Two Philly high schools were chosen for an $8M project to get more kids college and career ready

Two Philadelphia public schools have been chosen to participate in an $8 million project led by the University of Pennsylvania and a nonprofit to help hundreds of underserved students access college and career opportunities.

School of the Future, a citywide admissions school in Parkside, and Furness High, a neighborhood school in South Philadelphia, have been tapped as the first participants in the Academy at Penn — a model the Ivy League institution and Foundations Inc. hope will eventually spread nationally.

The aim is to solve for the barriers faced by first-generation college students and children from economically disadvantaged families with intense, year-round academic and social and emotional supports, career exposure, and help transitioning to college and the workforce.

”This is a true game changer,” said John Smith Jr., principal of School of the Future. The initial cohort of students is being selected now to begin in the fall.

Twenty-five students will be selected at both schools every year for four years — not the top achievers or the lowest performers, but those in the middle. Students who apply to be part of the cohort will be judged on academics, attendance, and other measures; if they have B’s and C’s but strong attendance, for instance, they will still be considered.

Academy at Penn participants will have Saturday classes and will be paid to spend part of every summer in classes on Penn’s campus, as well as have access to internships and personalized guidance and mentorship. They will engage in project-based learning, and their families will also have access to supports. Each school will have a program-paid counselor dedicated solely to program students.

Smith said he jumped at the opportunity to apply to have his school be part of the Academy at Penn.

School of the Future, a citywide admissions school, has introduced a science, technology, engineering, arts, and math focus under Smith’s watch, with students choosing pathways of concentration. The school enrolls 600 students now, and will expand to over 700 next year; Smith anticipates the Penn connection could drive up those numbers even more.

“It’s definitely going to make us more of a wanted commodity,” Smith said. “That’s what parents are looking for — not just what are you doing in high school, but what are you doing to get kids to the 21st-century workforce?”

Given the constraints of a Philadelphia public school budget, the program will offer opportunities School of the Future and Furness just are not able to pay for with the resources they have.

“We want to give them exposure to what life looks like in an Ivy League university. It’s something that will forever change their lives; it’s unparalleled,” Smith said.

It’s especially remarkable this time of year, when principals are building their budgets for next year, said Daniel Peou, Furness principal.

“This is the time when us principals sweat,” he said. “We don’t get what we need to run the school fully, so to actually have someone coming in and saying, ‘We have resources to support your students,’ it’s phenomenal.”

Furness educates 900 students, more than half of whom are English language learners. (Many more are immigrants who have already exited the English learner program.) Stefanie Cammarano, the Furness ninth-grade assistant principal, said she was particularly impressed that program administrators made it clear they would build the initiative around schools’ individual needs.

“They have mentioned over and over again that they are going to be very responsive and dynamic to the students who are in the program,” Cammarano said. “They kept saying, ‘What are your interests? What project-based experiences would you like to have? What careers would you like to explore?’”

(Those details are still being worked out; while the program has hired an Academy at Penn executive director, former district principal Rich Mitchell, what the academy will look like at each school won’t be fully built until student cohorts are selected.)

Students have to apply for the program, but Cammarano and Peou have spent time educating this year’s ninth graders about what an Academy at Penn experience might mean for them.

“I tell them, ‘This is a brand-new opportunity, you’ll be the first group of students that ever gets to put this on your resume,’ and big smiles have gotten on their faces when they hear that kind of phrase,” Cammarano said. Students have been excited so far by “the typical ninth-grade stuff — ‘Am I getting paid? Do I get to go on field trips? Do I have hands-on stuff?’”

The initiative will formally launch sometime this spring, and has been funded for five years. It has been funded by philanthropist Robert Schwartz, president of the Schwartz Creed Foundation, and will be administered by Foundations, the national education nonprofit, which is based in New Jersey.

It has the power to transform lives, officials said.

The partnership is an object lesson in how Penn’s Graduate School of Education aims to “improve educational and life outcomes for Philadelphia’s students,” Katharine O. Strunk, the graduate school’s dean, said in a statement.

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said that Academy at Penn would benefit “the futures of our first-generation college students, as well as our students from underserved communities.”

Schwartz said the project’s launch “is the realization of a vision to create a model that can transform the future for high school students nationwide. I am deeply honored to be part of this journey and inspired by the extraordinary collaboration that made it possible. This is just the beginning.”