At 10, a North Philly prep school savors success

Ten years ago, Germantown Academy teamed with Project HOME to create something unique: a small, top-notch private school for low-income kids in North Philadelphia.

With alumni placed in high-achieving prep schools around the region, the Community Partnership School (CPS) is celebrating a decade of success and making plans to expand.

"When people ask what I feel are the greatest accomplishments in my time at GA, I always list the Partnership School," said James Connor, who's retiring in June after heading that independent school for 26 years. "It allowed us as a school to broaden our definition of what GA could mean."

The school, which opened its doors at Project HOME's Honickman Learning Center in the fall of 2006, began with 34 children from prekindergarten through first grade. A grade was added each year until the school included fifth.

Connor, who nurtured the spark for the Partnership School with GA's board, said the goal was to give low-income students access to a curriculum based on Germantown Academy's and enrichment opportunities to provide a solid foundation for college-prep coursework.

He said he was frustrated that GA, which has 1,125 students in pre-K through 12th grade and had recruited low-income students, could not reach more. The idea was to "take GA to more people," Connor recalled. GA had moved from Germantown to Fort Washington in 1965, and the Partnership School also was a way for the academy to give back to the city where it was founded in 1759.

Project HOME, which contributed $1 million to help get the school launched, provides leased space at a discounted rate.

"It has been a tremendous project, because to have a quality education for prekindergarten to fifth grade is transformative in the lives of these children," said Sister Mary Scullion, Project HOME's president and executive director. "We can see how these kids just thrive in that environment."

The school recruits from the surrounding zip codes of 19132 and 19121 - the latter the second poorest in the city, Scullion noted.

National experts said the school was the first private inner-city school in the country created by another nonsectarian private school in partnership with a social-service agency.

Community Partnership's 91 students are in classes with no more than 14 children. Infused in all schoolwork is instruction that focuses on social skills, problem-solving strategies, and helping students identify their own feeling and those of others. Class meetings provide opportunities for students to sit in circles, participate in exercises, and share thoughts with teachers and Eliza Taylor, school counselor.

"We're doing a class meeting," fourth grader Nadya Davis, 10, explained recently. "When we have problems we talk, and [Taylor] helps us."

Families sign annual contracts and agree to attend five meetings a year. They pay tuition on a sliding scale based on income, but no one pays the full $12,000 cost. The average tab is $800 per year.

Board Chair Jocelyn Hillman said only 6 percent of the school's revenue comes from tuition. She said half comes from individual donors and 5 percent from foundations. Thirty percent comes from state programs that give tax credits to corporations that contribute to approved scholarship programs. The rest comes from fund-raising.

"Our donors are more committed and excited because they have seen our results," Hillman said.

National standardized tests show 91 percent of fifth graders score at or above grade level in reading; 86 percent in math.

The school's 60 graduates have gone to other private, magnet, and top charter schools. Ten of the 11 students in the first graduating class in 2011 are sophomores in high school and are on track to graduate on time.

All are still in school, according to the alumni office, which helps place students and continues to work with them and their families.

Asim Richards, a 2012 graduate who is now a freshman at the Haverford School, said: "I liked the people and the teachers. I could go to them when I needed help with anything."

Richards, 15, who arrived at CPS from a neighborhood school in third grade, marveled that there were only 13 students in his class.

Layla Raye-Ryan, 13, arrived at the Partnership School on opening day in 2006 for prekindergarten and recalls her seven years warmly.

"I just felt like it was a great opportunity for me," said Raye-Ryan, an eighth grader at Norwood-Fontbonne Academy, a private Catholic school in Chestnut Hill. "I got a lot of experiences that most kids in that area would not have gotten if they had not gone to that school."

Connor said he was thrilled by the school's success and noted that GA's involvement scaled back once the school had its own board and hired Eric Jones, the former director of diversity at Episcopal Academy, to head CPS the second year.

"Over the years the response to the school from all corners has emboldened us," said Jones, who knows firsthand how a private school education can open doors.

"I came from a neighborhood just like this one in Washington, D.C.," recalled Jones, who attended neighborhood schools through ninth grade.

The youngest of seven, he said his parents decided to embark on what he called "a last-ditch effort to try to get one of their kids to college. None of my siblings went."

He transferred to a private school in 10th grade, and his parents took extra jobs to pay for it. By the end of his first year, Jones said he was talking about the colleges to which he was going to apply.

"My expectation was that 'I'm going,' " Jones said. "To me, that is kind of the mind shift that these schools foster."

He has an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and a master's from Union Theological Seminary in New York.

The Partnership School, Jones said, which typically has space to admit only 15 to 20 children a year, received 10 times that number of applications last time.

"It's left us feeling confident that a bigger CPS, more Community Partnership, so to speak, is certainly valuable and useful."

He and Hillman said CPS is in the quiet phase of a campaign to raise money for its endowment, reserves, and capital to buy its own building so the school can double in size. CPS intends to remain intimate, but wants space for two classes per grade.

"We've talked about potentially extending into middle school, but we feel we've learned a lot about the prekindergarten through fifth-grade years," Jones said. "Let's do more of that."

The school's board has identified a building in the area, and Jones hopes the move can be made for the 2017-18 academic year.

"When we can invest in human potential as early as possible - that life, that child," Jones said, has a better chance of actually staying on a road that leads to well-being and success into adulthood."

martha.woodall@phillynews.com

215-854-2789 @marwooda