Lea-Penn Partnership

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January 14, 2022

To the students, families, staff, and partners of Henry C. Lea Elementary School,

It is with great excitement that I share with you a vision for the future of our school and the beginning of a process through which we will dream of and design for that future together. Over the last two years, we have experienced the most challenging conditions that our school community has ever faced. During these difficult times, it is important that we continue moving forward as a school so we are always growing, improving, and keeping pace with the interests and needs of our students and school community. Over the coming years, we are committed to a student-centered learning model through which teaching and learning is focused on students’ lived experiences and their questions about the world, and where students participate in community-connected projects. Our development as a student-centered school will be a school-wide effort, and we are committed to working with all of you to make sure that we continue to grow into the school that every Lea student deserves.

I am also excited to share that we are in discussions with the School District of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers about ways to support our school’s future development. Our hope is to move towards an agreement that would provide support for a five-year period to help the Lea school community realize its vision for student-centered learning.

As you probably know, our school partners with many different community-based organizations, non-profit organizations, and local institutions. The partnership between Henry C. Lea School and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) is one of our oldest and most wide-ranging relationships, dating back to the 1960s, and has grown stronger in recent years. Penn supports Lea through staffing, programming, and resources that help address the holistic interests and needs of Lea students, families, and staff. At the same time, Lea contributes to Penn’s vision and mission, as our school serves as a site of learning, apprenticeship, and service for many Penn students, faculty, and staff every school year.

As our school’s principal, I am committed to leading a process through which our school community can discuss and design together a strengthened partnership to achieve our collective goals. I am committed to making this process inclusive, most importantly by engaging with the diverse communities that make up our Lea school community––including students, families, school staff, partners, community members, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, the School District of Philadelphia, and Penn. And I am committed to a process that is equitable and open so that we hear and listen to the many and varied interests and needs of the members of our school community.

The conversations between the District and Penn about the proposed partnership are still ongoing, with many details still to be worked out, but I am optimistic that we are moving in a positive direction. Over the coming months, there will be a number of opportunities to share your opinions, questions, concerns, and hopes regarding the Lea-Penn Partnership and the future of our school. We will start by hosting town halls and meetings during the months of January and February 2022, and will schedule various open meetings and focus groups in the following months, as well as use surveys to gather input and feedback. Information about our first round of meetings can be found in the chart below. Information about future meetings, focus groups, and surveys will be shared in advance through various channels including letters, emails, our school website (https://lea.philasd.org/), the Lea Express newsletter (https://sites.google.com/philasd.org/lea-express/current-issue), ClassDojo, and the District’s automated messaging service, School Messenger.

For students and families

Wednesday 1/19/22: Monthly School Advisory Council (SAC) meeting

5:30 pm on Zoom: https://philasd-org.zoom.us/j/4566437297

SAC meetings are open to all Lea families and school staff!

Wednesday 1/26/22: Family town halls

10:00 am (morning) on Zoom: https://philasd-org.zoom.us/j/4566437297

6:00 pm (evening) on Zoom: https://philasd-org.zoom.us/j/4566437297

These separate town halls––1 in the morning and 1 in the evening––are open to all Lea families!

Wednesday 2/9/22: Monthly Home & School Association (HSA) meeting

7:00 pm on Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/lea-hsa-mtg-zoom-21-22

HSA meetings are open to all Lea families!

March – June 2022

More information to be shared soon!

For school staff

Monday 1/3/22: District-wide full-day staff professional development

Friday 1/21/22: District-wide half-day staff professional development

Friday 2/18/22: District-wide half-day staff professional development

March – June 2022

More information to be shared soon!

For partners and community members

Tuesday 1/25/22: Winter all-partner meeting

10:00 am on Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/9967328100

February – June 2022

More information to be shared soon!

It is both exciting and demanding to have an opportunity like this before us while we are all dealing with so many challenges in our school, community, and city. This opportunity to plan together for the future of our school has filled me with hope, and I am excited to work with all of you to collaborate on our continued growth as a school community.

Humbly,

Aaron Gerwer

Principal | Henry C. Lea Elementary School

agerwer@philasd.org | 215-400-7660 | https://lea.philasd.org/

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The Lea-Penn Partnership

Among its many and varied school-community relationships, the Lea-Penn Partnership is the most wide-ranging and significant. The Lea-Penn Partnership is an institutional partnership between Henry C. Lea Elementary School, the School District of Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) that endeavors to foster student academic achievement, as well as support the holistic interests and needs of Lea students, families, and staff. The Lea-Penn Partnership accomplishes this by providing a variety of strategically aligned resources to the school community while employing mutually agreed upon partnership practices and metrics.

Lea has cultivated partnerships with a number of “Penn-connected” partner programs, organizations, and initiatives, including a variety of Penn schools, departments, centers, organizations, programs, and courses. Lea’s Penn-connected partners include the Graduate School of Education, the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, the School of Social Policy & Practice, the School of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Arts and Sciences, and Penn Libraries. As of the beginning of the 2021-2022 academic year, of Lea’s 37 partner organizations, 15 of them (41%) are Penn-connected organizations, and of Lea’s 54 partner programs, 40 of them (74%) are Penn-connected programs.

Penn Partnership Schools

The Lea-Penn Partnership makes Lea one of two “Penn partnership schools,” which are K-12 schools that possess a unique institutional partnership with the university. The other Penn partnership school is the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School, also known as the “Penn Alexander School,” or “PAS.” Both Lea and PAS are public elementary schools governed by the School District of Philadelphia, and with student populations of a similar size. Both schools reside in the same neighborhood in West Philadelphia — Lea at 4700 Locust Street, and PAS at 4209 Spruce Street — in close proximity to the Penn campus and with catchment areas that border one another.

Both Lea and PAS partner with and receive support from the university, yet the character and quantity of Penn support differs between the two partnership schools. While both schools receive in-kind support from different Penn schools, departments, and organizations/groups in the form of the varying categories of programming outlined above, Lea hosts over 30 such Penn-connected programs, while PAS hosts no more than a handful. And while Penn provides both schools with financial support to complement the in-kind support it receives from different Penn-connected programs, PAS receives an annual operating contribution from Penn of $1,330 per student, while Lea receives an annual operating contribution of over $300,000 from Penn.

While both Penn partnership schools certainly benefit from their institutional partnership with Penn, each school also contributes in significant ways to the vision and mission of the university. Lea serves as a site of learning, apprenticeship, or service for nearly 400 community-based collaborators every school year, of which the majority are connected to Penn. Lea staff mentor Penn interns studying in a variety of fields in the social sciences, while Penn undergraduate and graduate students serving in a variety of roles in different partner programs have the opportunity to develop skills and learn lessons that cannot be acquired or experienced in a Penn lecture hall. The Lea school community — students, families, staff, and members of the wider community — welcomes these Penn-connected individuals into their community and supports them as they make mistakes, learn, and grow as volunteers or professionals, as citizens, as human beings.

Community Partnerships Coordinator and Lea-Penn Liaison

In recent years, Penn has increased its engagement with Lea, with one of the most significant developments being the expansion of the Lea-Penn Partnership during the 2013-2014 academic year that resulted not only in increased financial support from the university, but also in the creation of the Lea-Penn Liaison position responsible for coordinating the school-university institutional partnership. Under the direction of the Principal, during the 2017-2018 school year, the Lea-Penn Liaison assumed the title of “Community Partnerships Coordinator” (CPC) due to the position’s added responsibility of coordinating all of the school’s partnerships, including those with organizations that are not connected to the university.

During the three academic years spanning from the fall semester of 2013 until the spring semester of 2016, the role of Lea-Penn Liaison was filled by Dr. Caroline Watts, a Penn Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) faculty member who currently serves as the Director of School and Community Engagement at Penn GSE. In the summer of 2016, ShaVon Savage was hired by the School District of Philadelphia to serve as the new Principal of Lea Elementary School (2016-2020), and she collaborated with Dr. Watts to identify a new Lea-Penn Liaison.

Since August 2016, Richard Liuzzi has served as the CPC and Lea-Penn Liaison at Lea. Mr. Liuzzi — known to everyone at Lea as “Mr. Rich” — is a doctoral student at the Penn Graduate School of Education studying educational leadership in the Teaching, Learning, and Leadership division. He possesses extensive experience in developing school-community-university partnerships, and works closely with the Principal in managing the design, coordination, and sustainability of all Lea partnerships.

The Community Partnerships Coordinator and Lea-Penn Liaison is responsible for supervising and supporting school-partner coordination, collaboration, and communication at Lea, and thus serves as the primary point of contact for all school partners. More detailed information about the Community Partnerships Coordinator/Lea-Penn Liaison position can be found on this site's Partnerships Coordinator page.