20 Philadelphia schools will start year-round calendar pilot, getting morning and aftercare in the fall, sources say
If school communities buy in, the idea is for those 20 schools to move to more formal, full-time school calendars in the 2025-26 school year, which would demand negotiating with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, whose contract expires in August, 2025. At the time, officials said they wanted to reduce summer learning loss and help struggling students. Grover Washington administrators hoped the schedule change would cut failure rates by 50%; research shows that such schedules especially benefit students from economically disadvantaged families.
Watlington has said he wants all district buildings air-conditioned, but that goal is years away. The barrier to climate-controlling most schools is not the cooling systems themselves, but the electrical service required to run them.