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  • Tony Watlington talked about Philly’s ‘groundbreaking academic improvements’ on a national stage. Here are 3 takeaways.

    Tony Watlington talked about Philly’s ‘groundbreaking academic improvements’ on a national stage. Here are 3 takeaways.

    On Thursday, a roomful of leaders from the nation’s largest and most complex school systems stood, sat, and spilled into aisles to hear Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. talk about how the Philadelphia School District has pulled off “groundbreaking academic improvements” in the eighth-largest school system in the country.

    “The nation’s historic biggest poor city for many decades is getting better,” Watlington said. “We are so proud to be accelerating performance, and we are going to put our foot on the gas, and our goal … is to get to the top of the food chain.”

    The discussion came as part of the Council of Great City Schools’ annual conference, held this year in Philadelphia. In addition to the hometown district, the Baltimore, Detroit, and Los Angeles Unified districts were also highlighted.

    Here are some takeaways from the panel that featured Watlington, Sonja Santelises of Baltimore, Nikolai Vitti of Detroit, and Alberto Carvalho of Los Angeles.

    The Philadelphia story: It’s getting better

    Watlington trumpeted the progress made since he arrived in Philadelphia in 2022: improvement in most metrics — fewer dropouts, better graduation rate, better student and teacher attendance, forward motion in most areas as benchmarked against big-city peers on the test known as the “Nation’s Report Card.”

    Philly students made significant progress in math, but posted lower reading scores, according to new data

    “We’ve been really drilling down on fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math, and in three of these areas, we’ve seen significant improvement, besting the national average, our peer districts, and, certainly, outperforming the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Watlington said.

    Still, Philadelphia’s students — a diverse group, mostly from economically disadvantaged homes and mostly kids of color — have a long ways to go.

    According to preliminary data recently released by the district, 25% of district students met state standards in reading and 33% in math. (Math scores have been a particular strength of late — fourth-graders’ math scores have jumped 13 percentage points in the last three years.)

    “It’s ebbing and flowing, but over time we ought to see some appreciable improvement in student outcomes, and, yes, it ought to show up on some standardized assessments, even if those assessments are rife with cultural and racial bias,” Watlington said.

    Despite the fact that most city students do not meet the state’s standards in literacy and numeracy, there are more than just glimmers of hope in what the district has been able to accomplish in recent years, Watlington said.

    For years, Philadelphia’s performance was near the bottom of all large urban districts’. But the most recent stats from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that the district has vaulted from near the bottom to closer to the top.

    And after years of declining enrollment amid a robust charter school ecosystem, the traditional public school system added more than 1,000 students to its rolls last year. About 117,000 children are now enrolled in district schools.

    How did the district make gains? Watlington cited several factors: new, standardized curriculum, professional development for teachers, supporting principals, strengthening family partnerships, and improving instruction.

    “We’re not just trying to serve the middle,” Watlington said. “We’re serving all students, including students who qualify for special education services.”

    Baltimore found literacy leaders in its own backyard

    Funds are scarce and needs are great in Baltimore, as they are in large urban school districts across the country.

    But Santelises, who has been superintendent of the district of 70,000 for nearly 10 years, wanted to focus on building leadership, even without a built-in infrastructure.

    “What we did was we doubled down on leadership is not a title. Leadership is a state of being. Leadership is a focus, so that means leadership is not just who gets to sit the closest to the CEO. Leadership is not who has three letters in his or her name, but leadership is actually what is your ability to identify a problem,” Santelises said.

    Empowering people in schools to see themselves as leaders worked beautifully, Santelises said. Among the strongest leaders?

    “We found actually that our paraprofessionals — majority women of color, majority from low-income neighborhoods — were actually our best literacy tutors when we looked at the data,” Santelises said. “With all due respect to any companies in the room, it wasn’t the new AI technology that got the best results. It wasn’t the newest program you’re going to put on the software. It was actually the women who were closest to our young people and their communities were then viewed as leaders, and frankly got 30 to 40% greater improvement with our first and second graders than any program we purchased.”

    LA super thinks 10% of schools should get 90% of district attention

    Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said that 90% of districts’ time should be spent on 10% of its schools — the lowest performers.

    Leaders must have “the courage to say not every student shall get the same level of funding, the same level of support … they need disproportionately higher levels of funding based on equity indices.”

    (Philadelphia used to have a separate learning network for its lowest performers, with higher amounts of funding and more supports. The district broke up that network in a recent reorganization.)

    When he started in LAUSD in 2022, that school system, the nation’s second-largest, had 800 teaching vacancies. He reduced that number to zero quickly.

    Central office staffers who met Carvalho always told him how much they loved children, he said.

    “During spring break, I asked them to go love children closer to where children were,” Carvalho said. The employees who had teaching credentials were sent into schools to teach. “Yes, there are teacher shortages, but we have more of a talent-distribution problem than a talent problem, always.”

    Carvalho — a former undocumented immigrant who spent 15 years as Miami’s schools leader and had accepted the New York public school chancellor’s job but reneged, he said Thursday, “because I would have killed the mayor” — suggested that incremental progress is not nearly enough.

    “We’re not done, we can’t be done,” Carvalho said. “We have grade levels where reading performance is at 30, 40, 50%, and that means the vast majority of our kids are not learning and reading at grade level — the same for numeracy. Unfortunately, across our country, we often hide ugly truths about our own performance. And as they all said, ‘The first step in true educational reform is critical awareness of where we are.’”

  • The wife of Par Funding’s founder was sentenced to one day in prison — the last prosecution of people tied to the fraudulent firm

    The wife of Par Funding’s founder was sentenced to one day in prison — the last prosecution of people tied to the fraudulent firm

    The wife of the founder of Par Funding, a fraudulent and now-defunct Philadelphia-based lending firm, was sentenced Thursday to one day in jail and 60 days of house arrest for dodging about $1.6 million in taxes she should have paid on income derived from the scheme.

    Lisa McElhone apologized for her conduct during a sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Mark A. Kearney, saying the spectacular implosion of her husband’s business — and the criminal prosecution of people associated with it — was the “most painful and transformative period of my entire life,” causing her to lose her home and her future, and watch her husband get sent to prison.

    “It’s difficult, if not impossible, to express how overwhelming and life-altering this has been,” she said.

    Prosecutors acknowledged that McElhone — the owner of an Old City nail salon — had almost nothing to do with Par’s day-to-day operations. And the crimes she was charged with paled in comparison to those of others associated with the business — particularly her husband, Joseph LaForte, who ran the cash-advance firm as a Mafia-style criminal enterprise that defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, and resorted to loan shark-style tactics in efforts to collect on debts.

    Still, Kearney said, McElhone, 46, did bear some responsibility by failing to question aspects of the life she was afforded that she should have known were too good to be true.

    “These things only stop when good people … stop and say, ‘Hey, you’re asking me to go a step too far,’” he said. “That’s the only way these things stop. Because otherwise, if everyone falls in line, everyone goes to jail.”

    Kearney said McElhone’s one-day prison stint would be Thursday. She will then serve a three-year term of supervised release, he said, and her 60 days of house arrest will begin in January 2026.

    McElhone’s sentencing was notable as the final criminal proceeding for about a half-dozen people charged in connection with Par Funding, which prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in Pennsylvania history.

    LaForte received the stiffest sentence: a 15½-year prison term that Kearney imposed earlier this year. LaForte founded Par to offer quick loans at high interest rates to borrowers deemed too risky to secure financing from traditional banks, but lied to investors about the company’s financial health to raise more money, used thuggish tactics to threaten borrowers who fell into default, and hid tens of millions of dollars from the IRS for his personal use.

    Others charged included LaForte’s brother, who also received a lengthy prison term for participating in various aspects of the firm’s crimes. And earlier this week, two financial professionals, Rodney Ermel and Kenneth Bacon, were ordered to serve 2½ years and 6 months, respectively, behind bars for helping devise the fraudulent tax structures connected to the crimes.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Newcomer said it was perhaps fitting that McElhone’s penalty was the last to be imposed, given her limited connection to the business.

    “But I think it does speak to the breadth and severity” of Par’s misdeeds, he said, “that even the least-culpable person is still on the hook for a $1.6 million tax loss.”

    Par was founded in 2012 by LaForte, who was legally barred from selling securities because of previous felony convictions for financial crimes.

    One way he got around that was to list McElhone as Par’s chief executive on official documents. Then, LaForte and others he recruited to work for him — including experienced financial professionals — ran radio ads and staged fancy solicitation events to raise more than $500 million, all as they portrayed the business as legitimate and lucrative.

    In reality, prosecutors said, it was losing tens of millions of dollars a year. But to keep the fraud going, some of Par’s executives lied about the business’ financial health to keep raising money, and others threatened to harm or even kill borrowers who fell into default.

    Still, prosecutors said McElhone was effectively uninvolved in the business, spending her workdays instead running the Old City nail salon Lacquer Lounge.

    That doesn’t mean McElhone did not benefit from her husband’s grift. LaForte and his partners extracted cash from Par and spent it on things like a private jet, boats, paintings, expensive watches and jewelry, and homes in the Philadelphia area, Florida, and the Poconos.

    And in the single count to which McElhone agreed to plead guilty last year, prosecutors said she knowingly signed a tax form claiming she and LaForte were living in Florida — where there is no state income tax — even though they spent most of their time that year in their $2.5 million Haverford home.

    That deception led her to avoid paying about $1.6 million in taxes, prosecutors said, an amount she will now be forced to help repay.

    Kearney, the judge, said that others might have been more responsible for the wide array of Par’s wrongdoing — but that she needed to be held accountable for failing to stop the wrongs that unfolded before her.

    “When you get in a relationship with people,” he said, “make sure you keep your identity. Because you don’t want to be the person going to jail for their crimes.”

  • Pew Charitable Trusts chief to step down

    Pew Charitable Trusts chief to step down

    The head of the Pew Charitable Trusts is stepping down.

    Susan K. Urahn, president and CEO, is expected to retire in early 2027 after a search for a successor is completed and the new leader has begun working at the organization, a Pew spokesperson said.

    Urahn, 72, began at Pew in 1994 and took the top job in 2020 following the retirement of longtime chief Rebecca W. Rimel.

    Neither Urahn nor board chair Christopher Jones were made available for interviews. But, in a statement posted on Pew’s website, Urahn said she was fortunate to work with colleagues and a board “all dedicated to finding common ground and using facts as the foundation for discussion and action.”

    “Under Sue’s leadership, Pew has become even better and stronger,” read a statement attributed to Jones.

    Pew — which has offices in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and other cities — is a combination foundation/think tank, conducting research and disbursing grants to nonprofit organizations.

    In Philadelphia, it awards money to arts groups through the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. Its D. C-based Pew Research Center provides research on demographic trends and social issues, as well as polling on matters like politics, religion, climate change, and the role of technology in daily life.

    Pew’s work is funded through seven charitable trusts established between 1948 and 1979 by the children of Sun Oil Co. founder Joseph Newton Pew and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew. As of June 2024, the collective value of the trusts was $6.1 billion, a spokesperson said.

    In addition to funding Philadelphia arts groups and individual artists, Pew has sometimes taken a more activist role by partnering with other philanthropists on large civic projects costing tens of millions of dollars, such as the 2012 move by the Barnes Foundation from Merion to the Ben Franklin Parkway. In 2008, Pew contributed millions toward a bailout of the Kimmel Center that relieved it of debt left over from the arts center’s construction phase.

    In 2023, it announced the award of $4 million for Esperanza Health Center in North Philadelphia to expand services.

    Urahn, most recently based in D.C., worked her way through several posts — including director of Pew’s planning and evaluation division; director of the Pew Center on the States; and executive vice president for Pew’s work on state policy, economics and healthcare.

    A search for a new president is expected to begin in January.

  • William B. Starks, pastor emeritus at Community Baptist Church and Montford Point Marine, has died at 96

    William B. Starks, pastor emeritus at Community Baptist Church and Montford Point Marine, has died at 96

    William B. Starks, 96, of Philadelphia, pastor emeritus at Community Baptist Church in Chester, former associate pastor at Greater Ebenezer Baptist Church in Philadelphia, retired supervisor for the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Department, Montford Point Marine, lifelong singer, and volunteer, died Saturday, Oct. 4, of age-associated decline at Germantown Home rehabilitation center.

    Born and reared in Nashville, Tenn., the Rev. Starks grew up singing in church every Sunday. So his wife and two daughters were not surprised that he was ordained in 1966, served 31 years as pastor at Community Baptist, and continued to sing in choirs and elsewhere for the rest of his life.

    He was energetic and empathetic, they said, and he became so effective as a spiritual and practical mentor in Chester that city and church officials dedicated part of West Seventh Street in his honor on June 1. They renamed a segment of the street as Rev. William B. Starks Way, installed a sign at Fulton and West Seventh Streets, and called it “a lasting tribute to his selfless service and deep impact on our community.”

    The Rev. Starks was recruited from Greater Ebenezer Baptist by Community Baptist in 1978 and commuted every Sunday, and sometimes three nights a week, from his home in West Oak Lane to the church in Chester. His family said he never missed a Sunday service.

    Rev. Starks ministered at Community Baptist Church in Chester from 1978 to 2009.

    “His love for the Word of God encouraged him,” his family said in a tribute.

    The Rev. Starks was direct and serious in the pulpit, and willing to “roll up his sleeves and fight your fight,” his daughter Rhonda said. He created a Presidents Council to better organize church affairs, celebrated when the church paid off the mortgage, and encouraged its use as a satellite location for the Manna Bible Institute.

    He invited women and young pastors to preach, and induced the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Gov. Ed Rendell, Rep. Robert Brady, and other notables to address his congregation. His outreach and ministry were recognized in awards and honors from the Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation and other church groups.

    In the community, he monitored schools and families for discord, and confronted street-corner problems he encountered. He spoke out often against violence, injustice, crime, and drug abuse.

    Rev. Starks (front center) is honored by the Philadelphia chapter of the National Montford Point Marine Association.

    “He truly believed in the church being involved spiritually, socially, and politically,” his family said. “He truly had a heart for the people.” Earlier, he attended Tenth Memorial Baptist Church and studied theology at what is now Cairn University in Langhorne.

    The Rev. Starks worked at Philco and Whitman’s Chocolates in Philadelphia after he left the Marines in 1952. He spent 25 years with the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Department, earned service commendations from the Fairmount Park Commission, and left when he became pastor at Community Baptist. He retired from the church in 2009.

    He enlisted in the Marines after high school in 1948 and became one of the celebrated Montford Point Marines in North Carolina. He spent four years in the Corps, sang with the Marine choir, rose to corporal, and was transferred to Philadelphia. He never left.

    In 2012, he and other Montford Point Marines were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for enduring racism, segregation, and discrimination during their military tours and still serving with honor and distinction.

    Rev. Starks joined the Marines in 1948.

    His mother’s cousin was a church pianist and singer, and she regularly took him along to sing at church in Nashville when he was young. Later, he took music classes in high school and studied voice with professor John W. Work III at nearby Fisk University.

    In retirement, he volunteered at Eleanor C. Emlen Elementary School and elsewhere in the community. “He was very humble, generous, loving, and caring,” his daughter Rhonda said.

    William Barton Starks was born Nov. 2, 1928. He grew up with two brothers, and it was obvious early that his singing voice was exceptional.

    He met fellow singer Inez Baldwin at a recital, and they married in 1951. They had daughters Cheryl and Rhonda, and lived in North Philadelphia and West Oak Lane.

    Rev. Starks (fifth from right) “would give you anything,” his daughter Cheryl said.

    The Rev. Starks and his wife enjoyed annual summer cruises to the Bahamas. He was known as Big Daddy, his family said, “because he was like a father to so many people.” His wife died in 2016.

    “He meant the world to me,” said his daughter Cheryl. “He would give you anything.”

    His daughter Rhonda said: “He always told us he would do anything and everything for his family, and he did.”

    In addition to his daughters, the Rev. Starks is survived by four grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and other relatives. His brothers died earlier.

    Rev. Starks (right) doted on his daughters and grandchildren.

    Services were held on Oct. 17 and 18. Interment was Oct. 23 at Washington Crossing National Cemetery.

    Donations in his name may be made to the Scholarship Initiative of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Montford Point Marine Association, 27 Red Tail Court, Limerick, Pa. 19468.

  • A Delco man trolled a Philly Mag writer on Facebook. Now, a judge has ordered him to pay $160,000.

    A Delco man trolled a Philly Mag writer on Facebook. Now, a judge has ordered him to pay $160,000.

    A Philadelphia judge ordered a Delaware County man to pay Philadelphia Magazine senior reporter Victor Fiorillo $160,000 over a series of Facebook comments falsely labeling the journalist a pedophile.

    In an order issued Tuesday, Common Pleas Court Judge Vincent Johnson awarded Fiorillo $35,000 in compensatory damages and $125,000 in punitive damages. The ruling follows a hearing at which the defendant, Ryan Nelson, did not show up.

    “It feels great,” Fiorillo said. “Part of what I said at the beginning is that I would like to support some LGBTQ causes that the defendant very much would dislike his money going to, and I intend to pursue the matter.”

    The libelous comments by Nelson were aimed at Fiorillo not for his journalism, but for his off-the-clock performances as a keyboard player for a band led by drag queen Martha Graham Cracker.

    Nelson never responded to the lawsuit, which was filed in April, and no attorney is listed for him on the court docket. James Beasley, the journalist’s lawyer, did receive a threatening email in June from a person identifying as “RN” that included an expletive aimed at Fiorillo in the subject line.

    “Tell him to unblock me and stop hiding behind facebook,” said the message, which was presented to the judge. “If not i guess i can go to his house and ask him.”

    That email is no longer active, and The Inquirer was unable to reach Nelson through publicly available contact information.

    Philly Mag’s Victor Fiorillo filed a libel lawsuit after Facebook comments over drag performances

    The focus of the complaint was a series of comments Nelson made in response to a January post by Fiorillo in the Citizens of Delco public Facebook group, in which the reporter shared his article about a racial discrimination lawsuit against a country club restaurant.

    “The only person to agree with you likes seeing dudes in dresses dance with kids,” Nelson wrote.

    Fiorillo asked if the suggestion was that he was a pedophile because he performs with a drag queen.

    “Yes victoria, corruption of a minor. Same as pedophile,” Nelson wrote, adding, “or do you prefer groomer.”

    In another comment, Nelson said he’d “bet” that if a drag queen molested children, Victor would “prob write how the kids are homophobic.”

    The lawsuit said others on the Facebook group had read Nelson’s comments, and provided an example of another person repeating them.

    “There is nothing in the First Amendment that says you can call me a pedophile and a child molester,” Fiorillo previously told The Inquirer.

    Fiorillo was the only witness at the Oct. 8 hearing. Johnson interrupted the lawyer’s line of questioning to ask questions of his own, the reporter said. The judge asked over and over how many times Nelson made the comments.

    The Philly Mag writer recalled thinking from the stand that the hearing was not going in his favor, but felt a great sense of moral victory when the judge issued his decision.

    He said he hopes the ruling sends a message to all the “keyboard warriors out there, in their mother’s basement.”

    “That’s a very big part of why I went down this road to begin with. Part of defending free speech is standing against things that aren’t covered by that.”

  • Carousel House will be Philly’s ‘flagship’ rec center. But people with disabilities will have to wait until 2028 to reunite.

    Carousel House will be Philly’s ‘flagship’ rec center. But people with disabilities will have to wait until 2028 to reunite.

    In March 2023, Kathryn Ott Lovell, then Philadelphia’s parks and recreation commissioner, announced that the plan to build a new Carousel House in West Philly was finally coming together.

    The city’s only recreation center dedicated to people with disabilities had closed its doors temporarily in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, then permanently in 2021. City officials said years of deferred maintenance had made it unsafe.

    “I’m excited to stop talking and start doing,” Ott Lovell said during the 2023 presentation at the Please Touch Museum.

    The city’s disability community was also excited to reunite at Carousel House. To many, the rec center on Belmont Avenue had become like a second home, with dances, movies, swimming, arts and crafts, and summer camp.

    The city’s youth wheelchair basketball team was looking forward to returning to its home base. Since the rec center closed, the squad has been practicing in New Jersey.

    Two and a half years later, however, Ott Lovell has moved on to a new job, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has replaced Jim Kenney, and the Carousel House plan is still in the design phase.

    The new ribbon-cutting date: summer 2028.

    “I know this is a point of pain for many people, the timeline associated with this project,” Aparna Palantino, a deputy city managing director, acknowledged at a meeting Tuesday night announcing the “relaunch” of the project.

    The previous plan called for Carousel House to reopen this year.

    Palantino, who heads the city’s capital program office, said the expected cost of the project had risen from $35 million to $40 million. The work will still be funded primarily with beverage-tax proceeds, but the city had to line up grants to cover the difference, as well as conduct additional environmental and structural analyses.

    “The result of all that is this amazing space that will provide so many more opportunities than the former one did,” Palantino told an audience of several dozen.

    Aparna Palantino, deputy managing director of Capital Program Office, speaks with attendees during the Carousel House Rebuild Community Relaunch at the Please Touch Museum on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. The Carousel House project is estimated to be completed in Summer 2028.

    The state-of-the-art rec center will preserve some parts of the iconic Carousel House building and include two basketball courts, a heated lap pool and an activity pool with a zero-entry sloping entrance, a computer lab, a gym, a sensory room, and other amenities.

    Carousel House families miss their old home, as Philly eyes a new rec center plan for people with disabilities

    That all sounds great to people like Mike Martin, who has used a wheelchair for the last 30 years and has been going to Carousel House since the late 1990s. Such a place is needed in Philadelphia, where an estimated 17% of residents have a disability.

    But the lengthy delays in the project have Martin, 74, questioning whether he will ever see the vision become a reality.

    Martin and others would have preferred for the city to fix the existing building four years ago, when rec centers were reopening after the COVID-19 shutdown. A 2021 “Save the Carousel House” protest failed to sway city leaders.

    “The design is way more than I think we expected, not that we’re complaining at all,” said Martin, who serves on the Carousel House advisory committee. “We’ll see what kind of political will there is to push this through. I just don’t want to get my hopes up is what it comes down to.”

    Once a model

    Carousel House was considered a milestone when it opened in 1987: a city-funded rec center, specifically for people with physical and cognitive limitations, three years before the Americans with Disabilities Act would be signed into law.

    The Carousel House is pictured in Philadelphia’s West Fairmount Park on Wednesday, June 2, 2021. The city said it was permanently closing the recreation center for disabled people due to the facility’s deterioration.

    But in recent years, disability-rights advocates, both locally and nationally, have come to view that approach as outdated and even discriminatory. How is telling people with disabilities to go to one center, they ask, any different from designating centers for Black people, LGBTQ+ people, or other identity groups?

    “People with disabilities shouldn’t have to go to one place. That’s segregation, no matter how you look at it,” Fran Fulton, the late Philadelphia disability-rights activist, told The Inquirer in 2022. “There is no doubt having people who know how to work with children and adults with different types of disabilities is an advantage. But it doesn’t have to be just Carousel House.”

    Sadiki Smith (right) stands to dance as music therapist Madison Frank (left) with her guitar leads a music therapy session at Gustine Recreation Center Tuesday, November 29, 2022. Since the closing of the Carousel House, the city’s only rec center for people with physical and intellectual disabilities, many of the programs have moved to Gustine.

    The city was already moving in that direction before the pandemic with its long-term Rec for All inclusion plan. The goal is to eventually make the city’s 150 rec centers accessible to all residents. The new Carousel House will be open to all people in the surrounding neighborhoods, not just those with disabilities.

    That is welcome news for Lucinda Hudson, president of the Parkside Association of Philadelphia, who attended Tuesday’s meeting.

    “It’s well needed, and I think the community is pleased with how it’s coming together,” Hudson said. “We need a facility to be inclusive for all, and to support the handicapped community.”

    Worth the wait?

    Palantino said that while the Carousel House project has faced significant delays, city officials have continued to work behind the scenes. It is the largest project in the city’s beverage-tax funded Rebuild program, which has so far committed or spent $470 million.

    She believes the new building will be worth the wait.

    “It will be a universal space, so an entire family can come here and enjoy the amenities. The former Carousel House was a little more restrictive in the population it served,” Palantino said in an interview. “This will be the flagship rec center in the city when it’s completed.”

    Attendees look at blueprints during the Carousel House Rebuild Community Relaunch at the Please Touch Museum on Oct. 21.

    Families that frequented the Carousel House, however, are running out of patience.

    The Gustine Recreation Center in East Falls has continued some of the programs for people with disabilities, including music therapy, basketball, and social groups. But that center doesn’t have the space and amenities that Carousel House provided.

    “It’s just not the same,” said Tamar Riley, whose 43-year-old son had been going to Carousel House since he was 12.

    “Hopefully we can get this off the ground,” Riley, president of the advisory council for Carousel House, said of the plans presented this week. “It’s been a really long time. I know it’s going to be a beautiful place once the city gets it up and running.”

    The closure of Carousel House also forced Katie’s Komets, Philadelphia’s team in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association, to move its weekly practices to RiverWinds Community Center in West Deptford, Gloucester County.

    ‘Like a family’: Wheelchair basketball competition in West Philly is fierce (but in a good way)

    As a result, there is only one Philly player on the team, according to Joe Kirlin, who with his wife, Roseann, created a fund to support the team. The team is named after their late daughter.

    “The problem is city kids just can’t get over there,” Joe Kirlin said.

    Caroline Fitzpatrick (right), 14, of South Jersey, talks with friends during the Philadelphia Parks & Recreation’s 24th Annual Katie Kirlin Junior Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in Philadelphia on Sunday, Jan. 23, 2022. Fitzpatrick plays on Katie’s Komets team from Philadelphia.

    He said wheelchair athletes in the city are missing out on potential college opportunities. This year, all three high school graduates on Katie’s Komets received scholarships to play college wheelchair basketball.

    “That wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t start as kids playing wheelchair basketball,” Roseann Kirlin said.

    Lorraine Gomez, a community activist and president of the Viola Street Residents Association in East Parkside, said after Tuesday’s meeting that she appreciated the city’s efforts to keep the surrounding neighborhoods informed about the project.

    Gomez is looking forward to being able to use the indoor pool and walking track in the winter, and said people with disabilities also deserve “to have their space back.”

    “This is what the community needs,” Gomez said. “It’ll be a place where we can stay in touch with each other.”

    For Hudson, of the Parkside association, the most important thing now is to break ground.

    “So many things get put on the books, but don’t happen,” Hudson said. “This has got to be built.”

  • Frost advisories are posted as Philly has its chilliest spell in six months

    Frost advisories are posted as Philly has its chilliest spell in six months

    Frost advisories are up for Friday morning for areas just outside Philadelphia on both sides of the Delaware River as the region is about to experience its chilliest spell in more than six months.

    While the urban hotplate areas of Philly and Delaware County were not included in the National Weather Service advisory zones, cooler areas of the city and Delco could see some patchy white.

    “It is certainly possible,” said Zachary Cooper, a meteorologist at the agency’s Mount Holly office.

    Conditions conducive to frost — relatively clear skies, temperatures in the 30s, and light winds — may whiten the pumpkins in the region through the weekend.

    As per standard procedure, the weather service will be issuing frost advisories until the end of the growing season, defined as the first time temperatures reach 32 degrees or lower in a given area.

    It won’t be freezing, just frosty

    Philly’s first freezing reading typically doesn’t occur until mid-November, but frost can form with temperatures above 32.

    The air temperatures are measured about six feet off the ground, but they can be several degrees lower on the ground and on cooler surfaces.

    When winds are calm, they keep the air from mixing, and that allows thin layers of colder air to develop at ground level.

    The winds won’t be completely calm Friday morning, but “they should be light enough for favorable” frost conditions, the weather service said.

    The dry spell in the Philly region continues

    Temperatures should be several degrees below normal into next week, with highs mostly in the 50s and lows 35 to 40 degrees, the weather service says.

    Notably absent from the extended outlook is precipitation. Officially, at Philadelphia International Airport, only 0.81 inches of rain have fallen this month. That’s less than a third of normal.

    Most of the region is in “moderate drought,” and remaining areas are “abnormally dry,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor’s Thursday update.

    That could change the middle of next week, as computer models have been hinting at an active pattern.

    However, this should be a splendid weekend to get out and enjoy the burgeoning foliage show.

  • Penn faculty group says faculty, students facing ‘unfounded accusations of antisemitism’ from the university

    Penn faculty group says faculty, students facing ‘unfounded accusations of antisemitism’ from the university

    One University of Pennsylvania faculty member was called into a university office to answer for assigning “a pedagogically-relevant reading about conflict in Palestine,” others for political posts on personal social media accounts.

    One faced questions for wearing a stole with the Palestinian flag at an off-campus event.

    These are among “unfounded accusations of antisemitism” that Penn’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors said faculty and students have endured in the last year. Chapter representatives accompanied faculty to meetings at Penn’s Office of Religious and Ethnic Interests, which called the faculty in for questioning, according to a statement the group released Wednesday.

    Former Penn board chair Scott Bok and President Liz Magill discuss the upheaval that led to their resignations

    The religious and ethnic interests office oversees the implementation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, or shared ancestry. It was formed following accusations of antisemitism on campus in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, when Penn was roiled by dueling complaints of unfairly treating Jewish and pro-Palestinian members of its community.

    Then-Penn president Liz Magill resigned in December 2023 following a bipartisan backlash over her congressional committee testimony regarding antisemitism complaints, and the following spring, pro-Palestinian protesters erected an encampment on the College Green that ultimately was dismantled by police.

    Penn encampment disbanded by police

    Since January, President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted universities that it asserts have failed to respond adequately to antisemitism complaints, and the group of Penn professors said they are worried that the university is following the president’s lead.

    “We are concerned that Penn’s own Title VI office may be responding to these external pressures in a manner that risks chilling faculty speech and potentially discriminating against faculty in violation of the law,” the group asserted in a statement published on its website Wednesday. “… Faculty members, who in some cases had already been subject to targeted harassment, felt that they were expected to take unsubstantiated accusations of antisemitism at face value and to express contrition or offer some concession to their unidentified accuser, or face the possibility of disciplinary action.”

    Penn should do more to combat anti-Jewish bias on campus and reissue a statement opposing divestment from Israel, a university task force says

    Penn did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the religious and ethnic interests office.

    Penn announced the creation of the office in September 2024, noting it was the first of its kind nationally and saying it would ensure a consistent response across all of its schools.

    “Over the past year, our campus and our country witnessed a disquieting surge in antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of religious and ethnic intolerance,” J. Larry Jameson, who was then interim president and was named president six months later, said at the time. “The Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion (Title VI) is being formed to confront this deeply troubling trend, and to serve as a stand-alone center for education and complaint resolution.”

    The office formally opened in December with the foundational goals of educating, investigating, mediating, and evaluating. Its codirectors are Steve Ginsburg, who had served over a decade as an executive of the Anti-Defamation League, and Majid Alsayegh, founder of Alta Management Services LLC, which helped clients with criminal justice reform. The office’s chief investigator is Deborah Frey, who previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, working on discrimination complaints.

    “Because of our own lived experiences as targets of bigotry, we know this work is not going to be easy,” Ginsburg had told Penn Today. “These issues are complex and require deep thought and sensitivity for those who are impacted.”

    Faculty and students were not named in Wednesday’s statement and declined to comment through an AAUP executive committee member out of fear of retribution or harassment. The AAUP did not disclose the number of faculty and students involved.

    But the reports “come almost exclusively from faculty who are Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and/or Black,” the group said, giving rise to concerns about potential discrimination.

    The faculty and students referred to in the letter were not sanctioned or punished for their activities, but the mere act of being called in and questioned has “a chilling effect” on research, teaching, and speech, said the AAUP executive committee member, who asked not to be identified because the chapter wanted to speak with one voice.

    “For instance, in one meeting, a faculty member whose peer-reviewed research was subject to a complaint was pressured to make a modification to the presentation of that research, although their work had the support of their colleagues and dean,” the AAUP chapter said.

    In that case, the faculty member had been called in because the research “referenced a third-party resource that a complainant claimed, without evidence, promoted hatred of Israel and of Jews in the United States,” the letter stated.

    The chapter called on the office to “clarify and modify its procedures to ensure the transparency, consistency, and fairness essential to carrying out the office’s mission.”

    And it asked the office to respond to a series of questions, including about the criteria it uses to decide whether to pursue a complaint.

  • More than 300,000 Pennsylvanians need help heating their homes. The federal shutdown has delayed that assistance.

    More than 300,000 Pennsylvanians need help heating their homes. The federal shutdown has delayed that assistance.

    More than 300,000 Pennsylvanians who struggle to pay their heating bills will need to wait longer for assistance from the state government due to funding stoppages caused by the federal government shutdown.

    The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services said in a news release Wednesday that Pennsylvania will delay the opening of this year’s Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) until at least Dec. 3 because of a pause in federal funding due to the shutdown. The program was originally scheduled to open on Nov. 3.

    The opening date for the program will be reassessed once the shutdown ends and is contingent on the state receiving the delayed federal funds, Brandon Cwalina, DHS press secretary, said in a statement Thursday.

    LIHEAP distributes benefits to utility companies or home heating fuel providers for Pennsylvanians who need assistance paying their heating bills. The state has received more than $200 million each of the last two years from the federal government to carry out the program.

    Pennsylvania Human Services Secretary Val Arkoosh said in the news release that the program “is especially critical for older adults and low-income families” as colder months approach.

    Once DHS receives federal funding after the shutdown ends, the department will begin accepting LIHEAP applications and will continue processing applications that had been received during the shutdown.

    This announcement comes the same week that DHS said nearly 2 million Pennsylvanians will not receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) next month if the shutdown continues. The food assistance program provides $366 million a month to low-income people in Pennsylvania, including roughly 500,000 in Philadelphia.

    Joline Price, an attorney in the energy unit at Community Legal Services who works with clients to advocate for their access to water, heat, and electricity, said many of the same households could be affected by a lack of SNAP benefits and assistance in paying their heating bills, creating a “huge and devastating impact.” The program assisted 56,000 Philadelphia households last season, she noted.

    “Even if some of these benefits become available later in November, they’re gonna be making really serious choices between food and utilities,” Price said. “It’s gonna be — I don’t even know that I have the words — it’s going to be bad.”

    Other resources are available in the meantime — for instance, some electric and gas companies offer assistance programs — but there are gaps that remain with LIHEAP help beginning later than expected. For instance, Pennsylvania has an annual winter utility shut-off moratorium for qualified residents from Dec. 1 through March 31, though it does not eliminate any outstanding home heating bills, DHS said.

    Prior to Dec. 1, low-income Pennsylvanians who are already “drowning” in utility costs could see their electric or gas shut off, Price said.

    “Until then, folks are vulnerable to having their electric or their gas shut off, which would then bring them into the winter without safe heating sources,” Price said.

    Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and members of his administration are arguing that impacts to crucial services are on the shoulders of Republicans in Washington, who hold both chambers of Congress and the White House. Meanwhile, Republicans are blaming the shutdown on Democrats because the majority party cannot pass funding legislation in the Senate without at least seven Democrats crossing the aisle.

    Arkoosh echoed Shapiro’s messaging Wednesday, saying of LIHEAP: “Inaction from the Republican-controlled Congress now threatens access to this assistance.”

    “I urge Congress and the White House to recognize the serious consequences that limiting heating assistance will have on the health and safety of people in Pennsylvania. Congress must come together for a solution that protects people most at risk,” she said.

  • ‘You could park a car down there’: Sinkhole closes part of Schuylkill Trail in Center City

    A portion of the popular Schuylkill River Trail in Center City has been closed and fenced off indefinitely after a “chasm”-sized sinkhole formed under the asphalt.

    The trail is closed between Race Street and JFK Boulevard, just north of the SEPTA Bridge, according to the Schuylkill River Development Corp. (SRDC), a nonprofit that has helped revitalize the section of the trail known as Schuylkill Banks.

    The SRDC said that it is working with Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, the Philadelphia Water Department, and engineers “to figure out what caused the large cavity to form and what is needed to make the necessary repairs.”

    It has posted a map of a detour that can be used until repairs are made.

    A map of a detour for the Schuylkill River Trail closure between Race Street and JFK Boulevard, which closed for emergency repairs after a sinkhole appeared Oct. 23, 2025

    .

    Joseph Syrnick, president and CEO of the SRDC, said the hole first came to the attention of his staff when a trail user reported it last week. At first, it appeared to be only a small hole, Syrnick said.

    “By the time we got to it, it was about the size of a cantaloupe,” he said. “And then within a short time, it opened up the size of a small pumpkin. We immediately barricaded it off and made it safe.”

    Syrnick said the hole was covered with plywood and cones were placed around it to block access by trail users. Crews began to explore the hole more thoroughly.

    “We stuck our heads down there through the hole the size of the pumpkin, and saw a huge void. It’s like 8 by 10 [feet]. You could park a car down there — almost. So this has obviously been going on for a long time and luckily we caught it before it collapsed.”

    Syrnick called it a “chasm” under the asphalt.

    On Friday, SRDC hired an engineer, and then brought in the water department. The decision was made to block off the trail completely.

    Although part of the trail remained covered, it took until Monday to put fencing and signs in place, completely sealing off any access.

    “Theoretically, it could have collapsed,” Syrnick said.

    Syrnick did not have a time frame for when the trail would reopen. He said his team needs to find the cause first. A repair could mean minor or major construction.

    A sign warning people that part of the Schuylkill trail is closed for repairs between JFK Boulevard and Race Street after a sinkhole was discovered.

    “I think we’re lucky finding this in the middle of fall, heading in the winter,” Syrnick said, “which is way better than finding it in the middle of spring, heading in the summer.”

    Brian Rademaekers, a spokesperson for the water department, said it is working with SRDC to investigate the cave-in along the trail at Arch Street.

    Rademaekers said crews will use dye to trace the source in an effort to determine a possible cause. He said that the nontoxic dye may cause discolored water in the Schuylkill, but that it is not a threat to people or wildlife.

    “Once the results from this testing are evaluated,” Rademaekers said, “the PWD will work with SRDC to determine next steps needed to reopen the trail. Trail users should follow signage and advisories issued by the SRDC.

    Rademaekers said the water department would not likely have an update on the situation until at least Friday.