District pursues creation of new, smaller high schools

Over two-year period, number of high schools to increase by 14

by Paul Socolar

Responding to growing evidence that large, urban high schools often are not as good learning environments as smaller schools, the School District is expanding its roster of high schools and thereby aiming to reduce student enrollment at large high schools.

Creg Williams, the District's deputy chief academic officer in charge of high schools, said the District is implementing a "small schools" strategy not only to decrease the numbers of students in large high schools but also to provide "a whole lot more programmatic options for young people."

Besides starting up high schools from scratch, the District is dividing some high schools with multiple sites into separate schools and converting several middle schools into high schools. Based on current plans, there will be 14 more District high schools next September than there were a year ago - the majority of these with populations of 300-500 students.

While many of these schools involve new configurations of students in existing District buildings, each of the 14 new schools will have its own principal, budget, and curricular offerings.

Williams said that when the District constructs a facility for a new high school through its capital program, enrollment will be limited to 800-1000 students. But where existing high schools are being rebuilt, these schools may still be larger than 1000.

While some local community groups say the District's target high school size should be 400 or fewer students, Williams and other District officials maintain that schools with enrollments under 600 are less cost-efficient.

District data show that a majority of Philadelphia high school students are now enrolled in schools of 1,500 students or more.

Here are the details on the three primary strategies for expanding high school options.

Conversions of middle schools

Williams said the District looked for "large middle schools suitable to become high school buildings, where the middle school enrollment was low, or the middle school wasn't working." Five such middle schools took on a ninth grade this year and will keep adding a grade each year to become full-fledged high schools.

Three of the five schools - Vaux, Wanamaker, and Sayre - are also dropping a middle school grade each year. At FitzSimons and Rhodes, there was not enough space in the feeder schools this year to permit dropping the sixth grade at the middle school, Williams said.

An unsuccessful conversion took place at a sixth middle school. Pickett was slated for high school conversion and added a ninth grade this year, but Williams said the building is not suitable for a high school, and it will be back to middle school status next year.

The process of conversion to a high school is not an easy one for struggling middle schools, and since February the District has been providing stepped up training for the administrative teams at these "conversion schools."

Williams explained, "That group needed to be trained together as a group. Although they were experienced principals and administrators, they were transitioning to a high school, and that's a much different school environment than a middle school."

Dividing schools with multiple sites

Three new schools with new principals were created last fall by turning auxiliary sites into separate schools. Five more high schools will be created that way this year.