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06/30/2011

That’s the charter spirit

The success of two local charter schools spurs their officials to go one step further.

By Tom Waring, Northeast Times Star-
Gerald Santilli and Stacey Cruise are proud of what they created in 2002.

That year, the First Philadelphia Charter School for Literacy opened. Earlier this month, the school, at 4300 Tacony St., graduated its first class that completed kindergarten through eighth grade.

Its sister school, Tacony Academy Charter School, opened in 2009 at the former Orleans Technical Institute building in Rhawnhurst. It hopes to find a permanent location in Tacony.

According to Santilli and Cruise, the schools have compiled records of 97 percent attendance and 96.5 percent student retention and Pennsylvania System of School Assessment scores that are 18 percent higher in mathematics and nearly 27 percent higher in reading than comparable scores in Philadelphia public schools.

“We’re really pleased with the progress in nine years,” said Santilli, former executive director of financial services for the School District of Philadelphia.

At a gala affair held earlier this month at the Independence Visitors Center, Santilli and Cruise announced the formation of American Paradigm Schools, a non-profit educational management organization that is designed to improve education in struggling urban schools and districts across America and eliminate the achievement gap for children.

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