ABC picks up '90s 'Goldbergs' spinoff based on Penn Charter teachers

"My teachers were like the sane people who raised me," "Goldbergs" creator Adam F. Goldberg once said of the Penn Charter faculty members who inspired the spinoff.

Tim Meadows in a scene from ABC’s “The Goldbergs.” Meadows will be one of the stars in a so-far-untitled spinoff of the show that ABC has picked up for the 2018-19 season, set in a school based on Philadelphia’s Penn Charter SchoolRead moreByron Cohen/ABC

by Ellen Gray

Published Apr. 16, 2018, 10:45 p.m. ET

Nearly a year after it passed on a 1990s-set spinoff of The Goldbergs that its Jenkintown creator has said was inspired by the teachers of Philadelphia's William Penn Charter School, ABC Monday announced it had ordered the series for next season.

The untitled half-hour comedy, which sounds as if it has been revamped since the original pilot, will star Goldbergs recurring players Tim Meadows, as Principal Glascott; Bryan Callen, as Coach Mellor; and AJ Michalka, as Lainey Lewis, who's apparently grown up to be a teacher. The show was created by Adam F. Goldberg, who graduated from Penn Charter in 1994, and Marc Firek. The action takes place at "William Penn Academy," the same school featured in The Goldbergs, which is set in "1980-something."

In January, ABC aired the original pilot as a special episode of The Goldbergs in what looked like a potential second shot for the spinoff series.

In January 2017, Goldberg, a graduate of Penn Charter whose wife's parents are teachers, said he intended for the show to portray teachers positively.

"For me, having crazy parents, my teachers were like the sane people who raised me. And they like being there. And, yeah, they don't make a ton of money. They're heroes," Goldberg said.

The Goldbergs, which wraps up its fifth season on May 16, is already renewed for 2018-19, having received a two-season order last spring.