This Philly high school is getting $20 million to train thousands of students to get jobs at CHOP

For years, the Mastery Charter Network built its reputation as a college-for-all system of schools in Philadelphia and Camden.

Now, thanks to nearly $20 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies and a partnership with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Mastery is about to turn one of its schools, Mastery Hardy Williams High School in Southwest Philadelphia, into a workforce development hub. It’s part of a $250 million investment that Bloomberg is making to create 10 such high schools nationwide.

Beginning in 2025, Hardy Williams High students will be prepared for careers at CHOP — from patient-facing roles such as medical assistants to operations jobs such as information technology workers, and hospital administration positions — then walk right into full-time jobs in the hospital system as soon as they graduate.

Along the way, they’ll have access to hands-on CHOP resources and paid internships, and will have career supports once they graduate.

The partnership matches with the revised mission of Mastery, the Philadelphia-based network of 14,000 students in 24 schools.

“There are multiple entry points that students and families can choose on the pathway to a family-sustaining wage, a career,” said Saliyah Cruz, Mastery’s chief equity officer.

To Howard Wolfson, who heads education programs for Bloomberg Philanthropies, the calculus is simple.

“The system has washed its hand of the kids who are not college bound and that leaves them in a particularly challenging situation once they graduate,” said Wolfson. “But there are thousands of jobs that 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds can do if they get the training in high school, and we’re talking about good-paying jobs.”

The program formally starts in 2025, beginning with Hardy Williams ninth graders, and will eventually grow to include career awareness for seventh and eighth graders as well as the formal training for students in grades 9 through 12. (Hardy Williams, at 5400 Warrington Ave. in Southwest Philadelphia, sits in the former Shaw Middle School building, and has 660 students in grades 7-12. It also has 575 students in a K-6 school in the same building.)

And though students will have the ability to work at CHOP the day after graduation — if they pass certain industry certification exams — it doesn’t shut the door on college for those who want to pursue it.

“We imagine a world where a child might decide, ultimately, I want to be a nurse or a physical therapist or a doctor, but I also want to work,” Cruz said. That student might start right out of high school as a medical assistant which “gets my foot in the door, it gets me access to tuition reimbursement, it gets me access to mentors.”

Some Hardy Williams students might bypass CHOP and go to college right away, but the job offer still stands if they ever want to return to the system.

Mastery and CHOP have been working closely together for months, and Cruz said continuing that relationship will be key.

“We will know what kind of job opportunities they have. We will know which of our students need workplace mentorship, what the needs are, what the mentors should be doing. We’ll be able to support, and ensure our young people don’t graduate from school carrying a lot of debt.”

Students will still have a traditional high school experience; their electives will look different, however, Cruz said.

Ninth and 10th grade will be about exposure to different hospital pathways: a direct patient care pathway, an operations pathway, a hospital administration pathway. Students will choose one of the pathways, and by 11th grade begin having internships. In 12th grade, those internships will be paid.

Ask most people what kinds of jobs are available for people who work at hospitals, and they’ll likely say doctors and nurses. But there are 3,000 roles at CHOP, said Joanne McCool, CHOP’s vice president of human resources; every student can find a role of interest.

“Every single one of them is essential to running the health-care system,” said McCool. “Every single one of them is valued and respected. We are looking at this for the system, and we also wanted to make sure we were approaching this in a way that we didn’t force people into a place of false choice.”

And while CHOP is excited about the ability to work in a partnership that is “of the neighborhood, for the neighborhood, in the neighborhood,” McCool said, it’s also a relationship that makes business sense. (The Bloomberg money will be distributed over five years, and is not meant to support the relationship permanently.)

“This is a huge pipeline for us,” said McCool, who is hiring for 500 open jobs right now. “In any given year, we’re bringing in thousands of people.”

The system has a partnership with Franklin Learning Center and one with the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative, but “we haven’t done this to scale,” said McCool. “I don’t have trouble imagining a future where we’re converting 100 12th graders into employees. This is not meant to be a charitable donation, this is meant to be an inflection point that changes the business model and changes the way we look at creating talent models for the future of work.”

Besides Philadelphia, Bloomberg is also footing the bill to launch health-care-focused high schools in New York, Boston, Nashville, Dallas, Houston, Charlotte, Durham, and in rural Alabama and rural Tennessee.