In Philadelphia summers past, Hite was facing financial catastrophes, years-long teachers' contract stalemates, and other sundry crises. Now, he said, "we're able to focus on things like instructional practice, professional development, social and emotional learning — the things that we should always have been focused on as a school district but we weren't able to, because we were looking at 'Are we going to open on time?' and 'What can we do without?' "