SHQIP |  العربية | 汉语 | Español | Français | Kreyòl Ayisyen | ខ្មែរ | Português | Pусский | O’zbek tili | українська мова | Việt

September 10, 2025

Dear School District of Philadelphia School Communities,

In 2022, nearly 3,000 community stakeholders from across the City of Philadelphia joined us in developing the new five-year strategic plan–Accelerate Philly. The focus of the plan is simple: to position the School District of Philadelphia, the nation’s eighth largest, to achieve the Board’s goals and guardrails and become the fastest-improving large urban school district in the nation. We are making progress toward that goal.

Over the past three years, student and teacher attendance has increased, the four-year graduation rate has increased, test scores for students in grades 3–8 have increased, and the number of student dropouts has decreased significantly. Our district-wide enrollment has increased for the first time in a decade. And according to NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card, Philadelphia has rebounded from pandemic learning loss faster than most large urban school districts. In fact, only one other major city school district has recovered more than Philadelphia in eighth-grade math. Equally important, we have also invested approximately $954 million into a number of facility improvements, which you can read about here.

Under our strategic plan, Accelerate Philly, we also launched an 8-phase facilities planning process designed to increase access to high-quality academic and extracurricular programs across neighborhoods, recognizing that many of the district’s aging and unequal facilities are either under- or over-enrolled. We have completed seven phases and are now in Phase 8 where we are continuing to engage community stakeholders, and analyze complex data that will lead to me providing recommendations to the Board of Education later this fall.

Today, as a critical part of Phase 8, the District is launching the Facilities Data Dashboard, a public resource for exploring data in four key facility decision-making categories: school building, program alignment, capacity/utilization, and neighborhood vulnerability. The scores in these categories only evaluate the facilities, and do not necessarily reflect the quality of the school’s academic programs. They will be used by the District to develop recommendations on which buildings to maintain, modernize, co-locate, repurpose, or close. It is important to remember that this is not a simple process with one right answer. Each school is unique, and the decisions ahead are complex and require careful consideration.With that in mind, the recommendations will be made public in the fall and will go through a comprehensive public feedback period before being submitted as final recommendations to the Board of Education.

The District has participated in deep levels of community engagement so far, including a diverse project team (nine advisory groups, totaling 170 individuals); 47 listening sessions; 35 principal verification sessions; and a survey that received over 5,700 responses. We look forward to additional opportunities for public engagement this fall, and we hope that you will take the time to participate in an upcoming in-person or virtual listening session, where you can share your thoughts on what is most important to offer in our schools and how decisions regarding our facilities should be informed.

Every day we work together, we are one step closer to providing high quality access to academic and extracurricular programs across neighborhoods in our city. Thank you for your ongoing participation and support! To learn more about the facilities planning process, please visit www.philasd.org/fpp.

In partnership,

Tony B. Watlington Sr., Ed.D.
Superintendent
The School District of Philadelphia