BJ

Michael Forman, CEO/chairman, FS Investments

Nicole Hunt, president, Unite HERE

Orien Warren-Smith, parent, C.W. Henry Elementary School

Reggie McNeil, chief operating officer, School District of Philadelphia

Renato Lajara, assistant superintendent, School District of Philadelphia

Vernon Palmer, senior regional manager, School District of Philadelphia

Victoria Aristoklis, teacher, James Rhodes School

Walette Carter, parent, SLA Beeber

Wayne Wormley, president, The Wormley Company

Anti-Racist District Culture

Aliyah Catanch-Bradley, principal, Bethune Elementary

Angela Lipsay, parent, Samuel Gompers Elementary School

Carolina Cabrera DiGiorgio, president/CEO, Congresso

Constance Faith Horton, assistant superintendent, School District of Philadelphia

Dia Jones, assistant principal, Mastery Charter Schools

Jason Lafferty, teacher, Bartram High School

Lynn Rauch, general counsel, School District of Philadelphia

Marisol Rodriguez, principal, Juniata Park Academy

Meredith Mehra, deputy chief for teaching and learning, School District of Philadelphia

Michael Farrell, deputy chief for leadership development, School District of Philadelphia

Robin Cooper, president, CASA

Shariff El-Mekki, CEO, Center for Black Educator Development

Sylvie Gallier Howard, CEO, Equitable Cities Consulting

Tim (Chambers) McKinney, LGBTQ+ resource and program manager at Big Brothers Big Sisters Independence

Community Engagement & Communications

Alonzo Fulton, principal, Avery D. Harrington School

Amelia Coleman Brown, assistant superintendent, School District of Philadelphia

Rev. Bonnie Camarda, divisional director of partnerships, The Salvation Army Eastern Pennsylvania & Delaware

Brendan Morrissey, national program director for team leadership, City Year

Chandra Williams, pastor, Union Missionary Baptist Church

Christiana Uy, parent/member, Board of Education Community Advisory Council

Dalila Wilson-Scott, executive vice president/chief diversity officer, Comcast NBCUniversal Foundation

Donna Frisby-Greenwood, president/CEO, The Fund for The School District of Philadelphia

Jenna Monley, deputy chief, Family Community Engagement, School District of Philadelphia

Jenny Bogoni, executive director, Read By 4

Karyn Lynch, chief of student support services, School District of Philadelphia

Keith Bethel, former chief growth officer, Aramark

Omar Crowder, principal, Northeast High School

Peng Chao, acting chief of charter schools, School District of Philadelphia

Pep Marie, coalition coordinator, Our City Our Schools

Megan Smith, founder and president, Brownstone PR

Ken Anderson, vice president of civic affairs, the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia

Enriching & Well-Rounded School Experiences

Aja Carpenter, executive director of the Office of Post Secondary Readiness, School District of Philadelphia

Becky Cornejo, executive director, Neubauer Family Foundation

Beverly Socher-Lerner, executive director, Makom Community

Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend, president, Hamilton Family Charitable Trust

Cynthia Figueroa, president/CEO, Jevs Human Services

Dennis Terry, parent, Hancock Demonstration School

Elliot Weinbaum, chief philanthropy officer, William Penn Foundation

Gillian Dagress, parent, McCall Elementary School

Kevin Bethel, chief of school safety, School District of Philadelphia

Loree D. Jones, CEO, Philabundance

Lynne Millard, leadership coach, School District of Philadelphia

Melanie Harris, chief information officer, School District of Philadelphia

Dr. Noah Tennant, assistant superintendent, School District of Philadelphia

Orfelina Feliz Payne, executive director, Puentes De Salud

Patrick Clancy, president/CEO, Philadelphia Works

Pedro Ramos, president/CEO, Philadelphia Foundation

Simon Hauger, principal, The Workshop School

Trina Dean, academic coach, School District of Philadelphia

Vanessa Garrett-Harley, deputy mayor for children and families

Vicki Ellis, executive director of the Office of Strategic Partnerships, School District of Philadelphia

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify that Joseph and Associates will not create the five-year strategic plan on their own but along with other district leaders.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Philly schools chief defends $450K consultant who surrendered teaching license

2022-06-30T22:44:52+00:00

Amid dissent over his push for the district to hire a controversial education consultant at a cost of nearly half a million dollars, new Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. said the move will enable a speedy transition and beef up a “lean” administrative staff.

In a Wednesday call with reporters, Watlington said hiring Joseph and Associates, which is led by former Nashville district superintendent Shawn Joseph, will ensure he can focus on making Philadelphia “the fastest improving urban school district in the nation.” But some have raised concerns about Joseph’s $450,000 price tag, which will cover roughly a year’s work but exceeds Watlington’s own annual salary of $340,000.

Joseph’s tenure leading Nashville from 2016 to 2019 has also raised eyebrows. It was marked by a string of disputes, including claims that he ignored and mishandled allegations of sexual harassment against a middle school principal, as well as complaints that he attempted to award no-bid contracts. Joseph agreed to surrender his teaching license in 2019 because he failed to report 12 teacher misconduct cases to the state within 30 days, as required by state rules, according to a Tennessee Board of Education official. (Joseph contends that he signed the reports but a human resources employee failed to submit them to the state.) Joseph’s license was automatically restored but has since expired.

Joseph reached a buy-out agreement with the Nashville school board before his four-year contract was up. The terms of that agreement included a provision that in general, neither Joseph nor the board would file a lawsuit or claim against the other, according to the Tennessean. Joseph told Chalkbeat June 21 that he left his Nashville post because he and the board did not agree on how to reach “a continued focus on achieving equity and excellence” in the district.

Joseph told Chalkbeat Thursday that people tried to damage his image but that he remains proud of his work in Nashville.

“It’s been three years since I’ve been in Nashville and I’ve been working to train and prepare urban superintendents like Dr. Watlington,” he said. “Sometimes wisdom comes with pain. As you learn things, you’re able to impart that knowledge onto people.”

On Wednesday, Watlington defended his choice. “Are there other consultants out there who could be considered? Absolutely,” Watlington said. “The timeframe warranted me to make some recommendations and some steps sooner rather than later, so that I can hit the ground running on day one.”

But giving a contract to Joseph means less money for priorities like school safety, buildings, and outdated curriculum, said Renee Brown, a longtime Philadelphia education activist who has sent five children to schools in the city. She also said that as someone from outside Philadelphia, Joseph can’t fully grasp the district’s unique challenges.

“I’m very displeased,” Brown said.

The Philadelphia Board of Education agreed to hire Joseph at Watlington’s request at a board meeting in late May with almost no discussion. (Watlington officially took over the district on June 16.) The board told Chalkbeat that the decision to hire Joseph’s firm — which is charged with helping Watlington develop a long-term plan for improving the district — represented “best practice.”

Current and former Nashville school officials blasted Philadelphia’s decision to hire his consulting firm and issued warnings about the legacy Joseph left in the city.

Fran Bush, a Nashville school board member, highlighted accusations that Joseph improperly steered public money to a firm he had previously done business with.

“What I have to say is they’ve got to be very careful,” said Bush, referring to Philadelphia officials.

Watlington and Joseph have a professional experience in common: the Urban Superintendents Academy at Howard University. The academy is designed for educators who want to take on leadership roles in urban areas with a focus on academic performance and leading underrepresented and diverse populations.

Watlington is a graduate of the academy, while Joseph was one of its co-directors. When he was a co-director, Joseph introduced the academy’s 2021 cohort that included Watlington.

Joseph and Associates will help Watlington develop a five-year strategic plan for the district. That plan is due by the end of next May. The firm is also charged with assembling a transition team to help Watlington assess the district’s ability to meet its overall vision for schools, which is known as “goals and guardrails.”

Joseph led the 86,000-student Nashville district from 2016 to 2019. Local media outlets reported that Joseph won praise for his focus on students of color while he led the district. Earlier this month, former Nashville board member Will Pinkston expressed support for Joseph, telling Chalkbeat that he “was trying to do exactly the right thing and, frankly, exactly what the board asked him to do.”

But allegations about his leadership decisions dogged his time in the city.

For example, the Nashville district paid out claims resulting from the harassment complaints and lawsuits during Joseph’s tenure.

And Joseph reportedly pushed the district to sign two no-bid contracts worth $1.8 million with Performance Matters — a company in Maryland with which he had previously done business. Emails obtained by a Nashville TV station showed that Joseph began discussing a potential deal with the firm two weeks before he officially started as superintendent in July 2016.

In 2018, Nashville officials expressed disappointment that the number of district schools identified by Tennessee as most in need of support and improvement nearly doubled from 11 to 21 (the state adopted a new accountability system in 2018). Joseph said this demonstrated that certain schools needed more resources.

Jill Speering, who was the vice-chair of the Nashville board for two of the three years Joseph was the district’s top official, said she was “appalled” that he had been hired to consult in Philadelphia, “given his failed leadership in Nashville where the board had to buy out his contract in order to save the district further embarrassment.”

Another former board member, Amy Frogge, said Joseph’s practices precipitated an “employee morale crisis.”

There’s no public indication that Philadelphia district leaders are reconsidering Joseph’s contract.

On Wednesday, the Philadelphia school board again defended the decision to hire Joseph, saying in a statement that in a “large and complex” district, “transition support is intended to provide an even deeper understanding of the individuals, families, and communities this district serves.”

The board did not address the controversy surrounding its decision to hire him.

Correction: July 5, 2022: This article was corrected to say that Joseph’s teaching license was automatically restored. A previous version of the article said he had to reapply. Additionally, the article was updated to include Joseph’s defense for why teacher misconduct cases weren’t reported to the state in a timely manner.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in the city. She is a former president of the Education Writers Association. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Consulting firm will get $450,000 to help new Philly superintendent

2022-06-21T20:19:40+00:00

At his swearing-in ceremony on Thursday, Philadelphia’s new superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. unveiled a 100-day plan to help him transition to his new role.

What Watlington did not mention during the ceremony is the consultant who will — at a cost well into six figures — support that transition. The firm is run by the former head of Tennessee’s second-largest district who left that school system before his contract was up.

Last month, Watlington asked the school board to hire Joseph and Associates, a Tennessee-based education consulting firm near Nashville, to assist with his transition. The board unanimously agreed to pay the firm $450,000 for its services with little discussion at its May meeting. Funding for the contract will come from the 2022-23 operating budget.

The board has hired Joseph and Associates in large part to help Watlington to develop a five-year strategic plan for the district. That plan is due to be finalized at the end of next May. In addition, the firm will help assemble a transition team to help Watlington assess the district’s ability to meet its overall vision for schools known as “goals and guardrails.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Watlington said the consultant will also help him connect with people who can identify what’s working and what’s not working in urban school districts across the country. Watlington’s aim is to make Philadelphia one of the fastest improving urban school districts in the U.S.

“I’ve asked that external consultant to be an adviser to me, as I launch my 100-day entry action plan,” Watlington said.

The school board said in a statement to Chalkbeat that hiring such a consultant is “a best practice.”

The president of Joseph and Associates, Shawn Joseph, served as the first African-American superintendent of Metro Nashville Public Schools from 2016 to 2019, leading an 86,000-student district. Local media outlets reported that Joseph won praise for his focus on students of color while he led the district, but that his response to allegations of sexual harassment against school employees provoked controversy, as did certain contracts and a clash with principals.

The Nashville school board bought out of his contract after he served three years of his four-year contract. Joseph received a $261,250 payout when he departed his position.

In response to questions from Chalkbeat about his Nashville tenure, Joseph said it came to an end because “I did not believe that the climate supported a successful continued focus on achieving equity and excellence” in the district.

Two former school board members in Nashville vouched for Joseph’s leadership skills. Current Nashville school board chair Christiane Buggs said Joseph’s departure was due to “personality conflicts.”

“There were board members who were unable to reconcile their desire for their district with how Dr. Joseph was approaching it,” she said, adding that the contract buyout was a mutual arrangement.

And Will Pinkston, who served on the board during Joseph’s tenure, said it was a “really complicated situation” and that Joseph “was trying to do exactly the right thing and, frankly, exactly what the board asked him to do on the front end.”

The Philadelphia school board’s move to quietly hire the consultant drew some criticism. Lisa Haver, co-founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, argues the board should have discussed the matter further and doesn’t like the price tag.

“We’ve been saying for years that the board has spent way too much money on consultants and outsourcing, so this would not be out of character for any administration in this district,” Haver said. “They should not have considered this if they picked Dr. Watlington, if he had the knowledge and experience.”

In addition to leading Joseph and Associates, Joseph is an associate with Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates, an education consulting and executive search firm, and has worked and supported superintendent transition teams in two Maryland counties, Prince George’s County and Baltimore County.

Joseph founded his consulting firm in 2019, the same year he left his job as Nashville superintendent.

“We are supporting Dr. Watlington as he learns about the district quickly and aligning the work that he’s doing with goals and guardrails and facilitating the writing in a report, which will provide short-term and long-term recommendations in achieving the goals and guardrails,” Joseph said.

Joseph said the transition team for Philadelphia will have between 50 to 60 people, including committees made up of district teachers and principals in the school system. There will also be outside experts, including people from local universities who have experience in supporting education leadership transitions.

Betty Morgan, who once led Washington County Public Schools in Maryland, will be responsible for writing the transition team’s report.

Watlington’s 100-day entry plan will include a listening and learning tour, a school board retreat, a senior staff retreat, and other activities to engage with the community.

From early September until the end of November, Watlington and the transition team will evaluate the district’s capacity to achieve the school board’s vision, with specific attention to the district’s organizational structure.

Starting Dec. 1, Joseph and Associates will focus on the five-year strategic plan Watlington wants. The plan is expected to be ready by May 30 of next year.
This story has been updated to correctly identify Joseph and Associates as a consulting firm and not a law firm.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Philly’s new superintendent talks student success, teacher turnover, early goals

2022-06-16T13:45:00+00:00

This time last year, Tony Watlington Sr. was leading North Carolina’s Rowan-Salisbury school district, which educates roughly 19,500 students.

Big changes have arrived for him and for Philadelphia. On Thursday, he is taking over as superintendent of the city’s school district, Pennsylvania’s largest. He will lead a district with over 200,000 district and charter students in the nation’s sixth-largest city.

Watlington is the first Philadelphia superintendent to be appointed after the city regained local control, following the end of the state’s School Reform Commission. He arrives at a time when the district is experiencing staffing shortages, crumbling buildings, declining enrollment, and a struggle to return to academic normalcy after 18 months of virtual learning.

After receiving a unanimous vote from Philadelphia’s Board of Education to replace William Hite, who was superintendent for 10 years, Watlington was appointed to a five-year term. His salary will be similar to his predecessor’s at $340,000 a year.

Watlington’s ability to connect with political players will be crucial, in part because the district wants more state funding to meet the needs of its students. His relationship with Mayor Jim Kenney in particular is one to watch, since Kenney appoints school board members and makes other key decisions that affect district operations.

Watlington said the district is launching a new website where families can view the 80 listening and learning sessions he will conduct over the next three months, take a survey, and provide feedback. The information gathered will be used to help achieve the Board of Education’s “goals and guardrails.”

The new superintendent sat down with Chalkbeat Wednesday for an extensive interview about his future leading Philadelphia’s public schools. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Have you visited any schools? How has your interaction been with district employees?

Yes, I’ve had the good fortune to visit a handful of schools. I’m trying to do it in such a way that I don’t interfere with their preparation for their year-end exams and the like. But it was a great chance to talk with a small number of principals and teachers and students in particular. I feel even more confident this is the right decision after having talked with all of those groups.

What I’ve taken from it is that people are passionate. There’s a lot of different opinions about what we do well, and what we might consider. It just kind of whetted my appetite to do deep listening and learning.

A position to lead big city school districts such as Philadelphia is viewed as one of the hardest jobs in the country. Coming from a smaller district, how do you plan to shape urban education in the country’s sixth-largest city?

Number one, teaching and learning transcends school size. The second thing I would say is that the key is to have collaborative relationships with parents, because teachers and principals cannot do this work alone, regardless of the size of a school district. The third thing I would say is that it’s important for the Board of Education to have a committed focus. And this board has done just that with its “goals and guardrails.”

Are there any policies that need to be addressed?

I’ve asked the Board of Education to begin taking a hard look at all of our policies, and the extent to which they help us to reduce the barrier or eliminate barriers to improving student achievement for all groups, particularly Black and brown children who underperform white children.

Your predecessor’s director of communications resigned recently. Should we expect a lot of changes in the top ranks?

I think we’ve got stable leadership right here and we’re not going to skip a beat.

The Board of Education revealed a couple of months ago that teachers are quitting at a higher rate mid-year. What can or will you do to attract and retain good teachers?

The first thing I’m going to do is listen as a part of the listening and learning tour to hear the voices of teachers and what their needs are.

Second, I intend to fully investigate and understand what I believe to be some pretty good steps that this district has already taken to try to address teacher shortages and to mitigate the problem of teacher loss. That’s not limited to just our school district, quite frankly.

Third, I’m going to work with the team to identify specific strategies to expand our recruiting footprint at historically Black colleges and universities across the United States, as well as predominantly white institutions, and to continue to identify opportunities to grow our own teachers.

Have you met union representatives? Jerry Jordan with the teachers? Robin Cooper with the principals? How was that conversation?

Yes. I spent some time one on one with Jerry Jordan as well as one on one with Dr. Cooper. We’ve had some very authentic initial conversations. I very much look forward to working in partnership with all our union presidents.

We’re all after the same outcome, and that’s to significantly improve the outcomes for our students, while we also meet the needs of our staff members who provide the services to our students.

Let’s touch on equity and fairness in education. Right now we are waiting on a ruling in the fair school funding trial. Pennsylvania has been accused of adopting an inequitable funding system that does not provide resources all of its students need to meet state standards and discriminates against students based on their socio-economic status. Have you read up on the trial? And what programs or initiatives would you bring to help close the gap for students who hail from struggling areas?

I’ve had the opportunity to speak with a number of legislators when I visited Harrisburg recently. I’ve had an opportunity to have a phone conversation with Gov. Wolf and several other members of the delegation.

There are five priority areas that I’ll be focused on. First, I want to spend time assessing student and staff well-being. I mean physical health, social and emotional health, And that would also include the impact of gun violence in the school district and safety issues that certainly have an impact on schools, some more than others.

Secondly, I want to spend some time really honing in on how to engage with broad stakeholder groups across this city. I’ve got to understand their hopes, their aspirations, their concerns, understand what they think we do well, and what our various community members think we need to improve.

The third area will be to assess teaching and learning. Certainly, we want to take a hard look at our curriculum resources. To what extent are teachers equipped to do the jobs that we’re asking them to do? What’s their levels of support? The same is true of principals who lead schools.

Fourth, we want to assess the extent to which we have lots of talent in this school district, as well as where the gaps are.

And then finally, that fifth area of work will involve assessing the district’s operations, facilities, and finances.

All of those have some budgetary impacts. We will deliver formal findings and formal recommendations to the Board of Education and be very public and very transparent. And we’ll say the things that we found, and here’s what we’re going to recommend.

What are your strategies to take on gun violence and keep students safe getting to and from school?

The first priority area that is in my entry plan, and this is not an accident, is assessing student and staff well being. Even before we get to teaching and learning, assessing teaching, or learning, or focus on assessing where students are, was a big study. You’ve got nearly 200,000 students. I would imagine that some students, some staff members, and some parents are situated differently than others. So I don’t think I should paint the whole city with a broad brush.

I want to take the time to understand the context of the problem. Because I want to be careful not to get into stereotypes, or just what I think I’ve read or observed in the media. I want to take the time to do my due diligence, to take the time to listen, to talk to people, and to study our data. We have school climate data. There’s statistics available from the police department and others. And so we will have more to offer in that regard.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about Philadelphia and the district since being hired?

Well, because I’ve spent a good amount of time studying the district, and I had some familiarity with the city, with my father living some 20 miles west of here over in New Jersey, I wouldn’t say that I was surprised by anything.

The district has done such a phenomenal job of improving its financial health. That’s really important in urban America, where the tax base can sometimes be challenging. There are some indicators that suggest that you’re making some momentum. The spirit, spunk, and grit that I’ve observed firsthand among Philadelphians says to me that we absolutely can be the fastest improving urban school district in the country.

Have you picked a neighborhood? Have you bought a house yet?

I have become a resident of Center City. I’m currently not a homeowner. I am doing a temporary lease to give me more time to learn the city and figure out where I want to focus on. There are lots of great neighborhoods to choose from here.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Philly officially makes Watlington city’s next schools superintendent

2022-04-07T21:10:54+00:00

Tony Watlington is officially set to begin a five-year term as Philadelphia schools superintendent June 16, when he’ll replace 10-year veteran William Hite.

The Philadelphia Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to approve the contract for Watlington. A veteran educator, he comes to Philadelphia from the 18,000-student Rowan-Salisbury School District in North Carolina. The board announced Watlington as their pick on April 1.

“I’m excited,” Watlington told the board. “I also want you to know that I’m excited and I’m looking forward to working in partnership with all of you and all of the many fine citizens of Philadelphia from many diverse communities to achieve the board’s goals and guardrails.”

Watlington, who attended the meeting remotely, said he plans to visit “as early as next week” and be in Philadelphia “as often as I can” before his start date.

Lisa Haver, co-founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools and the only registered speaker at the meeting, said she hoped Watlington would support “common-sense charter [school] reform.”

“The board has shied away from real charter regulation,” Haver, a retired teacher, told Watlington. “I hope you will not be cowed by the charter lobby as the board has been, and that you will take a stand for stronger neighborhood public schools.”

Watlington will inherit several pressing issues as he prepares to take over one of the nation’s 20 largest school districts in one of the poorest cities in the U.S. His challenges include crumbling buildings, a large population of students from low-income households, and high teacher turnover.

Watlington told parent and student groups in meetings before his appointment that he views “high-quality teachers” as key to improving schools, and said he believes teachers should be paid more. While he admitted he’s not familiar with Philadelphia, he said he grew up as a “free and reduced lunch child” who can relate to the district’s students.

Watlington, the first person in his family to attend college, said his first job in education was as a custodian and bus driver. He also taught history — he described himself as a teacher, not a bureaucrat — and held positions as a curriculum specialist, assistant principal, and principal.

His starting salary will be $340,000 a year, which the district said is roughly the same pay Hite would have received if his contract had been renewed. The new superintendent will begin his job with twice-weekly meetings with Hite and district officials.

The vote caps a process that began last fall, when Hite announced his departure. Watlington was one of three finalists who made their cases to the community in a series of meetings in March. John L. Davis, a Baltimore schools official, and Krish Mohip, who works for the Illinois state school board, were the other two finalists.