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.”

Interviewer: KATIE RADER. For decades, University of Pennsylvania student activists have demanded that Penn pay PILOTs (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) to help fund Philadelphia public schools. The movement intensified in 2020, with over 1,100 faculty and staff joining a pro-PILOTs petition. Among them was Social Policy and Practice Professor DENNIS CULHANE, who in September joined a panel discussion on PILOTs sponsored by the Mitchell Center. In his discussion with political scientist Katie Rader, he revisits the topic in the wake of Penn’s donation of $100-million over ten years for environmental remediation of Philadelphia schools. He addresses whether this amount is the fair share that PILOTs activists have demanded, but also whether unilateral, voluntary donations are a path to true equity. He suggests that the Pennsylvania legislature make revisions to the state’s tax code to ensure a more reliable source of funds for public education.

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.

Penn needs to pay PILOTs, and it should consider the additional contributions it makes in the community reparations of sorts for decades of gentrification, tax breaks and expansion. It’s not either/or. It’s both.

Ten million per year represents about 10% of what Penn would owe in property taxes. In other cities like Boston, New Haven, Conn., and Providence, R.I., wealthy nonprofits have agreed to pay PILOTs above that standard. Many in Philadelphia have called on the university to pay 40% of what it would owe in property taxes to the public schools — an estimated $40 million per year. That’s a reasonable figure. Other nonprofits should also step up so that Philadelphia’s public schools have the money needed to educate the next generation.

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.

The $100 million that Penn has pledged to the public school systems is but a fraction of the amount that the University would pay if they committed to pay PILOTS, which itself are a fraction of the amount that they would owe if their property were fully taxed under Philadelphia law.