What to Know
- Student safety, academic achievement and possible year-round schooling were some of the topics Philadelphia School District Superintendent Dr. Tony Watlington discussed when he presented his five-year strategic plan to improve the city’s schools to the Board of Education on Thursday.
- The plan covers five priority areas, including student safety, academic achievement, and a pilot program proposal for year-round schooling involving ten schools.
- The Board will vote on the plan on June 1. If it’s implemented it will launch as early as July 1.
Student safety, academic achievement and possible year-round schooling were some of the topics Philadelphia School District Superintendent Dr. Tony Watlington discussed when he presented his plan to improve the city’s schools to the Board of Education on Thursday.
“This five-year strategic plan, called Accelerate Philly, will allow us to do a better job of partnering with parents and community,” Dr. Watlington said during an interview with NBC10’s Brian Sheehan on Wednesday. “It will allow us to focus very intently on school safety. And it will allow us to accelerate academic achievement such that we can become the fastest improving large urban school district in the country.”
The plan – which comes nearly a year into Dr. Watlington’s tenure – covers five priority areas and includes 63 strategic actions. It’s the result of a listening tour with 3300 stakeholders during his first 100 days on the job.
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Dr. Watlington said safety for both students and staff is a major focus.
“Internal to the district, we’re going to move down the road in this strategic plan to invest more resources in our safe paths programs,” Dr. Watlington said. “We are going to invest more resources in the safety zones. We are going to significantly increase the number of cameras that we have available in our school buildings.”
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The plan also includes efforts to improve communications with families by updating the district and school websites and establishing a parent ambassador role.
“A third priority area is around accelerating academic achievement and we will have a number of research-based and some quite innovative strategies to do that,” Dr. Watlington said.
Dr. Watlington said the goal will include reducing school dropouts and increasing graduation rates as well as launching a financial literacy module for all high schools.
The plan also includes improving student achievement and recruiting and retaining diverse as well as effective educators.
“We’ll have strategies in this plan for example that focus on increasing the number of African American and Latino male teachers in particular. Because those are two groups that are most underrepresented in our classrooms,” Dr. Watlington said.
Another aspect of the proposed plan is year-round schooling, which Democratic mayoral nominee Cherelle Parker is a proponent of.
“The purpose of doing this is to eliminate what’s called, ‘the summer slide.’ We know that children across geographic areas lose some of what they learn in the school year in the United States and certainly in Philadelphia,” Dr. Watlington said.
Dr. Watlington said the year-round schooling proposal would be tested through a pilot program if his plan is approved.
“We will propose to launch a pilot of up to ten schools that will implement a year-round calendar,” Dr. Watlington said. “We won’t impose this on any family. We want schools to opt and school families to opt into this model and not feel like we’re forcing them on them.”
Philadelphia School Board President Reginald Streater released a statement on Dr. Watlington's plan on Thursday.
“I truly believe that every child can learn and every learner can be taught,” Streater wrote. “Yes, the Board understands that there are certain barriers to success in the current and future lives of our learners, but we believe that a quality education gives our learners the tools necessary to matriculate the gauntlet of life toward self-determination, dignity, and full potential.”
The Board will vote on the plan on June 1. If it’s implemented it will launch as early as July 1.
