Students who moved out of the country were put back on Philly schools\u2019 rolls<\/a><\/p>\nInstead, the reenrollment was tied to a belief that the school system must find every child, and a desire \u201cto push the organization to get that next level of performance,\u201d the superintendent said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to follow the rules for children and young people that people don\u2019t stand up and come to advocate for, whether some of these children are hard to love or have attendance problems,\u201d Watlington said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to throw them away.\u201d<\/p>\n
What happened?<\/p>\n
The district added back students on Sept. 30, the day before school systems must report their enrollment to the Pennsylvania Department of Education. <\/p>\n
About 2,000 students were improperly dropped from the district\u2019s rolls, Watlington said; 720 were added back on the last day of September because they could not be verified as being enrolled in another school or district.<\/p>\n
Multiple principals told The Inquirer that many of the 720 had not shown up to school at all in the 2026-27 school year, and many families reported moving out of the state or country. <\/p>\n
Both Pennsylvania state code and Philadelphia school board policy require parental consent and documentation for a student to be withdrawn from school rolls. But it\u2019s not spelled out what documentation is required.<\/p>\n
The gold standard is verification from a new school, or a copy of a plane ticket if families leave the country, officials said. In the cases of families who stop responding to requests for information, principals say, in the past, they were able to use their best judgment to unenroll students.<\/p>\n
Watlington, who became Philadelphia\u2019s superintendent in 2022, said he was trying \u201cto get better and better and better at our record keeping.\u201d Last year, he ordered a more careful review of students who had been dropped from school rolls.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor kids who are dropped inappropriately, we want those numbers there too and to be very transparent with the Pennsylvania Department of Education: These are kids who we are still looking for or trying to certify,\u201d Watlington said. \u201cI did the same thing last year. We just didn\u2019t make as many headlines about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watlington said if he had known students were dropped from the rolls without proper documentation, he would have ordered them added back \u201clast year and every year I\u2019ve been here,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd would be unapologetic about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
An additional district-level review of the 720 students\u2019 records is underway as the school system tries to locate the students, track down documentation, or begin the truancy process.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s also happening at the same time as the state\u2019s enrollment verification process, said Watlington and Tonya Wolford, the district\u2019s chief of evaluation, research and accountability. Student records are cross-referenced with other schools and districts, and Philadelphia will not get funding for students who have not actually attended, said Watlington.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t just willy-nilly throw 800 kids who are all in Ghana on our rolls,\u201d the superintendent said. \u201cNone of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I want everybody in Philadelphia to know\u2019<\/p>\n
Several principals said they were alarmed by the order to add back students they have reason to believe are enrolled elsewhere. <\/p>\n
Watlington said he understood that frustration.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur principals are busy,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are hardworking, trying to get the reading and math performance up, the graduation rate up, the dropout rate down to keep this momentum that we want to continue. And it\u2019s an additional tax and strain to be focused externally sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The central office will help with the work of tracking students down, Watlington said, and the work is no secret.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, I want everybody in Philadelphia to know. I want the whole city to know that we are canvassing this city. We want every child who was in school last year back in school this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watlington is responsible for the whereabouts of all 200,000 students in public schools \u2014 district and charter \u2014 in the city, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re not in the district-operated school, you need to be in a charter school or a home school or a private school,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to turn a blind eye and say I don\u2019t want to grow the district enrollment, but let me be clear, when we submit data to the Pennsylvania Department of Education on Oct. 1, there\u2019s a process that the Commonwealth does to work with the 500 school districts to certify all of those children.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Fair game for competition\u2019<\/p>\n
Watlington has given marching orders to the entire organization: The district is responsible for helping find students, too, tapping outside partners like faith leaders and others to spread the word. <\/p>\n
The district needs to tell its story better, Watlington said.<\/p>\n
Academics have generally improved in the school system \u2014 Philadelphia was tops in the nation in its learning rate post-pandemic<\/a>, according to research out of Harvard and Stanford \u2014 but children still struggle, with only 33% reading at grade level and 25% meeting that benchmark in math.<\/p>\nCity charter schools\u2019 performance is slightly worse, with only 31% reading at grade level and 20% meeting the benchmark in math.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve shared with the assistant superintendents my expectation that they get shoulder to shoulder, elbow-to-elbow with ward leaders and block captains just like the politicians do, because they know this city and the community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI take the position if any of these 720 children could potentially be here, but be one of these kids that I see walking up and down Lehigh Avenue in the middle of the day, I want to make sure that we\u2019ve done our duty to get these kids in school.\u201d<\/p>\n
The district can and should make a push to compete in ways it hasn\u2019t in the past, Watlington said \u2014 not to demonize any other sector, because \u201cI think whatever kind of school kids go to, and their parents want, that\u2019s right for that child.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, the superintendent said, \u201cwe\u2019re going to be focused on being visionary enough to aspire to grow our enrollment in the school district, because the numbers suggest to me that we need to be competitive, we need to be accurate, and we need to be honest with the data.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we do that, it\u2019s fair game for competition,\u201d he added. \u201cCompetition is good for the consumer in this capitalistic system we live in, and I think it\u2019s the same way when it comes to public education.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min The Philadelphia School District was right to put back on its books 720…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,124875],"class_list":["post-303692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-school-district-enrollment-attendance-documentation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}