Philly’s Schools Are Under Strain. But Communities Refuse to Give Up. 

This summer, as budget debates rage in Harrisburg and Philadelphia’s school district reevaluates its physical footprint, the people at the heart of the city’s public education system — families, educators, advocates, and students — are facing yet another turning point. With school closures on the horizon, a strike authorized by the teachers union, and a $300 million budget deficit looming large, here’s how we got to this point, and how school communities are coming together in this volatile moment to fill the gaps and provide support.

Funding and fairness: Pennsylvania’s broken system

In 2023, Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court declared the state’s education funding system unconstitutional. The decision marked a historic win in the long legal battle brought by the Education Law Center and other members of the PA Schools Work coalition, demanding that the state uphold its duty to provide a “thorough and efficient” education for all children.

While the court’s ruling was a “big deal” for Deborah Gordon Klehr, executive director of the Education Law Center, the state still has a long way to go in bridging the $4.5 billion adequacy gap recognized by the legislature. 

“The students who need the most are still getting the least in terms of resources, staffing, and educational opportunities because of the way the state funds or does not fund public schools,” Klehr says.

Despite the victory, the ruling didn’t come with a mandate — it left the “how” up to the legislature. Last year, Pennsylvania lawmakers put about $500 million toward the gap. With this added funding, schools have already started doing “great things,” according to Klehr, such as hiring early-grade teachers and expanding after-school tutoring. And while Governor Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget allocates $1.5 billion in new education funding, it’s not enough for Klehr.

“It’s not about just passing any budget,” she says. “It’s about passing a budget that is constitutionally compliant and addresses the needs of students here in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania.”

Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT), agrees that the seven-year time frame to get the funding “up to speed” is not enough. “You have kids now that are going to be starting kindergarten,” he says. “They’re not going to have a properly funded education system until they’re in seventh grade.”

The threat of school closures

Currently, the state’s school budget, which was supposed to be passed on June 30th, is in a stalemate. Pennsylvania is not alone — budget stalemates are also playing out in Michigan and North Carolina, as Democratic governors fight Republican legislators. Meanwhile, the district is undertaking a major facilities planning process that could result in school closures—raising alarms for communities still haunted by the last wave in 2013.

“We have buildings that are so overcrowded that kids are learning in hallways and in the cafeteria,” says Carly Sitrin, the Philadelphia Bureau Chief at Chalkbeat. Meanwhile, other schools are operating at only 20 or 30 percent capacity. 

Students and families are divided on whether school closures are the best possible solution to this problem. “What I’ve heard from teachers and students and families is, ‘We wish it didn’t have to include closures,’” says Sitrin. “‘We wish the process could just be: What if we invested more in our neighborhood schools and solve these problems by fixing our buildings or keeping up with maintenance?’” 

The district has yet to release an official list of schools slated for closure. They are in the process of speaking with communities and families, while taking stock of every school and assessing its site capacity. The district’s final facilities plan is due in December.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has authorized a strike: What does that mean?

On the forefront of teachers’ minds going into the coming school year is compensation, according to PFT President Steinberg, who authorized a strike on June 17.

“People need to feed their families. People need to be able to earn an adequate living,” says Steinberg. He later adds, “People need to understand that nobody went into this to get rich. So when we’re talking about wages, it’s just a matter of being able to provide for your families.”

Steinberg highlighted both teacher and paraprofessional recruitment and retention as two major issues the district has been dealing with. He believes an increase in salaries is a necessary first step. His goal is to achieve a collective bargaining agreement that satisfies the needs of the union’s members, recognizes their value and worth, and improves the quality of services provided to students. 

“The district and city have to be aware that we’re serious about this,” he says. “Our members need to earn a living wage, and the conditions in the schools must be improved.” Steinberg says the union has just started setting up activities for teachers to come and start printing picket signs, and the response has been “overwhelming.”

When asked how the union is thinking about minimizing disruption for students and families if a strike were to occur, Steinberg says 48 hours’ notice will be given, as required by Pennsylvania law. “Strikes, by their very nature, are disruptive,” he says.

Families and communities filling the gaps

While recent headlines threaten an uncertain period for education, community organizations, nonprofits, and educators are stepping up — and have been for years. 

For many students, showing up to school is difficult not because of test stress, but because they don’t have clean clothes, coats, or hygiene products, a chronic issue Cradles to Crayons (C2C) is working to address.

“Unlike food insecurity or housing insecurity, where there is federal to state and to some extent city funding to help with those insecurities, there’s very little funding available for families for clothing insecurity,” says Michal Smith, executive director of C2C. Clothing insecurity is the lack of access to appropriate, adequate, and affordable clothing.

She shared that when speaking with Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services, they pointed out that many young people entering the judicial system were caught stealing food because they were hungry, or clothing and sneakers to fit in at school. Of the top 10 reasons why kids don’t show up to school, three of them are rooted in clothing insecurity, according to C2C. 

C2C is a “multiplier of impact,” explains Smith, because they don’t support children directly but supply the school district, and organizations like Project HOME, ACHIEVEability, or the hospital networks.

“I think one of the things that is so impressive about the fact that this is a model that really engages communities and engages families,” Smith says. She shared a story about a young man who came with his parents for a volunteering shift, and looked miserable the whole time. A week later, “the young man came back with his parents, who now didn’t seem to be terribly happy, and he had filled the minivan with all of his items that he’d grown out of or he didn’t need to give back to kids.”

Demand for C2C’s services spiked during the pandemic — and it’s rising again, partly due to tariff uncertainty. Smith also noted that agencies serving immigrant populations aren’t ordering as much out of safety concerns, in the wake of recent deportation crackdowns. 

“The need is acute, and we all have our responsibility to help it,” says Smith.

Other nonprofits like Lift Every Voice Philly, the Education Law Center, and the Philadelphia Student Union are working to mobilize parents and students to speak out — at school board meetings, in Harrisburg, and on the streets. Their campaigns range from pushing for fairer funding formulas to demanding culturally responsive curricula. Other organizations simply hope to offer a safe space for students outside of the classroom.

Philadelphia Student Union Rally (2016)

At Tree House Books, a giving library and literacy center in North Philadelphia, program coordinator Deirdre Hyman and others on her team help to run literacy programs supplementing in-school instruction. 

Before working at Tree House, Hyman was a preschool teacher at a private Christian school. With several years of experience as an instructor, she’s learned that teacher support can only go so far: “Most students are only as successful as their parents are involved,” she says.

As a parent herself, she acknowledges how difficult it can be to manage work and childcare —  dealing with “all the survival things” on top of having to help with homework or read a book to your kid. “Even for me, I have one kid, but when I come home from here and then I have to sound out flashcards and make dinner, it’s like, this is a lot,” says Hyman. 

This has become especially hard in recent years, as she’s observed an “educational gap” between parents and kids. In short, the curricula have changed, and kids are being taught differently than how their parents were. “I have to go on YouTube, teach myself the thing, and then now I’m here teaching her the thing,” she explains. 

Meanwhile, teachers face a huge obstacle in engaging kids in the classroom: technology. “Education right now is competing with technology,” she says, explaining how social media has monopolized kids’ attention spans and decreased their ability to focus in class. “Like, if you watch TikTok all night, and then now I’m trying to lecture you on any subject, you’re not listening.”

The way forward may lie in social connection. As Hyman puts it, when kids feel “loved and accepted” at school, they’re more likely to engage. Her “dream” is one of collaboration — getting parents and teachers to work together, as well as nonprofits and schools. She says Tree House is considering a project to get other organizations in the North Philadelphia community together to combine forces, to “make sure that all kids have math and literacy support.”

Support at the District level

School District of Philadelphia Building

Helping to mobilize the support of these nonprofits, the Office of Strategic Partnerships at the Philadelphia school district plays a key role in connecting schools with outside organizations that can provide arts enrichment, mentorship, and mental health programming at no cost. Executive Director Ayana Lewis says her “small but mighty” team helps vet and coordinate nonprofit partners to ensure that resources are directed where they’re needed most. 

“We know that the state legislature has determined that the funding structure in Pennsylvania is unconstitutional,” says Lewis. “And we also are very clear that there are certain areas where there is more need based on concentrated poverty and certain neighborhoods and communities, and so we take all of that into account when we are identifying and allocating programmatic resources.”

In response to post-COVID student isolation and trauma, many partners now focus on building “small and intimate environments where students feel they belong,” says Lewis. “We all need an outlet… somewhere the people around us care about us and where we matter.”

Her office recently helped connect students to more than 140,000 program slots through outside partners — a total value of $38 million, according to Lewis. They’ve also worked to bring free bikes and riding lessons into schools, and are launching a new partnerships database in January to improve how resources are tracked and distributed. “There’s been a narrative that when you invest in the district, it goes into a black hole,” says Lewis. “We’re here to flip that on its head.”

How to get involved

Community ties in Philadelphia already run deep and strong: “Philly is a city of neighborhoods,” according to Sitrin. When Tree House Books’ entire library was flooded last Christmas as a result of a burst pipe, “hoards of books” started pouring in from the community, according to Hyman. “Authors that we’ve worked with at past events, families whose kids aged out of books, they brought books back.”

There are plenty of opportunities to play a role in these local support ecosystems. Whether it’s volunteering your time or donating gently-used items to nonprofits like C2C and Tree House Books, there are avenues for families and community members to step in and strengthen the safety nets that schools and students rely on.

Beyond volunteering, civic participation is a powerful tool in the push for education equity. As Klehr suggests, “You could testify at a school board meeting about an issue that’s important to you or a reform you’d like to see.” Steinberg also urges families to contact their legislators and elected officials to advocate on behalf of educators.

Showing up at local school board meetings and community forums is a vital way for families to influence education decisions. For families worried about school closures, the current facilities planning process has offered opportunities for parents to join committees and participate in community engagement sessions. 

As lawmakers debate the next state budget and the district weighs tough choices, Philadelphia’s school communities continue showing up — for each other, and for the belief that every child deserves access to equitable education.

“I think a lot of the focus sometimes is like kids aren’t reading at grade level, and the district is failing and these schools are failing,” says Sitrin. “And I think as soon as you dig into each community, and you start talking to advocates and talking to people in neighborhoods, they believe in their schools. And they just want to see the district and the state invest in their schools and improve them.”