After years of declining enrollment, the Philadelphia School District has grown. Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said the school system’s official student count for 2024-2025 is 117,956 — 1,841 students more than in 2023-2024, an increase of a little under 2%. Officials said the enrollment gain was due to students transferring from charter schools and from elsewhere outside the district. Of those students, many are English-language learners, a booming population in the city, particularly in the Northeast. Still, Philadelphia is a much smaller district than it once was. In the 2004-2005 school year the district enrolled 187,547 students. The district’s student count began to slip significantly after Pennsylvania, in 1997, authorized charter schools, which are publicly funded and authorized by local school boards but managed by independent boards. Today, 64,119 students attend Philadelphia charter schools. Watlington credited teachers, principals and school support staff with the recent gains.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer; 11/25/2024