Tag: Philadelphia Schools

Philadelphia Schools to Review Policy Allowing Students to Pick Team Determined by Gender Identity

The Center Square

The School District of Philadelphia will review language it proposes to be formally included in its existing policy that allows students to pick the gender of the team for which they want to play.

The agenda for the Dec. 15 school board meeting has new language under “Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Student Participation” policy for interscholastic activities that states, “Students participating in interscholastic athletics may participate on the team of the gender with which they identify.”

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State Senate Committee Votes to Expand Pennsylvania Education Tax Credits

Bradley Vasoli

Two popular school-choice programs for Pennsylvania students would get regular annual funding increases – expanding access to thousands of families – under legislation a state Senate committee approved yesterday.

Sen. Mike Regan’s (R-Dillsburg) bill would automatically raise allocations to the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) by 25 percent each year, provided at least 90 percent of obtainable scholarships have been utilized the year before. Regan estimated his funding rise would amount to $100 million more annually—about 0.3 percent of what the commonwealth spends on public education. His measure passed the Senate Education Committee by a party-line vote of seven to four and awaits a vote of the full chamber. 

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Nonprofit Blasts Philadelphia, Pennsylvania School District for Efforts on Gender and Neglect of Academics

Bradley Vasoli

As the School District of Philadelphia labors to make its digital student-information system accord with expanding progressive concepts of gender, a right-leaning nonprofit is urging officials to refocus on academics.

In 2016, the district adopted a policy allowing students to pursue their “gender identity” and therein defined the term as “a person’s deeply held sense or psychological knowledge of their own gender, regardless of the sex they were assigned at birth.” The new rule allows students of one biological sex identifying as another to access restrooms, locker rooms, gym classes and athletic programs consistent with the former rather than the latter. In 2020, several school employees reportedly asked Sarah Galbally, the district’s lobbyist, to push for recognizing a broader variety of gender identities in the student tracking system, something that couldn’t be done without tweaking state-education policy.

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