YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School

  • 1231 N. Broad St., 5th Floor
  • North Philadelphia  
  • Current Enrollment: 159 (400 authorized)
  • Date school began: 1997
  • Executive Director salary/compensation:  $159,564
  • CFO salary/compensation:  $128,126 
  • Minimum projected cost to District for next 5 years: $12 ,862 ,606.

2021 CSO Recommendation:  Five-year renewal

Academic Success: N/A

YouthBuild’s website states that the school was established in 1992 as a program for “high school dropouts”. The Board of Education voted to convert YouthBuild to a charter school in 1997. YouthBuild students enter the program in 12th grade; therefore, the CSO does not use standardized test scores to evaluate academic progress.  The CSO evaluation report states:  “YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School serves opportunity youth in Grade 12, with a program that focuses on providing students with vocational training simultaneously to completing academic coursework required to graduate from high school. Due to the unique mission of the school, they are held accountable to metrics that sit outside of the charter school performance framework. The following metrics are presented below, along with the floors and targets embedded into the school’s charter agreement.”  Except for Academic Competencies, each metric has a Floor and a Target value.  The school is given one point if it meets the Target and a half point if it meets the Floor.  However, even with the adapted metrics, Youth Build does not meet its requirements in several categories.

The school did not meet the Target of 70% mastery in Academic Competency. The school was  below all four years of the charter, even after rising from  56% in 2016-17 to 67% in 2019-20.

The Target for meeting Community Service is 80%; the Floor is 70%.   The school did not meet the Target or the Floor in any of the four years evaluated; there was a slight rise from 60% to 63%, but that fell to 58% in SY 2019-20. 

The Target rate for meeting Diploma Attainment is 78%; the Floor is 72%.   Youth Build came close to reaching the Floor in the final year of the term; previous rates were 58%, 62% and 61%. 

The Target rate for meeting Vocational Certification Attainment is 78%; the Floor is 70%. The school did not meet either the Target or the Floor in any for the 4 years evaluated. Scores for the first 3 years were 58% 58%, 57%.  They fell to 20% in the 4th year.

In the first two years of the term, YouthBuild students met the Target of 80% of graduates officially enrolled in a Post-Secondary Placement including technical schools and 2- and 4-year college programs, or obtained a job or enrolled in a job training or certification program.  They meet the Floor value of 70% in the third year.  The fourth year is listed as N/A.

The CSO evaluation  includes Attendance data but does not use it for evaluation purposes because of the “unique mission of the school.”  The 2019-20 attendance data “reflects attendance through March 13, 2020.” Only 4% of students or less attended 95% of days or more during the 4-year term.  Chronic Absenteeism Rates for the 4 years ranged from 89% to 98%.

YouthBuild approaches the Organizational standard but did not meet the standard in several areas.   The school Does not meet Standard (0/10) in Personnel because of missing child abuse clearances: 6 of 10 files reviewed were missing  evidence of Act 168 documentation; 3 of 10 files reviewed were missing evidence of valid PA Child Abuse Clearances for the duration of the charter term.  Youth Build Does not Meet Standard (0/10) in Health and Safety for several reasons including non-compliance in three food safety inspections. The health policy did not include screening or immunization requirements, nor did it acknowledge School’s responsibility to provide screenings; evacuation drill violations. The school approaches the standard for Board Governance with only half of the total points.  YouthBuild’s teacher tenure rate is  4.6 years compared to the District’s 13.2 years.