School District of Philadelphia leaders on Wednesday announced plans to open a pair of new schools – utilizing an acclaimed New York model – and celebrated recent academic progress across the city.
While the district’s 2026 “State of Schools” event primarily focused on positive developments, potential school closings loom, as officials finalize a long-awaited facilities plan.
“We still got an awful lot of work to do, but our children absolutely are accelerating toward a better and brighter future,” Superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. told a crowd seated in the auditorium of Thomas A. Edison High School in North Philadelphia.
Watlington said the district intends to launch a K-8 and high school program in existing facilities this year, under a new initiative titled the North Philadelphia Promise Zone.
The effort is an attempt to replicate the successes of the Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit group that runs charter schools and offers extensive programming to families in a 100-block section of the Manhattan neighborhood.
Geoffrey Canada, the New York organization’s longtime leader, is supporting Philadelphia’s version of the program, according to Watlington.
He did not detail the mechanisms of the new schools, saying only that they will be voluntary and geared toward ensuring that each graduate is able to attend college. Aliya Catanch-Bradley, principal of Mary McLeod Bethune School, will oversee the Promise Zone.
A slide displayed during Watlington’s presentation indicated that Comcast and Temple University will be among the entities partnering with the district.
Watlington’s team is expected to deliver a long-term school building plan to the Board of Education in the coming weeks. The document will recommend specific facilities be closed, renovated and repurposed, officials have said.
“Many of our buildings are aging,” said Mayor Cherelle Parker, who also spoke at the State of Schools event. “We have to acknowledge that not every facility currently meets the needs of us being able to provide a 21st century, high-quality education.”
Watlington said the blueprint will be designed to ensure that every building is put to maximum use. Currently, some schools are severely under-enrolled, while others are overcrowded, he noted.
“The real issue, the problem we’re solving here, is to figure out how to drive more high-quality academic and extracurricular programming into every school in every neighborhood,” he added. “Because historically there’s just been too many disparities.”
Once the plan is implemented, every student in the middle grades will have access to Algebra 1 and all high schools will offer at least five Advanced Placement courses, according to Watlington. There will also be enhanced arts, physical education, and career and technical education opportunities, he said.
Watlington stressed the extensive public engagement around the facilities plan, including 47 community meetings and more than 13,700 surveys completed.
Through that outreach, the district has said four themes emerged: Strengthening K-8 programming through better use of space; reducing unnecessary school transitions for students; expanding access to 5-12 selective and speciality schools; and the need to reinvest in neighborhood-based high schools.
Mayor Cherelle Parker said her administration is developing a plan to revitalize the district’s 20 vacant school properties, with a particular emphasis on the construction of new housing.
More details will be announced when the mayor releases her municipal budget proposal in March. Last month, the BOE adopted a resolution permitting the district to enter negotiations with the city over the properties, some of which have not been used in three decades.
Parker said the effort does not involve any schools that may be shuttered as part of the ongoing facilities planning process.
She vowed not to let the empty buildings become public health or safety hazards. “And I won’t mention the crisis,” Parker said, before taking a long pause.
The comment was a clear reference to the Kada Scott case. The 23-year-old’s remains were discovered in October on the grounds of East Germantown’s Ada H. Lewis Middle School, which closed down more than 15 years ago.
Turning the vacant buildings into residential properties aligns with Parker’s Housing Opportunities Made Easy, or H.O.M.E., initiative, which aims to build or preserve 30,000 units of affordable housing over four years.
In the decade leading up to 2019, Philadelphia public schools ranked last among large, urban districts on a nationwide math assessment for 8th graders. However, since the coronavirus pandemic, the city’s scores have recovered faster than nearly every other municipality.
The positive trend was among the many highlighted by school officials at Wednesday’s event and in the annual report on Watlington’s Accelerate Philly strategic plan.
Third-grade testing shows a nearly 13% increase over the last three years in the percentage of kids hitting proficient or advanced in math, and reading scores in the same grade level have jumped 3.3%.
Meanwhile, at the high school level, the four-year graduate rate has risen 6.8% over three years, and the total number of dropouts has dipped by more than 2,200 students.
“We’re not getting better by letting the kids who don’t read or do math well just drop out of school,” Watlington stated.
District leaders said they are working hard to change the narrative about the quality of education provided in Philadelphia’s public school system.
“We’re launching our schools into the stratosphere,” BOE President Reginald Streater said. “We are indeed in the middle of an educational renaissance in the city of Philadelphia.”
