The McCall School, located at 325 S. 7th Street, serves Society Hill, Chinatown,[1] and Old City.

[3] The official opening of McCall occurred in February 1911; the construction of the building had been awarded on October 26, 1909.

[5] In the 1950s McCall introduced a program of English as a second language for students, the first of its kind offered by a U.S. public school.

[7] According to Black Enterprise, the demographic and academic transformation of McCall was a demonstration of the phrase "The better the neighborhood, the better the schools.

[1] Russell Scott Smith of Edutopia wrote that in 2004, compared with other schools in Philadelphia, "McCall already had a fairly good reputation for academic rigor and safety" and that by 2009 it had improved even more.

[8] In 2012 Kristen A. Graham of The Philadelphia Inquirer stated that McCall was one of "the district's stronger neighborhood schools".

"[12] The school received a "cybrary" in 2007—a library facility with 22 computers and materials in Mandarin Chinese financed by fundraisers and bake sales.