The trickle begins in the fall, some principals say: Students with a history of behavior or disciplinary problems or other issues show up in Philadelphia School District schools, often from city charters.
Students switch schools after the start of the school year for many reasons — and changing schools is fairly common in Philadelphia.
But at times, it seems like some students are off-loaded from charters because they’re tough to educate, according to interviews with a dozen district administrators. In district schools, administrators cannot remove students for such issues.
Advocates at the Education Law Center have noted that trend, as has the head of the district’s principals union — all of whom call it concerning, especially in a school system with large numbers of needy students and not enough resources to educate them.
“In October, in November, in December, that’s when we see the counseling out, the threats of expulsion that say, ‘We’re going to expel you, but you can go to a district school and then you won’t be expelled,’” said Margie Wakelin, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Education Law Center-PA.
Cassandra St. Vil, chief executive officer of a group that represents a large number of Philadelphia charters, said she is not aware of any data to support those anecdotal claims.
“For years, opponents of charter schools have tried to use this message and yet there has never been any evidence to back it up,” said St. Vil, of Philadelphia Charters for Excellence. “And conversely, we hear from charter school leaders the exact same thing, that students come to them.”
District data show that over the last three years, there has been a steady flow of charter students transferring to district schools throughout the school year. In the 2024-25 school year, for instance, 161 students transferred from brick-and-mortar charters to district schools in September. By June, it was 843 students, just a fraction of the total charter sector.
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Charters educate more than 64,000 Philadelphia students; there are about 114,000 in district schools.
“While this is not an issue across the entire charter sector, the district is looking at the data, and working with the Charter Schools Office,” Christina Clark, a district spokesperson, said in a statement. “The district is working to analyze enrollment trends across all sectors.”
Robin Cooper, president of Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, Teamsters Local 502, said many district schools get a stream of students beginning in the fall, after district schools’ budgets are locked in on Oct. 1, then another in the spring, just before state testing. (Students’ scores count for the schools they attended on Oct. 1, even if they switch schools after that date.)
“They’re not sending the kids who get A’s, the good kids, they’re sending you the kids who might have problems,” said Cooper, who was a longtime district principal before assuming the union presidency. “It negatively impacts your climate, and the charter is getting the money for the student.”
One district principal, who declined to be named for fear of reprisal, said they recently stopped in a hallway to talk to a student who had just transferred to the district school from a charter.
“She said, ‘They kicked me out for fighting,’” the principal said. “Here, we can’t kick a student out for fighting. I said, ‘Welcome to our school. I’m in the business of growing children.’”
Students ‘counseled out’ of charters
Charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately managed, though authorized by local boards of education — have transformed Philadelphia’s educational landscape since they first came to Pennsylvania in 1997.
Charters are funded by per-student payments from the school district, but are paid only for the number of days enrolled.
By law, charters are open to all students, and most operate on citywide lotteries — though some are neighborhood schools.
A 2017 Education Law Center analysis of the enrollment of special education students in Pennsylvania charters found that “while a number of individual charter schools equitably serve all students, the charter school sector taken as a whole generally underserves these vulnerable student populations.”
Anecdotally, district principals say in some cases, they see students with behavior problems or learning differences accepted to some charters, but then some of them are “counseled out.” That means they are not officially expelled or forced to leave, but strongly encouraged or pressured to do so after a disciplinary issue crops up.
In district schools, the bar for expulsion is much higher — for incidents such as using a weapon, or threatening mass violence.
Wakelin, of the Education Law Center, said she recently spoke to a parent whose child has a significant disability. The parent had multiple conversations with the charter school about the child’s needs. She said the school kept telling the family: We’ll help.
“And then very recently, the charter school said, ‘You know, you might be better served in a district school that has more resources for a student with autism,’” said Wakelin, who declined to name the school in question.
‘It’s no secret’
After the start of the school year, another district principal said, comes a bump in charter transfers.
“We see an increase every year,” said the principal, who, like other current and former district administrators who spoke to The Inquirer, asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. “It’s not talked about, but in the schools, it’s no secret.”
When new students transfer in, an administrator often asks why they left their old school.
“Most of them say it’s because they were kicked out of whatever charter school they were at — they got into a fight, or whatever,” the principal said. “And most of the times, it’s things that we can’t move students for in the Philadelphia School District.”
Lawrence Jones, longtime chief executive officer of the Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School in Southwest Philadelphia, said there is “an urban myth” that charters off-load problem students to district schools and then benefit financially for doing so. (There is a common perception that charters get paid for students based on their Oct. 1 enrollment counts, and keep the money if students go elsewhere, but charters actually get paid for the number of days students are enrolled.)
“The gain that you could potentially get for dropping those kids, financially and other funding, would be less than if you held onto those students,” said Jones.
But a third district principal called the issue a particular challenge for neighborhood schools, which already typically tend to have higher concentrations of children with complicated needs. Public schools often get needy students midyear, but no additional funding. Their budgets are projected in the spring, but finalized in the fall.
“It’s just not fair,” said the third principal. “We’re not getting their best kids.”
That principal is currently experiencing what they call “the season when we get charter kids,” they said. “They send them to us for discipline issues, uniform violations.”
‘A sword that cuts both ways’
The practice engenders deep frustration, principals say.
“Public schools can’t turn kids away. It’s not like the charter world where you can say, ‘No, I’m full, have a nice day.’ In public school, you take the kid, crowded or not, and figure it out,” a fourth principal said.
St. Vil, of Philadelphia Charters for Excellence, which represents 64 schools, disputes that characterization. She noted that nearly 80% of the city’s charter students are Black or Latino, and many have special needs or are English learners.
“These schools are achieving real success stories for students who too often haven’t thrived in one-size-fits-all settings,” St. Vil said.
Jones, of Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School, said that while there may be some isolated instances where a charter counsels out a student with difficulties, “it’s a sword that cuts both ways.” Students sometimes come to charters from district schools with inadequate special-education plans, he said.
Parents enrolling their children at Richard Allen have told him that they were told his school “could provide better services,” Jones said. “I asked, ‘By who?’ And they said, ‘By staff at the former school, the district school.’”
