This Philly school got White House attention for its innovative model. Now, its existence is threatened.
“We serve some of the most marginalized students, and we’re doing it much more poorly now,” said the Workshop School's former principal, who's still affiliated with the school through its nonprofit.
The Workshop School pioneered a model so innovative that its students and teachers have twice been honored at the White House. But the West Philadelphia public school’s fortunes have shifted in recent years.
“Now, we’re in a battle for our lives,” said Simon Hauger, a Workshop School founder.
Workshop’s model is unchanged; its students still learn primarily through interdisciplinary projects by solving real-world problems: car trouble, water quality, food insecurity. It is made up mostly of students of color who come from economically disadvantaged families, and continues to be competency and skills-based, not content-based or test driven.
What has changed is the way the Philadelphia School District admits students to its 38 magnet and citywide schools. In an effort to be more equitable, the district moved to a centralized lottery three years ago and away from giving principals say-so in who comes into their programs.
The result? A mismatch between its incoming students and the school, and a building bursting at the seams.
A school district spokesperson did not address Workshop officials’ concerns about their ability to adequately serve the students assigned to them, but did say the number of students enrolled is based on historical data.
‘We’re doing it much more poorly’
The Workshop’s building was never meant to hold an entire school — the 31,000-square-foot, two-story structure on Hanson Street once housed the former West Philadelphia High automotive annex. After two years as an alternative senior-year project, Workshop became a full-fledged school and moved into its current space, with the promise of moving elsewhere eventually.
But facilities are a perpetual problem in the underfunded district, and a new spot never materialized.
After changes to the district’s admissions policy, Workshop has been forced to take more students than officials say the small building can handle.
That means it also doesn’t have the staff to handle the growing number of students with special needs. As a result, the school is experiencing both behavior and culture issues it’s never had in the past — attendance is down significantly, and serious incidents, such as fights and assaults, have tripled in the last three years.
“We serve some of the most marginalized students, and we’re doing it much more poorly now,” said Hauger, the school’s former principal, who’s remained involved through Workshop Learning, the nonprofit still affiliated with the school.
‘It’s not their neighborhood high school’
In the past, students came to Workshop by word of mouth — not necessarily kids with top grades, but students who bought into the mission, into different ways of learning, into a very small school where no one gets overlooked. Workshop staff would visit local K-8 and middle schools to recruit, often with Workshop students in tow. Interested eighth graders might visit to get a feel for the place. Or, counselors would call Workshop leaders to identify young people they thought would shine there.
Now, without the ability to recruit, Workshop cofounder Matthew Riggan said, “Kids are not coming in with any idea of what the place is about. A lot of what we get are students who put it on their list because it’s not their neighborhood high school.”
Male-identifying students tend to gravitate toward the Workshop school, often because of its auto body program, but Workshop staff worked hard to try to recruit female students.
“We know that women are underrepresented in these trades,” said Riggan. “We were always really, really mindful about how we counterbalance that so we get more women in our system.”
The number of young women at Workshop is eroding; the incoming ninth-grade class had just one girl, officials said.
And because Workshop has no admissions requirements other than Philadelphia residency, it attracts significant numbers of students with special needs or those whose grades and test scores would not qualify them for many other criteria-based schools in the system.
Workshop has always welcomed students with special needs, but “we need the space and staffing to support the students who are enrolled at our school,” Riggan said. “We need space and staffing to serve any [individualized education plan — the federal, binding document guaranteed to each student with special needs] we have in the building.”
Because of its size, Workshop doesn’t have the capacity to have an emotional support class or an autistic support class, even though the numbers of students with autism and those with emotional support needs is increasing. In some cases, students receive emotional support instruction from an online program because Workshop has no other way to provide it.
‘Status quo is not an option’
The school’s principal sits at a desk in a hallway because there’s no room to have an office. There’s no staff lounge, or gym or auditorium. Workshop’s HVAC system is unreliable, and half the building’s rooms have no windows. On a recent warm day, four classes had to operate simultaneously in the lunchroom because their rooms were too hot. On another day, three out of four bathrooms were nonoperational; the whole building had five total toilets for all 200 students and 28 staff.
The school’s special education team occupies a former closet converted to a small office, and because there’s no private place for staff to pull out students who need extra help, students with IEPs must either get one-on-one services in a hallway or the lunchroom, or special education teachers have to “push in” and try to teach separate lessons in already crowded classrooms, Workshop officials said.
The effects of more students with special needs and more students with intense needs has a ripple effect, officials said: More time is spent on a small number of students who have more needs, and reaching all students requires more differentiation and scaffolding, overwhelming staff.
And the effect on students is noticeable, too. While Workshop students generally say they still feel seen and loved by the adults in the building, the attendance figures are telling: Officials said that last year, 63.5% of Workshop students attended school 95% of the time, higher than some elite city magnet schools. This year, that number has plummeted to 21%.
“It has gone off a cliff,” said Riggan.
“There’s a real impact on culture and community,” said Hauger, noting some Workshop students who in prior years would be thriving at the school, have left for other schools.
The numbers for the fall are stark, Hauger said. In the past, a typical ninth-grade class would be 65 students. Its 2024-25 freshman class target was 80 students, the absolute maximum it could accommodate with the three classrooms it has available. The incoming ninth grade has 107 students, over 40% of whom have special needs.
Monique Braxton, the district spokesperson, said attrition is expected, countering that 83 students were expected to be enrolled by fall.
“The status quo,” Hauger said, “is not an option.”