Proposed Quantitative Performance Measurement to Gauge School/Community Connectivity

Currently, no quantitiative metric gauges connectivity between a Philadelphia public neighborhood school and its catchment area, the community[ies] in which it sits and ostensibly serves. School/community connectivity is important for a variety of reasons, including a school’s potential to be an educational, social, and recreational community center. Further, connectivity is important in that taxpayers with children are essentially customers (potential or actual) of their local school; these taxpayers/customers are justified in their expectation that the local school will actively seek out their “business” (e.g., sending their children to the school) and work to keep it over the long-term.

One measure of school/community connectivity is to track the percentage of eligible students attending a catchment area’s school. Initial measurements could serve as a baseline against which to gauge future progress/regress. Percentage metrics could be developed for the entire catchment area as well as sub-catchment areas. A more refined sub-catchment measurement would reveal how well a school’s student attraction/retention efforts are working in smaller subsets of a community/catchment area. If the percentage of eligible students from the catchment or sub-catchment area decreases over a period of time, strategies should be developed and implemented to reverse the trend. Relatedly, if sub-catchment areas are lower to being with, strategies to address particular attraction/retention issues could be developed. Creating this metric would be possible using GIS mapping and demographic data.

Note: The responsibility to establish and maintain connectivity (and maintain/increase student attraction/retention percentages) is shared among the School District, the local school’s leadership team, and the broader community. However, the School District – as the entity charged with administering the school system – must be responsible for creating the paradigm and supporting policies to establish school/community connectivity and student attraction from the catchment area as an important component of its mission.

September 7th Meeting

After taking a Summer break during July and August, the East Falls School Committee will reconvene on September 7th at 7:00 PM. We'll be meeting at our usual location at the Presbyterian Church at the corner of Vaux and Midvale in East Falls. This year promises to be our most exciting and productive, as there are so many major initiatives and changes (all positive!) moving forward. There's a new Principal, an $8 million capital refurbishment project about to begin and a march towards academic excellence and International Baccalaureate accreditation. Please come and join us; the more support we have, the more we'll accomplish.

Mifflin School Working Towards International Baccalaureate Accreditation

Thanks to a visionary School District CEO, a School Reform Commission with high standards, the East Falls School Committee's advocacy, the support of other community organizations, and individual efforts by many of us, the Mifflin School in East Falls has been selected to work towards International Baccalaureate feeder school accreditation. Check out the attached press release for more info.

The International Baccalaureate program for middle school aged students is academically rigorous and would transform Mifflin into a neighborhood institution with magnet school academic quality. The IB program stresses a holistic approach to learning through six main themes: who we are; where we are in place and time; how we express ourselves; how the world works; how we organize ourselves; and, sharing the planet. Core subject areas include: languages (including foreign language instruction), mathematics, social studies, science and technology, arts, and personal, social and physical education. For more background, check out the International Baccalaureate Program's website.

New Pre-School Program at Mifflin

The early registration period has ended but there are still a few open positions left in the Mifflin School's new Bright Futures preschool program. The Bright Futures program is free and priority admission is given to all East Falls residents regardless of income. Priority will also be given to four-year-old students (your child must be four by September 1) but is also open to three-year-old children. If you are not an East Falls resident but are interested in applying for the program at Mifflin, you can still fill out the registration form and write on the top that you would like to be considered for Mifflin’s program.

For more information, please call (215) 351-7200. Do not call Mifflin directly as it is not open during the summer months. For more info, please check out this link.

Note: There has been tremendous response to this new offering and the program is now full. However, interested parents should still inquire about openings and put themselves on the program's waiting list.