Philly school board will vote on Franklin Towne’s charter, the first step on the road to closure

After allegations that officials at Franklin Towne Charter High School manipulated its lottery to keep students from certain zip codes out, the Philadelphia school board will move to revoke one of the city’s top-performing charters — the first step on the road to closure.

The news — made public via a school board agenda item posted Monday — marked a stunning turn for the high-achieving Northeast Philadelphia charter. If the school board approves the resolution supporting the charter’s revocation at its Thursday meeting, a full hearing will be scheduled, with Franklin Towne officials and the Philadelphia School District able to present evidence and testimony on whether the school should close.

An Inquirer analysis earlier this year found that students from numerous zip codes appeared to have been shut out from Franklin Towne’s January lottery, with astronomically small — 1 in 1.296 trillion — odds the results happened naturally.

Findings from the district’s Charter Schools Office released Monday largely mirrored that analysis — and found that the school also appeared to have excluded students in prior years.

The office reviewed the student application and lottery process during the charter’s term and “concluded that there are grounds for the Board of Education to revoke the Charter under Section 1729-A of the Charter School Law,” according to the board agenda item.

In a message posted to its website Monday, Franklin Towne said it was “blindsided” by the revocation notice.

“The data used to prepare our renewal application over the summer gave us no reason to believe the school is in any violation that would prohibit our charter from being renewed,” the school said.

The revocation notice does not affect Franklin Towne Charter Elementary School, which operates separately from the high school.

A May Inquirer report detailed the lottery allegations made by Patrick Field, Franklin Towne’s chief academic officer and a school employee for 17 years. Field has since been suspended with pay from the school; his lawyer accused the charter of retaliating against him.

» READ MORE: A Philly charter school manipulated its lottery to keep kids out, a top administrator says

“It took a great deal of courage for Mr. Field to do what he did and so it is gratifying to see that the City and the Philadelphia School District are beginning to take action in response to FTCHS’ reprehensible discriminatory misconduct,” Eric Young, a lawyer for Field, said in a statement Monday.

After students from Franklin Towne’s elementary school and siblings of current students are prioritized, all Philadelphia students are supposed to have an equal shot at admittance to Franklin Towne’s high school. But Field told The Inquirer the school had deliberately shut out certain students from January’s lottery.

Field said Joseph Venditti, the former Franklin Towne chief executive, instructed staff to keep students from certain zip codes out, and to exclude others because they, or older siblings, exhibited academic or behavioral problems. Others were blackballed because they came from another charter school that would require paying for their transportation.

After Field revealed what he knew to Franklin Towne’s board, Venditti abruptly resigned in February, citing health issues.

Families “need to have faith” that admissions processes are being implemented fairly, Peng Chao, acting chief of the district’s charter schools office, said in a Monday news conference.

In Franklin Towne’s case, “the data that was provided by the school itself seem to indicate otherwise,” Chao said.

Franklin Towne told families after The Inquirer story appeared in May that it had hired an external agency to conduct an investigation into the allegations.

“Not only is my administration dedicated to providing a fair and unbiased enrollment process for all applicants, Pennsylvania’s Charter School Law requires we do so,” Brianna O’Donnell, the new Franklin Towne CEO, wrote at the time.

That investigation is still underway, the school said Monday.

Though local school boards authorize charters and local districts have supervisory powers over them, Pennsylvania charter law limits the actions the district can take. Charters are run by their own independent boards.

But Franklin Towne’s high school charter expires in 2024, opening a window for the district to make public any concerns it might have about the school, and to ultimately either close it or force leaders to make wholesale changes to get a new charter.

But initiating the process does not ensure the school will close soon — or ever. If the board issues a revocation notice, Franklin Towne would have a hearing sometime this fall that would last days or weeks. After a public comment period, the school board would have to take action on Franklin Towne again and could revoke the school’s charter.

Even if the board does move to revoke the charter after the hearing, the school has the right to appeal to a state board and then through the court system. The school would remain open through the entire process, which could take years.

Franklin Towne noted those steps — and the prospect of appeals — in the message posted to its website.

“The framers of Pennsylvania’s Charter School Law put such protections in place in part in the event a hostile school district would use its power to force charter school students back into its budget by closing their school,” the charter said, adding that “regardless” of how the board votes Thursday, “we will continue to educate students, enroll new students, and hire new staff.”

Franklin Towne, which sits on the campus of the Frankford Arsenal, has demographics that don’t match the rest of the city or the school system. More than half of its student body — 54% — is white, 23% is Latino, 12% Black, 8% multiracial, and 2% Asian.

The district has previously raised concerns about the school’s demographics. Families have also raised concerns about its treatment of special education students.

But the school, which opened in 2000 and educates 1,300 students, is considered an academic star — 74% of its students met state standards in reading and 43% in math, compared to 34% in reading school districtwide and 16% in math. Franklin Towne received a coveted U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon in 2014, and has a 97% graduation rate.

The school has been sought after by families. Of 813 students who applied last year, 205 were offered seats through the January lottery, according to the Inquirer’s analysis.

The accepted students came from 22 zip codes. In 17 other city zip codes, none of the students who applied got in.

The lottery particularly disadvantaged Black students, the Inquirer analysis showed.

Field said he knew only that the lottery was rigged this year. But the charter schools office said it reviewed application and acceptance data provided by the school from 2020-21 through 2023-24, and found “a notable concentration of accepted students from specific zip codes, while there were fewer than expected acceptances in other zip codes, which had substantial numbers of applicants.”

In five majority-Black zip codes in West and Southwest Philadelphia, there were no students accepted during at least three of the four years reviewed, according to the charter schools office.

“The extremely low probability of this distribution occurring by chance further underscores the potential presence of non-random factors influencing the acceptance process,” the office said.

In its statement Monday, Franklin Towne said it was “confident that we will overcome any manipulation of the facts portrayed either in the media or in public meetings” by the charter schools office. It did not say what facts were being manipulated.

Since the allegations were made public, the school said it would move to join a centralized system that handles charter applications, as most but not all of the city’s 83 charters do. Franklin Towne had previously run an independent lottery.

While Venditti is gone and the charter is joining the centralized lottery system, Chao said revocation was still an appropriate sanction.

“This is also about making sure that the adults who have the privilege of operating and governing the school are held accountable for what happened over time,” Chao said.