From the outside, Building 21 looks like a typical school in Philadelphia’s West Oak Lane neighborhood: four stories, brick, impersonal. Cops and metal detectors greet students each morning on the ground floor. Its classrooms are devoid of the high-tech hardware typically associated with cutting-edge schools.
But looks can be deceiving. Most weeks, this school sends students to work in high-rise offices, tech firms or a coding center it runs downtown.
In fact, the building’s past history as a neighborhood elementary school may be the only reminder of the big, comprehensive and often unsafe public high schools from which it’s often a refuge.
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Offering a dizzying array of internships, college courses and dual enrollment opportunities, Building 21 challenges nearly all of the conventional wisdom about what an urban public high school should do.
Unlike most urban high schools, Building 21 is small: Enrollment is capped at 400 students, with classes of just 25 or fewer.