KaTiedra Argro has been on a mission: restore her school’s reputation as a premier Philadelphia educational institution where young women hone their skills, excel as leaders, and find their voices.
The principal of the Philadelphia High School for Girls spent last fall visiting 48 elementary and middle schools to recruit students. She went all over the city, from Northeast to Southwest, to sell kids on an historic all-girls school that was founded 13 years before the Civil War.
A member of Girls High’s Class of 1999, Argro came to a difficult conclusion. “My takeaway was that nobody knows what the Philadelphia High School for Girls was anymore,” she said.
Girls High is one of the oldest all-girls public high schools in the country and still one of the largest, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of federal data. But the pillar of Philadelphia education is suffering from a “diminishing” brand, Argro said. In the 1980s, the school’s enrollment reportedly reached 2,000 students . Its famous graduates include feminist attorney Gloria Allred, R&B star Jill Scott, and Barbara Harris, the first woman ordained a bishop of the Episcopal Church…