February 10, 2016
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Drexel University's Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships temporarily will house the new Science Leadership Academy Middle School.
The new Science Leadership Academy Middle School will open this fall at Drexel University's Dana and David Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships.
The school will rent a portion of the Dornsife Center, located at 3509 Spring Garden St., for at least two years before moving into a building to be constructed on the former site of University City High School. The school will open to 90 fifth-grade students in the fall, but ultimately will serve 360 students in Grades 5-8.
The school will operate as a partnership between the School District of Philadelphia, Drexel and Inquiry Schools, a nonprofit that helped launch the Science Leadership Academy and its Beeber campus. Start-up costs are being funded in part by a $1.8 million grant from the Philadelphia School Partnership.
It will serve as the neighborhood catchment school for Samuel Powel Elementary School, which currently includes students in kindergarten through fourth grade. Powel is adding pre-kindergarten and fifth grade, as well as an additional classroom per grade.
“The new Science Leadership Academy Middle School is part of an overall strategy to create more innovative schools in The School District of Philadelphia,” Superintendent William R. Hite said in a statement. “This school scales Philadelphia’s successful Science Leadership Academy model into the middle grades. We are excited to form a deep partnership with Drexel University around this academic model.”
