Looking Closer

I expected the library to be a library (a place full of books, y'know).

In SDP's central office women earn 21% more than men at the median; in schools they earn 10% less.

SDP payroll grew 27% over eleven years — under inflation.

SDP's roster grew 40% while enrollment fell 13%.

SDP's 26,433 positions split into ten role families.

21,543 people work for Philly schools in three pay bands: ~14,000 earn $40K-$120K, ~700 earn $120K-$200K, 23 earn more.

SDP's operations workforce fell from 1,589 to 572 in 11 years. 562 were genuinely cut; 425 moved to contractors.

A massive playground with potato sack slides, the art museum steps since before he could walk, and the Broad Street Line that refuses to let me on.

On a Sunday morning walk with my son I found two orange stick figures scratched into a dirt patch in Fairmount.

SDP's $175K+ tier grew from 5 to 53 in eleven years. 19 of the 53 are Assistant Superintendents, one per Learning Network.

On the night the Eagles won the Super Bowl, my three-month-old wore an Eagles onesie to a neighbor's party.

The Philadelphia School District's central office has nearly tripled in eleven years.

Six months after two Philadelphia sheriff court summons: an op-ed with no numbers, two appointees foreclosed by their own office, and a search portal.

Philadelphia Code § 9-813 makes rental price coordination a code violation. $2,000-per-violation penalties, private right of action.

The eight articles above make the case.

My son builds towers and knocks them down, builds them and knocks them down.

28% of 311 tickets in lower-income Philly zips close with real action.

Philadelphia School District settled for $650,000 over the 2021 selective-school admissions overhaul.

This Sunday at 830am, we set out to finish up the job we started last week.

A small number of Philadelphia addresses generate a disproportionate share of 311 complaints — sometimes the same complaint, year after year.

A Philadelphia citywide map of single-family properties with no Homestead Exemption on file, with synthetic dots showing likely outreach targets.

Philadelphia's 2027 property reassessment: mean +7.0%, median +4.2%.

Some places in Philly — the kind that grow on you over time rather than the tourist spots.

On a spur of the moment decision, my family and I decided to do our part to help identify abandoned cars in the open 311 tickets.

Income tier predicts only 19% of Philadelphia 311 wait times.

My car was broken into twice in Fairmount.

How long does Philadelphia 311 take in your neighborhood?

7 of Philadelphia 311's 27 published SLAs are met less than half the time.

Philadelphia spent $120M on the 250th anniversary of American independence — $15.5M on a single concert.

23,229 of 75,929 open Philadelphia 311 tickets haven't been updated in 365+ days. 88.1% untouched in 30+ days.

Philadelphia sanitation workers earn the 4th-lowest wages among America's 20 biggest cities — below the MIT living wage for a single adult.

I take the 6am train out of Philadelphia a few times a month.

Lower-income Philadelphia neighborhoods wait 16 days longer for 311.

L&I and two other discretionary complaint categories explain most of Philadelphia 311's 2.6-day income gap.

Philadelphia banned indoor smoking at casinos in 2007.

Of 1.3M Philadelphia 311 records since 2024, 57% are phone calls, not service tickets.

311 is Philadelphia's equalizer — one number, same service for everyone.

Why every Philadelphia department should have an FP&A analyst.

In which someone with more institutional experience corrects my framing, and I learn the difference between being right about the destination and wrong about the route.

Notes from Fairmount on why this city works.

Philadelphia eviction court lets tenants buy ~2.5 extra months by skipping hearings and claiming never served.

The Philadelphia Sheriff has a 223-day deed-recording backlog.

Philadelphia's property-return process takes 6 to 10+ months end-to-end.

Philadelphia’s eviction system raises rents ~$50/month for honest tenants, depresses property values, and shrinks lower-income housing stock.

SDP faces a $300M structural deficit and is cutting 340 school-based positions.

I care about diverse schools.

Philadelphia changed its selective school admissions rules on the same day the application window opened, with no formal public comment period, no warning, and no time to respond.

A federal court said Philadelphia may have discriminated in its 2022 school admissions policy and sent the case back for trial.

The Philadelphia Code still names abolished agencies — Fairmount Park Commission, Recorder of Deeds, Board of Inspectors — in present-tense language.

The back-of-the-envelope calculation that changed how I think about calendars forever.