Dear Friends,
On behalf of the entire Frankford Friends School community, welcome to our website and our school. Since 1833, we have proudly offered an outstanding values-based Quaker education in the heart of Philadelphia. Our tuition reflects our belief that a school environment where all socio-economic groups are represented contributes an important element to the diversity of our community, where students develop the necessary skills to create and collaborate with peers from a variety of backgrounds.
The strength of our faculty ensures that a Frankford Friends School education is about more than knowledge; it is about guiding students to seek the Light in themselves and others; it is about developing a questioning spirit; it is about the fostering of a deep sense of social responsibility in our students. Our students are happy, humble, and engaged and they care deeply about each other and their community.
I invite you to visit and learn more about Frankford Friends School and to see how creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking blend with our teaching of Quaker testimonies; how we nurture our students’ social, emotional, and academic growth throughout the day; and to meet the students who will graduate as confident, caring, and socially-conscious young adults who use their strengths and passions to better our world.
I look forward to seeing you on campus soon!In partnership,
The Quaker testimonies and our “Frankford-friendly” values are artfully woven into our day. We care deeply about being a school in which every member of the community makes a personal commitment to joyful learning and the betterment of themselves and the world.
Students learn best when they are given opportunities to dig into challenges and design their own solutions to real-world problems. Our students learn through rich experiences that provoke their thinking and curiosity and enable them to draw connections between academic content and the world.
Our students come from all over the City of Philadelphia. Classes use public transportation to travel to exciting destinations across Philadelphia, check out books at the neighborhood’s Free Library, experience nature while exploring in the city’s parks, do service with city leaders and organizations, and partner with local organizations to understand more about the joys and challenges of urban life. Through fostering a love for our city, we help grow proud city dwellers who know how to navigate safely and who are active stewards of their own neighborhoods and communities.
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The physical home base for our Project-based Learning initiative.
The Frankford Friends School IDEA Lab (Innovation, Design, Engineering, Art) serves as the physical home base for our Project-based Learning initiative. Spanning two floors, it has the tools and space that our students need to freely explore, innovate, and create with confidence.
The physical home base for our Project-based Learning initiative.
The Nest is the award-winning, half-acre green space on campus that provides joyful opportunities for our students to freely explore, investigate, and observe the natural world around them. The space includes three rain and pollinator gardens, vegetable gardens, mud kitchens, spaces for dirt digging, building and climbing, and a waterworks for water play.
The physical home base for our Project-based Learning initiative.
The Holt provides open space where students can work on collaborative projects and for classes to showcase their work. Our front office and space for meetings is also located there. Make sure to stop by and say hi to Miss Liz!
The physical home base for our Project-based Learning initiative.
The FFS Middle School is home to our 5th through 8th graders who work and learn together during four core classes that meet everyday - Math, Science, Spanish and Humanities. They also explore their interests during classes in technology, performing and visual arts, and physical education. With inquiry and self expression at the root of each class, all students develop strong analytical and problem solving skills that prepare them for the competitive high schools they go on to attend.
The physical home base for our Project-based Learning initiative.
Our students get fresh air and have joyful interactions with their friends while in the schoolyard at the center of our main campus. Our chickens and bees, which also have their home there, enjoy watching our students play kickball, four square, and other active games or spending quiet time with students who want time for relaxation.
The physical home base for our Project-based Learning initiative.
Our physical education program shares space with a performance space and stage that can seat 400 guests. Beneath, all students in grades PreK to 5 sing, read and write music, play rhythm instruments, do dramatic play, and learn to improvise while participating in our classroom music program. All fourth graders learn a string instrument (violin, viola, or cello), lent to them by the school and learn to play both singly and as an ensemble. The orchestra room is lined with shelves made from the antique wooden pews that previously graced our space. Middle School students can choose from electives that include theater, choir, handbells, orchestra, and jazz band.
The physical home base for our Project-based Learning initiative.
The Carol & Terrence A. Farley Building, home to the Lower School and Early Childhood Center, began as a one-room schoolhouse in 1833. On the first floor, first through fourth graders have spacious classrooms each equipped with tables for collaborative work and investigation, large group meeting areas for Morning Meetings and whole class instruction, and classroom libraries with a variety and range of reading selections. Students have many opportunities to work together and independently, with an array of spaces to meet different work needs.
The physical home base for our Project-based Learning initiative.
Our early childhood classrooms have time to browse through and borrow from a large collection of picture books, sometimes on their own and sometimes with a reading buddy from an older class. On opposite sides of the library, you can find the Prekindergarten and kindergarten classrooms which are havens for love, learning through inquiry and play, and opportunities to grow socially and emotionally, guided by two teachers for each group of students.
The physical home base for our Project-based Learning initiative.
Quaker values are the heart of everything we do at Frankford Friends School. In keeping with Quaker practice, our community meets to worship together with their fellow teachers and students in our historic Meetinghouse dating from 1833.
The earliest direct predecessor of Frankford Friends School was the one-room “Spring House School,” built by Oxford Meeting in 1768 at the corner of Walnut and Spring Streets. At this time, King’s Highway (now Frankford Avenue) was a bustling area, frequently visited by members of the Second Continental Congress, including John Adams, Benjamin Rush, and Thomas Jefferson.
Frankford Friends School was established on its present site in 1833. In 1868 the Meeting House was enlarged and additional classrooms were built above the horse sheds on the property. Twenty years later, a new brick schoolhouse was built; today it is home to our Pre Kindergarten through Second Grade classrooms.
In the early aughts, grades seven and eight were added to the school, and the first eighth grade class graduated in 2004. In 2012, the Margaret Passmore Trickey building was built. Today, ift is home to our two story IDEA Lab and the Third through Fifth Grade classrooms.
The school has continued to grow and in 2016, a half-acre nature-based playscape, The Nest, was added to the campus along with The IDEA Lab and administrative offices. In 2017, FFS purchased a former church adjacent to the school, which was renovated to provide space for the Performing Arts and Physical Education programs.
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