{"id":178085,"date":"2025-08-26T21:59:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T21:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/178085\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T21:59:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T21:59:15","slug":"philadelphia-charter-school-appeals-federal-court-order-to-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/178085\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia charter school appeals federal court order to close"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia\u2019s free newsletter<\/a> to keep up with the city\u2019s public school system.<\/p>\n

The leaders of Memphis Street Academy at J.P. Jones, the Philadelphia charter school that a federal judge ordered to close last month, want one thing to be clear: The school is open.<\/p>\n

The school formally appealed a court ruling last week that the school must surrender its charter<\/a> for failing to meet certain academic standards. Days later, it welcomed students and families back to campus to hand out backpacks before the first day of school.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep on surviving, because that\u2019s what we do,\u201d said Memphis Street Principal Steven Bilski as students lined up for free pizza and water ice at last week\u2019s back-to-school event. \u201cOur kids need it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bilski and other leaders at the American Paradigm School charter network, which runs the school, have been fighting to keep it open since 2022, when district leaders kicked off a process to close the school. <\/p>\n

In court, district lawyers have argued the school must close because it failed to meet certain academic standards, even after it had pledged to do so. Those conditions included requiring the school\u2019s state test results to exceed those from similar schools in some subjects, and to raise its math proficiency rate to above 10% \u2014 a score it still has not achieved.<\/p>\n

But the school alleges the framework the district used to evaluate its performance discriminates against schools that educate a high proportion of Black and Hispanic students.<\/p>\n

The school\u2019s appeal in its federal case likely means there will be no answer soon about what happens to the future of Memphis Street Academy. <\/p>\n

In the meantime, school leaders and supporters say that the drawn out legal process has created challenges of its own \u2014 like trying to retain staff and reminding families that the school is open, even though they may have seen reports that a judge ordered the school to close.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt starts a whole myriad of other problems,\u201d said Councilmember Jim Harrity, who lives close to the Port Richmond neighborhood where Memphis Street Academy is based and has been a vocal supporter of the school. \u201cAnd we don\u2019t need any other problems for these kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Memphis Street Academy was meant to excel academically<\/p>\n

The school\u2019s building was built in the 1920s and used to be home to John Paul Jones Junior High School. But the district turned it over to American Paradigm Schools in 2012 as part of its \u201cRenaissance\u201d initiative<\/a>, which was meant to turn around failing schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody else wanted Memphis Street at that time,\u201d said Ashley Redfearn, the charter network\u2019s CEO. \u201cIt\u2019s not like everyone was like knocking each other down to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may have been because of the building\u2019s dilapidated state. Annette Thomas, who runs a janitorial and maintenance company that contracted with Memphis Street Academy, said it took three months of \u201cconstant hard work\u201d to clean up the building from the condition the district had left it in. She remembers there were rat droppings on window sills and urine on the bathroom floors.<\/p>\n

Now, the school appears clean and well-maintained. It enrolls nearly 500 middle school students in grades 5-8, 90% of whom come from the surrounding neighborhoods. <\/p>\n

But academically, the school has struggled. During the most recent round of state tests from this spring, 15% of students achieved proficiency in English language arts and 4% did so in math, Bilski said during a recent board meeting. <\/p>\n

Those scores are significantly lower than the district\u2019s most recent numbers<\/a>, and lower than Memphis Street Academy\u2019s results when the district moved to close it in 2022. The school\u2019s test scores are also lower than nearby Richmond Elementary School, which funnels many students to Memphis Street Academy. <\/p>\n

Bilski and other school leaders said the test results don\u2019t capture students\u2019 full experiences or the value the school provides outside of the classroom, including health and wellness services and a recently opened food pantry for the surrounding community. <\/p>\n

Though Bilski said he is focused on improving the school\u2019s academic performance, he said he is also conscious that many students have difficult home lives and need more than just academic support to thrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey come through a pretty rough neighborhood, they come across a lot of trauma,\u201d Bilski said. \u201cThey take that stuff into school, and it makes learning that much more difficult, so we do have to meet those needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Memphis Street leaders want \u2018stable\u2019 environment for students<\/p>\n

In court, the school alleges the framework the district\u2019s Charter School Office uses to evaluate charter school performance is biased because it is \u201cheavily weighted\u201d by academic performance measures \u201cfor which Hispanic and African American students materially underperform other student groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

But last month, U.S. District Judge Chad Kenney of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania opposed that claim. <\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of uplifting its students, MSA blames their demographic backgrounds for its own shortcomings,\u201d Kenney wrote in his decision ordering the school to close. \u201cThese excuses deprive MSA\u2019s students of the education they deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n

By appealing that ruling, the school aims to continue to be \u201ca stable force\u201d for the neighborhood, said Redfearn. <\/p>\n

Redfearn said she was not expecting the ruling in the case to come down last month, just as school leaders were preparing for the new school year and finalizing hiring new staff. The court order complicated that process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went into mode of just, let\u2019s get things ready for the kids,\u201d said Redfearn. \u201cBecause at the end of the day, they\u2019re going to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, just days before school started, a large sign declaring \u201cMSA is Growing!\u201d hung on the sidewalk fence outside the school. Pop music blasted as kids danced around. A gym teacher dressed up in a wildcat costume waved to new and old students.<\/p>\n

Some parents at the back-to-school event said they hadn\u2019t heard of the legal case. But others said the reports they had seen that the school was ordered to close had been unsettling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it really closing though?\u201d asked Tanya Griffin, who lives down the street from Memphis Street Academy and takes care of her niece and nephew, who both attended the school. Her niece graduated, and her nephew is entering eighth grade.<\/p>\n

She said her nephew likes his teachers and his classes. The food is good, she said, and the health services it provides are useful. She added that Memphis Street Academy has been a resource for the entire neighborhood, many of whom were students in the same building before it became a charter school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want it to close,\u201d said Griffin. \u201cA lot of neighborhood kids go here, a lot of parents enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that impact students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia\u2019s free newsletter to keep up with the city\u2019s public school system. The leaders…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":178086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,13915,40980,100865,1448,2830,1311,18823,6214,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-178085","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-back-to-school","10":"tag-chalkbeat","11":"tag-memphis-street-academy-charter-school","12":"tag-pa","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-philly","16":"tag-students","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115097315731574896","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}