Two new schools are coming to the Philadelphia School District.
The two, a K-8 and a high school, will have resources to help eliminate long-standing achievement and opportunity gaps for kids from under-resourced communities.
They’ll be part of the “North Philadelphia Promise Zone,” Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. announced. Watlington said they would be the first schools in the United States to replicate the acclaimed Harlem Children’s Zone, with the blessing of its founder, Geoffrey Canada.
Harlem Children’s Zone runs charters, but the proposed new schools will be run by the district using the organization’s educational model.
“We’re going to be partners in opening these two state-of-the-art schools,” Watlington said at his state of the schools address, held Wednesday at Edison High School in North Philadelphia.
The district has big hopes for the schools, which officials said will be opened in existing Philadelphia school buildings — no new school structures will be involved.
“Not only will they get better, but get better faster than our district average, we’re going to make sure the school is staffed with the very best, most effective principals,” Watlington said. “We’re going to ensure that these schools are staffed with the very best, most effective teachers.”
They will be schools of choice, meaning parents can opt into having their children attend rather than basing enrollment on where students live.
The schools will also pull in Temple University; Watlington said that via the Temple Future Scholars program, “every single one of these graduates from this K-8 and high school” will be college-ready.
When the schools will open, the exact relationship with Harlem’ Children’s Zone, how the schools will be funded, and who will staff them has not yet been determined, but Watlington said the K-8 will open first.
He has tapped Aliya Catanch-Bradley, the respected principal of Bethune Elementary in North Philadelphia, to lead the efforts to open the North Philadelphia Promise Zone schools.
Watlington’s new-school announcement capped a two-plus hour event where he and others underscored progress the district has made in the past year — and since the superintendent came to Philadelphia four years ago.
Other news from the state of Philadelphia schools event
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, who led off the event, said she was pleased with the state of schools.
“The school district has continued to make steady and meaningful progress,” Parker said. “Test scores are rising, attendance is rising. Dropout rates are declining, and those gains are real, and they reflect what happens when we invest in our students.”
Parker emphasized her desire to have the city take over a list of abandoned district buildings. The school board took the first step in December, voting to authorize Watlington and his administration to begin negotiating with the city to do just that.
Parker said that some of the buildings have been vacant for as long as 30 years. The district has not yet released a list of buildings to consider transferring, but the mayor said it includes at least 20 former schools.
“I want you to be clear about what my goal and objective is,” Parker said. “It’s not ok for me to have 20, 21 buildings consistently vacant, red on the school district’s balance sheet, generating no revenue and not at all working at their best and highest use. We’re going to find a way to do what has never been done in the city of Philadelphia before — develop a plan for those persistently vacant buildings.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.