‘Paid parents,’ year-round school, new curriculum, and swimming instruction: Here’s Philly’s 5-year school roadmap

Tony B. Watlington Sr. released the roadmap Wednesday for how he intends to fix Philadelphia schools, outlining a five-year strategy that will lean on $70 million in new curricula, significant recruitment and retention incentives for teachers and other staff, and a pilot of year-round education in 10 schools.

The plan calls for paying some parents to help bridge the gap between the district and the community, expanding opportunities for district children to learn to swim, streamlining how organizations partner with schools, and launching high-dosage tutoring during the school day in up to eight schools.

The document will define Watlington’s tenure in the Philadelphia School District. He began as schools chief in June and spent the last year surveying 3,000 parents, teachers, students and community members, as well as consulting with outside experts paid to help guide the plan.

Watlington will present the blueprint Thursday to the school board, which is scheduled to vote June 1 to adopt it.

“I’m hopeful that Philadelphians will view this as our plan, not Tony’s plan, not the board of education’s plan,” said Watlington, who said the district would “align all of our resources around this plan in order to significantly improve achievement.”

Though he’s not yet sure how much it would cost to execute the entire strategic plan, Watlington likened the process to buying a car.

“When it comes to improving our students’ academic health, I always want the Cadillac,” Watlington said, adding that he intended to show a good return on investment, too. “Right now, we don’t have Cadillac budgets or Cadillac money. That does not mean that we shouldn’t have Cadillac aspirations.”

Five priority areas guide this work:

Watlington wants to increase the number of school safety zones, using extra resources to pay off-duty police officers to ensure students’ wellbeing on the way to and from school. Watlington also wants to add 150 cameras inside schools, and continue investments in mental health initiatives.

“It’s not just fluff, it’s not just feel good, it’s not just let’s get on the carpet, cross our legs, lock arms, and feel better,” Watlington said. “Because if we can transform how we relate to each other, we can improve school climate, we can reduce incidences of harassment, bullying and discrimination.”

Watlington aims to build a facilities project team with internal and external members to develop a better decision-making process around buildings and environmental needs, from coping with asbestos to managing air-conditioning schools.

Historically, parents and community members who reach out to the district might not get a prompt response — or a response at all.

That must change, Watlington said. The district will invest in a two-way communication system and, in a pilot that starts with the superintendent’s office, give community members the opportunity to rate their interactions with the school district on a scale of 0 to 10.

“This will not just be switching a few deck chairs on the Titanic,” Watlington said. “We are going to seriously improve our customer-service orientation in our school district in the spirit of partnering with parents.”

Parent University, begun by former Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, will be re-launched, with classes for district caregivers. And Watlington also wants to pay a group of “parent ambassadors” to help build credibility in the community and build bridges with underrepresented and unconnected youth and families.

A former Philadelphia superintendent helped Watlington realize a curriculum overhaul was needed. Constance Clayton, whom Watlington now considers a mentor, told him, “Young man, our children are transient, the curriculum matters,” Watlington said.

That is: There is no standardized curriculum across the district, so if a student moves from School A to School B, there’s no guarantee that what they’re learning and the way they’re learning it will match.

Philadelphia will spend $70 million over two years on “the best-in-class, research-based curricula in reading, math, and science that exist in the United States of America,” Watlington said. Federal funds will supplement the district’s budget to buy it.

Watlington said this will mean changes soon inside classrooms. He doesn’t want teachers to have to surf the internet to find lessons, or teachers to have to “sit at a computer half the day, flipping through stuff.”

Year-round school is also on the table, in a pilot of 10 schools, Watlington said. He won’t choose the schools that participate.

“We’re going to make the case to parents in our school communities, because I want communities to be able to opt into this model,” he said.

Watlington also wants to add time to the 180-day school calendar for those schools that participate in the year-round pilot. (Year-round school remains a big if; the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has declined to comment on the possibility, but it will likely be a tough sell.)

Another facet of Watlington’s plan is high-impact tutoring in six to eight schools. This tutoring, used in Chicago and New York, places highly trained tutors in classrooms to work one-on-one or in small groups with students immediately after a lesson is taught.

Comcast pays for such tutoring elsewhere, and Watlington said he’s had conversations about them funding the Philadelphia pilot, too.

“I’ve got to have something more different and better if I’m going to ever have a chance to even begin to try to catch up,” Watlington said. “And we got a lot of kids who need an opportunity to try to catch up.”

A number of Philadelphians have told Watlington and the school board that they want long-closed district indoor pools to be re-opened. Citing research that Black children drown at six times the rate of white children, the superintendent wants to launch a pilot of a yet-to-be-determined number of learn-to-swim programs at the elementary school level.

Watlington has paid attention to other districts’ efforts to attract more teachers with big signing bonuses. Camden, for instance, is paying $10,000 to teachers. Philadelphia is paying just a few thousand.

“Unacceptable,” Watlington said. “We must get in the game. We live in a free market, capitalistic society and everywhere else in the free market, supply-and-demand factors have a way of influencing salaries, incentives, recruitment and retention incentives.”

He also wants to recruit more Black and Latino male teachers and possibly develop a high school specifically aimed at encouraging students to become teachers in Philadelphia.

Outside organizations often have a challenging time maintaining partnerships with the district or individual schools. Now, Watlington wants the district to better manage those relationships. That starts with a central repository of every partnership, something that doesn’t exist now.

Watlington also wants to develop an evaluation system for all central-office employees. Some currently have none.

He’s also interested in benchmarking Philadelphia against other large, urban districts when it comes to finance, human resources, transportation, or other operational areas.

”We’re going to build a system completely around what children need, and we’re going to support adults so they can support our children,” Watlington said.