The communities are side by side. They have wildly different education outcomes – by design.

PHILADELPHIA – Tomea Sippio-Smith still remembers how depressed she felt after participating in an eighth grade math competition decades ago. It wasn’t so much the outcome that bothered her – whether she left victorious was beside the point. Rather, it was the revelation of what was missing from her education.

Sippio-Smith was in honors algebra. She was a smart kid. But upon arriving at the competition, she realized her wealthy rivals had been learning a type of math she’d never even heard of – math Sippio-Smith might never get to learn because it wasn’t offered at her Miami school.

“It was just a poignant moment, seeing what we didn’t have,” said Sippio-Smith, a mother of two. She and her classmates returned to their school with a “sense that it didn’t matter – like, we could try our best, and it wouldn’t matter.” It didn't matter that Sippio-Smith, who was in band, had to play an instrument held together by rubber bands and tape; that she had to learn in classrooms that were falling apart.

Sippio-Smith works largely in Philadelphia but lives in a predominantly white suburb outside the city, so her own children can attend better-funded schools than the one she did. When she moved to the area from Miami, Sippio-Smith, who's Black, sought out housing in Philadelphia proper. She wanted her children to attend its public schools and experience the city's diversity, but she struggled to justify putting them in schools like the ones she attended, where basic services aren't always guaranteed.