Penn Alexander School

PUBLIC SCHOOL

To make the neighborhood attractive to families, Penn came up with the strategy to build a public school. The Alexander School is a three-way partnership among the School District of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and Penn. It was named for Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, a Penn alumnus and the first African American woman receiving a Ph. D. degree in economics in the United States.

Penn Alexander is a K-8 neighborhood school. Penn donated the land, managed building construction, helped develop the curriculum, and pledged an additional $1,330 per student annually for ten years (a pledge that has since been renewed to 2022). It is now considered a gold standard public school in the School District with a diverse student body: 51% Black, 30% White, 15% Asian, and 5% Latino. (Sorrentino, 2015)

Since the opening of Penn Alexander School, the tension between affordability and gentrification has increased. The median sale price of houses in the Penn Alexander catchment area raised from $94,750 in 1999 to 

$410,000 in 2007. The CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of this area was about 20%, much higher than the city’s 9%. Ethnically, “the African American population within the catchment declined by 52 percent in just ten years.” (Puckett & Lloyd, 2015)

Figure 9. Penn Alexander School. © Karen Aquino, Daily Pennsylvania. https://www.thedp.com/article/2011/06/penn_alexander_turns_students_away

Source:

Sorrentino, A. (2015). Philadelphia’s University City: A model of urban renewal anchored and lead by private sector institutional investment. Paper presented at the 51st ISOCARP Congress, Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. 

Puckett, J. L., & Lloyd, M. F. (2015). Becoming Penn: The Pragmatic American University, 1950-2000: University of Pennsylvania Press.