Despite relying on SEPTA to get kids to school, one Philly charter has boosted attendance. Here’s how they did it.

SEPTA and Harrisburg lawmakers threw schools — and much of the region — a curveball this summer, with deep mass transit cuts affecting thousands.

But the staff of Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School developed something of a battle plan going into the 2025-26 school year.

CEO William Hayes and his team spent weeks before the term began connecting with parents, helping students think through how their commutes might change, even adding students to yellow bus routes the school pays for.

» READ MORE: SEPTA cuts made Philly schools’ attendance tumble significantly

“We didn’t take the approach of, ‘We don’t care what’s happening with SEPTA, be here on time or else,’” said Hayes. “It was grace and understanding for how this could negatively impact them. We had to proactively support.”

It’s worked so far — average daily attendance was 96% among middle school students and 92% among high school students for the first few days after SEPTA service cuts, compared with 91% among middle school students and 88% among high school students for a comparable period last school year.

This year, the tardiness rate is 10% among middle school students and 21% among high school students - last year, it was 7% and 9%, respectively.

Meanwhile, SEPTA cuts have affected attendance at district schools; 63% of Philadelphia schools showed an increase in late arrivals for the first three days of the school year, and 54% had more students absent than the first three days of school last year, district officials said.

More than half of Boys’ Latin’s roughly 500 high schoolers rely on SEPTA to get to school; the rate is lower at the middle school, which educates about 300, and where Boys’ Latin pays to run three yellow bus routes for some students.

The school had already planned to spend the summer focusing on attendance and family engagement — a hallmark of Boys’ Latin, where students spend more time in school than most of their peers in the city, including longer school days, more weeks in school, Saturday obligations, and summer programs for some students.

So the communication began early, when SEPTA specifics were known. Colleen Smith, Boys’ Latin’s chief operating officer, broke things down by route and neighborhood.

Incoming middle schoolers and ninth graders who came to Boys’ Latin’s West Philadelphia campuses for orientation or freshman academy spent time in advisory, where they were asked: What time do you need to get up to get to school on time? Is your bus route changing?

Boys’ Latin’s director of student and family engagement made calls to families whose children had attendance issues last year, too, to work with them one-on-one about possible challenges.

There were frequent messages to parents distilling information SEPTA had put out. At “Parent University,” an in-person orientation for families, folks had a lot of questions, Hayes said: Will my child be penalized for SEPTA-related lateness? What do I do if my child is stuck at a bus stop and I’m at work? How will missed work be handled?

Families were told: If something goes awry, this is who you contact for information.

“Our communication to them was: ‘These cuts are happening, this is terrible, here’s what we need to do together to make sure that your students are here and ready to learn,’” Smith said.

The school even squeezed some students onto its own yellow buses.

A few years ago, Boys’ Latin added a single shuttle for middle school students who lived more than 1.5 miles away from the school — that’s the distance at which the Philadelphia School District provides free SEPTA fare cards for students, but some parents felt nervous putting their children on public transit.

One trial route with 10 sixth graders has ballooned to three routes with more than 100 students across middle school grades — one route in the Northeast, one in the Northwest, and one in South and Southwest Philadelphia.

Boys’ Latin foots the bill for those yellow buses themselves, paying about $300,000. With SEPTA cuts looming, Smith squeezed in a few more bus stops.

Parents driving students to school is up, and so is carpooling, officials said.

Nearly two weeks after the cuts kicked in, the Boys’ Latin team is “overcommunicating” on attendance and transportation, Smith and Hayes said.

Students who are marked late or absent because of SEPTA challenges will get grace to make up missed work, with attendance records still kept, but transportation challenges noted.

And the staff is learning lessons daily: Some students are choosing to walk, for instance — even long distances — rather than wait for buses, or risk getting passed by buses that are suddenly a lot more crowded.

“Kids are making choices that may or may not have been communicated to their parents,” said Hayes. (That raises security concerns for a lot of families.)

Boys’ Latin didn’t just step up its attendance game because of SEPTA; the push was pre-planned, and the family engagement is a hallmark of the model. But the timing of the SEPTA cuts dovetailed with the push nicely.

Staff — from teachers to janitors and bus drivers — are incentivized to make sure kids want to come to school and have a clear path to do so. (Yes, that means financial incentives — “I do believe that priorities should be funded appropriately,” Hayes said.)

Boys’ Latin’s work to get kids college ready is meaningless if kids don’t show up, he said — cleaning staff should work toward making school an appealing place, bus drivers should set the tone to give kids a positive day, and teachers and administrators must figure out from students and families what they need to get to school on time.

“We can’t control SEPTA, we can’t control what the city is doing, but we can make this a space that kids absolutely just want to get to,” said Hayes.