PHILADELPHIA — A secret, sweeping five-year probe of the Philadelphia School District’s compliance with federal asbestos regulations entered a new phase Thursday as the school board signed off on a deferred prosecution agreement to avoid criminal charges.

The agreement makes a national example of Philadelphia: it’s the first time ever that a school district has been criminally charged with such environmental violations, federal authorities said.

David Metcalf, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said the agreement “affords the government the highest available level of prosecutorial and judicial oversight over the School District of Philadelphia and its efforts to comply with its legal obligations to provide safe schools.”

The bombshell news — the investigation only came to public light last month — means the district must report to a court and follow a judge’s recommendations for five years or face potential prosecution.

The investigation marks a major development in the district’s yearslong struggle with environmental issues. At one point, it had fallen years behind on required inspections and in recent years has temporarily closed several school buildings due to asbestos hazards.

The investigation began in July 2020, officials now say, when the DOJ subpoenaed district records for asbestos maintenance at its roughly 300 buildings.

Federal officials probed the district’s compliance with the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response (AHERA) law between 2015 and 2023. If asbestos is present in any school building, it must be inspected every six months; every building must be checked every three years.

Philadelphia’s school system complied with the probe and has now caught up and vowed to keep pace with federal requirements. The district plans to inspect all buildings twice a year.

Officials said full details of the agreement can’t be shared until the Justice Department files it with a court, which is expected to happen imminently.

“We acknowledge past gaps in our asbestos management program, and we are committed to sustaining the improvements and investments we have made in recent years to bring the program into compliance,” Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said. “Under the agreement, the district will offer training to specific school-based employees on asbestos management. And we will agree to continue to seek out vital resources of funding, public and private, to meet the needs of maintaining healthy learning environments across our more than 300 buildings.”

Watlington said DOJ’s allowing the district to enter the deferred plea agreement, rather than pursue prosecution, signals the school system’s progress. It has tripled the amount of money it spends on environmental management in recent years — in part because of a $100 million donation from the University of Pennsylvania, money that was pledged the same year the probe began.

School board president Reginald Streater said the board “as a collective are committed to maintaining healthy school environments and securing the resources to do so,” and was confident in the ability of Watlington and his administration to successfully execute the terms of the agreement. Streater also said he believed the district’s current environmental spending level was enough to meet the DOJ’s requirements.

But, he said, budgets matter in ways that may not be immediately evident to parents and members of the public.

While stressing that the board and district want to display the “level of contrition and responsibility that we are owning as an institution," Streater noted that having an environmental budget that matches the district’s obligation to maintain its buildings ”matters, and having funding and a budget that aligns with that matters as well."

In the past, Philadelphia, as many underfunded school systems have, slashed facilities spending when times got tough.

The board unanimously signed off on the deferred prosecution agreement.

“I am happy that we can finally close this chapter,” board member Whitney Jones said.

Stepped-up spending on environmental monitoring

The district first publicly acknowledged it was years behind on federal asbestos investigations in 2023. Officials said at the time the failure was due to a lack of resources and personnel, and said it would likely take three years to come into compliance.

Inspections are complicated — they take several days at minimum, and can only occur when students and staff are not present. The vast majority of district buildings contain asbestos, which was widely used in floor and ceiling tiles, paint, and pipe insulation until about 1980.

Undisturbed, asbestos poses no risk. But when asbestos becomes damaged, its tiny fibers can be toxic, causing health issues including mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer.

The district has dramatically increased spending on asbestos management by more than 400% in recent years — jumping to $55.7 million this school year, from $10.2 million in 2020-21. It now pays tens of millions to an outside firm to oversee the environmental demands of its old buildings, and employs 39 in its environmental services office, which used to have only 21 workers.

In addition to the stepped-up monitoring, the district will also now make available to the public room-by-room results of each building’s inspection, said Victoria Flemming, the district’s environmental director. Parents and staff can look up where in their building asbestos is located and its most recently noted condition.

A history of environmental struggles

In recent years, multiple district schools and charters housed in district buildings have periodically had to close because of disturbed asbestos. Missteps with asbestos management during a multimillion dollar construction project the Ben Franklin High-Science Leadership Academy building led to several hospitalizations and the long-term displacement of students. The district settled a lawsuit in the case of a teacher who contracted mesothelioma after working in buildings with known disturbed asbestos.

Watlington, who arrived in Philadelphia in 2022, stepped up communication about environmental issues, though critics say the district is still not nearly transparent enough.

Watlington said that year that closures happened in part because the district had improved its environmental processes. In some cases, he said, officials knew about the disturbed asbestos, but because of faulty record-keeping, potentially dangerous material was labeled safe for years.

The main building of one school, Frankford High, remains shut because of extensive damaged asbestos. Officials most recently said they will spend $20 million to fix Frankford, which could reopen for the 2025-26 school year. In the meantime, students are spread out over two locations — some students in a school annex and others at the Roberto Clemente Middle School in North Philadelphia.

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