The Yass Prize, founded by Susquehanna co-founder Jeff Yass and his wife Janine, announced Wednesday that it will fund scholarships for 500 Philadelphia children to attend private school. The need is pressing because the city plans to close 17 district schools in 2027 thanks to declining enrollment. The 4,000 or so students whose schools are closing are eligible for the scholarships, worth $8,000 a year through high school graduation. Scholarships are awarded first-come, first served.
Students can take the scholarships to some 16 private schools near Philadelphia that the Yass Prize organization has recognized as innovative and promising. That includes Liguori Academy, a high school that offers building trades training, and St. Francis de Sales, a Catholic elementary school.
A new school can be life-changing. Only a third of Philadelphia students were proficient in English, and a quarter in math, on state tests last year. That’s the horrifying return on school district spending of about $32,000 per student, according to the Commonwealth Foundation. District-staffing surged while enrollment dropped 12% from 2016 to 2025.
Parents have few other options to escape, though many try. That’s the takeaway from a new Commonwealth Foundation report on the state’s two modest programs that offer tax credits to businesses and individuals who donate to scholarship organizations. More than 100,000 mostly lower-income children used the tax-credit scholarships in 2023-24, the most recent year with data available. But funding caps leave tens of thousands of students on waiting lists, says the report.