“Thanks to the work of Penn Justice Dems, amongst other [Penn organizers and local activists] — you did make Penn pay the PILOTs money, you won the PILOTs start. While it's not enough, and there's definitely more to win, think about what you were already able to do, that even the Board of Trustees could not turn their heads away from,” Gym said.

Over 100 students, teachers, and community members marched through Drexel and the University of Pennsylvania’s campuses on Tuesday evening calling on both schools to make payments in lieu of taxes to support the School District of Philadelphia.

Calls for Penn to pay Payments in Lieu of Taxes to Philadelphia were raised yet again in a recent City Council committee hearing that examined how nonprofit tax exemptions affect the funding of local schools, as well as the role PILOTs can play in the city's future.

Many Philadelphians, including those directly impacted by toxic school environments and those with ties to wealthy nonprofits, have called for nonprofit institutions to contribute 40% of foregone property taxes annually to the School District of Philadelphia as Payments In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOTs), to share the responsibility of funding public education.

AAUP-Penn's ultimate goal is to make the University a more ethical space and said they would support any groups on campus working towards this, such as Penn for PILOTs, a group of faculty and staff who believe the University should make payments in lieu of taxes to the city of Philadelphia, and Fossil Free Penn, a group on campus that demands Penn divest from the fossil fuel industry. 

In 2020, with a new push by activists, a group of staff and faculty launched a petition called Penn for PILOTs. The organization calculated that if the university were to pay 40% of the property tax rate on the land it owns, the annual total would be $40 million, or about 0.35% of the university's annual revenues. (If passed through directly to the school system, the sum would represent a 2.5% increase in funding from the local government, which covers about half of the system's annual operating expenses.)

“Of course it’s important that Penn at least recognizes the profound challenges that the School District of Philadelphia faces with things like lead poisoning and asbestos,” Campano, a professor at Penn’s Graduate School of Education, said. “But charity is not the same as social and racial justice.”

Two weeks after the University of Pennsylvania made a $100 million contribution to the School District of Philadelphia, it’s unlikely the cash infusion will inspire copycat donations from major higher education peers in the city.

Activist leaders on campus and across the city have called for a donation like this for a long time. They want Penn to pay payments in lieu of taxes, known as PILOTs, calling foul on the regulations that allow a nonprofit that owns $3.2 billion in city real estate to skip property taxes. Like the tax dollars contributed by other property owners in the city, their payments could towards public schools and infrastructure, these critics say.