Chalkbeat

‘We’re going to listen’: Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington sets sights on rebuilding trust

2026-08-26T16:53:35+00:00

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Philadelphia Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. has begun his fifth year on the job with his focus set on improving students’ academic performance.

But other pressing issues, including the 17 schools the district plans to close beginning next year, may command the attention of students, families, and staff.

The release of last year’s state test scores remains “delayed by the state,” Watlington said, but previous scores show that while students’ math performance has improved, reading performance has declined. The district’s graduation rate has risen, and the number of dropouts has declined.

“We’re going to keep putting our foot on the gas,” Watlington said, adding that he’s focused on improving communication with families and building stronger partnerships with parents and community members. That will include paying some family and community members a “modest stipend” to become ambassadors for the district.

Still, it’s unclear whether Watlington’s strategy will strengthen the district’s relationships and repair trust with the thousands of families facing school closures or whose children’s education has already been disrupted this year by asbestos concerns or the end of certain programs.

Chalkbeat spoke with Watlington Wednesday about his plans for the upcoming school year. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

We’re coming off a year with high tensions, largely about school closures. Some teachers and students said they lost trust in the district. How will you go about building trust this year?

Trust is the cumulative effect of small acts over time. It takes a long time to build it, and it takes a little time to erode it.

We’re going to be transparent, and we’re going to tell our families and communities the truth. Truth is kindness, I believe, and especially when we have to deal with really difficult issues.

One of our truths is, in the sixth-largest city in the United States of America, the district-operated schools have a 65% occupancy rate, and 35% of those seats are sitting vacant. It’s inefficient for the taxpayer’s dollar.

I understand people who have strong feelings about school closures, and we’re going to empathize. We’re going to stay at the table. We’re going to build transition committees with school communities. We’re going to listen. We’re going to do something with that feedback.

We’re going to continue to work as partners, and we’re not going to take personal when conversations get a bit strident. That’s when we need to stay in the fight, work together, and we can disagree without being disagreeable.

What do you plan to do in the coming year — be it around academics, curriculum, family support, staff support — that’s different from when you first started?

Number one, I’m going to focus on academic achievement. We had the right strategy in math. Three through eighth grade math, we’ve got nearly a 13-percentage-point increase (in proficiency rates over three years).

On the reading side, we expected there to be some implementation dip. We think we absolutely did the right thing to standardize the reading curriculum across the school district. A lesson learned is that we’ve got to double down on how we support and prepare teachers. We need the classroom teaching to change in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Superintendent gives his annual State of the Schools address on Wed., Jan 7, 2026 at Thomas Edison High School.

Half of the day, kids have to be exposed to grade-level standards, not remedial work, not just tutoring. Because we will never improve and fix this problem through tutoring and remediation. We will never remediate or tutor our way to excellence.

We see graduation rates going up, but we don’t necessarily see all high school academic scores going up. Do you worry at all that the standards to reach graduation have lowered?

I don’t think the standards to reach graduation have lowered. I do think that I want to challenge the notion that when school districts improve their graduation rates, there are people who automatically want to say, “Well, they’re lowering their standards.” Because I think there’s a bias against public education in this country. I really do, and the bias is strong, and that’s why I’m here in Philadelphia.

I’m going to stand tall and strong and tell people many public schools are doing better with the students that we serve than kids in other sectors. As third through eighth grade kids get (academically) stronger, and we continue to invest in those lower grades as they move up, we will do nothing but produce stronger high school students and graduates.

I think there’s a problem with grade inflation in higher education and K-12. I’ll admit that at the same time.

Some Philadelphia superintendents stay a long time. Some don’t. Why stay in the role?

This is personal to me. As a student who came out of poverty myself, I know that public schools are the way to get into the middle class and solidly in the middle class. I know that public schools are what can help to create wealth and generational wealth that far too many Americans don’t get.

I just think all the pieces are coming together at one time, despite all the challenges we have. I’m optimistic about the progress that has been made.

And then finally, I’d like to stay 10 years and one day — and beat (former Superintendent) Bill Hite’s record of 10 years.

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that affect students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia kicks off a new school year as students, educators brace for looming school closures

2026-08-24T18:51:22+00:00

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After 120 years of operation, Philadelphia’s Overbrook Elementary School might have just had its final first day of school.

Kids skipped through the schoolyard and parents waved goodbye to students wearing fresh uniforms Monday morning as Overbrook and the entire Philadelphia school district kicked off the 2026-27 school year.

For some, the mood was somber. Overbrook is set to close at the end of this school year as the district moves forward with its plan to close 17 schools over the next decade. Nine schools, including Overbrook, will no longer welcome students next year.

“I’ve been to this school since I was in kindergarten,” said Overbrook fifth grader Mahogany. “I don’t want to lose something that I feel safe to have.”

District officials have promised robust support for families at closing schools and said the closures will ensure students can access higher-quality buildings and more educational opportunities. But many students, families, and educators say the looming closures are their major concern this school year. They worry about losing tight-knit communities and neighborhood gathering places. At some schools, the threat of sweeping changes — which would close the schools of more than 4,000 students over the next decade — is already having an effect.

Overbrook Principal Kenneth Glover said he didn’t yet have the school’s enrollment numbers for this year. But during a press conference Monday morning, he said he knew some families in the neighborhood had opted to enroll in nearby charter schools instead of returning to Overbrook for its final year.

Glover said he was prepared to work with the district’s school transition team “to make this a perfect school year for everyone.”

This year, he said “the focus needs to be instruction. The kids should not have to worry about this school being saved. That should be an adult issue.”

Fifth grader Mahogany has attended Overbrook since kindergarten, and worries about the planned school closure. “I don't want to lose something that I feel safe to have," she said.

The district has said that all students from the closing schools will be relocated to schools that are either higher-performing or in better-quality buildings. Its facilities plan reassigns Overbrook Elementary students to Guion S. Bluford and Lewis C. Cassidy schools. No teachers will lose their job due to the closures and instead will be reshuffled to empty positions at other schools.

Superintendent Tony Watlington, Board President Reginald Streater, and other dignitaries made no explicit mention of the closures at their morning back-to-school press conference at Alexander McClure Elementary School.

Streater said school leaders continue to work to help students succeed despite the district’s limited resources.

“While some decisions will be tough — and we all know some decisions have been tough — we must all remain resolute in our commitment to improving outcomes and create the conditions for every student to thrive,” he said.

Free backpacks, a DJ, and a batch of fresh-made smoothies greeted Parkway Northwest High School students on their return to classes.

Teachers, union leaders, and members of the City Council and state legislature say they plan to continue fighting the closures. But they have few levers to pull to influence the board’s decision. Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr., who represents the area around Overbrook Elementary, said he will introduce legislation to prevent the Overbrook property from being redeveloped into condos.

“We want to be civil; we want to be cooperative with the school district,” Jones said at the press conference outside Overbrook on Monday. “But we will act up.”

The school board has the final say over which schools close, and it has already approved the plan. Members of City Council are looking into changing the board’s governance structure, which could give the council more influence.

Watlington said during Monday’s back-to-school press conference at McClure Elementary that his focus is on improving the district’s academic performance.

“While we’ve made some significant improvement, we know that the majority of our young people are still not at grade level in reading (or) math,” Watlington said. He added that the district is going to double down this year and that “we won’t rest until all of our children are at grade level in reading and math.”

Students plan to ‘keep going and keep pushing’

Parkway Northwest High School in Germantown greeted returning students with a balloon archway, a DJ, and a batch of fresh tropical smoothies. It will also close at the end of this school year under the district’s closure plan.

David Samuel, 16, arrived early to distribute backpacks to fellow students. But he planned to leave early from school to testify in a lawsuit that a community advocate filed against the district over its plan.

“I have to miss out on the first day, because this is something that’s really near and dear to my heart,” he said. “Just hearing the news and seeing what the parents are going to go through — I can’t stop here. I still have to keep going and keep pushing.”

Students get their class schedules on the first day of school at Parkway Northwest High School. It's one of 17 campuses slated to close under the School District of Philadelphia's facilities plan.

District officials said schools were added to the closure list based on several factors, including building quality, enrollment, and whether they had space for special programs such as pre-K and gym class. As part of its facilities overhaul, the district also plans to renovate 170 buildings.

But many students say they just want to remain in their schools.

Calin Shakoor, a 10th grader at Parkway Northwest, is determined to keep his grades up this year in hopes of convincing the school district to keep the school open.

He attended multiple meetings with the school board and City Council last school year to oppose the closure.

“Some people feel like it’s a done deal, others are still fighting for it,” he said. “All we can do is try to keep it open, make sure our academics is good and all that.”

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philly schools ask communities to help shape transition plan as controversial closures move ahead

2026-08-20T22:10:34+00:00

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The School District of Philadelphia’s closure plan is moving ahead as written, even as elected officials demand parts of the plan be reconsidered.

District officials announced Thursday they are opening applications on Aug. 31 for new school transition committees. Those committees will be set up for the nine schools closing this academic year, schools receiving students from a closing school in 2027-28, and any school phasing out grade levels at the end of school year 2026-27. Each 20-person committee will include a mix of teachers, school staff, parents, caregivers, community partners, and students.

The district says the committees will give feedback and help shape transition plans that reflect the needs of each school community.

Superintendent Tony Watlington and district representatives have spent the last few years defending themselves against criticism aimed at their approach to community engagement about the closures. At several board meetings, neighborhood hearings, rallies, and protests, Philadelphians said they don’t feel that their input has been deeply considered. Even individuals named by the district to sit on advisory committees in the early stages of the process said they found those efforts to be perfunctory and frustrating.

Since the vote to approve the facilities plan, elected officials, led by City Councilmembers Nina Ahmad and Isaiah Thomas, who chairs the city’s education committee, have launched a war against district leadership — threatening lawsuits, calling for school board members’ resignations, and shutting down board meetings in an attempt to gain some control over the list of schools scheduled to close.

Thursday’s move to assemble transition committees signals the district has no intention of making changes to the plan anytime soon.

Watlington said in a statement that for the transition process to be successful, the district will need to meaningfully partner with school communities.

“We really want this to be something that represents ‘nothing for us without us,’” Watlington said at Thursday’s school board meeting. “We want to be equal partners in how we implement this facilities master plan.”

In June, the district appointed Shakeera Warthen-Canty to lead the newly created school transition office, which will oversee implementing the facilities plan. The plan includes closures but also promises to modernize some 169 buildings. Watlington has said it’s a 10-year, $3 billion vision to build a new high school, renovate pools, update HVAC systems, improve bathrooms, refurbish athletic facilities, add kitchens, and redesign classroom spaces.

The transition committee applications will be open through Sept. 18. Watlington said the district’s outreach to parents and school staff “won’t be limited just to these committees. There’ll be other deep engagement.”

People can submit feedback on the transition process through this form.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia City Council members say they will ‘use every tool in our arsenal’ to stop school closures

2026-07-28T21:31:51+00:00

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Members of Philadelphia’s City Council say their fight to stop the district’s school closure plan is far from over, and they’re prepared to use several tactics to force changes before closures begin next year.

“We’re going to use every tool in our arsenal to make sure that we protect our children,” said Isaiah Thomas, chair of the City Council’s Education Committee, at a press briefing Tuesday.

The district plans to close 17 schools beginning in the 2027-28 school year and reshuffle those students elsewhere under a sweeping facilities plan approved by the Board of Education in April. The plan would also co-locate several schools and upgrade nearly 170 school buildings.

The facilities plan is meant to ensure students go to class in quality buildings and families can access more opportunities, such as prekindergarten and AP classes. It’s also supposed to help the district adapt to its declining enrollment, which has left hundreds of empty seats in several schools.

The City Council doesn’t have a direct say over the closures, but it does control some district funding. Last school year, several members vehemently opposed the plan, and Thomas called for board members’ resignations after they voted to approve it.

With the upcoming school year slated to be the last for several schools, council members say they plan to use their power to continue pushing for changes. Some said they were looking to keep Paul Robeson High School and Lankenau Environmental Science High School in particular off the closure list.

Thomas said he is still considering potential legal action over the closure plan. Councilmember Curtis Jones said he is considering requiring an independent audit of the district’s spending on services such as school lunches.

School Board President Reginald Streater said in a statement that the board “values City Council’s partnership and remains committed to engaging stakeholders throughout the plan’s implementation.” The board will continue to review community feedback about the plan, Streater added.

The district will work closely with students, families, and staff, as well as elected officials and community members, “to ensure every transition is thoughtful, transparent, and centered on student success,” school district spokesperson Monique Braxton said in a statement.

The district shared its facilities plan after dozens of community engagement sessions and surveys of residents across the city. The initial proposal included closing 20 schools, but following protests, the district removed three from the list the board approved in April.

“It is no secret the facilities plan is unpopular,” said Councilmember Nina Ahmad, who has opposed the district’s plan to close Lankenau Environmental Science High School in particular. “If three can be taken off, then more can be taken off.”

Thomas said he plans to mobilize Philadelphians to continue their fight against the closures.

“You’ve got to care more about these 17 schools closing than you do about LeBron James coming to Philadelphia,” Thomas said, referencing the recent NBA news that the famed basketball player will join the Philadelphia 76ers. “This matters more.”

As Philadelphia plans to close schools, board members call for more scrutiny of charter enrollment

2026-07-24T18:54:56+00:00

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As Philadelphia moves to close 17 district schools, some Board of Education members say it’s time to put additional scrutiny on charter schools as well.

During a Thursday meeting, Joyce Wilkerson called on the board to analyze the 16 charter schools that operate as part of the city’s Renaissance Initiative. The program turned district schools over to charter operators in an effort to improve them, but largely has not succeeded.

“The time has come for us to get a handle on what’s going on,” Wilkerson said. “We’ve just finished closing district neighborhood schools. I think that we ought to do a similar kind of analysis as we approach the future of the Renaissance charter school program.”

When district leaders launched the Renaissance Initiative in 2010, the schools were meant to operate like neighborhood schools, serving “the students in the surrounding neighborhood or catchment area,” according to district policy. At the time, the district was run by a state-appointed board that favored charter expansion. But as student enrollment shrinks citywide, many Renaissance schools rely on filling their seats with students from outside their neighborhood. That means enrolling kids who might otherwise attend their own neighborhood district-run school, increasing competition for students.

In fact, at half the city’s Renaissance schools, the majority of students came from outside the schools’ catchment, a Chalkbeat analysis of district data for last school year found. The schools must give priority access to students within their catchments, but can open up remaining seats to students anywhere in the city, just like at district neighborhood schools.

Out-of-catchment enrollment is highest at Universal Audenried Charter High School, whose charter the board voted to renew Thursday. Only 20% of students reside in the school’s catchment neighborhood.

“That’s not the reason this school was created,” said Wilkerson. “It’s not the parameters within which it’s supposed to operate.”

Board President Reginald Streater commended Universal Audenried for its improved academic scores in recent years. But he agreed with Wilkerson “that the Renaissance question is a question that the board needs to wrestle with,” adding that members must look into whether the initiative is accomplishing what it set out to do.

Penny Nixon, CEO of Universal Charter Schools, which operates Universal Audenried, said in a statement that the board’s discussion “presents an opportunity for meaningful dialogue about how we, together, can continue strengthening neighborhood enrollment.”

“While we cannot determine where families choose to enroll their children, we remain steadfast in ensuring that neighborhood families have access to our school and that every available seat is used to serve Philadelphia students when neighborhood demand does not fill our capacity,” Nixon said.

The board has tried to limit out-of-catchment enrollment at Renaissance charters by including conditions in their charter agreements that require the schools to enroll mostly students from within their catchments. But schools that don’t meet requirements continue to operate.

Universal Audendried’s previous charter agreement required the school to limit new students for the 2025-26 school year to those coming from its catchment area, or those who were siblings of current students. Though the school failed to meet that condition, the board still renewed it Thursday.

Renaissance charters are largely subject to the same accountability standards as other charters, which focus on schools’ academic and operational performance. The board can move not to renew a Renaissance charter if it does not meet some of those standards, which kicks off a process that can lead to closure. But it cannot close one of those schools unilaterally.

District’s school closure plan left out charter schools

Philadelphia’s district enrollment has shrunk by 13% from a decade ago, largely due to declining birth rates. Fewer kids means district, charter, and private schools are all competing for fewer students.

The district’s sweeping facilities plan, including closing 17 schools beginning next year, is largely meant to help the district adapt to its enrollment decline.

The board voted to approve that plan earlier this year, after months of protest from school communities. But though one-third of Philadelphia students attend charter schools, and the district owns the facilities of Renaissance charters, the district didn’t include an analysis of charter school enrollment or potential plans for Renaissance buildings in its facilities planning process.

District and board officials did not respond to questions about why charter schools were not included.

The district’s website states that “While the District and renaissance charter schools are an interconnected system, the primary recommendations in this plan will focus on District-operated school programs.”

Montessori Charter fights school board over nonrenewal decision

Separately on Thursday, the school board kicked off the process that could lead to closing Philadelphia Montessori Charter School, which is not a Renaissance charter.

The school, which enrolled around 250 students last year, had fewer than 20% of its students score proficient in the state math and reading test last year, both below the district average.

The “student academic growth has not kept pace with state expectations,” said Board of Education Vice President Sarah-Ashley Andrews Thursday. Seven of the nine board members voted in favor of issuing a notice of nonrenewal to the school.

The school appears ready to fight the decision. It filed a lawsuit in May in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court against the district alleging its charter renewal process is unlawful. On Tuesday, the school’s president and two families filed a separate lawsuit against the district in federal court, alleging the district “administered the renewal process in a discriminatory and arbitrary manner” against the school.

Before the vote, Philadelphia Montessori Executive Director Amanda Wilson urged the board to pause their decision as the court cases play out.

“When decisions affect the future of a public school and hundreds of children, the process should inspire confidence that these decisions are being made thoughtfully,” said Wilson.

Philadelphia Montessori is one of several charter schools and charter advocacy groups fighting the district in court over its renewal process.

Only 8% of Philly voters say public education is headed in the right direction

2026-06-23T19:35:35+00:00

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Only 8% of Philadelphia voters think that public education is headed in the right direction according to a new poll released this week.

The data shared with Chalkbeat on Tuesday of 1,029 registered Philly voters found that more than half of the respondents think the state of public education is worsening. Voters said they are unhappy with the condition of buildings, want to see more advocates pushing to improve the city’s schools, and want Mayor Cherelle Parker to be more engaged in education issues.

The online survey was commissioned by Philly for Great Public Schools, and conducted by Change Research. Philly for Great Public Schools is a new coalition led by Tamir D. Harper, a longtime education proponent and former district teacher, that advocates for traditional public, charter, and magnet schools in the city. The poll went out to voters via a series of Facebook and Instagram ads and text messages between May 27 and June 3, 2026.

The results show Philadelphians’ opinions about their public schools have soured over the last year. In a similar survey conducted by the same company in May 2025, 44% of voters said they were “very concerned” about the state of public education in the city, according to a statement from Philly for Great Public Schools. This year, 57% said the same. Overall, 81% of respondents said they are at least somewhat concerned about the state of public education, up 4 percentage points from a year prior.

The poll’s timing came during a particularly tense period for Philadelphia schools. The mayor-appointed Board of Education had just voted to close 17 schools at an explosive April meeting that drove City Council members to call for board members’ resignations and a switch to an elected board. The district had adopted a budget with millions in cuts and hundreds of teachers were being transferred to other positions — in some cases leaving the district altogether.

Harper said the poll results weren’t surprising after the year the district has had, but he said decisionmakers should take the data as a sign that they need to engage more meaningfully with parents and city residents.

“People feel like they don’t have a voice in how their children are being educated,” Harper said in an interview. “Families are scared. They wake up one day and their school may be on the list to close or it may be on the list one day and not on the list the next day.”

The poll found support for charter schools is high in the city. Among parents who responded to the survey, 63% said they support allowing new charter schools to open. Support for opening new charters was especially high among Black and Latino poll respondents (61% and 54% respectively) and those without a college degree (61%).

In the wake of the city’s budget fight about school funding, the survey found strong support for an audit of the school district at 86% of voters.

A slight majority of voters (52%) also said they opposed school closures, with 30% in support of the board’s vote to close some schools and modernize nearly 170 others.

“We have a city that is prepared to work together to address the issues. We have a city that is invested in public education, and now we need our leaders to listen,” Harper said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Why switching Philadelphia to an elected school board would be very complicated

2026-06-03T20:42:06+00:00

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Furious over the Philadelphia Board of Education’s vote to close several schools, City Council Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas wants to explore changing the board from one appointed by the mayor to one that’s elected.

But doing so would be an immensely complicated and politically daunting process. State lawmakers would need to pass legislation that the governor would need to sign. The mayor would need to give up the power of appointing board members, and voters would have to approve this change.

And switching to an elected board could also strip the City Council of much of its influence over the district. That’s because those and other legal changes could ultimately grant the school board major authority it now lacks: the power to tax.

The proposal from Thomas follows a citywide uproar over the district’s decision to close 17 schools, which he vehemently opposed; he’s promised to sue to halt the closures, although no such suit has materialized so far.

His push to overhaul how school board members are selected highlights longstanding conflicts between different political power centers in the city. It also channels concerns that unlike for every other school district in the state, Philadelphia residents lack direct representation when the board makes significant decisions about spending, charter school expansion, curriculum mandates, desegregation initiatives, and more.

In the current setup, the school board members and the superintendent must go every year to the mayor and council to push for a share of city taxes sufficient to help the district meet the needs of its students, after many years of what a court deemed were inadequate levels of state funding that violated the Pennsylvania Constitution.

That forces board members and district leaders into an annual tussle with the council over the budget. What’s made that even more stressful is the district’s longstanding structural deficit. For 2026-27, the board just adopted a $4.6 billion budget with $225 million in cuts as it attempts to cope with a projected shortfall of $300 million.

All that means if the school board gained its own taxing power and could rely less on city government, it “would be a huge structural shift in how the city and the school district operates,” said Christopher McGinley, a former Philadelphia school board member who also served as superintendent in two suburban districts with elected boards.

It’s unclear what if anything would convince city officials to relinquish their current power over school funding and school board members. Thomas said last month while he is in favor of an elected school board, he does not support giving it taxation power.

Mayor Cherelle Parker picked all nine current board members at the start of her term. Nominees are first vetted by an Education Nominating Panel, which is also appointed by the mayor. They are then subject to the “advice and consent” of the City Council. (Board member Joyce Wilkerson was appointed by Parker but never got the council’s approval, and now serves as a “holdover” member, which has caused additional controversy.)

Parker’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

An elected school board might spawn new political problems in Philadelphia even if it eases current ones. Still, some believe that the existing process is inadequate for dealing with the district’s myriad challenges.

Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, a longtime critic of the board, pointed out that at neighborhood hearings on the proposed school closures, nearly every speaker opposed them, to no avail. To her, an elected Philadelphia school board is also an issue of fairness.

“Why should every other school district in Pennsylvania have an elected board and Philadelphia does not?” she said

Pennsylvania school boards have taxing power — except Philly’s

The most direct influence an elected and not appointed board could have on schools in the city would be the power to raise money through taxation.

In all the state’s other 500 school districts, the elected boards of education levy school taxes, while municipal and county governments raise taxes for other needs such as infrastructure and social services. The educational and civic governing bodies are separate entities with their own taxing power, geographic boundaries, and sources of revenue. For instance, Montgomery County has 62 municipalities and 22 school districts.

Shifting from an appointed to an elected school board by itself would not automatically include the power to tax. To give an elected school board taxation power would require a vote by the state legislature and amendments to the state school code. It would also require voters to approve changes to the 1965 education section of the city’s Home Rule Charter.

But unlike other jurisdictions, Philadelphia is its own county as well as its own school district. That means even if an elected school board were granted the power to tax by state government and voters, it would lead to the City Council and Board of Education drawing on the same sources of tax revenue.

Richard Feder, the former chief of legislation in the city law department, said all of those changes would mean “cutting City Council out of the process” of funding schools, which would likely lead to the kind of staunch opposition from the council that Thomas has already expressed.

Besides the considerable political problems, Feder said he doesn’t think giving an elected board taxation power would be a good idea fiscally.

“I spent my career fighting for more school funding,” Feder said, “but we shouldn’t have two competing taxing bodies fighting over the same limited tax base.”

Susan Gobreski, the former head of the advocacy group Education Voters PA, said Philadelphians already elect the officials who provide the funding for schools. The council “is not a single-issue body” like the school board and can put all the city’s needs into perspective, she said.

At the same time, she said, the feeling that the board is accountable to no one is real. Even if an elected board ended up lacking taxation power, Gobreski said allowing the public to pick its members would still be worthwhile so voters could feel they had a say in choosing who to hold accountable for decisions around education policy.

Electing school board members could open Pandora’s box

But there’d be one more complication about a change to an elected board. Feder said to meet state requirements, voters in Philadelphia would have to approve a change to the city charter to allow for a partisan election. Or state voters would have to approve an amendment to the school code allowing Philadelphia to hold a nonpartisan election.

McGinley, who served on the School Reform Commission that previously ran Philly schools and was superintendent in Lower Merion and Cheltenham, worries that electing school board members would open a political Pandora’s box by giving more leverage to interest groups “that would play their cards” on various issues.

But Elaine Simon, a retired urban studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has co-authored an upcoming book on the last wave of school closures in 2013, said an elected board, especially one with regional representatives, would be more sensitive to the needs of different areas in the city.

“Now, the school board members are not representing a neighborhood,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, Board of Education President Reginald Streater is skeptical of what benefits Philadelphia would gain by electing its school board members.

He said more time should elapse before contemplating another major upheaval of district governance. It only recently emerged from an even less democratic period when a state commission ran city schools from 2001 to 2018 before returning control to a local school board.

He pointed out that the state is moving toward school funding adequacy after a historic Commonwealth Court decision, and that in Philadelphia measures including test scores, attendance rates, and dropout rates are improving.

Conditions “are getting better … why change this now?” he said.

Chalkbeat Philadelphia bureau chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this article.

Philadelphia school board adopts $4.6B budget with millions in cuts

2026-05-29T00:03:29+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education approved a $4.6 billion budget Thursday night that includes millions in cuts and will result in schools losing climate staff, teachers, counselors, and substitutes.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said cutting some $225 million is necessary to begin to plug the district’s $300 million budget deficit while balancing rising salaries, healthcare premiums, and charter school payments. No staff will be laid off, Watlington has previously said. Instead, teachers and school-based staff might be reassigned to other vacant positions across the district.

“I’m agnostic to how we get the dollars, but we desperately need additional revenue,” Watlington said.

The budget passed 8-0.

The cuts come amid a cloud of bad news for Philly schools. Ahead of the meeting, City Council members rallied outside of the district building and blasted board members for their April vote approving the district’s plan to close 17 schools starting in 2027. Enrollment declines and other funding challenges mean schools will lose more staff, advanced placement classes, and after-school programs than the district is discussing.

Board member Joyce Wilkerson blamed state and federal underfunding for the district’s financial position. Philly is the only school district in the state that can’t raise its own tax revenue and is nearly entirely dependent on state and city funding.

“It’s a national disgrace, and a disgrace to this commonwealth” that Philly schools don’t receive more public funding, Wilkerson said.

Voting to approve the budget amounts to doubling down on the closure plan, City Council member Kendra Brooks said.

City Council member Jamie Gauthier called for the six board members who voted for the closure plan to resign. “We need a school board that is actually accountable to our community,” she said.

Though elected officials are publicly fuming about the closures, no City Council member has proposed a plan to help the district close its budget deficit.

Mayor Cherelle Parker has been pushing a proposed $1 per ride tax on Ubers and Lyfts to funnel more money to the school district. But the tax has become one of the central political battles in the city, and city council members do not appear poised to approve it as is.

Thursday’s vote locks the district’s budget cuts in while negotiations around the rideshare tax continue.

City Council member and Chair of the city’s Education Committee Isaiah Thomas said at Thursday’s rally that the rideshare tax is not part of his negotiation strategy.

Also on Thursday, the board approved a $266 million amended capital budget that lays out major renovations, building additions, system replacements, and playground construction for dozens of schools to be paid for with bonds. The district’s facilities plan intends to modernize some 170 schools in addition to the closures, but there’s no guaranteed funding for that plan, so it’s unclear how realistic those projections are.

The city has a July 1 deadline to enact a budget. Thomas said if school board members and district officials don’t come back to the table to discuss changes to the closure plan, council members will continue to put them on notice.

“We’ll just keep going,” he said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Should Congress spend big to rebuild schools? This $500 billion campaign proposal will be a tough sell.

2026-05-18T10:00:00+00:00

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America’s schools are crumbling.

There’s black mold in buildings in Alaska and Maine. Classrooms in New Jersey and Texas lack proper heating and cooling. And there are persistent plumbing problems in Idaho and Pennsylvania.

America’s aging school infrastructure is by one measure a nearly $90 billion problem. Federal leaders have acknowledged it since at least the 1980s but have declined to address it. Local school districts and state governments also haven’t solved it — in some cases, even after being ordered by a court to do so.

It’s a problem so big that one congressional candidate running to represent parts of Philadelphia — where the cost of repairing and upgrading public schools could cost up to $10 billion — is making it the centerpiece of his campaign. After struggling to find solutions in the Pennsylvania Legislature, state Sen. Sharif Street, a Democrat, believes only the federal government has the resources to tackle this issue. He thinks a $500 billion block grant proposal could find bipartisan support in a Congress and a country deeply divided on the federal government’s role in education.

“If we don’t address this at a federal level and come up with a massive amount of money to do so, we’re going to constantly be in a space of choosing all bad options,” Street said.

Those who lobby for the issue say Street’s proposal could put thousands of people to work, boost test scores, and strengthen communities. Street thinks it could — and must — be the nation’s next interstate highway project.

To make his case in Congress, Street must first get through a tough Democratic primary for the 3rd Congressional District on May 19. The winner of the primary is the heavy favorite to win the November election.

Regardless of whether Street wins the seat, advocates say it’s rare for a congressional candidate to make school infrastructure a key issue in a pitch to voters.

“It is absolutely viable, if Congress has the will to do it, and it would be transformative for America’s families and communities for decades to come,” said Ally Talcott, executive director of the Build America’s School Infrastructure Coalition, of Street’s proposal. “I think it is quite possibly one of the areas that could bring the country together.”

The centerpiece of Pennsylvania Sen. Sharif Street's congressional campaign is a $500 billion proposal to fund school construction and maintenance.

But Street is wading into a debate where others have previously failed to make progress. Convincing conservatives to support sending $500 billion for school facilities through a Department of Education the Trump administration is working to dismantle would be a tough sell, even if local bond measures for school infrastructure continue to do well at the ballot box.

R. Richard Geddes, a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute specializing in infrastructure policy, said he thinks school construction and maintenance is “a huge sleeper issue” that few are paying close attention to.

Still, for a proposal like Street’s to succeed and that money be spent efficiently, Geddes there should be conditions. He suggested requiring municipalities to bundle projects like Pennsylvania did to build 550 bridges, or setting up a federal credit program like one that provides loans for highway and railroad projects.

Asking thousands of local education agencies to apply for some of the $500 billion pot would be “a mess,” and those districts wouldn’t reap the benefits of scale, Geddes said.

Cities and municipalities should also consider public-private partnerships, Geddes said. That could look like attaching a privately owned gym or coffee shop to a school building to generate revenue that could pay for a portion of the building maintenance.

Geddes said that could come with its own controversy, but “it would still be better than what we have, which is a lack of creative thinking.”

State and local funding lags for school infrastructure

To accommodate the baby boom generation, cities and towns built thousands of new schools. Since then, the fertility rate has declined, and post-pandemic K-12 enrollment has been shrinking. That’s left many school buildings half empty and costly to maintain.

State and local lawmakers typically patch up the worst infrastructure issues with small-dollar grants and emergency funds. But they haven’t come close to fully funding their school facilities’ needs. As of 2023, 13 states contributed less than 10% toward local district investments in school construction and capital improvements, according to the 21st Century School Fund’s State of the Schools report from last year. And 10 states made no contributions at all.

It’s estimated that the average annual gap between what districts are spending on their public school facilities and what is needed is nearly $90 billion nationally, according to the State of the Schools report.

It’s a crucial education issue that has been politically “orphaned,” despite recent history indicating it can be relatively popular with voters said Mary Filardo, a school construction finance expert and founder of the 21st Century School Fund. Voters approved nearly 80% of bond measures for school facilities in 2025, and they approved nearly 74% in 2024.

In May, Texas voters approved a $6.2 billion school bond — the largest in state history.

But local funding hasn’t been sufficient to meet all the needs. And in some places, like Philly, the school district lacks taxing authority altogether.

In Street’s hometown of Philadelphia, the school facilities crisis has become one of the most pressing political issues in the city. With a $300 million budget deficit and declining student population, the district is moving forward with a $3 billion plan to close 17 schools and modernize nearly 170 others.

But right now, the district can’t pay for it. The district’s annual budget is $4.5 billion, yet estimates for the total cost to repair and upgrade its schools range from $5 billion to nearly $10 billion.

“Philadelphia is one of the great American cities. And it’s like, how did you let this get this bad?” said Filardo.

Pennsylvania’s previous program to fund school repairs, known as PlanCon, stopped receiving funding in 2015. A new version has never received state funding.

“There’s no way that the city or the state at the local level can actually fully address those needs,” Street said. “We just can’t do it.”

Street said his proposal, which he acknowledged is a starting point and could end up being much smaller than $500 billion, would have the Department of Education send out funding through an as-yet-undeveloped formula that factors in local population and needs.

The Philadelphia school district spends about $770 million on facilities a year, mostly on debt service and emergency repairs when roofs collapse or boilers fail, Filardo said. Those emergency repairs can end up costing more than regular maintenance and upkeep.

Filardo says for districts like Philly it’s a bit of a paradox: “They’re not spending enough, but they’re spending a lot, and they’re not getting as good a value from what they are spending.”

Geddes said when cities and towns are faced with budget crises, “the easiest thing to do in the world is defer maintenance.” That goes for roads, sidewalks, and electrical grids as well as schools.

He suggested one condition of receiving federal funding could be locking in contracts that would commit municipalities to funding 10 or 12 years of proper maintenance in advance.

That maintenance will be critical, Filardo warned, as construction costs rise and the effects of climate change batter buildings and put extra pressure on electrical systems.

School infrastructure funded with ‘hodgepodge’ of federal policies

Talcott of the infrastructure coalition said the way the country currently treats school construction funding is via “a hodgepodge of federal policies.” Funding goes out piecemeal through several agencies and departments including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy.

A bill in Congress aims to take on the problem, but it’s a far cry from the $500 billion Street is seeking.

The Rebuild America’s Schools Act of 2026 co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, and U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, would set aside $100 billion in direct grants and $30 billion in bonding authority over five years for school construction.

But Scott, the ranking member on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said gaining support for the legislation has felt like an uphill battle. The bill currently has no Republican cosponsors and hasn’t had a hearing. Scott and other lawmakers have introduced a version of the bill four times since 2019.

“If the locality can’t afford it and the state’s not doing it, then it’s either going to be the federal government or it won’t get done,” Scott said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Billionaire and Republican megadonor is funding scholarships for students at closing Philly schools

2026-05-15T17:20:33+00:00

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An organization funded by Pennsylvania billionaire and Republican megadonor Jeffrey Yass is offering scholarships for Philly students displaced by school closures to enroll in private schools.

This week, the Yass Prize — an organization founded by Yass and his wife Janine — announced new “Opportunity Knocks” scholarships. The scholarships will award $8,000 each year through high school graduation for 500 students whose schools are being closed under the district’s recently approved facilities plan.

Caroline Allen, director of the Yass Prize, said the scholarships are intended to provide families with stability during a time of uncertainty in the district.

“We’re really capitalizing on this time,” Allen said. Though no schools will close until 2027, Allen said “we don’t want to wait for two years for these schools to close down to do something.”

Allen said students who are deemed eligible and receive the scholarships could attend any of the 16 private schools in the city that have received the Yass Prize and have been “vetted” as “sustainable, transformational, outstanding and permissionless.” Those private schools are already preparing to receive an influx of students from district schools that are closing or merging, Allen said.

Yass is the richest person in the state and is well known for his support of charter schools and school vouchers. Yass critics in the public education advocacy space have condemned the scholarships as attempts to lure students away from the public school system.

Aly Shaw, senior research analyst at the LittleSis Public Accountability Initiative, a nonprofit research firm, said she’s been tracking Yass’s political spending and was not surprised to see his name on scholarships aimed at drawing students away from public schools.

“This is the disaster capitalism playbook exactly,” Shaw said, referring to the exploitation of crises for profit. She pointed to Yass’s public support for school privatization and aversion to paying taxes as actions that she said have drained funding from public schools. The scholarships are evidence of Yass “taking advantage of a disaster that he created to promote private schools,” Shaw said.

The scholarship applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and awarded on a first-come, first-served basis to the first 500 students who complete all required steps, including an “eligibility review” and school enrollment applications, Allen said.

Through the Center for Education Reform, a group that supports vouchers and similar policies, the Yass Prize has awarded over $60 million to more than 225 organizations across 45 states since 2021.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia City Council will explore creating an elected school board

2026-05-07T17:43:10+00:00

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Members of Philadelphia’s City Council will examine creating an elected school board, escalating their campaign to have more control over the city’s schools.

Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas introduced a resolution on Thursday to authorize the committee to conduct hearings into the school board’s governance model. The resolution was privileged, meaning it was adopted by the City Council with Thomas’s support.

The move comes after weeks of explosive fights between Thomas and Board of Education President Reginald Streater over the district’s plan to close 17 schools. The board voted 6-3 to approve that plan last week following protests from Thomas and other councilmembers.

Elected school boards can give residents more say over who controls schools, but they can also politicize the school governance process. Researchers have found that no particular governance model is associated with improved academic outcomes for students. School governance conversations have intensified across the country as districts grapple with declining enrollment, school closures, and budget problems.

Philadelphia law states that school board members serve “at the pleasure” of the mayor, unless they are elected. All members of the current board were nominated by Mayor Cherelle Parker. Most were also confirmed by City Council through a vote, except member Joyce Wilkerson. Wilkerson’s presence on the school board has created tension between the City Council, Parker, and the board.

Thomas’s resolution directs the Education Committee to explore options for an elected school board or a hybrid of elected and appointed members.

In response to questions from Chalkbeat, Streater said in a Thursday statement the board voted to approve school closures “grounded and guided by our commitment to increasing access and opportunities for all students.”

“As a Board, we will continue to call on our city and state partners to work alongside us to ensure that every student receives the investment and support they deserve,” he added.

The resolution calls out the board’s approach to school closures — including initially scheduling a vote on the closures with only 72 hours notice — as a reason for why the governance model should change.

“These actions and the context of these decisions should remind Philadelphians that the governance model of the Philadelphia Board of Education is unique among municipalities in Pennsylvania,” the resolution states. “Considering a more traditional elected or hybrid model of governance may compel the Board to be more responsive to students and families’ concerns than the Board has proven to be.”

In every Pennsylvania district except for Philadelphia, the state’s largest district, school board members are elected. Those elections are partisan. Boards have key powers over districts, including hiring a superintendent, various policies, and the budget.

Seven other members of the City Council cosponsored the resolution from Thomas. It does not state when the Education Committee’s hearings over school governance would begin.

Philadelphia has a $3 billion school closure and modernization plan. Paying for it could be a problem.

2026-05-06T22:00:56+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district’s plan to close schools and modernize others has a $3 billion price tag. Right now, the district can’t pay for it. And its plan to raise that money might end up being wishful thinking.

Last week, members of the Board of Education voted to approve the plan to close 17 schools, and modernize nearly 10 times that number. But they had serious questions about the district’s plan to fund it. Even Superintendent Tony Watlington, who pushed the board to approve the closures and upgrades, has acknowledged the funding hole.

Watlington has said he wants to raise $2 billion from local, state, and federal government as well as philanthropic grants to pay for school upgrades over 10 years to ensure buildings are well equipped to receive more students. The remaining $1 billion would come from the district’s capital borrowing cycle.

But major questions loom over how the district would ever raise that much money. The district already has a $300 million budget deficit. The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, the district’s nonprofit fundraising partner, has raised $70 million since 2015 — or less than 3% of the plan’s total cost. The City Council has blasted the school closures and its relationship with the district has broken down. And Pennsylvania Senate Republicans, who control their chamber, have opposed sending significantly more money to the state’s largest district.

“We’ve never raised money at this level,” said board member Crystal Cubbage, who voted against the plan, at the board’s meeting last week.

All those difficulties could lead to the district to consider a watered-down version of the plan that leaves out many of the improvements Watlington wants. And they could pile further financial pressure on the district, which in addition to its fiscal problems has been losing students for years and is planning to cut hundreds of school-based jobs.

Watlington has stressed that the aim of the facilities plan is to ensure all students have better access to academic opportunities and go to school in high quality buildings.

Under his proposal, some buildings would get bathroom renovations and updated classrooms. Others would get electrical upgrades and new heating and cooling systems. In some buildings, the district has promised accessibility improvements, elevator replacements, new gyms, and fixed roofs.

The plan’s high cost is a departure from school closures elsewhere that are often meant to save districts money. Watlington has said cost-cutting is not a major aim of the facilities plan, but rather the goal is to shuffle enrollment so that the district can spend money more efficiently.

School leaders have said the facilities plan could still change even after the board’s vote to approve it. No schools are scheduled to be closed until the beginning of the 2027-28 school year.

State, city officials could reject additional facilities funding

When Watlington initially presented the facilities plan earlier this year, he said there was an alternative version that would cost significantly less, take longer, and leave more students in low-quality school buildings.

That plan would cost $1.85 billion over the course of 16 years, and the district could pay for it through its own borrowing. However, it would only reduce the number of school buildings rated unsatisfactory or poor from 85 to 45. And it’s unclear if the district’s list of schools to close and colocate would change under this cheaper version of the plan.

That alternative plan also did not include additional investments that Watlington has recently pledged in certain areas where members of City Council have opposed the plan.

It’s unclear if district officials have tweaked the alternative plan in recent months. District officials did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about it, and board members did not ask about it ahead of the April 30 vote to proceed with the facilities plan.

But regardless of which plan district officials turn to, closing schools while asking for more funding is already deeply unpopular with some members of City Council.

Last week, City Council Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas and several other elected officials interrupted the school board’s meeting and called for the resignation of those who voted for the closure plan. And many have questioned the district’s stated need for more funding while it plans to close schools.

Without significant improvement in average academic performance, Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr. said during a city budget town hall in Southwest Philadelphia Tuesday, “why would we continue to put that money in the district?”

The district has also historically been underfunded by the state. Though Gov. Josh Shapiro has approved budgets increasing funding for Philly schools each year since taking office, his budget proposal for next year still leaves the district underfunded by more than $3 billion, according to a formula adopted by a bipartisan state commission. The district will likely need the support of Republican lawmakers to get more state money.

So far, the school closure plan has brought goodwill from at least one key Republican state lawmaker.

After the closure vote, Sen. Kim Ward, a Republican and the president pro tempore of the state senate, posted on social media that she was glad Philly’s schools “recognize the need for reform” and that she was “optimistic” about working with officials to “ensure Philadelphia students are set up for success.”

Philadelphia Board of Education approves 17 school closures

2026-04-30T23:06:14+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education voted Thursday to move forward with the district’s plan to close 17 schools beginning in 2027.

Board members took their 6-3 vote remotely after fleeing an intense and heated meeting where students, educators, and state and city policymakers demanded the plan be rejected. The vote means the district will kick off the process to close more than 4,000 students’ schools and reshape Philadelphia’s school district.

The $3 billion plan would also colocate and relocate several schools and modernize nearly 170 school buildings. Superintendent Tony Watlington has said adopting the plan is necessary to provide better educational opportunities and high-quality school buildings for all students. The district plans to put $1 billion toward it and raise the other $2 billion from government and philanthropic grants.

Ahead of the vote, members of City Council shouted down board members urging them to “Shut it down!” and students yelled “Shame on you!”

Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, chair of the city’s Education Committee, called for the resignation of every board member who voted for the closures, interrupted the meeting several times and promised a lawsuit would land Friday.

Philadelphia Councilmember Isaiah Thomas and other members of City Council rally the crowd calling to shut down the Board of Education meeting on April 30, 2026.

Board President Reginald Streater, Vice-President Sarah-Ashley Andrews, Joan Stern, ChauWing Lam, Cheryl Harper, and Joyce Wilkerson voted in favor of the plan.

“We cannot fully modernize every building, ignore enrollment shifts, or postpone action anymore,” said Streater. “We must call the question today before financial instability forces the hands of all of us in this room.”

Six of nine board members vote to approve school closures

Students, educators, and families packed the meeting, holding signs and blowing whistles. But few were allowed to testify to the board. Though school board meetings generally must have a public comment period, Thursday’s meeting was technically a continuation of the meeting that the board adjourned last week.

That meant only people who had previously signed up to speak were allowed to address board members. After Streater changed the meeting to be virtual, few people were online to give their comments. Microphones were removed from the meeting room where some people — including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg — waited to testify.

Graham Williamson, a 10th grader at Lankenau Environmental Science High School, said he was inspired to see members of City Council fighting to keep his school open. But he said he had been telling school leaders to keep his school open since the district first announced its plan earlier this year.

“I’ve talked a lot already,” Williamson said. “I think it should be enough.”

Board members who voted against the proposal said they agreed that some closures are necessary. But they pointed out what they said were major problems with the plan, like its $3 billion price tag that the district does not have the funds to pay for and scarce details about what support would be available for students at closing schools.

The plan “will not lead to improved academic outcomes, it’s not financially viable, and it does not get us to the stated goal of 90% building utilization,” said board member Crystal Cubbage, who voted against the plan alongside Whitney Jones and Wanda Novalés.

All board members said they acknowledged that closing schools is a difficult and emotional decision. Even those who supported the plan said they had concerns. But they said the board needs to act to address the district’s declining enrollment, buildings with hundreds of empty seats, and enormous school repair costs.

“We must start now,” said Stern. “We cannot postpone this.”

Vote kicks off school closures, but plan could change

The district’s proposal would begin closing schools at the start of the 2027-28 school year. But there’s a legal process the plan has to go through before any of that happens. And lawsuits could derail the timeline further.

The board’s vote essentially directs the district to begin the process of closing schools. School leaders could still change the plan before the district implements it.

By the meeting’s conclusion, board members disappeared quietly through back doors and more than a dozen police officers stood guard outside the board’s office.

But parents, teachers, and students have told district leadership they will not go quietly.

“We will be here until the last person is removed from this building,” 29-year veteran Penn Treaty Middle School teacher Kristen Young said Wednesday at a rally to protest her school’s closure. “And that will likely have to be by force.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Vote on Philadelphia school closures canceled by Board of Education

2026-04-23T18:15:02+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education will not vote on the district’s sweeping school closure proposal Thursday as previously planned, the board announced.

Board Chief of Staff Sithi Bucciarelli said in a statement Thursday afternoon the board will now meet April 30 to consider the resolution that includes the closures.

The board will still meet on Thursday at 4 p.m., as scheduled, to consider other business not related to the closures, Bucciarelli said.

On Monday, the board announced the plan to close 17 schools beginning in 2027 would be on Thursday’s school board meeting agenda. The reversal comes roughly two hours before that meeting was set to begin.

The resolution included changes to the facilities plan that the district had not shared previously, including removing one school from the closure list. It also included modernizing nearly 170 other schools.

In the last few days, members of the City Council have pushed Superintendent Tony Watlington and Board President Reginald Streater to delay the vote. During two days of tense hearings on education spending, elected officials told school leaders the facilities plan as written has major flaws.

Councilmembers and educators also said the plan’s timeline has been rushed, which meant many people did not have time to review the plan or reschedule their weeks to attend the meeting.

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents parts of West and Southwest Philadelphia, told Watlington and Streater during a Wednesday hearing that delaying the vote would show they were working in “true partnership towards the benefit of our kids.”

On several occasions during the hearing, Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas asked Streater directly if he would delay the vote. But Streater said he could not make that decision unilaterally and would have to consult with other board members.

All 17 councilmembers signed a letter dated Thursday requesting that the board postpone the vote until its May 28 meeting, at the earliest.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers also harshly critiqued the district’s quick timeline for the scheduled vote.

On April 30, the board will only consider the facilities plan vote and a resolution related to issuing bonds.

“We recognize that the future of our school facilities is a matter of significant interest that requires the highest level of collaboration,” said Board President Reginald Streater in a Thursday statement. “In the spirit of partnership, we are taking this time to ensure our stakeholders understand the proposal” before the Board votes.

This story has been updated to reflect that the Board of Education still plans to meet April 23.

Chalkbeat Philadelphia Bureau Chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

Your guide to Philadelphia’s upcoming school closure vote

2026-04-23T14:53:50+00:00

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Update: Board officials announced Thursday afternoon they will now meet April 30 to consider the resolution that includes the closures.

The Philadelphia Board of Education is moving ahead with plans to vote Thursday on the school district’s proposal to close 17 schools.

The closure plan, which the district first announced in January and initially targeted 20 schools, has received major pushback from school communities and local officials who worry shuttering schools will destabilize students, spark bullying and fights, and rob communities of vital resources.

“If we slow down just a little bit and just took more account for what the community says, what students say, we might get better results on how we should move forward,” said Overbrook Elementary School Principal Kenneth Glover at a Wednesday rally to save his school, which is on the closure list.

This week, students, educators, and policymakers launched a full-out campaign for the board to delay the vote. At the City Council earlier this week, members blasted School Board President Reginald Streater and Superintendent Tony Watlington, saying they were not sufficiently consulted in the planning and selection of the schools to be closed and modernized.

But Streater declined to postpone the vote. He said only that he would bring their concerns back to the other board members.

Watlington and district officials have said the closures and general rightsizing of the district are necessary and will expand educational opportunities for students. Over the past decade, enrollment in Philadelphia’s public schools has declined by more than 17,000 students. That’s left many students to learn in half-empty, inadequate school buildings that are costly to maintain.

District leaders say their facilities master plan, which includes the closures, will offer students safer school environments and will help the district better serve the needs of Philly students and families.

Here’s some additional information about the closure vote, and how you can get involved.

Where’s the most updated list of which schools would close?

The district is proposing to close 17 schools, modernize 169 schools, and colocate six schools.

The district’s facilities master plan website has more information about plans for each school.

Where is the vote happening and how do I participate?

The vote is part of the Board of Education’s Monthly Action Meeting, which is held at 440 North Broad Street and livestreamed online here. The meeting begins at 4 p.m.

You can submit written comments here (you must include your name and the subject line “Board Comments”). Or you can drop a statement off at the board office at the North Broad Street address.

What happens if the board votes yes?

If the board approves the resolution, the district and board will then move forward with required legal steps to close schools. The district may still make changes to the plan during that part of the process.

Per the plan, most closures would not go into effect until 2027. District officials have promised that schools identified for closure will have a planning year, during which staff and families will work with a “transition team” to ease students and teachers through the changes.

What other actions could the board take?

The board could decide to table the vote to give the district more time to receive community input. Board members could also vote against the closure plan and send it back to the district to make changes.

However, Watlington has said this version of the plan is the “final, final set of recommendations” he is putting forward.

How much will the facilities plan cost?

The district doesn’t have a firm plan to fund the proposal, which comes with a $3 billion price tag. Alongside the closures, the broader facilities master plan includes renovations to nearly 170 schools. That means fixing bathrooms, painting walls, and patching ceilings, among other repairs.

Watlington said the funding will come from a combination of philanthropic donations and district funds. However, the district is also facing a $300 million budget shortfall, which Mayor Cherelle Parker hopes to partially close with a controversial rideshare tax.

What will happen to teachers if their school closes?

Watlington has said no teachers will lose their jobs due to the closures. But the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union has not thrown their support behind the plan.

PFT President Arthur Steinberg joined calls this week to delay the vote and is planning to host a protest outside of the district building ahead of Thursday’s vote. Steinberg said the union is working on an alternative proposal that it plans to release in the next few weeks.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Feud over Philadelphia’s school closure plan leads to threats against district funding

2026-04-22T22:08:29+00:00

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In the hours before the Philadelphia Board of Education is scheduled to vote on its school closure plan, political threats and finger-pointing have reached a fever pitch.

City Councilmembers who say they were caught off-guard by the board’s sudden decision to hold the vote to close 17 schools this week have summoned Superintendent Tony Watlington and Board President Reginald Streater to multiple budget hearings, where they have threatened district funding. They say they felt misled by district leaders and — as Councilmember Nina Ahmad put it — “sandbagged.”

Meanwhile, at rallies to save individual schools from closure, state lawmakers have declared that they have long memories and will not forget the outcome of Thursday’s vote. They’ve said if the board votes to close beloved schools in their districts, they’ll be less likely to advocate for increased state aid for Philly schools.

“The administration, the legislative body, and the school district all look like you’re fighting against each other,” said Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who at a Wednesday hearing asked Streater to delay the planned vote as a signal of political goodwill.

Streater refused to accept or reject the request, saying he would confer with the board members and come to a decision before Thursday.

The fiery political rhetoric signals that the relationship between city government, school board members, and district leaders has been damaged. Still, there are few alternate proposals to get the district the money it says it would need to maintain buildings and close its budget hole. And as angry as elected leaders are about the situation, many of those same officials are among the biggest champions of education funding who might be loath to punish the district by cutting school aid or withholding their support for increasing it.

“I don’t want to talk about school funding until we get a facilities plan that we all agree upon,” Councilmember and Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas told Chalkbeat. “You can’t tell us that we have to get in line with your facilities plan and then tell us we have to get in line with your funding plan. That’s disingenuous.”

The only proposal to increase city funding for the school district on the table right now is Mayor Cherelle Parker’s $1 rideshare tax, which at least one councilmember has said is “dead on arrival” if the closure plan moves forward as written. That proposal would provide an estimated $54 million to offset 340 planned staff cuts — a drop in the bucket for a district facing a $300 million deficit and which has been chronically underfunded by some $1.8 billion annually, according to a Commonwealth Court judge.

Members spent Tuesday and Wednesday questioning and excoriating Watlington, Streater, and the city’s Chief Education Officer Debora Carrera. But when it comes to voting to send the district money, “we always come through,” Councilmember Cindy Bass said at Wednesday’s budget hearing.

At that same hearing, Parker called for unity but did not back down from her tax proposal that has become increasingly unpopular at the City Council.

“I know it’s good theater for people to see what they consider to be our going to war, the administration, versus the council, the legislative branch versus the executive branch in opposition, with the school board in opposition with the school superintendent,” Parker said.

For many elected leaders, the issue might be a defining feature of their time in office. Their speeches over the last few months at rallies to keep schools from closing may help them get attention from families and latch onto a cause that’s spurring civic engagement across the city.

Parker, who appointed all of the board members, is up for reelection in 2027. All 17 City Councilmembers have indicated they intend to seek reelection in 2027, and this year, every member of the state House of Representatives is on the ballot.

“As we go through budget season in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we will remember that vote on Thursday,” state Rep. Morgan Cephas, a Democrat, warned board members at a Tuesday rally to keep Lankenau Environmental Science High School open.

Still, no City Councilmember has put forth a plan to help the district close its budget deficit or allocate more money to prevent closures.

“It’s complex for y’all. It’s complex for us. We’re trying to work as a partnership, and everybody’s gotta do a little bit of give and take,” Council President Kenyatta Johnson said Wednesday.

Education advocates say councilmembers could draw on the city’s budget surplus, shift the amount of tax revenue set aside for the district, or adjust the split of the city’s soda tax revenue to send more money to schools, for example. Thomas told Chalkbeat Wednesday he won’t entertain alternatives until they reach common ground with the facilities plan.

But holding up all city funding for the district appears unlikely.

Bass said Wednesday that not one councilmember “has taken a single vote against any level of funding” for the district in the past.

Thomas said if the board moves forward with a vote on the closure plan Thursday, he’s prepared to consider “plenty of options.”

Chalkbeat reporter Rebecca Redelmeier contributed to this story.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

17 school closures: Philadelphia Board of Education to vote on new facilities plan Thursday

2026-04-20T17:39:10+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education will vote Thursday whether to move forward with the school district’s school closure proposal, according to a resolution the board published Monday.

The latest version of the plan district officials released Monday would close 17 schools beginning in 2027. That’s down from the initial 18 school closures Superintendent Tony Watlington presented to the board in February.

The district’s updated proposal takes James R. Ludlow School off the closure list and nixes the plan to turn John Moffet Elementary into a middle school. Moffet would now become a K-4 school, with students attending Ludlow for middle school.

It also increases investments in some parts of the city where members of City Council have vehemently fought the plan. And although the district still plans to close Lankenau Environmental Science High School and Paul Robeson High School, it now plans to hold onto those two school properties and eventually repurpose them for community or student use, rather than sell the buildings or convey them to the city.

The plan, which includes colocating some schools and modernizing nearly 170 others, has a $3 billion price tag — up from an initial $2.8 billion. But there’s no guarantee the district will be able to foot the bill. Watlington said during a press briefing Monday that the district will put $1 billion towards the upgrades and hopes to raise additional funding from government and philanthropic grants.

The plans’ ultimate goal, Watlington said, is to increase educational opportunities for all students. Too many students are in half-empty, crumbling buildings that are not offering them the academic opportunities they sorely deserve, Watlington has said. And district enrollment is projected to continue to decline.

Board President Reginald Streater appeared supportive of the plan at the press briefing Monday, but it’s still unclear how other members will vote.

“We can’t expect a different result doing the same thing, understanding our budget realities,” Streater said. “We have to reorganize and go through this reform of how we do things in Philadelphia if we expect to provide our babies the resources they need to be who they want to be and who they can be when they grow up.”

If the board approves the resolution, it will kick start another process for the district and board to complete required legal steps to close schools. One of those steps will likely be additional public engagement.

Streater said the district could alter the plan again, based on enrollment or budgetary changes. But for now, this is the version the board will consider.

“This is the final, final set of recommendations that I’m presenting to President Streater and his Board of Education for consideration,” Watlington said.

Councilmember who fought closure plan now supports it

The district’s decision not to sell Paul Robeson High School seems to have swayed at least one city councilmember: Jamie Gauthier.

Gauthier had previously fiercely opposed the district’s plan. She had organized rallies against it and proposed rezoning the land for Robeson and other schools in her district to prevent them from being redeveloped into commercial or residential buildings. But on Monday, she said she supported the changes.

“This proves that you’re listening. It proves that you care about equity in this plan, and I and my community are grateful,” Gauthier said at the briefing Monday.

The $200 million increase to the plan’s price tag largely stems from bigger investments in Gauthier’s district, which includes parts of West and Southwest Philadelphia. These include modernization projects at Anderson Elementary, Bryant Elementary, and Mitchell Elementary, and a pool renovation at Motivation High School.

The plan increases spending in Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr.’s district in North Philadelphia as well. Young had also fought the facilities plan and said he was considering his own rezoning proposal.

On Monday, Young said in a statement that he welcomed the decision to remove Ludlow, which is in his district, from the closure list. But he called the move “clear proof that the school facilities plan is flawed and isn’t based on any sound rationale.”

“I remain firmly opposed to the Facilities Master Plan as a whole,” Young said.

Education Chair Isaiah Thomas calls closure vote ‘rushed’

Philadelphia Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas immediately critiqued the district Monday for giving Philadelphians only three days notice of the vote.

People had been pleading with the board for months to give them significant advance notice for any vote on the plan. On Monday, several educators told Chalkbeat they worried the tight timeframe would make it difficult for people to reorganize their week to attend the meeting.

“More information needs to be communicated to our communities before a vote is taken, and the school board should not take a vote on this plan until that has happened,” Thomas said in a statement.

Thomas said the vote as scheduled would be “rushed” and would “only further reduce public trust and fear about this plan and its impact on our young people.”

Teachers union opposes plan, is working on alternative

Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said his team did not receive prior notice of the plan’s changes or the scheduled vote.

“I think the timing is awful,” Steinberg said.

The City Council plans to consider a $1 per ride tax on Ubers and Lyfts on Tuesday that would funnel $48 million annually to the district and prevent some staff cuts. With the closure vote now looming, “it’s going to be more difficult to get the public on board and to keep people enthused about” the proposed rideshare tax, Steinberg said.

Steinberg said the union cannot comment on the substance of the plan because district officials did not “show their work” about how they decided which schools they planned to close. The union is working on an alternative proposal that it plans to release in the next few weeks, he said.

The $3 billion price tag is also a major concern, Steinberg said. He worries the district will not have the money to make all the investments and modernizations it has promised.

“My greatest fear is the closures will go ahead because they’re in place and they’re scheduled,” said Steinberg. “You’ll get three or four years down the road, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, well, we don’t have the money. We’re gonna have to stop here.’”

This story has been updated to include comments from City Council Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg, and Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Meet the Philly kids fighting to keep their schools from closing

2026-04-03T17:11:20+00:00

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Eighth graders Alexis Rodriguez and Dominic Wolbert spent the week before a recent Philadelphia Board of Education meeting getting ready.

They had taken hours to write their speeches and get feedback on them from their teachers at Stetson Middle School. They had overcome some nerves and discomfort.

When their names were called to speak at the March meeting, they looked directly at the school board members and told them: Don’t close our school.

“Stetson for me was a place where I could learn, and grow, and befriend people who I hold very close to me,” said Rodriguez, 14. “Phasing out our school is to crush the feeling of safety and belonging.”

With their testimony complete, the two middle schoolers ducked out of the board meeting around the two-hour mark to grab chips and soda from the vending machine. It was still a long night ahead, with dozens of other students, teachers, and parents signed up to speak out against the closures.

Stetson Middle School students Dominic Wolbert (left) and Alexis Rodriguez practiced their speeches to the Board of Education before giving their public testimony at a recent town hall meeting.

In the months since Superintendent Tony Watlington released his proposal to close 18 schools, students have been front and center in the fight against the plan. Kids as young as 6 have testified at school board meetings. High schoolers have planned walkouts, analyzed district data, and built relationships with members of the City Council to try to push change. Some students spent part of spring break attending a training on how to organize against the closures.

Watlington has said the plan will mean all students go to class in quality buildings and have more access to desirable programming, like AP classes. The $2.8 billion proposal also includes modernizing more than 100 schools.

Students Chalkbeat spoke with said they didn’t regularly attend school board meetings or keep up to date with local political decisions. But the school closure debate was one that mattered to them and mobilized them. Some said working together to fight the school closures has forged new deep bonds within the schools. Others said it made them question why it seems students and families have so little say in school decisions.

Qeni Corinaldi, a senior at Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice, said the proposal to close his school got him wondering about who has power over schools in the first place.

“It went from, ‘Oh, my school’s being shut down’ to ‘I’m going to learn more about it,’” Corinaldi said.

After he spoke to teachers and friends, attended a school board meeting, and did some research, he had questions. Why did the mayor get to decide who was on the school board? How did Watlington get his position? Why did it seem that Watlington and the school board were in sync, if they were supposed to be separate entities?

When he realized how much power was concentrated in the hands of just a few people, he was shocked. “The power structure is not what democracy is all about,” Corinaldi said.

Students overcome nerves to publicly criticize school closures

The board will make the ultimate decision about which schools close, but they have not yet said when they will vote. In the meantime, students are pulling every lever they can to try to push the board to make changes.

At Lankenau Environmental Science High School, students have helped organize an event showcasing the school’s programs and ties to the 400-acres of natural land surrounding the campus. At Parkway Northwest, students led a roundtable discussion with Councilmember Cindy Bass to share their perspective on the closure process.

Parents and teachers have helped younger kids get involved too.

Students at John Moffet School in Philadelphia rally on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, to oppose the district's plan to change their school from an elementary school to a middle school.

At a rally outside John Moffet Elementary School, which the district wants to turn into a middle school, 9-year-old Morgan Chism had a simple question about the plan: “Why do I have to walk a mile just to get to school?”

Chism’s grandmother, Brenda Riggins, said he had been raising questions about who makes decisions about education ever since Moffet parents started organizing people against the facilities plan.

Riggins said Chism has always been a civically engaged kid — he would prefer to watch cable news and not cartoons, she said — but this moment has gotten him to ask questions about the deeper issues of inequality that plague the city. Even if he doesn’t fully understand the depth of them yet.

Another Moffet parent, Lina Ahmad, said her son Yahya was really sad about the change planned for the school. But speaking up to try and spare the school has given him new energy, she said.

At the rally, Yahya was too small to see over the podium but spoke confidently about his love for his school. “I don’t want to move,” he told the crowd of parents and teachers. “The school is actually one of the best schools. I don’t want to leave.”

Fitler Academic Plus 8th grader Ana Urena testified at a recent school board meeting to urge the Board of Education not to close her school.

Ana Urena, an eighth grader at Fitler Academics Plus who testified at the board’s recent town hall meeting, said she was nervous about speaking in front of the crowd. But she realized that the decision at stake was one that could lead to thousands of students losing their schools. “That’s what really motivated me to do it,” she said.

She said she hopes that by sharing her perspective, the board will put student voices front and center.

“When I’ve heard the board speak, when I hear the adults that have the power to fix this, all I hear is money. Billions of dollars, millions of dollars. It doesn’t matter,” Urena said. “I don’t hear the students.”

Chalkbeat Philadelphia Bureau Chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

The Philly City Council can’t stop school closures directly. Here’s what 2 members are trying instead.

2026-03-26T15:17:19+00:00

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A second member of Philadelphia’s City Council wants to introduce zoning changes that could influence the school district’s school closure plans and what would happen after closures.

Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr., whose district includes parts of North Philadelphia where the school district wants to close three schools, told Chalkbeat he is looking into proposing legislation that would limit how their respective properties could be redeveloped.

The proposal “would be very similar” to a bill that Councilmember Jamie Gauthier introduced last week to restrict the zoning for four West Philadelphia schools, Young said. That bill would rezone the school parcels to civic, educational, or medical use, which would mean any developer looking to build commercial or residential property would have to go through the lengthy process of getting a zoning variance.

“Rezoning the parcels gives the community more say in what will happen,” Young said. He added that he has not finalized his plan yet because he is in discussions with other members of the City Council whose districts send students to schools in his.

In theory, Young’s proposal could complicate the district’s plan to close certain schools, because it could be harder for the district to sell or offload those buildings if the schools do close.

The City Council has no direct say over which schools close — that decision is ultimately up to the Board of Education. But they do largely get to determine changes to how land can be used in their districts, following a Philadelphia government tradition.

Gauthier’s zoning proposal has not yet passed, but is likely to. The legislation is under review by the Committee on Rules.

District leaders have said the list of schools to close is based on data about building quality, enrollment, and the programs they can offer. Many of the buildings slated for closure are over a century old and require costly repairs. District enrollment has also shrunk over the past decade, leaving many schools with more than 100 empty seats.

But some school communities worry they’re being targeted for closure because their buildings sit on valuable land. Young and Gauthier say rezoning school buildings would ensure the district isn’t motivated to close schools based on their resale value, and that neighborhoods have a say over what happens to the land if their schools close.

“Look around you, several new buildings are going up as we speak,” Gauthier said Monday at a rally outside of Paul Robeson High School in West Philadelphia, one of four schools that would be closed or repurposed in her district. “What does it say that we’re making space for all of these uses, but the district won’t even try to find something for our kids?”

But urban planning advocates say restricting zoning doesn’t guarantee benefits for the neighborhood. Instead, it could cause greater strain on the cash-strapped school district by limiting who would want to buy old school buildings, they say.

“Trying to take real estate out of the equation by trying to limit the upside that somebody might pay to do a residential conversion of a school is really just hurting the school district,” said Jon Geeting, policy and advocacy director for Build Philly Now, a local economic development think tank. “I just don’t really think we’re helping anything by making it harder to redevelop.”

City Council wants more say on school closures

In addition to Robeson, the schools in Gauthier’s district that the district plans to close or relocate are Blankenburg Elementary, Martha Washington School, and Parkway West High School. Her bills would designate all of them as “Special Purpose” zoning, along with Motivation High School, which the district removed from the closure list last month.

That designation would zone the land for uses like schools and libraries. To build something else, developers would have to receive a zoning adjustment. Receiving that adjustment can be a political and time consuming process, with no guarantees.

Geeting and some other advocates say they worry zoning restrictions could lead to vacant school buildings sitting empty — a problem the district is already dealing with from the last round of school closures. It has around 20 school properties that have been vacant for years. Last year, a woman’s body was found behind one of them.

Gauthier “supports finding productive use for vacant school buildings,” Harrison Feinman, Gauthier’s director of communications, said in a statement. “But it is inappropriate to plan the redevelopment of schools while students are still in them.”

Superintendent Tony Watlington has said this round of proposed closures would not lead to any vacant buildings. Of the 18 schools slated for closure, the district plans to repurpose 10 for district use. The district wants to convey the other eight to the city or sell them.

Mayor Cherelle Parker has said she supports the plan, and has indicated she wants to turn some closed schools into housing. But none of that is a done deal. The Board of Education still needs to approve Watlington’s plan.

In the meantime, Young said he’s been looking into introducing a rezoning proposal to ensure his constituents’ perspectives are considered in school decisions, but he did not release further details. The district plans to repurpose two schools slated for closure in his district, Robert Morris and Laura W. Waring. But it wants to convey James R. Ludlow School to the city for redevelopment.

Young said his district has plenty of other vacant land that could be redeveloped for housing.

Young has flexed his power with respect to the school district in other ways. On Tuesday, he held his own town hall about some proposed closures in his district, which district officials attended. And earlier this year, he introduced legislation that would enable the City Council to remove members of the school board. Currently, only the mayor has power to do so.

His aim, he said, is to ensure school decisions serve the local communities he represents.

“The people in those communities directly hold me as their council member accountable for the local issues,” Young said. “Education is a local issue. I’m the only person that they can directly take their frustration out on.”

Students fear Philly school closures could spark bullying and violence. Here are possible solutions.

2026-03-13T16:15:00+00:00

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Philadelphia students and community members want to know how schools will prevent fights, bullying, and other conflicts that could stem from the district’s proposal to close 18 schools.

Experts say there are ways to prevent such violence — if planning begins now.

People have brought up safety at many of the roughly 40 community meetings the school district has hosted at schools that would close beginning in 2027. Usually it’s parents and students at smaller, specialized schools who would be moved into bigger neighborhood high schools with violent reputations.

April Anderson voiced concern at a February community meeting about plans to close Parkway Northwest High School, which her child attends, and move those students to Martin Luther King High School, which is about a half-mile away and happens to be Anderson’s own alma mater.

“There are fights at King,” she said. “If you put kids from Parkway in King you don’t think that’s going to start issues?”

Several Parkway Northwest students who attended the meeting echoed that sentiment, including freshman Dane McFarland, who runs on MLK’s track and said he gets bullied there.

Dane McFarland, holding up a megaphone, was among the students who walked out Parkway Northwest High School on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026 to protest the Philadelphia school district's plan to close the school.

A rough reputation can stick with a school, even when data about student conflicts doesn’t tell a simple story. MLK High School does have a higher rate of group assaults than Parkway or Building 21, another school that would also merge into MLK under the district’s closure plan.

But Parkway has higher rates of fights between students, according to the district’s data on serious incidents from 2021 to 2025.

At a City Council hearing about the closures on Feb. 17, Council President Kenyatta Johnson asked district Superintendent Tony Watlington to ensure “that we have a game plan to make sure our young people are safe.”

Watlington answered by pointing to Safe Path, which stations trained adults around the perimeters of campuses to break up dismissal-time fighting and escort children home as needed. But that program was delayed at some schools this year, and moreover doesn’t directly address the climate inside buildings.

At a recent school board meeting, the president of the School Police Association of Philadelphia, Bernadette Ambrose-Smith, requested that the district do a safety analysis of the closure plan, due to concerns about students losing “safe havens.”

Officials said every school receiving new students would have a “transition team” but have not specified how those teams would help defuse tensions and prevent violence stemming from closures and displacement.

Asked about the issue, district spokesperson Monique Braxton contended that the district already has adequate resources in place, writing in an email: “We don’t anticipate violence between existing students and incoming students at receiving schools.”

But combining student groups and their social hierarchies means the first few months of mergers and co-locations would be an adjustment for kids, and that schools should “plan ahead for the social aspects of the transition,” said Tracy Waasdorp, director of research, school-based bullying, and social-emotional learning at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Center for Violence Prevention.

Waasdorp said that before schools merge or co-locate, one initial step could include gathering school staff, parents, and community members to discuss existing dynamics and tensions.

She also recommends starting with adult-led and supervised summer activities that require kids from different schools to interact, a strategy that she calls a “no-brainer.”

And once the school year starts, administrations should point out to students which adults they can talk to if they are experiencing bullying, conflict, or other stressors, Waasdorp said.

“Some of these children already have been struggling, and they may continue to struggle once they get to this new setting,” she said. “Make sure that whoever that one person is is available and known to the kids, like, ‘I’m the social-emotional person. I’m here for you.’”

Prioritizing the role of trusted adults is also one of several strategies being used by Bartram High School, which until recently was a hot spot for violence, including an average of five students who were shot each school year from 2017 to 2022.

Since implementing a pilot of the Youth Violence Reduction Initiative about three years ago, shootings are down 80% and fights not involving guns are down 31%. It could serve as a strong model for schools confronting mergers under the closure plan to consider, in part because of its focus on gangs.

Students worry about crowded hallways making fights worse

The pilot at Bartram could have been seriously tested by the district’s initial school closure plan.

The district’s original plan, which it released in January, would have closed Motivation High School and relocated its students to Bartram. When he heard the news, Bartram ninth grader Hanaij Fulton was concerned that hallways would become hot spots. He doubted school safety officers would be able to control crowds if more students packed in.

“It’s like nothing they can really do when they fight, because the whole hallway is just full of people,” Fulton said. “They’d have to push past people. People wouldn’t be moving.”

After criticism about the plans for Motivation High, the district scrapped the proposal to merge students there into Bartram. It also nixed plans to close Paul Robeson High School and merge students there into William L. Sayre High School. But other schools will still have to deal with increased student traffic and related concerns if the Board of Education approves the closure plan.

Before the district backtracked, Tenneh Conteh had similar concerns about Sayre High School, where she is a senior.

She said school safety officers there already struggle to maintain order at the metal detectors, where kids try to sneak in vapes and sometimes guns.

“If they can barely handle the students who do come to school, they can’t handle new kids,” she said.

She feels funding related to the closures should be spent on extra security guards and additional training at the receiving schools.

But Waasdorp said neighborhood volunteers, not just extra security staff, can play a helpful role in and around buildings in such situations.

“It’ll be really important for schools to increase adult supervision in unstructured areas as the school year begins,” she said. “It’s showing all of your adults around you care about how you guys get along, and we intend to make sure everyone feels connected.”

How violence plummeted at a Philadelphia high school

The district believes the Youth Violence Reduction Initiative — or YVRI — contributed to an 80% decrease in firearm assaults by students at Bartram. In addition, there have been no shooting deaths and far fewer fights at the school since it began using the initiative in 2023. Shootings also went down citywide at that time.

“Most of the people that was really starting stuff with a lot of people, either they calmed down or they not here no more,” said Jamer Heard, a Bartram senior.

The initiative is designed for students who are part of, or are at risk of being part of, group-on-group violence. In addition to building relationships with trusted adults, it relies on a combination of conflict deescalation strategies and cross-agency collaboration.

Since the program started, there’s been a 67% drop in student-on-staff assaults, a 62% decrease in incidents involving police, and a 92% decrease in gang-involved group assaults at Bartram High.

A quote displayed in the office of Youth Violence Intervention Program Coordinator Kevin Rosa at Bartram High School on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024 in Philadelphia.

Such declines were “much larger than we expected,” said Dr. Brandy Blasko, a senior research associate in the Office of School Safety. “We’re seeing that the model we chose is actually working.”

Caterina Roman, a criminologist at Temple University who helped design the initiative, said the program could “be perfect for” mitigating violence at high schools that are receiving new students after the closures.

“Because YVRI was designed on the principles of the Comprehensive Anti-Gang Model, prevention gets built right in,” she said in an e-mail.

The district recently expanded the program to Olney High School.

The Bartram program is currently funded by a $1 million grant from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention that will expire this year. When that funding is up, administrators plan to ask Pennsylvania for additional support.

“I think given the success of the program, we’ll figure it out,” Blasko said.

Carly Sitrin and Rebecca Redelmeier contributed reporting.

This story is part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The New York Times’s Headway Initiative, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) via the Local Media Foundation.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Long-term enrollment decline is fueling Philly’s school closure plan. It’ll likely continue.

2026-03-11T19:33:10+00:00

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Philadelphia families and educators have been fighting for months against the district’s proposal to close 18 schools. They worry about taking resources away from struggling neighborhoods and limiting the choices that families have long been promised.

But there’s a basic problem driving the closures that isn’t up for debate: There aren’t enough students to fill the city’s schools. And the situation is only expected to get worse.

Over the past decade, enrollment in Philadelphia’s public schools has declined by more than 17,000 students. That’s largely a result of declining birth rates and a sharp increase in the number of students attending cyber charter schools.

At the same time, some neighborhoods’ population has skyrocketed, driven largely by arriving immigrants. That means even as the number of empty seats in some schools has grown into the hundreds, others have become overcrowded. While the district’s overall enrollment has shrunk nearly every year, the portion of English language learners has climbed.

This school year, around 117,000 students attend Philadelphia’s district and alternative schools — a 13% decline from a decade ago. Over the next decade, the state projects enrollment will likely fall by another 10%.

The Board of Education has yet to approve the school closure proposal. It plans to host a town hall on Thursday to hear more feedback.

No board member has indicated support for the proposal yet. But board members have acknowledged that the city’s declining school enrollment must be addressed.

The district already doesn’t have enough funding to meet what the state has determined it would require to adequately educate its students. Keeping buildings open with fewer and fewer kids is a cost it may not be able to bear.

“We cannot ignore enrollment shifts,” Board President Reginald Streater wrote in an op-ed last week. “We cannot wait until financial instability forces decisions upon us. But we also cannot allow financial pressure to take priority over our mission.”

School enrollment decline unlikely to reverse

Philadelphia is far from the only district in this position. Birthrates are declining nationwide, and researchers predict nationwide public school enrollment will fall by 5% between 2022 and 2031.

In Philly, that decline is made more severe due to the rising popularity of cyber charters. In 2014, only around 550 students attended cyber charters. Last school year, more than 14,000 students did, despite concerns from some officials and education groups about the quality of education they provide.

State officials predict the Philadelphia district won’t be able to recover the thousands of children it has lost over the past decade. Instead, the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s enrollment projection model, which factors in trends in birth rates and student progression through grades, predicts Philly’s enrollment will decline by another roughly 10,000 students by 2034-35.

Superintendent Tony Watlington has said he does not want to close schools. But he’s forging ahead because the proposal would improve opportunities for the students who remain in district schools, he told the Board of Education last month. The plan would also mean no students go to class in buildings rated as poor or unsatisfactory, according to Watlington.

Watlington has said he is committed to keeping and attracting students to the district. But if enrollment continues to decline, he indicated the district could be staring down even more school closures down the line.

“You just can’t lose your student population — and for whatever reason, people leave — and then expect to maintain the same level of building footprint,” Watlington said.

Philadelphia’s small themed high schools under threat as district plans to close, consolidate buildings

2026-03-06T20:55:20+00:00

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Creating small, themed high schools was once a key component of Philadelphia’s education reform strategy.

The intent behind schools like Paul Robeson, Lankenau, Motivation High, Building 21, and the U School was to offer students more intimate settings, the chance to form close relationships with teachers, and the opportunity for a very different kind of learning experience than what large, comprehensive high schools provided.

Now, however, most of these schools face uncertain futures under the district’s facilities plan, which would close 18 schools and is now being considered by the Board of Education.

Superintendent Tony Watlington’s plan would move most of the small schools into nearby neighborhood high schools and either close them entirely while creating a dedicated program in the larger school, or have them maintain a separate identity in the building with their own principal and staff —the so-called co-location strategy.

“We can’t keep all the small boutique high schools and the neighborhood high schools,” Watlington told the City Council at an early February hearing on his plan. “We don’t have the resources to do all of it.”

In comments to the Board of Education last week, he repeated his conviction that small schools can exacerbate inequality of opportunity. “There is too much disparity in this city,” he said. “What we want to do is level the playing field.”

Research attempting to quantify the benefits of small high schools is limited Generally, the smaller schools have higher attendance and graduation rates, with students more likely to pursue — if not finish — a postsecondary degree.

“Kids have a higher sense of agency and graduate with a deeper understanding of who they are, and what they want” in life, said Simon Hauger, founder of The Workshop School.

And parents and students love them, saying in surveys that they feel safer in these schools and “part of a real community,” Hauger said. Under Watlington’s plan, Workshop would eventually move into Overbrook High School.

In the superintendent’s vision, neighborhood high schools would establish or strengthen a multitude of different programs that could satisfy the needs of all students, a model that already exists at schools like Northeast High. While he expressed some praise for small schools to the City Council, he said in most cases they lack opportunities for students to take Advanced Placement courses, access robust art and music programs, and participate in sports.

Nevertheless, most City Council members have criticized the plan. And members of the public complained bitterly at neighborhood meetings.

Students from Motivation High, which Watlington originally wanted to move into Bartram, and Parkway Northwest, which is slated to become an honors program at Martin Luther King, have been particularly vocal in opposition.

Students at Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice walked out of their classrooms last month to protest their school's proposed closure.

“The school may be small, but small means great,” said Samantha Brumfield, the home and school association president at Paul Robeson High School.

That type of criticism may have had some impact. Initially, Watlington proposed closing Robeson and making it an honors program within Sayre High School. After hearing the public’s dismay, he changed the plan and now proposes combining Motivation High and Robeson into one building. And after an outcry from students and parents at Lankenau High, which has an environmental focus, he changed his recommendation to move these students into W.B. Saul High of Agricultural Sciences rather than to Roxborough. That, however, has not mollified the critics.

Supporters of the small high schools say they were established for a reason that’s still relevant.

“What I love about Paul Robeson is that we teach children to build their own brand,” said Elana Evans, Robeson’s special education compliance manager. Due to the close relationships, teachers can help students figure out “who do you want to be,” and “help you get there.”

But Board of Education President Reginald Streater, a graduate of Germantown High School — a historic neighborhood school that closed in 2013 along with 23 others in the district’s last wave of downsizing — clearly agreed with Watlington when he told the City Council that maintaining so many small high schools in the district is “unsustainable.”

Philadelphia’s small high schools took decades to develop

The history of high schools in Philadelphia is complex. It was fueled by educators’ desire to improve student experiences. But race was also a factor as neighborhood demographics rapidly changed and student enrollment in many schools grew more diverse.

These small high schools were established in Philadelphia in several waves, starting in the 1960s and taking off in the early 2000s under former superintendent Paul Vallas.

Until the 1960s, the vast majority of students in the public system went to neighborhood high schools, although three vocational schools opened in the 1920s and 1930s to teach students trades: Bok, Mastbaum and Dobbins. Two prestigious magnets for the top students, Central High for boys and the Philadelphia High School for Girls, both opened in the 19^th century.

Some of the neighborhood schools, like Olney and Bartram, in their heyday had an enrollment of 4,000 or 5,000 students. They were, for the most part, divided into several distinct “ability” tracks that often served to keep classes largely segregated even as the overall school enrollment became multiracial.

Former mayor Wilson Goode, who is Black and went to Bartram, told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2004 that despite his desire to be in academic classes, his counselor told him he was better suited to an “industrial arts” program within the school. He had to persist to be put into the academic, college-bound track, he said — and even then, despite making the honor roll, his counselor discouraged him from applying to college.

A key moment was in 1963, when the city was undergoing rapid demographic change. That year, district leaders created so-called Motivation programs to handpick what they termed promising but average students in the neighborhood schools and prepare them for college. A frequent effect of this, unintended or not, was to isolate within the program a school’s dwindling number of white students.

In a facilities plan the district released in January, officials proposed closing Southwest Philadelphia's Motivation High School. But now, the plan calls for keeping Motivation High open and combining it with Paul Robeson High School.

What is now Motivation High School was originally the Motivation program at Bartram High. What became Lankenau High School was once the Motivation program at Germantown High School.

Then in 1967, educators created the Parkway program, which they called a “school without walls.” Through Parkway, students could get academic credit for real-world experiences rather than spending most of their time in traditional classrooms.

They also had more control over their learning, creating their own educational plans, working in real jobs, and taking advantage of museums and other cultural and historical resources.

Eventually, three Parkway programs opened — Parkway Center City, Parkway West, and Parkway Northwest. Over the years their education approach became much more traditional, if theme-focused: Parkway Northwest, in Mount Airy, organized around peace and justice studies, for instance. If Watlington’s plan is approved, only the original Parkway will remain; Parkway West would move into Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, and Parkway Northwest into Martin Luther King.

Parkway Northwest focuses on peace and social justice studies. Students and teachers say they worry it will be hard to keep that focus if they are merged into a larger building.

The district’s next wave of new high school creation, in the 1970s, came in response to a 1968 desegregation lawsuit. Philadelphia opened several themed special admissions schools with strict requirements, including the High School for Creative and Performing Arts, commonly known as CAPA, and Carver High School of Engineering & Science. Officials anticipated that these schools would attract a racially diverse student body, which for the most part they did.

The small schools that opened later, starting in the 1980s, are known as “citywide admissions” schools. They also required students to apply, although their standards are more relaxed.

Changes were taking place in large neighborhood high schools too. Before the small schools movement took off, the district attempted to provide more personalized learning for students by investing heavily in “small learning communities” that were autonomous, offered their own courses, and had distinct enrollment, among other features.

But these communities were also designed to counteract the strict ability tracking that was still a feature in neighborhood high schools.

Watlington made key change at Philadelphia’s small schools

Especially in the smaller schools that Watlington called “boutique,” principals historically were able to shape their incoming classes as they saw fit and admit students who may have otherwise fallen short based simply on their grades, attendance and test scores.

However, in a sign of things to come, Watlington and the board put an end to that discretion in 2022, setting up a system that largely removed human judgement and was instead based on an algorithm they said was more fair and equitable. That system, however, made it harder for some schools to fill their spots.

“The new enrollment system was the beginning of the end for these citywide schools,” said one school leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly. “Everybody’s enrollment for the most part has declined in these schools … there’s no longer any flexibility.” For instance, Motivation’s enrollment dropped from 331 in 2022-23 to 151 this school year.

Others involved in the founding and development of these schools said that even co-location with a larger school will have an impact. And they say that uncertainty about the schools’ future is likely to affect enrollment even more.

Students at Philadelphia's Lankenau Environmental High School say their school's campus, near a nature center and urban garden, make the school special. The district wants to close Lankenau and merge it into Roxborough High School as an honors program.

Joshua Kleinman has worked at the U School, which uses a project-based learning model, since its inception in 2014. But he prefers to see an upside in Watlington’s plan, saying that many of the new small schools have long struggled with inadequate and even inappropriate facilities.

U School leaders have “fiercely advocated for a facility we deserve since opening our doors,” Kleinman said. If Watlington’s $2.8 billion plan led to modernized and specialized school facilities, “it would be one of the most ambitious in the school district’s history.”

But Thomas Gaffey, who helped establish Building 21 in 2014 to help all students “develop their passion” in a small, supportive setting, is more pessimistic.

“You can’t take a program like Parkway and put it within a big comprehensive high school,” he said, “and expect it to stay the same.”

Will Philadelphia’s school board approve closing 18 schools? It has a lot to consider first.

2026-02-27T03:06:52+00:00

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Philadelphia’s $2.8 billion plan to close nearly 20 schools is now in the hands of the Board of Education.

Thursday’s board meeting marked the first time most of the members spoke publicly about the proposal the district released last month. It’s likely to be the core issue of board meetings going forward.

The district’s plan would close 18 schools beginning in 2027, colocate (combine two schools in one building) and relocate others, and invest in more than 100 school buildings. Superintendent Tony Watlington announced at the meeting Thursday that the district removed Conwell Middle School and Motivation High School from the initial proposed closure list it released last month after taking community feedback into consideration. He said the district would not cut staff positions as a result of the closures.

Board members said during the meeting that they understand the motivation behind the proposal but need more information and more time before they decide whether they support it. A vote hasn’t been scheduled. The board will hold a town hall March 12 to hear more feedback.

Students, educators, and families packed the meeting, with hundreds more in an overflow room, urging the board to reject the proposal. Several union officials, state representatives, and City Council members joined them in a protest before the meeting, calling for more transparency about the data officials used to decide which schools to close and more investment in school building maintenance.

Several self-described “shy kids” testified that their schools helped them come out of their shells and improved their mental health. They asked for greater investments in their buildings and urged officials to consider students as “more than lines on a spreadsheet.”

Students from AMY Northwest and Lankenau Environmental Science High School said the district should fix the selective admission application system that they said keeps small schools’ enrollment artificially low. Parkway Northwest and Laura Waring students said by closing their school the district was closing their home.

Watlington emphasized that the plan comes after dozens of community engagement meetings and reflects feedback from Philadelphians.

Kathryn Lajara, special education compliance monitor at Stetson Middle School, said she felt like the meetings so far had been “just checking a box.”

“They keep claiming that this is what people want, but it’s actually not,” Lajara said. “They hold these community meetings, but then there’s really no comprehensive feedback from it.”

Board members ask for more clarity about closure plan

Board President Reginald Streater asked for open hearts and minds from the public about the plan. He said that chronic underfunding and declining enrollment put the district in a difficult position.

Streater said he was infuriated that the board is being asked to consider closing schools but that it is willing to make tough decisions.

Watlington told board members that the plan would benefit all students by increasing access to desirable classes and academic programs and ensuring students attend class in high quality buildings.

Several board members called for more clarity about how the district would address transportation and safety concerns and provide support for displaced students. Some said that they worry the plan doesn’t directly support student learning and that the promised new opportunities would not be equally accessible.

“If we are asking communities to sacrifice neighborhood schools, the benefit must be worth the sacrifice,” said board member Wanda Novalés.

Several board members said they worried about how the district would scrape together enough money to afford the plan’s $2.8 billion price tag. District leaders have already said they would need additional philanthropic and public funding. And they wanted to know how school leaders will prevent this situation in the future.

Watlington said he doesn’t believe in closing schools and that he wouldn’t want his own child’s school to close. He said he is committed to growing district enrollment to avoid future closures. However, he said if enrollment continues to decline — a trend largely the result of falling birth rates — “we’ll be back in this boat again at some point.”

Leaders of 5 school-based unions oppose school closure plan

Leaders of five school-based unions joined the protest before the meeting, including the heads of the teachers union, principals union, and school police officers union.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg called the plan to close schools an abomination. He said he feared students and staff would leave the district if the board approves it.

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, which represents school principals and other staff, called for more transparency from the district about the decision-making process.

Bernadette Ambrose-Smith, president of the School Police Association of Philadelphia, said she was particularly concerned about student safety. As far as she knew, Ambrose-Smith said that the district had not done a safety analysis of the closure plan.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia district removes 2 schools from proposed school closure list

2026-02-26T22:00:00+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district no longer plans to close Russell Conwell Middle School and Motivation High School, Superintendent Tony Watlington announced Thursday.

The decision to spare the two schools from proposed closures comes after nearly a month of intense community pushback against the district’s sweeping facilities plan. Watlington has said the plan would help the district provide more resources and opportunities to all students, and would also include investments in schools that remain open.

The changes also follow concerns of some prominent city officials who have so far opposed the plan. The district has also altered the plan to switch the schools some students would relocate to.

But 18 schools — most of which have mounted strong protests against the closure plan — would still close beginning in 2027.

Watlington presented the updated plan to the Board of Education Thursday afternoon. The board will ultimately decide whether that plan goes through, but it’s unclear when members will vote on it.

Watlington said at a press briefing before the board meeting that the changes represent the district’s commitment to listening to community feedback.

“Our community, quite frankly, made some suggestions that had merit,” Watlington said. “The fact that we can’t make all the changes that people across this great city recommended should never mean that we can’t make some of the changes.”

In addition, under the revised plan, Lankenau Environmental Science High School would merge into Walter B. Saul High School as a career and technical education program. That’s a shift from the initial proposal to merge Lankenau into Roxborough High School as an honors program as officials initially proposed. However, the Lankenau building would still close.

Meanwhile, students from Paul Robeson High School would relocate to Motivation, rather than Sayre High School. That means rather than joining a neighborhood high school, current Robeson students would remain at a small, criteria-based school.

Lastly, Lewis Elkin Elementary School would no longer add grades to become a K-8 school. Instead, it would remain a K-4 school and students would attend Conwell after graduating. Conwell would have an honors program that students could apply for through the district’s school selection process.

In total, more than 4,500 Philadelphia students would still have their schools closed in the coming years. The plan has the same price tag of $2.8 billion, which the district says would require extra philanthropic and public funding on top of district funds.

Philadelphia City Council seeks leverage over school closures

Members of Philadelphia’s City Council don’t have any direct say over the closure plan. But that hasn’t stopped them from speaking out about it.

Last week, council members grilled school leaders over the plan. President Kenyatta Johnson said members would not “rubber stamp” the plan, and some members indicated they could withhold funding from the district in the city budget process to back up their views.

Several prominent members rallied in particular support of Conwell Middle School in Kensington. City Council Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas previously said he would “never support” a plan that included closing Conwell, a school he attended. Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, whose district includes Kensington, said Conwell “should not be on that list.”

When asked about political influence over the plan, Watlington said his team listened to all Philadelphians and “took all that feedback together.”

Watlington said his team heard from Conwell alumni and accounted for feedback that the district should invest more in Kensington, which the district categorizes as socially vulnerable. But he denied that the district played favorites.

“We landed on these recommended changes not reflecting any one voice or sector more than the others,” he added.

Fewer students would switch to neighborhood high schools

When he announced the school closure plan last month, Watlington said one of its major goals was to reinvest in neighborhood high schools. The initial proposal would have closed five criteria-based magnet high schools or citywide admissions high schools with low enrollment. Students at four of those schools would instead attend neighborhood high schools.

But at crowded community meetings, many high school families said they chose small schools for a reason. Some said they would leave the district entirely rather than send their children to larger neighborhood high schools.

Many neighborhood high schools have been in a tough position in Philadelphia, juggling hundreds of students with few resources. Some have a reputation for chaos and violence. School leaders said funneling more students into those schools would enable them to create more opportunities. But now, they seem to be walking back that strategy.

Only one closing school — Parkway Northwest — would still merge into a neighborhood high school. It would become an honors program at Martin Luther King High School, even though many families have said they would not want to send their children there.

“All children in all of our schools are important, and we think they all deserve the very best,” Watlington said. “We also won’t hide from the fact that we heard some feedback from individuals who said that they prefer the smaller, boutique high school experience.”

Philly to defend a $2.8 billion plan to close schools amidst student walkouts and lawmakers’ protests

2026-02-26T17:31:54+00:00

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Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington is preparing to defend the district’s school closure and modernization plan at a marathon board meeting Thursday. He’s got his work cut out for him.

The plan would close several schools starting in 2027. Some buildings would be handed to the city, others sold, and many repurposed as district swing space or administrative offices. Officials say the Board of Education won’t vote on the plan Thursday.

Late Wednesday, the district quietly released plans to upgrade some 200 buildings. However, those changes come with a big caveat: Academy at Palumbo, for example, may get new bathrooms “if the district is granted additional government and/or philanthropic funding.” In other words, that funding is far from guaranteed.

Meanwhile, reactions to Philadelphia’s school closure plan underscore the political and policy tightrope district officials are now tiptoeing. The district’s closure plan has been shouted down by community members, teachers, elected officials, public school activists, and union representatives since its introduction. City Council members told district representatives earlier this month that though they don’t get a vote on the plan, they’ll make their feelings known through the budget process.

At community meetings across the city, district officials have been on the receiving end of blistering tirades and passionate pleas from Philadelphians who say the proposed closures and mergers will decimate communities, spur gentrification, crater student achievement, and wipe away any iota of trust and goodwill the district has gathered.

District officials have maintained the plan would be good for Philly. They say it’s necessary to shift students from half-empty, aging buildings into schools more equipped to give them the academic opportunities and staffing support they need. They say there will be a transition year during which district staff will support schools through the challenges of merging and relocating.

Ultimately, students will benefit from these changes, Watlington has said.

The students of Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice, one of the schools targeted for closure, don’t feel the same. They walked out of their classrooms on Wednesday singing “we shall not be moved” and carrying signs that highlight their high graduation rate and their commitment to public service.

State representatives have shown up to community gatherings and protests to voice their support for the schools in their neighborhoods.

“I’m concerned. I’m annoyed because it’s too fast,” State Rep. Darisha Parker said at a recent community meeting at Fitler Academics Plus in Germantown. She told district representatives “if you’re going to disrupt, uproot, and destroy our community then we need to tell you what we ain’t going to do for y’all.”

Philadelphia ninth grader Dane McFarland spoke passionately about how much Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice has meant to him and his friends.

Parker said the district was being “unfair” and should have convened meetings with local and state representatives to walk them through the plan and give the community time to raise funds before putting closure on the table.

Watlington has said the plan will cost $2.8 billion, using $1 billion in district funds and $1.8 billion in new public and philanthropic dollars.

But getting the political support for that funding will be an uphill battle.

“I know we at war,” Parker said. “They never convened a meeting with the Representatives who’ve gotta pay for these bills.” People at the district “just come up with a number and say, ‘find the money and make it work,’” Parker said.

State Rep. Morgan Cephas said on Instagram that in her nine years as a state representative, “a school has never closed in my district and it will not start now!” She rallied to protect Overbrook Elementary School, another school the district plans to close. At a packed community meeting at Overbrook recently, students sobbed into microphones begging district staff not to close their building.

School staff and the unions that represent them also aren’t sold on the plan.

Ahead of tonight’s board meeting, the five unions representing district employees are planning to hold a “save our schools” rally to protest the closures and are demanding to see the data underlying the district’s decisionmaking.

“Our schools need fixing and funding — not closure,” Philadelphia Federation of Teachers Chief of Staff LeShawna Coleman told the City Council earlier this month. The union conducted its own review of the plan and said they are “gravely concerned” that the plan will “provoke distrust and anxiety among beloved, established educators in schools designated for closure.”

But the community opposition to the plan has also revealed something more fundamental about Philadelphia neighborhoods: Residents want the chance to turn things around.

Ala Stanford, a congressional candidate who graduated from Fitler, said at a recent community meeting that if the district was serious about investing in schools, district officials could start by having more of a presence in the communities they serve.

“Come show up so we can show you who we are and what we’re doing,” Stanford said. “Maybe there could be a philanthropic effort where we can donate. The state can give some, y’all can give some. The community gives what they can.”

Parker and others who spoke at Fitler said they want to host a fish fry, raise money, “and do what we can” to keep their school open.

This story has been updated to reflect new information about planned upgrades to some 200 schools.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia council members won’t ‘rubber stamp’ school closure plan

2026-02-17T21:54:02+00:00

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Philadelphia city council members are adamant that although they get no official vote, they will have a say in the district’s school closure process.

At an all-day hearing on Tuesday, council members interrogated Superintendent Tony Watlington, Board of Education President Reginald Streater, and other district representatives about the proposed plan to close 20 Philly schools beginning in 2027.

Members raised concerns about the plan’s lack of detail about student transportation, safety, changing demographics, and academic inequities. Some members said the plan feels rushed, while others took issue with what they said is a lack of consideration about the intricacies of Philadelphia neighborhood dynamics. They also said the community engagement process hasn’t made families feel included.

City Council President Kenyatta Johnson said his members will do their due diligence to elevate the concerns of students and families across the city and “will not just rubber stamp” the plan as is. But the decisionmaking power lies solely with the district and school board. There won’t be any City Council vote.

In response, district officials emphasized the plan is still a draft proposal. Watlington will formally present it to the school board on Feb. 26, but the board will not be voting on it at that meeting. Streater declined to give a timeline for the voting process, but Tuesday’s hearing made clear that changes are likely before the plan is adopted.

“If there are schools that council wants me to take off the list and add others on that list, we are open to you telling me what those are,” Watlington told council members.

Council member and Education Committee chair Isaiah Thomas said he and his colleagues intend to use their “bully pulpit” to influence the plan’s final form since they do not get a vote of their own.

“We are the checks and balances,” Thomas said, but “the crazy thing is, we don’t even have a vote.”

Councilmember Jim Harrity told district representatives he is “infuriated” that he and his colleagues will not get to vote on the plan and pointedly mentioned the upcoming city budget process as a way members will signal their approval or lack thereof.

The “budget’s coming, and we will be looking,” Harrity said.

Philly is the only school district in the state that cannot raise its own revenue, and about 40% of its $2 billion budget comes directly from the city. Last year, Councilmember Kendra Brooks criticized the city’s budget deal for failing to include a meaningful increase in funding to the school district. The lion’s share of the district’s budget comes from the state.

District officials have told community members that the closure plan is not primarily about saving money. They maintain the reorganization will focus on increasing student access to high-quality academic opportunities, clean and modern buildings, and expanding pre-K programs.

The district said it is projecting to spend $1 billion of its own resources and will seek an additional $1.8 billion in public and philanthropic funding to fund its closure, co-location, and modernization plan.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Watlington and Streater said the plan is their attempt at longterm “thoughtful” planning to stretch the resources the district has while recognizing that it has been underfunded for decades.

Watlington said Tuesday the plan in its current form already represents a careful compromise.

“We could have released a draft plan that closed twice as many schools and been able to defend it,” Watlington said.

But city council members said there is more meaningful engagement to be done. Councilmember Cindy Bass said she has not been contacted or included in the districts’ decisionmaking process. Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who sits on the education committee, said she has noticed a pattern of district officials “dancing around” difficult questions.

More than 40 members of the public signed up to speak on Tuesday, many of whom said they are urging the district not to close their neighborhood schools, but to invest in them. Streater and Watlington said the district does not have the money to do so.

Streater and Watlington promised they’ll be listening to community feedback and council members.

Here’s a breakdown of how the district is proposing to spend the $2.8 billion officials say is needed for the closure and modernization plan:

Council District 1 would get $308,049,008. Some $57 million of that will go to making South Philadelphia High School a career and technical education hub.”

Council District 2 would get $302,284,081. About $54 million of that will go towards renovating John Bartram High School.

Council District 3 would see $204,947,677. Some $19 million of that will go to funding improved heating and cooling, electrical systems, and adding an elevator and playground space for the co-location of Middle Years Alternative and Martha Washington.

Council District 4 would get $216,819,480. About $50 million of that will be dedicated to renovating Overbrook High School.

Council District 5 would get $290,748,937. Some $8 million of that will go to renovate and add a new auditorium for Franklin Learning Center.

Council District 6 would get $55,769,008. More than $27 million will go to Edwin Forrest School to create an addition to allow it to accommodate K-8 students.

Council District 7 would get $388,795,327. More than $32 million of that will go to building an addition on John Marshall School that will include a gym and an elevator.

Council District 8 would get $318,986,215. Nearly $43 million of that will be set aside for Martin Luther King High School for construction to accommodate the incoming co-located Building 21 school, an electrical upgrade, and building upgrades.

Council District 9 would get $442,934,244. $42 million at Laura H. Carnell School. Modernization projects will include the construction of a new addition to increase the capacity and for restroom renovations, ADA improvements, exterior site improvements, and stormwater management.

Council District 10 would see $275,829,539. District statements say Watson Comly School will be modernized, including the construction of a new school building for the middle school grade students from William H. Loesche and Watson Comly.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia wants to entice students back to neighborhood high schools. Will it work?

2026-02-13T18:43:51+00:00

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For Philadelphia parent Samatha Bromfield, the choice to send her kids to Paul Robeson High School was deeply thought-out.

Bromfield said she spoke to her children and saw what they needed: “They needed something small. They needed a family.” That’s what she found at Robeson, which has around 300 students and where the teachers all know her children’s names.

But now, the school’s future is in doubt. Robeson is one of the 20 schools the district wants to shutter in an effort to address declining enrollment and move students out of dilapidated buildings. Five are criteria-based magnet high schools or citywide admissions high schools with low enrollment.

Many of those schools would be absorbed into neighborhood high schools as honors programs. But their buildings would fully close in 2027, and the district has not made clear exactly what options current students will have then. Students who recently accepted an offer to schools on the chopping block have been told their only other option is their neighborhood school.

All together, those moves amount to a shrinking number of choices for some students and families, who have come to count on the idea that they have a real say in where they go to high school in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s high school selection process is a rigorous and often confusing one. It requires middle school-aged students to explore dozens of options and rank their top picks for a lottery system.

The choices are meant to help students find schools that “nurture their passions,” Superintendent Tony Watlington has previously said. For decades, the district has promoted these options to attract families.

Now as the district moves to close some of those schools and reduce the number of choices, families say they feel betrayed. If the plan moves forward, officials will be faced with the challenge of enticing families back to neighborhood schools.

Already, many say they will not go.

“I choose to decide where my children go,” Bromfield said. “If you decide — you, as in the board members — decide to close Paul Robeson, I have a choice to pull my children out of the public school system.”

Why attracting families to neighborhood high schools is so difficult

Watlington will present the plan to the Board of Education, which will ultimately decide which schools close, later this month.

Until then, district officials have told students at closing schools and those who recently accepted offers to attend them that they should stay enrolled. If they want to switch schools, their only option is attending their neighborhood school.

Watlington has stressed that the district plans to create a transition team to support all families impacted by the closure plan. The district’s goal, he has said, is to keep all students within district schools.

“We are laser focused on doing everything we can to not contribute to more out-migration of students,” he said during a recent radio interview.

The plan would provide students more access to desirable opportunities, like AP classes and career and technical education programs. It includes investments in some neighborhood high school buildings.

But attracting families to neighborhood high schools will likely be a tall order. For decades, school leaders have pushed small high schools as an answer to parents’ concerns about neighborhood high schools, which often have a reputation for being more chaotic and violent than smaller magnets.

In the meantime, these small schools are also trying to convince incoming families to stay enrolled, even with the threat of closures looming.

Successive district leaders in Philadelphia have championed different versions of specialized schools. In the early 2000s, for example, then-chief of schools Paul Vallas opened two dozen new small high schools. He divided some schools in half and turned others over to charter organizations under the promise that students’ experiences and outcomes would improve.

The idea was that at small schools, there would be more opportunities and better academic achievement. Increasing the number of available schools would also reduce overcrowding and give families the sense of choice. And magnet programs could offer the promise of a more intimate and often more rigorous education than a neighborhood high school.

In some cases, it works. Several longstanding magnet schools, like Julia R. Masterman and Central High School, are top-ranked in the state with families desperate to get in.

But not every small school is equally desirable. Over the past decade, the district has lost around 17,000 students, largely because of declining birth rates and more students attending cyber charter schools. Some magnet and citywide admissions schools now have hundreds of empty seats.

In the meantime, some neighborhood high schools have also struggled. Several have low academic achievement and, in some cases, reputations for in-school violence. Many are also in old buildings that families say would not represent an improvement for their children.

Watlington and other officials have promised to boost those schools. But so far, families say they’re not convinced.

“The neighborhood schools are unacceptable for me as a parent,” said Janae Crawley, a parent of a student at Parkway Northwest, during a meeting at the school about the closures. The district wants to close Parkway Northwest and turn it into an honors program at Martin Luther King High School, which has around 600 students — more than double the size of Parkway Northwest.

Crawley, like other parents, said the high school selection process was lengthy. After a “very important and very big conversation” with her child, they decided on Parkway Northwest.

Closing the school would be “almost catastrophic,” she said.

District plan would expand capacity at some popular magnets

The district’s proposal isn’t just about funneling more resources to neighborhood high schools. District officials acknowledge that many families want choices in high school selection, and are frustrated that many of the city’s top magnets are exceedingly hard to get into.

By closing some schools and colocating and relocating others, the district would be able to increase capacity at five top magnet schools, Watlington has said. That includes expanding enrollment at Central and Masterman and adding selective middle schools at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush and Palumbo Middle School.

Watlington also wants to open a new, specialized year-round high school that any family could apply to. It’s unclear how students would be chosen for admission or when the school would open.

Still, enrolling more students at neighborhood high schools remains a core promise of the plan. Many students at the schools slated for closure say that’s exactly what they don’t want.

“If I wanted to go to a neighborhood school, I would have applied there,” said Leille Lane, an 11th grader at Motivation High School, which the district wants to turn into an honors program at Bartram High School. Bartram is nearly four times the size of Motivation, and has a much lower graduation and attendance rate.

“If I wanted to attend Bartram or any other school, I would have put that school on my list,” Lane said.

Carly Sitrin and Sammy Caiola contributed to this story.

Philadelphia families at small schools like Parkway Northwest fight school closure plan

2026-02-09T23:21:26+00:00

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Philadelphia students and families have packed community meetings over the past week, urging district officials not to close their schools.

At Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice, parents and students said they valued the school’s small community. At Lankenau Environmental High School, educators said the campus had a unique location near a nature center. And at Paul Robeson High School, families worried the school’s land has been targeted for redevelopment.

But district officials have remained steadfast in their pitch: They want to close 20 schools beginning in 2027 in an effort to address declining enrollment and deteriorating buildings.

“It feels like we are grieving,” said Logan, a sophomore at Parkway Northwest, at one of the more than a dozen community meetings the district has hosted since the start of the month at schools it plans to close. He declined to give his last name.

The district’s proposal, which also includes upgrading nearly 160 school facilities, would result in nearly 5,000 students having their schools closed. Superintendent Tony Watlington has said the closures are necessary to address declining enrollment and deteriorating buildings, and will lead to more opportunities for all students.

But families and educators at the community meetings Chalkbeat attended said they worried the plan would harm students at closing schools. Many were concerned about safety issues combining students from different areas, and urged the district not to take school resources away from their neighborhoods.

Students at the meetings made an urgent case to keep their schools open, highlighting principals and teachers they loved and opportunities that made their schools special and helped them thrive. A journalism club. An agriculture internship. A sense of community and connectedness that, they said, they worried the district had not taken into consideration.

Whether their advocacy will lead to any change is yet to be seen. Key members of City Council, including President Kenyatta Johnson and Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas have said they are concerned about parts of the plan.

But so far, Mayor Cherelle Parker is standing alongside Watlington in her support of the closures. Watlington plans to present the proposal to the Board of Education on Feb. 26. The board will ultimately decide which schools close.

The district will host dozens more meetings in the coming weeks. As they face angry parents and spirited staff and students, district leaders have repeated that the plan is meant to benefit all students.

“If we accept the status quo, we will get what we’ve always gotten,” Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill told families during a virtual meeting about the proposed closure of Conwell Middle School last week. “What this plan proposes to do is to raise the bar — to raise the educational experience across the board for every student, regardless of ZIP code or neighborhood.”

Parkway Northwest students say they want to preserve small school environment

Tensions flared between community members and district staff at Parkway Northwest as district officials explained their plan to merge the school into Martin Luther King High School during a community meeting last week. Parkway Northwest would become an honors program housed on that campus.

Many of the more than 200 students and family members who showed up to defend Parkway Northwest said they intentionally chose the school for its special, small environment. The two buildings are just around the corner from each other, but Martin Luther King is more than double the size of Parkway Northwest, which has fewer than 250 students.

“If you take away this environment, you aren’t just changing everything,” said sophomore Melody Jenkins. “You’re disrupting my ability to succeed.”

Parkway Northwest High School enrolls around 250 students.

The proposal is part of the district’s promise to reinvest in neighborhood high schools, like Martin Luther King. But students pushing back against the district’s proposal said the plan felt like it didn’t consider the value of a small school.

“Parkway is more than just a school,” said sophomore Jorvan Kelley. “I feel safe coming here.”

Lankenau’s campus is essential, students and teachers say

District officials also want to close Lankenau Environmental Science High School as part of their effort to funnel more resources to neighborhood high schools. Lankenau would merge into Roxborough High School and become an honors program within the school.

Philadelphia Schools Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill, center, tells families at Lankenau Environmental Science High School that the district's closure plan is meant to benefit all students.

But that proposal “diminishes the program,” said agriculture teacher Tiffany Turrentine. She said Lankenau’s location across the street from a nature center and next to a community farm provides countless educational opportunities that students wouldn’t be able to access at Roxborough.

So many Lankenau students showed up to defend their school last week that they had to filter into the school’s auditorium in shifts. Some had to leave before they had a chance to speak because their parents had come to pick them up. Those who did address the district officials said the school’s environmental programs and staff were invaluable. Many were distraught that it could be closed.

“I’ve got to start thinking about the worst case scenario, but I feel like a lot of people are backing the school,” said freshman Aidan Frishman. “So I’m just kind of hoping that the school doesn’t get shut down.”

Conwell Middle School families say district has disinvested in Kensington

District officials have started each community meeting by explaining the closure plan and the motivation behind it to improve opportunities for all students. But at Conwell Middle School last week, families shouted down Hill, the deputy superintendent, as he presented the plan to merge Conwell students into AMY at James Martin.

Families said they were frustrated to hear the same information repeated and wanted district officials to listen to the dozens of students and parents who had gathered.

“Parents need to speak,” Principal Erica Green told Hill and other officials.

Conwell Middle School sits in a 100-year-old building just a few blocks from the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, which is a hotspot for drug use. Many families and community members said they worried closing the school would be akin to the district deserting the neighborhood.

“Our children and our families come through all the craziness that is happening outside to get here,” said Councilmember Quetcy Lozada. She said she is urging district officials not to close the school.

Tilden Middle School principal says she is hopeful students will thrive after closure

Just a dozen or so Tilden Middle School employees and area residents attended the district’s community meeting at the school Saturday. Some attendees blamed the small turnout on the weekend timing and the frigid weather.

Tilden itself is a small community, just 266 students in a building meant for 2,000, said Principal Timeka Ford-Smith. Under the new proposal the school will stop inducting new classes in 2027. Once current students have graduated, the district plans to turn Tilden into a sports complex for neighboring Bartram High School.

On Saturday, Ford-Smith struggled to impart a sense of hope to the room. She shared her faith in the principals of the other three middle schools where neighborhood children would be placed in the future.

“I believe in my heart … that our students will be in a very, very good position to learn, to grow, and to be prepared for high school,” Ford-Smith said.

Claire Landau and Donna Ragsdale with the School District of Philadelphia take questions about proposed school closures from community members at Tilden Middle School on Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026.

Still, community members were frustrated with the choice to invest in Bartram High but not Tilden, especially given that the district ranks the Tilden community as highly vulnerable due to social factors and past school closures in the area. They brought up community resources anchored at the school, such as a food pantry and a suite of housing, transportation, and health services offered by partner Methodist Services.

“It’s almost like somebody is dying and life support is their last option, and you’re choosing to withhold it or take them off,” said Najmah Ryans, the school secretary.

District representatives said they would spend the time before the closure considering how to continue offering those resources without disruption.

Robeson families worry school has been targeted because it sits on valuable land

District officials have said closed school buildings would be repurposed for district use, conveyed to the city, or sold. They have promised none will sit empty. But it’s unclear whether the city or other developers will want to take over all the buildings the district doesn’t repurpose.

Families and community members connected to the Paul Robeson High School said during a community meeting Saturday that they worried their building was targeted for closure because it’s in an area of the city where real estate is increasingly valuable. The neighborhood, which sits between the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University campuses, is full of new rental housing buildings and university developments.

The nearby University City High School, which closed in 2013, is now a parking garage connected to Drexel.

“How many more buildings do Penn and Drexel need in this community?” asked Antoine Mapp, director of the community group West Powelton Steppers, which has run programs with Robeson students since the 1990s.

Families and students at the meeting said that they did not want to send their students to William L. Sayre High School, which the district plans to merge Robeson into as an honors program. Sayre is nearly two miles away.

“The education of Black and brown students such as myself are not being taken seriously,” said ninth grader Ahrianna Deloach. “We’re watching buildings around our school get torn down and rebuilt in every direction. And somehow, our education keeps getting pushed to the side.”

Paul Robeson High School students and families said during a community meeting on Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026, that the school's small size and tight-knit community make it special.

Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

These Philadelphia schools avoided closure in 2013. Now they’re on the chopping block again.

2026-02-04T17:17:39+00:00

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When Danielle Edwards, 19, heard her alma mater, Paul Robeson High School, is on the list of schools the School District of Philadelphia wants to close, she messaged former classmates she’s still in touch with.

“That was my first school that I actually loved,” she said.

The district released plans last month to close 20 schools, including Robeson, as part of an effort to address problems with school facilities and declining enrollment. It wants to move students from Robeson into William L. Sayre High School as an honors program.

It’s a familiar and painful challenge for Robeson.

In 2013, a state-appointed board closed 24 schools in a contentious decision that drew months of protests. Robeson was initially on the list of schools to be closed, but it narrowly escaped that fate after intense pushback from the community.

Back in 2013, the fight to keep schools open was fierce. Teachers, students, advocates, and political leaders formed human chains, phone banked, shut down Broad Street, and swamped public meetings demanding their schools be left alone. Mayor Cherelle Parker, then a state representative, called on the City Council to keep one school in her district from closing.

The outside of West Philadelphia University City High School in 2013.

For some schools, it worked. More than a dozen schools originally on the closure list ended up staying open and continued educating students for more than a decade.

But now, four schools or buildings that the district initially planned to close 13 years ago are back on the closure list: Robeson, Robert Morris School, Overbrook Elementary, and Lankenau High School. Mayor Parker has come out in support of the plan.

Without the same level of community pushback so far, advocates say they’re worried they may not be able to muster the support to save them again. And this time around, they have to convince members of a school board who have different aims and political influences from the several state-appointed board members of 2013.

District officials say they’ve learned key lessons from the 2013 closures when it comes to tradeoffs and consequences, and that the plan will ultimately benefit students when it comes to learning and early learning.

The outside of West Philadelphia University City High School in 2013.

The district plans to present its plan to the board, which will determine which schools to close, on Feb. 26. A vote will come sometime afterwards.

Longtime Robeson teacher Andrew Saltz, who protested the last round of school closures, said he plans to try to save Robeson once again.

A lot in his life has changed since the last protests. He’s older, and has children. Still, he said, he’s finding the energy to fight the closure plan again; he’s said he’s heard from freshmen who are scared about where they’ll go to school if Robeson closes.

“This is the right thing to do,” said Saltz. “So, OK, let’s get it going.”

School leaders say different forces are driving school closures

Just like for Saltz, a lot has changed for the city and its schools since 2013.

The mayor and city council now determine who sits on the school board, rather than some members being appointed by the state. Superintendent Tony Watlington, who joined the district in 2022, has stressed that the perspectives of teachers, families, and community members will help shape a new facilities plan.

Still, there’s an expensive and persistent challenge: repairing old school buildings and operating schools with fewer students. District enrollment has declined, leaving some schools — including two of the four on the closure list for the second time — more than half empty. Old buildings have further deteriorated. During this winter’s cold snap, the heat in several classrooms did not work properly.

A view of the demolition zone of University City High School in 2013.

In 2013, the School Reform Commission that controlled the city’s schools cared largely about saving money. The district was cash-strapped and laid off nearly 4,000 employees before the first day of school.

District enrollment was also rapidly declining at the time — though for different reasons than it is today. In the years before the closures, the School Reform Commission had ceded district schools to charter organizers and approved other charter schools to open in the city.

But since control of Philly schools returned to the city at the end of 2017, district enrollment has declined largely because of falling birth rates. More Philadelphia students also now attend cyber charters.

Researchers found that some students’ academic performance took a hit after the 2013 closures, and absences increased for students who were displaced. Several school buildings were also left empty and deteriorating. And communities’ trust with school leaders was fractured for years.

“It was not worth the cost,” Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill told families in late 2024.

School leaders say the new proposal to close 20 schools and co-locate and relocate others is meant to provide more opportunities for students and families, like increased access to pre-kindergarten and AP classes. It also would result in students no longer attending school in buildings the district deems unsatisfactory.

But many say they’re worried the same harms stemming from the 2013 closures could happen again. The plan would move hundreds of students to lower-performing schools and disproportionately affect Black students.

Protests against some of the proposals have already begun. Some members of the City Council have spoken out against the plan, calling on the district to change which schools it plans to close.

Viery Ricketts-Thomas, a block captain in Overbrook, said she feels shocked the neighborhood’s elementary school could be closed.

Since 2013, the school has gotten a new principal, Kenneth Glover, who has launched initiatives to partner with community groups to build a new schoolyard and attract more Black teachers who reflect the student body.

Though Overbook’s building is rated as poor, the school is enrolled at nearly 80% capacity, according to district data. Its students’ math and reading scores on state tests have also improved over the past three years.

“Right now the school is thriving,” said Ricketts-Thomas. “These are kids you’re displacing.”

Teachers, students and advocates with Stand Up Philly Schools protest planned facilities closures on Thurs., Jan. 29, 2026 outside the School District of Philadelphia headquarters.

Why fighting school closures might be harder now

Philadelphia teacher Jon Hoffmeier has fond memories of his two years teaching at University City High School. It was his first full teaching job in the city, and he loved how students had space for soccer practice and football practice.

The school closed in 2013. When Hoffmeier drives by the school’s old address, he now sees a parking garage. “It’s an absolute shame,” he said.

Hoffmeier was one of hundreds of teachers who had to move schools after the last round of closure. Now at Lankenau High School, he and other teachers are already fighting to keep the school open. They’ve launched a petition, made posters, and organized a rally at their school.

But not all schools are mounting the same response. Julia McWilliams, co-director of the urban studies program at the University of Pennsylvania, said the energy ahead of the 2013 closures felt different.

Advocates had been rallying for years against the School Reform Commission, and some were already organized across neighborhoods, she said. Schools bussed dozens of students to commission meetings and some groups threatened lawsuits.

Civil action intensified. Students at the now-closed Carroll High School in Port Richmond formed a “human chain” around their school in protest. The night the School Reform Commission read the final list of closing schools, a group of protestors blocked the entrance to the meeting and 19 were arrested.

Lankenau High School juniors Tyrone Ware (right) and Niyasia Bounds say they don't know what they would do if their school closes, as the district has proposed.

Today, McWilliams said she worries there are fewer groups ready to call for changes, and many people may not have time or energy to put toward the cause. Some are busy with other issues, like organizing for immigrants’ rights. And many people may feel less passionate about protecting public education.

“What I’m seeing is just people don’t have a lot of confidence in public schools, because of what algorithms are telling them, because of what happened during COVID, because of the ways the teachers unions didn’t want to go back in-person,” said McWilliams. “People pulled their kids out and just never sent them back.”

Still, for some who plan to fight the closures, the new environment could fuel their motivation. With the city in control of its own schools, they say it’s vital for school leaders to keep many of the schools proposed for closure open to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2013.

Saltz, the Robeson teacher, remembers that ahead of the 2013 closures, it felt like “everyone already hated” the state-controlled School Reform Commission that oversaw city schools.

This time, he said it feels like the city is turning on its own schools.

“I think that made it more depressing,” said Saltz of the current closure plan. “Because you thought this school board would be different.”

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s how to give feedback on Philadelphia’s school closure proposal

2026-01-30T21:32:20+00:00

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Do you have thoughts on the Philadelphia school district’s proposal to close 20 schools? School leaders say they want to hear from you.

The district’s school closure plan, which officials released last week, would result in nearly 5,000 students having their schools closed and several others schools being relocated or co-located to other buildings.

Superintendent Tony Watlington has said the plan will result in better educational opportunities for students, including more access to AP classes, more pre-kindergarten seats, and more capacity in some of the district’s most-desirable schools. It would also help move students out of deteriorating buildings.

But Watlington has not yet officially presented that plan — which has quickly become controversial — to the Board of Education, which will ultimately decide which schools close. Before he does so, district leaders have said they want to meet with students, educators, families, and community members connected with each school they want to close.

The district plans to host virtual and in-person community meetings with each school it proposes closing. Meetings will begin on Feb. 2 and go until Feb. 21.

Two district-wide town halls are planned for President’s Day, Feb. 16.

Watlington has said he will formally share the plan with the board on Feb. 26.

Several board members said during their meeting Thursday that they plan to attend some of the meetings and hope others do as well. “The community has a right to speak out,” said board member Cheryl Harper.

Anyone can register for the community meetings, including virtual options, on the district’s website.

Here’s where and when they’ll be:

Week 1 — Monday, Feb. 2 to Saturday, Feb. 7

Feb. 2: Russell Conwell Middle School, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m, Virtual

Feb. 2: Warren G. Harding Middle School, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 2: Robert Morris Middle School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 2: Paul Robeson High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 3: General Louis Wagner Elementary, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 3: John Welsh Elementary, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 3: Penn Treaty High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 3 Lankenau High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 4: Parkway NW High School, 6200 Crittenden St., 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 4: Lankenau High School, 201 Spring Lane, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 5: Russell Conwell Middle, 1849 E. Clearfield St., 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 5: AMY at Northwest, 6000 Ridge Ave., 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 6: Laura Waring Elementary, 8:30 to 10:00 a.m., Virtual

Feb. 6: Overbrook Elementary School, 8:30 to 10:00 a.m., Virtual

Feb. 7: Blankenburg Elementary, 4600 W. Girard Ave., 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., In-Person

Feb. 7: William T. Tilden Middle School, 6601 Elmwood Ave., 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., In-Person

Feb. 7: Paul Robeson High School, 4125 Ludlow St., 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 7: Parkway West High School, 4725 Fairmont Ave #2, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., In-Person

Week 2 — Monday, Feb. 9 to Thursday, Feb. 12

Feb. 9: Blankenburg Elementary School, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 9: Fitler Academics Plus Elementary School, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 9: James R. Ludlow Elementary, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 9: Motivation High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 10: John B. Stetson Middle, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 10: William T. Tilden Middle, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 10: Parkway West High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 10: Parkway NW High School, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 11: Pennypacker Elementary School, 1858 Washington Lane, 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 11: Motivation High School, 5900 Baltimore Ave., 5:30 to 7:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 12: Penn Treaty High School, 600 E. Thompson St., 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 12: John B. Stetson Middle, 3200 B St., 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., In-Person

Week 3 — Monday, Feb. 16 (President’s Day) to Saturday, Feb. 21

Feb. 16: Community-wide Town Hall, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., Location TBD

Feb. 16: Community-wide Town Hall, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., Virtual

Feb. 18: General Louis Wagner Elementary, 1701 W. Chelten Ave., 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 18: John Welsh Elementary, 2331 N. 4th St., 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 19: Overbrook Elementary School, 2032 N. 62nd St., 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 19: James R. Ludlow Elementary School, 550 Master St., 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 20: Pennypacker Elementary, 8:30 to 10:00 a.m., Virtual

Feb. 20: Academy for the Middle Years at NW, 8:30 to 10:00 a.m., Virtual

Feb. 21: Laura Waring Elementary School, 1801 Green St., 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., In-Person

Feb. 21: Fitler Academics Plus Elementary, 140 W Seymour St., 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., In-Person

Feb. 21: Warren G. Harding Middle School, 2000 Wakeling St., 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., In-Person

Feb. 21: Robert Morris Middle School, 2600 W Thompson St., 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., In-Person

Philadelphia teachers, students call for changes to school closure proposal

2026-01-30T00:53:42+00:00

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Protestors rallied outside of the Philadelphia school district’s main office in the bitter cold Thursday afternoon, calling on members of the Board of Education to put a stop to the district’s proposal to close 20 schools in the coming years.

The plan, which district officials announced last week, would impact 1 in 3 district schools and result in nearly 5,000 students affected by school closures beginning in 2027. Students would be moved out of deteriorating old buildings to fill empty seats in many underenrolled schools. But it would also relocate hundreds of students to lower performing schools and close schools in neighborhoods the district’s own data shows are vulnerable because of social factors and past school closures.

Superintendent Tony Watlington has said closing schools and shuffling enrollment would lead to more opportunities for all students.

But inside the school district’s main building, board members — who have final say on the closures — gave no indication on how they will respond to the district’s sweeping proposal. They said they would share those thoughts at their board meeting on Feb. 28, when district leaders plan to formally present the plan.

Board president Reginald Streater said it would be “inappropriate” for him to speak about the plan’s merits ahead of the presentation. But he thanked Superintendent Tony Watlington for creating a plan for the district’s aging facilities. Streater said the board will review the proposal during its February meeting but not vote on it.

School leaders, teachers, and parents urged the board to prevent closures and to come up with a better plan that keeps schools open. During a spirited public comment session, several said the proposal would destroy tight-knit school communities and leave students with longer commutes and more crowded classrooms. Some worried the data the district used to make its decision was flawed. And others said they feared the plan reflected a disinvestment in schools where the majority of students are Black and brown.

More than a dozen students and staff from Lankenau High School rallied in front of the district’s main building ahead of the meeting.

“Our voice should be heard,” said Krysten Fanis, a sophomore at Lankenau Environmental Science High School, which the district wants to close and turn into an honors program at Roxborough High School. “How they’re trying to recommend to shut down our school is not OK.”

Board members encourage people to weigh in

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that district leaders have already said they may shift parts of the plan before they formally present it to the board at next month’s board meeting.

That may be a response to the swift pushback. Some City Council members have called for specific changes. And many teachers, students, and families have said they will fight for their schools to stay open.

Streater and other board members encouraged teachers, students, and families to attend the community engagement sessions the district plans to host in the coming weeks at each school it proposes closing. Two board members said they would make an effort to attend the meetings.

Board Vice President Sarah Ashley-Andrews stressed the importance of community input at the meetings. “We want to hear your voice, your comments and concerns,” she said.

Several educators and community members connected to Conwell Middle School, which the district wants to close, held signs during the meeting urging school leaders to keep the school open. Longtime Conwell Principal Erica Green stressed the school’s history, tight alumni network, and recent investments, some of which were funded by settlement money from lawsuits against opioid manufacturers.

“Do not let the almighty dollar drive a choice to remove a beautifully designated historic school and beautifully gifted young people,” Green said.

Representatives of other schools said that the whole district will be impacted by the proposed closures.

“This is a collective effort,” said Paul Brown, a psychologist at Roxborough High School who attended the protest. “Rather than singling out individual schools to fend for themselves, we should be all working together to ensure every student can go to their neighborhood school instead of traveling across the city.”

Board members also appointed two non-voting student board representatives: Brianni Carter, an 11th grader at Philadelphia High School for Girls; Ramisha Karim, an 11th grader at Northeast High School; and Semira Reyes, an 11th grader at The Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts.

Carter and Karim said they aimed to attend the community engagement meetings to hear what their peers and adults are saying.

Board members also voted to approve several contracts and grants, including:

$15 million for mechanical, plumbing, fire protection, and electrical engineering design services.
$3.7 million for purchasing facilities supplies, tools, and building materials
$610,000 to replace the fire alarm system at James G. Blaine School.
An agreement with the Community College of Philadelphia to use space at Ben Franklin High School.

Three of nine board members were absent from the meeting, and four called in remotely.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school closure plan would move hundreds of students to lower-performing schools

2026-01-29T15:58:56+00:00

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Philadelphia school leaders say the aim of their plan to close 20 schools is clear: give all students better opportunities and support school communities.

By restructuring how the district uses its facilities, Superintendent Tony Watlington has said the district could provide all students with better buildings, more rigorous academic offerings, and more access to arts, music, and physical education.

“Part of the problem here is that there’s so much disparity in the school district of Philadelphia,” Watlington said last week when announcing the plan.

But some members of the City Council say they’re already worried that the proposal would leave students and families in some neighborhoods of the city worse off, and that areas affected by school closures previously are being targeted again.

Nearly half of the schools the district wants to close are in areas the district has identified as vulnerable, based on neighborhood social factors and prior school closures.

Some students at closing schools are also getting a tougher deal than others, because they would move to worse-performing schools, according to Chalkbeat’s analysis of the plan. That can hurt the performance of students at the lower-performing schools for years, researchers have found.

School leaders say they’re listening to communities and heeding the research about how to best go about closing schools and restructuring enrollment.

The district’s plan would mean no students would attend school in buildings rated poor or unsatisfactory, based on their cost of upkeep. And more students would have access to some highly desirable schools and programs, like career and technical education and selective admissions schools.

But as reactions to the district’s school-closure plan roll in, several officials have said they worry the proposal has left their neighborhoods shortchanged.

Several schools in Kensington and surrounding neighborhoods, for example, have a high social vulnerability rating as determined by the district based on several factors. The city also closed the area’s Sheridan West Middle School in 2013.

Still, the district has proposed closing several schools around Kensington. Students at one of those schools — John Welsh Elementary in Norris Square — would move to a school with lower performance, based on state test scores.

“Moving students out of their neighborhoods adds stress, disrupts learning, and pulls them away from the community ecosystems that support them,” said Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who represents Kensington, in a statement. “Equity cannot mean asking the same neighborhoods to carry the heaviest burden, again and again.”

Closures would move hundreds to lower-performing schools

District officials have previously said that they would not focus on school performance in their decisions about which schools to close. Instead, their decisions hinged on factors like how much unused capacity a school building has, whether it has spaces for programming like gym classes and prekindergarten, and social factors in its neighborhood.

That’s unlike the city’s last round of school closures in 2013, when officials scrutinized schools’ test scores when making closure decisions.

Under the new plan, around 90% of the 5,000 students at schools the district plans to close would be reassigned to better-performing schools, based on last year’s test scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA.

But that still means around 400 students at two schools — John Welsh and Overbrook Elementary — would be reassigned to worse-performing schools.

That could create looming challenges for those students, past research has found.

In studies of past school closures in Chicago, researchers found that one year after their schools closed, students who switched to high-achieving schools made gains in math and reading after the closures.

By contrast, students who were moved to the lowest-performing schools lost more than a month’s worth of learning in reading, and a month and a half’s worth of learning in math.

A study of Philadelphia’s school closures in 2013 also found that the achievement of students reassigned to high-performing schools improved after the closures, even though other factors, like school absences, increased for displaced students.

“We know that if the students go to really high performing schools, they did slightly better,” said Marisa de la Torre, managing director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, who conducted the Chicago study.

But she added that school performance is often not what matters most to families, who may care more about keeping their children close to home or in an area they trust. That means districts must balance how they prioritize school performance with other community interests in their decision making process.

The district did not respond to specific questions about the decision to move some students to lower-performing schools. District spokesperson Monique Braxton said the district plans to create a transition team to support school communities through the closures.

Will some neighborhoods go through repeated school closures?

One issue Philadelphia residents have said they care a lot about is reducing harm to neighborhoods where the city previously closed schools.

At community engagement events the district hosted over the summer to get input for its plan, several residents said they worried neighborhoods still reeling from school closures in 2013 would be affected again. That year, a state-appointed board closed 24 city schools. Empty school buildings from those closures still sit unused in some neighborhoods, slowly deteriorating.

School officials said they would factor in information about which neighborhoods were hit by closures in 2013 through a “neighborhood vulnerability” score. The district did not share exactly how it calculated the scores, but said they were based on social vulnerability data from the Centers for Disease Control and whether the school community had experienced school closures in the past.

Still, in the final list of recommendations of which schools to close, nine of the 20 closures are of schools with neighborhood vulnerability ratings of “very high risk” or “high risk.”

That has frustrated several city leaders.

“It seems like we’re headed towards the same people being disadvantaged by this process who are always disadvantaged by this process,” said Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents part of West and Southwest Philadelphia.

Still, Gauthier said the district’s approach does feel like an improvement from the school closures of 2013. She said she appreciated the district’s willingness to hear feedback and host community engagement sessions.

She just hopes that leads to changes to the proposal.

“We still have the opportunity to make sure that there’s equity,” Gauthier said.

Chalkbeat senior data editor Thomas Wilburn contributed to this story.

Philadelphia parents resist district’s plans to close 2 Kensington middle schools

2026-01-28T20:10:06+00:00

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This story was originally published in the Kensington Voice.

Ashley Jenkins plans to send her 2-year-old daughter to Conwell Middle School in Kensington. Two of her sons graduated from the school, and another is in sixth grade.

“It’s a safe haven,” Jenkins said. “Conwell is not only a school to us. The teachers are their aunts and uncles … I can’t imagine losing Conwell.”

But that plan may now be upended.

The School District of Philadelphia announced on Jan. 22 that Conwell and Stetson middle schools are among 20 schools it plans to close starting in 2027. The timeline for closures remains unclear. Some schools will phase out over several years, while others will close more quickly.

The district also plans to expand Lewis Elkin and William Cramp elementary schools into K-8 schools. Conwell students would be reassigned to AMY at James Martin, on East Ontario and Richmond streets. Stetson students would be phased into Elkin and Cramp. Both middle school buildings would be converted into district swing spaces.

The proposal is part of the district’s long-awaited reorganization plan, driven by declining citywide enrollment and building issues, including asbestos and poor ventilation.

The proposal has drawn opposition from City Council members, parents, alumni, and educators, who see the schools as integral resource hubs and safe spaces in their communities.

Conwell Middle School graduates and brothers Syncere Clark Williams and Rayneal Woods Clark with brother and current Conwell student Yahshua Woods and younger sister Lailah Hall at Rayneal's high school prom in 2025.

Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who serves on the City Council’s Education Committee and whose district includes both middle schools, said the announcement caught her by surprise.

To many community members, Lozada said, Conwell is more than school.

“They are part of a family,” she said. “Conwell should not be on that list.”

Conwell operates a food pantry twice a week. Her office just delivered a freezer to the school last week.

The district has cited underenrollment as a reason for the closures, according to Lozada. Districtwide enrollment has declined by about 17,000 students over the past decade. The drop has been steeper in Kensington: Enrollment at Conwell fell from 176 students in 2022 to 109 in 2025 — a 38% decrease.

While Conwell is a magnet school, more than half of its students live in the surrounding neighborhood.

“The reality is that it’s underenrolled because of the neighborhood,” Lozada said. “It’s a public safety issue. It’s not because successful academic learning is not happening there, or that the teachers are not coming anymore, or that the building is falling apart. It’s more about what’s happening on the outside. So, instead of responding and making the neighborhood safer, the [students, teachers, and faculty] are being compromised and almost punished.”

Santysha McDuffie said Conwell has supported her family year after year. She picks up Thanksgiving turkeys and winter coats from the school, where her kids are in sixth and eighth grade.

“Whenever we’re having issues, the school is always there to help,” McDuffie said.

Santysha McDuffie's daughter Madison sitting in the Conwell Middle School library, where McDuffie said she likes to spend time.

McDuffie lives about a 15-minute drive from Conwell and chose the school over other options after researching and receiving a recommendation from a friend for her son, Lawrence.

“He’s a smart boy, and he needed a school that was going to keep him on his toes,” said McDuffie, adding that her son has been challenged because he has been assigned high school-level work.

“He’s excelling in it, and he loves it,” she said.

McDuffie’s daughter, Madison, is also thriving.

“I know she’s safe there,” McDuffie said. “She feels more like herself. She’s opening up.”

Recent investments raise questions about school reassignment

The district’s proposal to close Conwell comes after hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested in the school in recent years, raising questions about how the closure aligns with those expenditures.

Conwell was designated $333,333 in opioid settlement funds, one of six Kensington schools to receive money from lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors. As of December 2024, about $109,950 of those funds had been allocated for science equipment, including 3D printers, and for after-school programs like the Conwell Media Team. The media lab itself is a recent development. In 2023, the media lab teacher crowdfunded for gear.

Additional opioid funds were designated for a therapeutic space, student support amenities, and schoolyard improvements, including space for an outdoor farming program, and a washer and dryer for students’ clothes.

Separately, Principal Erica Green used a $20,000 Lindback Award she received in 2022 to upgrade the school’s science lab and expand STEAM programming.

Meanwhile, the school opened a new turf soccer field in 2024.

The proposed reassignment of Conwell students to AMY at James Martin also raises questions about how the district is applying its own school rankings, which are part of its decision-making process. The district ranked the building, programming, capacity, and neighborhood vulnerability for every school it operates in the city.

According to district data, AMY’s building is rated poor and its programming unsatisfactory. Conwell received higher rankings in both categories, with its building and programming classified as fair.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said during a press conference last week that no students would be moved into buildings rated poor or unsatisfactory. He also said that 90% of students would be reassigned to schools with comparable or better academic outcomes.

The district’s plan also calls for modernizing 159 school buildings, but it has not provided details on how those upgrades would affect schools slated to remain open, including AMY.

The district did not respond to a request for comment regarding this reassignment in time for publication.

Stetson Middle School is ‘neighborhood fixture’ in Philly

A majority of Stetson Middle School students live in the surrounding neighborhood. Stetson’s enrollment has declined since the district contentiously revoked the school’s charter status in 2022, after a years-long battle between the Philadelphia Board of Education, families, and the charter company, ASPIRA. Enrollment fell from 616 students that year to 511 in 2025 — a 17% decrease.

Since the district’s announcement, a petition has launched in opposition to Stetson’s proposed closure and has over 520 signatures.

The petition raises concerns about potential overcrowding at Elkin and Cramp elementary schools, where Stetson students would be reassigned. The district has labeled both schools as underutilized.

“Schools like Stetson serve as community hubs where families connect,” the petition states. “This loss could fragment our closely-knit community and erode social ties.”

Tony Rocco, who taught full time at Stetson for nine years before retiring in 2019, teaches an after-school photography class there twice a week.

“Stetson has become a fixture in the neighborhood,” Rocco said.

While the school has had its challenges, Rocco said he has watched generations of families pass through, and has seen students like Benny Martinez-Russi flourish.

Martinez-Russi, 19, graduated from Stetson and is now a first-year student at Temple University on a full academic scholarship.

“If I drive past the area, I’m gonna feel nostalgia,” Martinez-Russi said.

He was quiet when he started there, but teachers, including Rocco, whom he described as a father figure, helped him warm up.

“I see the good work that gets done in that school every day and the difference that every teacher tries to make for their kids,” Rocco said. “It breaks my heart to see Stetson and the parents, potentially again, having to go through yet another bunch of changes.”

Photography teacher Tony Rocco, left, with Benny Martinez-Ruzzi, middle, a Stetson Middle School alumnus who's now a Temple University student.

District data shows Stetson’s building faces bigger structural challenges than Conwell’s. Stetson’s building was rated unsatisfactory, with a score of 41%, and its programming received a score of 25%. The neighborhood’s vulnerability score was flagged as “high risk.”

The district defines high neighborhood vulnerability as places with many social and economic challenges, including those that may have experienced school closures in the past.

A state hearing officer’s report found that ASPIRA made progress improving Stetson’s climate but fell short on academic and financial promises. A charter appeal board voted 4-1 to revoke the school’s charter status in 2022, about three years after the school board voted to not renew ASPIRA’s contracts.

“I just hope that they’re thinking through, as much as possible, about the decisions that they make,” Rocco said. “Do you have a better plan for Stetson, or is this something that is just dollars and cents in a spreadsheet, where you’re trying to figure out how to save money? Because those are my kids.”

In Norris Square, the district plans to close John Welsh Elementary. The district rated the building as poor.

Under the proposal, Welsh students would be reassigned to John Hartranft and William McKinley elementary schools. The plan is to modernize and repurpose the Welsh building into a year-round high school.

In Frankford, the district wants to close Warren G. Harding Middle School. The James J. Sullivan School, John Marshall School, Henry W. Lawton School, and Laura H. Carnell School would expand, with Sullivan moving into the Harding building.

In Fishtown, Penn Treaty High School would also close.

Councilmember Jeffrey Young, whose district includes Penn Treaty, said the district told him Penn Treaty students would be phased into a high school in the Kensington catchment area. William Bodine High School would move into Penn Treaty’s building to expand capacity.

What’s next for the proposed Philadelphia school closures?

Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas will meet with every council member to discuss proposed closures and community needs, Lozada said.

Then, she said the education committee will review each council member’s priorities and bring them to the school board and the district.

Lozada said she will host community meetings to gather feedback. The district has also scheduled community engagement sessions for every school slated for closure throughout February.

“I would want none of them to close, but if we have to close them — if we can’t get to a point where we can’t save them — then I want the transition to be as easy and as safe as possible, not just for our children, but for our teachers,” Lozada said.

According to the district, teachers and staff affected by the plan should retain their jobs, and that principals in “good standing” would also be retained.

The district’s recommendations will be presented to the Philadelphia Board of Education on Feb. 26.

“Any changes in information that we have shared will be provided at that time,” said district spokesperson Monique Braxton in response to a request for comment.

The school board must approve the final plan and may make changes.

‘I pray it doesn’t happen’: Philadelphia reacts to plan to close 20 schools

2026-01-22T22:55:38+00:00

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The head of the Philadelphia City Council Education Committee says he disagrees with parts of the school district’s plan to close 20 schools, kicking off what may become a fraught conflict over which schools are ultimately shuttered.

The district said Thursday that nearly 5,000 students will have their schools closed in the coming years. Along with closures, the plan includes co-locating and relocating several schools and modernizing some school buildings, shuffling where many students go to school across the city.

But Councilmember Isaiah Thomas said he would “never support” closing one of the schools on the district’s list — Conwell Middle School — and has major questions about the district’s plan for several others.

Other officials urged the district to be transparent with schools and make sure students and families are supported. A spokesperson for Mayor Cherelle Parker said she was not available to comment. And union leaders said they needed more time and more information to determine whether or not they support it.

The reactions that began to trickle out Thursday will set the stage for what will likely become months of tense discussions and negotiations over what could be a jarring transformation for Philadelphia schools. District leaders say the plan would improve academics and use resources more efficiently as enrollment has declined and buildings have fallen into disrepair.

Members of the Board of Education, who were nominated by Parker, will review the plan at next month’s board meeting. The plan must be approved by the board, although Thomas and other city officials could use their political influence to complicate the plan’s path forward, or change it.

Though school leaders have said for months that closures were coming, the timing of the news still shocked many educators and families. Whispers of a list of schools the district plans to close began to spread Tuesday and Wednesday. Meetings and protests about the plan are likely to happen early and often.

Outside of Motivation High School in West Philadelphia Thursday afternoon, students said they had learned their school was closing during a meeting in the school’s auditorium earlier in the day.

“I pray it doesn’t happen,” said Journee Tucker, 16.

The district wants Motivation to merge into Bartram High School as an honors program beginning in the 2027-28 school year. The Motivation building is slated to be repurposed as district swing space.

But Tucker said she worried that Bartram is “too chaotic.” This year, it has nearly 600 students enrolled — four times the size of Motivation.

If the plan goes through, she said her mom has already said she would attend a different high school than Bartram.

“It’s going to be a mess,” Tucker said. “I just don’t see the point.”

Councilmember wants to protect Conwell Middle School from closure

Thomas’ reaction stood out Thursday, in part because several elected officials did not say if they were for or against the plan, or comment on specifics. Others weren’t available for comment.

Thomas is an influential voice in the city’s education system, and has been a proponent of several charter schools.

Thomas said he immediately disagreed with parts of the plan — especially the district’s plan to close Russell Conwell Middle School, which he attended.

“If you’re a Philly person, you understand,” he said, adding that the school’s strong alumni network and culture is a huge benefit to the community.

The school, which is in a 100-year-old building in the city’s Kensington neighborhood, is one of several middle schools the district plans to close.

Thomas said he also disagreed with the district’s plan to merge students from Parkway Northwest High School into Martin Luther King High School, and turn Parkway Northwest into an honors program in the school.

Thomas said he also did not understand how the district expects to expand Ellwood from a K-5 school to a K-8 school while the school is already nearing capacity.

“I’m not looking to completely blow anything up or anything like that,” Thomas said of the plan. “There are some things that I agree with, there are some things I have a few more questions about, and then there are a few things that I disagree with.”

Union leadership says school closures would be ‘devastating’

District leadership has said no teachers will lose their jobs as a result of the closures, and teachers at schools that close will help fill vacancies elsewhere.

Still, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg said Thursday the news has been “devastating and disheartening” for staff.

Steinberg said he could not comment on whether he supported the plan until the district shares more information on how they arrived at their decision. During community engagement events last year, the district shared the information it was factoring into the plan. But it did not explain how those factors would influence decisions.

“It’s like they took all these ingredients, threw them into a blender, and came out with a finished product,” Steinberg said.

Ultimately, Steinberg said he is never an advocate for closing a school. But he said he understood that the district has had years of “chronic disinvestment” and needs to address its aging buildings.

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators which represents principals and other school staff, said she appreciated the district’s efforts to survey staff and families for feedback about facilities before announcing the plan.

But she said she still worries closures will be problematic for school communities and create uncertainty for many school staff.

“I understand the superintendent has a job to do, and I don’t think that he did it lightly,” Cooper said. “I just think it’s a no-good situation all the way around.”

Families, teachers worry school closures will be damaging

In West Philadelphia, Rhemar Pouncey is worried about what will happen to her grandson if Overbrook Elementary School closes.

In the district’s proposal, Overbrook students will be reassigned to four other neighborhood schools, and the building will be repurposed as district network offices.

Pouncey called the school “a family and a community in itself,” referencing staff who know students by name, as well as food and gift drives organized by the neighbors.

“I do not concern myself with sending my grandson to Overbrook Elementary, because I know he’ll be safe,” Pouncey said. “I know when he gets dropped off that he has an extended group of aunties and uncles.”

The district has said it will create a transportation plan for students whose schools change, but has not released more details.

Pouncey said she worries about her son walking through “danger zones” in the neighborhood to get to another school.

About two dozen schools have a Safe Path program that hires adults to patrol school perimeters and sometimes walk children home after school. Separately the City of Philadelphia runs a Safe Corridors program to escort students before and after the school day.

“What’s going to happen if one of our kids gets shot or gets killed because you close down the closest school to them, for them to have to go all the way to John Barry, or all the way to Bluford?” Pouncey said.

Several teachers said the district had forbidden them from talking to the press about the plan.

One teacher at Lankenau Environmental Science High School, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said the entire school was taken aback to hear the school would be closed and turned into a magnet program at Roxborough High School.

Much of the school’s programming, she said, relies on its location. It organizes a beekeeping and honey collection event with a community partner, for example, that can only happen at the site. And it has other programming connected to a neighboring environmental education center.

“If you’re just talking about buildings, and you’re looking at children as numbers, then, yeah, this is what you do,” the teacher said. “But when you look at the actual educational programming and closing a site like Lankenau, it doesn’t work. You won’t be able to pick the program up and put it into Roxborough.”

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school district wants to close 20 schools starting in 2027, affecting dozens of others

2026-01-22T16:17:45+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district wants to close 20 schools starting in 2027 as part of a reorganization plan that will affect 1 in 3 traditional district schools and reshape the city’s public education landscape.

Nearly 5,000 students would have their schools closed in the coming years, based on this year’s enrollment counts. Another 2,800 students would have their schools moved to a new location following the district’s plan to co-locate and relocate eight current schools to different facilities.

The changes will mean major shifts for school enrollment across the city. More than 20 schools would add seats or grades to accommodate students from closed schools, and some catchment boundaries in the Northeast would shift. The district would also open four new schools in existing buildings and upgrade infrastructure at nearly 160 school facilities.

In total, the plan would affect roughly 30,000 students, or a quarter of current district enrollment. That includes students at schools that would be new co-location sites and those at schools that would add one or more grades.

The proposal would have a particularly large impact on middle schools, with more than a dozen elementary schools turning into K-8 schools to absorb students from six closing middle schools.

The plan represents the district’s effort to address some fundamental challenges facing Philadelphia’s schools. Many schools are below capacity by hundreds of students after a long-term decline in district enrollment. Over the past decade, district enrollment has declined by around 17,000 students, reflecting a citywide population decline and a jump in the number of students enrolled in cyber charter schools.

Crumbling asbestos, broken sinks, and poor ventilation plague the city’s school buildings, which are on average more than 70 years old. Fixing those problems would cost billions that the district doesn’t have.

Yet the proposal — which the Board of Education must approve — will likely ignite fierce opposition. Some have been warning the district for months about the downsides of fracturing school communities. Bitter memories from the last round of school closures could be a factor: After the district closed 24 schools in 2013 largely to save money, some students’ academic performance and attendance took a hit, and the district’s financial problems persisted.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said during a press briefing this week that the plan would improve the quality of education the city’s schools can offer.

“We must find ways to more efficiently use our resources, so we can push higher quality programming into all our schools, while at the same time addressing under and over enrolled schools,” Watlington said.

The district has begun sharing its plan with affected schools this week and will present its recommendations to the Board of Education at its February meeting. The board ultimately must approve the changes and could reshape them before any closures begin.

Teachers and staff at schools that will close will keep their jobs to help fill the district’s vacancies, Watlington said. Principals “in good standing” will remain employed by the district.

Philadelphia school closure plan likely to trigger protests

Students and staff will begin to be affected by the changes at the start of the 2027-28 school year. The exact timeline for closing individual schools remains unclear. Some closing schools will gradually phase out grades over several years, while others will close at once and students will merge into a different school.

For neighborhoods where schools are slated to close, empty buildings will likely become a looming concern. After the last round of closures, several buildings were left deteriorating for more than a decade. The district now owns more than 20 buildings considered persistently vacant, meaning they haven’t been used in several years.

Under the proposed changes, the district would close 20 school buildings over the next 10 years. It has specific plans to repurpose 12 for district use, including opening a year-round high school in one.

But the future of the other eight closed buildings is unclear. The district wants to turn many over to the city to create housing or other public infrastructure. Though Mayor Cherelle Parker has broadly supported turning empty schools into housing, those changes would require specific action from the city.

District officials say they are aware of how challenging these changes can be — and how worried many Philadelphians are after the last round of closures. Over the past year, they hosted dozens of community engagement events and sent out several surveys to solicit feedback.

Watlington said the responses helped guide the recommendations. But many educators and community members said it was difficult to give feedback without yet knowing which schools would see changes. The new list will likely result in pushback and protest as teachers and neighborhoods hope to keep their schools from closing, as some successfully did ahead of the 2013 closures.

Watlington promised students and families will be supported through the transition. He said 90% of students who will change schools will be reassigned to schools with comparable or better academic outcomes.

Watlington pledged the plan would also result in specific improvements for district students. No district students will go to a school with a building rated as poor or unsatisfactory, he said. Other improvements include:

Doubling the percentage of kindergarten students who have access to district-operated pre-kindergarten from 25% to 50%.
Increasing the number of high schools that offer five or more AP classes by 12%.
Increasing the percentage of schools that offer “robust” music, art, and physical education programming from 57% to 70%.
Increasing the number of middle schools that offer Algebra 1 from 53% to 100%.

The plan addresses some of Philadelphia families’ common concerns, like limited space at some of the most desirable magnet high schools and severe overcrowding in the Northeast. It also expands career and technical education program offerings and access to other sought-after programming, like pre-K.

Under the proposal, the district would increase the number of seats at five criteria-based schools, including Central and Masterman, which are consistently two of the top-ranked schools in the city. It would also open a new middle school to feed into Palumbo High School, another top-ranked magnet school.

In the crowded Northeast, the district would modernize several schools to expand capacity, including by creating a new building for Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush and turning its old building into a new catchment high school.

The district is also planning for some high schools that would close to live on in a different form. Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School, Motivation High School, Parkway Northwest High School, and Paul Robeson High School will each close and become honors programs integrated into other schools.

Still, these changes will mean huge disruptions for students and families across the city. After the last round of closures, researchers found school absences for students whose schools closed increased, and they missed more days of school and received more suspensions the farther they traveled to their new school building.

The district originally planned to release its proposal for school closures last November, but then delayed it. Now, school leaders say they’re waiting on the support of the Board of Education, Parker, and funders to move forward.

The district doesn’t have enough money on its own to fund the plan’s price tag. The school changes and upgrades would cost $2.8 billion, which the district wants to pay for with $1 billion in district funds and $1.8 billion in new public and philanthropic dollars.

Without that funding, Watlington said the district would have to “scale down” the plan and keep students at dozens of schools rated as poor or unsatisfactory.

Watlington acknowledged that many people do not want their schools to close. He pledged the district would create a designated team to help families with any transition and give them the “gold standard red carpet treatment directly from the Superintendent’s office.”

“We have one shot at this to get this right,” Watlington said.

Sammy Caiola contributed reporting.

Correction: Jan. 22, 2026: The table in a previous version of this story inaccurately stated that Laura H. Carnell School will absorb students from William T. Tilden Middle School. Students from William T. Tilden Middle School will be absorbed by Thomas G. Morton, John M. Patterson, and Joseph W. Catharine schools.

Philadelphia district will consider transferring vacant school buildings to the city

2025-12-11T23:10:22+00:00

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Some long-vacant Philadelphia school buildings might be transferred to the city for redevelopment as potential housing units in the near future.

The Board of Education approved a resolution Thursday granting the district the ability to negotiate with the city to sell or otherwise transfer some vacant buildings for housing or other purposes that benefit the community

The resolution passed 6-2, but several board members said they felt strongly that the district should not grant the city any sort of exclusivity or claim on vacant properties without exploring other development opportunities.

Board President Reginald Streater stressed at the meeting that the resolution does not immediately transfer any school buildings to the city but is the first step in a process.

“I would be derelict in my duty if I didn’t explore this as a mechanism,” Streater said.

The approval also is a political move signaling that the board — which is mayorally appointed — is aligned with Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration.

Parker has made building and restoring some 30,000 housing units a core part of her agenda and has publicly expressed her interest in using empty school buildings for that purpose.

Philadelphians, elected leaders, and even a charter school have renewed their focus on the district’s empty buildings after police found 23-year-old Mount Airy woman Kada Scott’s body buried in the woods behind the Ada H. H. Lewis Middle School building, which has sat empty and blighted since 2008.

The district has 20 vacant buildings valued at an estimated $80 million, according to the city’s office of property assessment, that would be considered for transfer under Thursday’s resolution. According to the resolution text, the district would still need to consider outstanding bond obligations, legal processes, or potential revenue impact before making any formal agreement with the city.

Thursday’s resolution kicks off the process of exploring the possibility of a transfer, but any agreements to exchange a school building would need to go before the board for a vote, according to the resolution.

Board member ChauWing Lam, who voted against the resolution, said Thursday she wasn’t sure the document was necessary to have those exploratory conversations with the city. She said she was concerned that the district and board would be foregoing and limiting the board’s ability to consider other offers outside of Parker’s administration by adopting the resolution.

The resolution frames any potential transfers as a cost-saving measure for the district, which is facing a budget deficit and spends money and staff hours on the upkeep of vacant school buildings. The resolution says those buildings are unused and not needed for education and the resources they require could be better spent on classroom needs.

Board member Wanda Novalés said Thursday any proposal brought to the board regarding the sale or transfer of any district-owned buildings should be financially beneficial for the district because the properties “belong to our students.”

Streater said the resolution only covers currently vacant buildings and would not apply to any future schools closed through the district’s ongoing facilities planning process.

A list of schools targeted for closure, co-location, renovation, or reuse is expected in the next few months.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org

Philadelphia is going to close public schools. Here’s how you can weigh in on the process.

2025-11-19T20:25:37+00:00

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The School District of Philadelphia is knee-deep in a process to close, colocate, and renovate schools in the coming years. And district officials say they want to hear more public feedback on how that process is going.

This month, the district announced it would delay the release of a draft plan outlining proposed outcomes for every school, in order to gather more community responses through a survey it launched this week. Superintendent Tony Watlington told City Council members on Tuesday that such a plan would be put before the school board sometime this winter.

“We know that many of the district’s aging and unequal facilities are underenrolled or overenrolled,” Deputy Superintendent of Operations Oz Hill told reporters on Monday ahead of the survey’s release. “This process seeks to more efficiently use our limited staff and facility resources to improve and enhance the quality of education for our students.”

Over the past year, district employees and consultants have hosted some 47 “public listening and learning sessions” and have received over 5,700 responses to an earlier survey about the closure process. But many parents, advocates, and community members say despite all that, the process has come across as vague, frustrating, and overly controlled.

Parents and neighbors at an event Chalkbeat hosted in partnership with Germantown Info Hub last month said it felt like the district was front-loading community engagement early on without providing tangible information about plans for each neighborhood school.

What they want, community members said, is to know what the future holds for their school, not general information about district-wide processes. And they want time to weigh in on those individual school plans before anything is set in stone.

District spokesperson Alex Coppadge told reporters on Monday that principals have made it clear that school-level engagement and partnership will be critical once the draft plan is released.

“We get it. People want to know exactly what’s happening to their specific circumstance, and so we want to be empathetic towards that” Coppadge said. “We want to create space and ample time to make sure that whatever that engagement looks like, is thoughtful, is meaningful, allows us the opportunity to take their feedback back and really try to move forward as partners.”

Once the district releases plans for individual schools, Coppadge said there will be an “extensive engagement period,” but declined to say how long and when that would be.

“I know that it will not be a rushed process, and that we will try to do it as thoughtfully and meaningfully as possible,” she said.

You can respond to the new district survey here.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia City Council turns up heat on school district over charters, principals’ contract

2025-11-18T22:45:38+00:00

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Philadelphia City Council members questioned school leaders during a Tuesday hearing about several longstanding issues, like decisions to send non-renewal notices to two charter schools and fiscal concerns.

But they deferred asking questions about one pressing issue: the district’s facilities plan, which officials have said will lead to closing schools.

District officials were initially scheduled to release recommendations of which schools to close, colocate, modernize, and repurpose earlier this month. But they delayed the announcement to conduct a community survey.

Superintendent Tony Watlington told the City Council on Tuesday that the district is “committed to bringing recommendations this winter.”

Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who chairs the council’s education committee, said the council will hold a hearing in January to focus on facilities once the draft plan is public. He urged council members to hold their questions about the plan until then.

With that issue essentially off the table, council members questioned school officials about other simmering concerns. Here’s a breakdown.

Council presses district on overdue principals union contract

District principals have been urging the school district for months to agree on a contract with their union, the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, or CASA. The union has been without a contract since its last one expired in August.

Thomas questioned Watlington about why negotiations have stretched on so long.

Watlington said he could not share details while contract negotiations are ongoing, but that he is “optimistic” about reaching a contract deal in the “near term.” When asked by Thomas for a deadline, Watlington said it would not be appropriate to set one.

Several school district principals attended the hearing, wearing T-shirts branded with the CASA logo.

“We’re here in support of our district,” said CASA President Robin Cooper during a break from the hearing. “But also to be clear that we need a speedy resolution to our contract.”

Cooper also declined to share details about how negotiations are going.

Thomas asks about fate of 2 charter schools

Thomas also pressed board members about steps they’ve taken to not renew the charter agreements of KIPP North Philadelphia Academy and People for People Charter School.

“We’re still here today with the possibility of Black-led institutions being closed while their white counterparts are allowed to stay open,” said Thomas, who has previously criticized district leaders for closing other Black-led charter schools.

Thomas said he was concerned about the board’s decisions because “it’s not clear cut that the Black-led institutions were doing a worse job than their white counterparts.”

Board of Education President Reginald Streater said the board has tried to be more transparent about its non-renewal decisions by hosting several public meetings about charter renewals. During those meetings, board members said they were concerned about both schools’ low academic performance.

Streater also clarified that the board has not made final decisions not to renew both schools. Instead, he said, the board has triggered a non-renewal process mandated by state law to review the schools. He did not say when the board will make the final decisions.

People for People Charter School sued the school board in September following the board’s move towards not renewing its charter. The lawsuit focuses on the role of board member Joyce Wilkerson, who the school alleges is an “unlawfully seated member” of the board.

District leaders commit to eliminating budget deficit by 2030

The district’s budget presentation to the council showed it is expecting a $341 million deficit in fiscal year 2026, and will need to use around half its reserve funds to cover that cost.

During recent years, federal COVID relief funds helped fill such funding gaps, said the district’s Chief Financial Officer Michael Herbstman. But since that funding ended last year, the district has “a deficit in our budget that looks very similar to where we were before” it got those dollars, Herbstman said.

This year’s delayed state budget has added to the district’s financial difficulties. The district received additional $193 million in the 2025-26 state budget, which passed last week. But it had to take out around $700 million in loans during the four-month-long budget standoff, Herbstman said.

Herbstman said he estimated interest on the loans will cost the district around $7.5 million, which it must pay by April 1.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said one of the district’s priorities is eliminating its budget deficit by 2030, which will mean cutting some spending.

“We have to take some austerity measures over the next several years,” Watlington said. “We’ve got to balance our budget, and we’ve got to get our house in order.”

Mayor cautions against ‘political fights’ over school closures

Although City Council members held off on pressing Watlington and other officials about school closures, Mayor Cherelle Parker said she supports the district’s approach to the issue.

“I know that change is hard,” Parker said at Tuesday’s hearing. “I want every parent to know that I want what every parent wants: our children to have something better than what we had.”

Parker said she hopes to turn some underutilized school buildings into housing to help achieve the goals she has laid out in her housing plan, which some City Council members oppose.

When the district last closed schools more than a decade ago, the city council passed a nonbinding moratorium on school closures.

Parker said she would not stand for anyone trying to “manipulate” the process. “I support Dr. Watlington and President Streater enough that I’m going to fight tooth and nail to make sure no one attempts to bring them into any political fights,” Parker said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

As Philadelphia weighs school closings, advocates ask: Does shuttering a school impact neighborhood violence?

2025-11-14T21:55:02+00:00

This story was reported by Denise Clay-Murray and published by MindSite News.

KIPP North Philadelphia Academy charter school has been operating since 2018 in the red brick school building on North 16th Street at Cumberland Street. Bright KIPP banners hang off the four-story building but you can still see the fading letters “M Hall Stanton” on the facade.

That’s because KIPP only moved in after the Philadelphia School District closed down M. Hall Stanton Elementary as part of a massive change that shuttered 30 schools over a two-year stretch from 2012 to 2014. The district was struggling to close a projected $1.35 billion deficit and said it needed to consolidate to put scarce dollars into the classroom.

When Stanton opened in 1960, Philadelphia’s overall population had peaked, and this part of North Philly was growing. It was built with enough classrooms for 1,300 students spread over four floors. A report from the National Register of Historic Places said its “modern design, the work of local firm Ehrlich and Levinson, was an important sign of investment in a struggling neighborhood” when it opened.

Outside KIPP North Philadelphia Academy, formerly M. Hall Stanton Elementary School. The school is again threatened with closure.

For decades, the school was anchored in the community. Its 450-seat auditorium hosted community meetings and for many years, its classrooms were used in the evenings for adult education. It may get emptied again since the Philadelphia Board of Education has begun the process of revoking its charter. The district is also poised to close a number of other Philadelphia public schools as it again grapples with declining enrollment, aging buildings in need of major repairs, and some schools with hundreds of empty seats.

When that happens, neighborhoods like this part of North Philadelphia may again be confronted with the loss of a vital institution.

As the city’s school board prepares to debate this new round of closures, a question raised by community advocates before and after the last round is likely to reemerge: Did shutting down 30 schools more than a decade ago exacerbate Philadelphia’s gun violence by destabilizing those neighborhoods and removing key social institutions?

To try to answer that question, the Philadelphia Journalism Collaborative and MindSite News used public gun violence and crime data obtained from the Philadelphia Police Department to plot gun-related crimes that occurred within 500 yards of schools from 2006 to 2024. We wanted to know whether gun violence rose and fell at different rates around open and closed schools.

The data show that among the 30 shuttered schools, there were 12 where gun violence either stopped improving or worsened after the closure in ways that don’t follow the citywide trend. Another 13 schools that were shut down had inconclusive trends or ones that mainly paralleled the citywide numbers. Five others saw a decrease in nearby gun violence over that period.

For the Stanton site, gun violence near the school — which had declined in the years preceding its closing in 2013 — began rising after the school closed at a rate that outpaced the increases in violence that occurred across the city. From 2006 through 2024, 434 acts of gun violence occurred within 500 yards of the school, the data show. (Five hundred yards is equivalent to five football fields.)The data don’t prove school closings lead to higher gun violence, but they do show areas where it worsened after closure that can’t be explained by spikes in gun violence across the city.

Neighborhoods feel the impact

The fact that Stanton and some other closed schools saw gun violence worsen comes as no surprise to Chantay Love.

When a school is closed, it creates a sense of loss and changes the character of the neighborhood, said Love, executive director of the EMIR Healing Center in Philadelphia’s Germantown section. EMIR, an acronym for Every Murder Is Real, is named for Love’s brother who was lost to gun violence. It’s a nonprofit organization that provides support services for those who have been impacted by shootings.

“Just like we convene around different entities, communities convene around schools,” Love told MindSite News. “It’s because they’re a cheering space, not only for the neighborhood but also for the young people. It becomes their second home. It’s where they get to thrive and develop. And when it’s taken away from them, the nuance of the neighborhood is removed.”

While crime has always existed in low-income neighborhoods, “there were certain things you just didn’t do around a school,” Love said. “And no matter who was around, they protected all children. This was the sacred place. It was extended home. By closing schools, you leave a hole in the neighborhood.”

Looking across the empty parking lot and recreation space of Fairhill Elementary School, in a photograph taken last year. The school has been empty since 2013.

As early as 1993, Stanton Elementary was in the news because the urban school received so much less funding than its suburban neighbors — an inequity in school funding that has persisted into the present.

That year, HBO aired the documentary “I Am A Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School” as part of its “America Undercover” documentary series. The film, which went on to win both an Emmy and an Academy Award, followed former principal Deanna Burney as she attempted to help the students and teachers at Stanton navigate their academic work while simultaneously dealing with such outside forces as poverty, disinvestment, drug abuse, and violence.

Despite the best efforts of Burney and her staff, the documentary ended with her resignation due to the frustration she felt in not being able to create major changes in student achievement or to raise the school’s performance on standardized tests, which remained around 50% below the district’s mean. Burney decried the limited resources Philadelphia schools receive in comparison with their suburban neighbors.

‘My ZIP code shouldn’t determine my education’

Twenty years later, the fates of Stanton and 23 other schools were on the line. They would be sealed in 2013 at a pivotal March hearing of the School Reform Commission, which the state established to stabilize the district’s finances. Its five members — three appointed by the governor and two by the mayor — essentially replaced the locally-controlled school board.

The hearing took place at the school district’s headquarters in Center City before a room packed with hundreds of students, parents, teachers, and activists calling on members of the commission to find some way, any way, to close a gaping budget hole – without closing schools. They carried signs: “Banks got bailed out, Schools got sold out!” and “My ZIP code shouldn’t determine my education!”

The commission had an unenviable task. Pennsylvania schools had been grappling with declining state funding for decades: In 1975, the state provided 55% of public school funding but by 2001 it provided less than 36%. The district had been under the control of the commission since 2001, and was staring at a deficit of $1.35 billion for the 2013-2014 school year, the result of cuts that then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett made to the state’s education budget.

Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm hired to find cuts, recommended combining 20 school communities and closing another 24 as part of a five-year plan to make the district more financially stable. The lowered maintenance costs and revenue from selling the buildings would allow the district to save more than $100 million, according to the firm’s analysis.

But residents served by the schools had other ideas. “This is a fiasco! The whole city needs to be shut down!” yelled neighborhood activist Pamela Williams, according to accounts published at the time by WHYY and The Public School Notebook.

Their pleas were largely ignored. By the end of the grueling session, the commission had voted to close 23 schools. The decision to close M. Hall Stanton Elementary came weeks later. The district had already closed a half dozen schools in 2012, so in all, from 2012 to 2014, the district closed 30 schools — 10% of all schools in the district.

It was part of a national trend in which unelected bodies were given power over big-city school districts that were struggling to bring in enough revenue to adequately fund public education for student bodies with high poverty rates and needs.

“It happened everywhere,” said Lisa Haver, cofounder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, a grassroots advocacy organization that fought the closings. “It was D.C. It was Chicago. It was every major school district that followed the same pattern of either getting rid of a school board or in some way disempowering a school board.”

Cutting district budgets and closing schools was seen by policymakers through the lens of fiscal discipline and efficiency, and few expressed concerns about the potential impact on community stability and crime. Some advocates did, however.

At a hearing on the proposed closings, Mary Laver spoke on behalf of St. Vincent de Paul Parish, a Germantown Catholic church, to oppose the closing of Robert Fulton Elementary School.

“We are very concerned that a shutdown of Fulton, combined with a shutdown of Germantown and Roosevelt, will put the entire neighborhood at risk,” Laver said, according to The Public School Notebook. “The neighborhood will be deprived of anchor institutions that have stabilized the neighborhood for years.” She predicted an increase in crime.

This pattern of disinvestment in urban communities extended beyond school funding, and it had a serious cumulative impact, Philadelphia City Councilmember Kendra Brooks told MindSite News.

“There was a threat of closing libraries, and resources being drained from Park and Rec programs, and other out-of-school time programs,” Brooks said. “So, what do you expect a generation of people to do without adequate resources to move forward? Right now, I feel like we’re living the results of that.”

But it was the school closings, in her view, that had the biggest impact.

“The population of young people that are on both sides of gun violence — meaning the folks that are being murdered and killed, and the people that are doing the crimes — they will all have been in school during that time where we were closing buildings,” Brooks said.

Losing the ‘village’

Dana Carter spent 16 years as a teacher in the Philadelphia schools, rising to the level of a school-based teacher leader. In 2013 she decided to step away and take a two-year teaching contract in the United Arab Emirates.

Dana Carter.

When she returned to the U.S. in 2015, she noticed some ominous changes. In the areas where schools had closed, she said, the sense of community no longer existed. “Prior to the school closures, we had a little bit of the village in the community,” Carter said. “The children went to school in the community and the community was able to see what was going on. And now these buildings have become abandoned.”

Schools like George Wharton Pepper Middle School in Southwest Philly, she said, “have become areas of blight with rodents, and trash dumping has been really bad there.” Buildings that were once the pride of the community were now “an eyesore.”

She also noticed that the city’s gun violence numbers were rising, and she began to wonder if there was a correlation. Could the school closings — coupled with other forms of community disinvestment — be contributing to an increase in crime and gun violence?

When gun violence spiked in 2020, she set to work. Using statistics from a Pew research study, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Statistics, unemployment data and information from the school district, she found that the percentage of shootings involving youth had begun climbing in 2013 — the same year Stanton school was closed.

“I was just trying to figure out what the catalyst was to this influx of violence in the streets,” she said.

In December 2021, Carter sent a summary of her findings to the Philadelphia Board of Education. She contended that the combination of disinvestment in neighborhood schools and forcing students to travel to other parts of the city to attend classes was contributing to the rising violence. She asked the district to halt new initiatives that weren’t related to the social and emotional health of students and staff. Those areas, Carter suggested, should be the top priorities for how the district should invest scarce funds.

Carter’s research was ignored.

Will history repeat itself?

Now the district is preparing to embark on another round of closings.

District officials have yet to say how many buildings they seek to close in this round, but they released data showing that 65 are less than half full. Beyond how full a school is, the district has promised to look at the physical condition of the building, the school’s ability to meet students’ needs, and neighborhood vulnerability.

That last factor will look at poverty in the surrounding neighborhood and whether the area was hit by past closings.

Activists from Stand Up for Philly Schools urged the school district not to close schools at a protest last month.

For those that are shut down, what will it mean for the neighborhoods they serve?

Advocates say the 2013 round of school closings offer some lessons – and reasons to worry that additional closures will harm the surrounding neighborhoods.

From 2006 to 2024, 434 incidents of gun violence occurred within 500 years of the Stanton Elementary School site. The number peaked at 34 in 2016, but as the chart shows, it was on an upward swing after the 2012 to 2013 school year (shown in a gray band) when most of the closures were implemented and citywide gun violence was declining. Stanton was closed in 2014.

In the case of the M. H. Stanton School, the number of gun-violence incidents had been on the decline prior to its closure in 2013. But in 2015 and 2016, shortly after the school closed, the number of shootings within 500 yards of the school rose quickly, even at a time when citywide gun violence incidents were stable or improving.

Since schools serve neighborhoods in many ways, closing them can pack a serious blow, especially in neighborhoods that have already been harmed by other forms of disinvestment, said Akira Drake Rodriguez, an assistant professor of city planning at the University of Pennsylvania.

Even schools that don’t achieve high test scores and that grapple with other problems still provide a familiar touchstone for children, she noted.

“For some students, school is the safest and most consistent space they have in their lives,” Rodriguez said.

The pandemic put a spotlight on gun violence in Philadelphia

A review of police department data suggests that huge global events like the COVID-19 pandemic and local events like school closings both have an impact on student morale – and in some cases, on gun violence.

Before the COVID-19 shutdowns began in 2020, gun violence had already been rising in Philadelphia. With the massive disruptions to daily life, homicides spiked around the country. In Philly, they rose from 356 in 2019 to 499 in 2020 and 562 in 2021, according to the Philadelphia Police Department.

By the time the pandemic lockdowns ended in 2022, the number of homicides had dipped back down to 516. In both periods, the victims tended to be young, Black and Latino men between 18 and 35 who’d had previous interactions with the law, according to the department.

Student performance also suffered before the pandemic, with one 2019 study suggesting that those “who struggled most academically during this tumultuous time were those attending schools that received the most displaced students,” according to a report by WHYY.

While the pandemic-era increase in gun violence parallels national trends, Councilmember Kendra Brooks believes disinvestment, including the 2012-2013 round of school closings in North Philadelphia and other underserved parts of the city, helped set the stage for the rise in gun violence in the years that followed.Now the district is preparing for another round of school closings and has promised a more community-centered process this time.

A decade later, six schools remain empty

From a distance, the former Fairhill Elementary School looks like one of the city’s many abandoned warehouses. One of at least six schools that still remains empty after being shuttered more than a decade ago, it is located at 6th Street and West Somerset in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, less than two miles from the Stanton/KIPP site.

A view from the street outside Fairhill Elementary School. The building has been empty since 2013.

Alongside a fence and beneath a tree are two chairs that used to occupy someone’s living room, a table, a trash can, and a recycling bin. The space is decorated with Puerto Rican flags and other mementos. A painted-on hopscotch court and chalk drawings can still be seen — the remnants of a time when students used to play here.

Fairhill is one of the closed schools with no clear pattern of gun violence after closing. For the first two years after it closed, gun violence near the school dipped. Then it began to rise just before a citywide increase in incidents that struck Philadelphia leading up to and during the pandemic.

From 2006 to 2024, 319 incidents of gun violence occurred within 500 years of the Fairhill Elementary School site. The numbers declined after closure (gray band) and hit a low of 11 in 2017. In the years following gun violence grew, but not in a consistent pattern.

During a visit last year, a group of men standing underneath a tree in the parking lot warned a reporter to be careful about going to the other side of the building because homeless people using drugs call that space home.

“I’ve been here since 1975,” said one man who preferred not to give his name. “I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

Orlando Rosa spent his teen years in the Fairhill neighborhood. Five years ago, he opened Pivott Boxing Academy across from the empty Fairhill School site to give neighborhood children new prospects. “A lot of the kids here don’t have many options in life, it’s a one-way street out here,” Rosa told the Kensington Voice.

Helping young people avoid the ugly was one of the reasons why Orlando Rosa opened the Pivott Boxing Academy across the street from Fairhill on North 6th Street. The gym trains professional and amateur boxers and has won several awards from USA Boxing, the federation that governs the sport.

Rosa grew up in this neighborhood. While there have always been challenges in this section of the city, the closing of Fairhill Elementary took it to another level and “hurt the neighborhood,” he said.

“The kids have to travel now and they’re not able to go to school in their community,” Rosa added. “They have to go to another neighborhood and it’s difficult to learn when you have to adjust, and you don’t know anyone.”

Kids are an important part of the focus of Pivott Boxing Academy.

Other closed school buildings were sold and repurposed. Some, like Stanton, became charter schools. Others such as Germantown High School were redeveloped into housing.

Closing schools can erode neighborhoods, removing hubs that once anchored people and changing their relationship to the neighborhood. Some may sell their homes — in some cases for lower prices due to declines in property values that often come with school closings, Rodriguez, the professor of city planning, said. And that, in turn, can set the table for future losses.

“When these schools close, it really destabilizes the neighborhood, which then can create the conditions for gentrification,” she said.

Edward Bok Technical High School in South Philadelphia, for example, has become a maker space — the Bok Building — with a rooftop bar. At night, affluent patrons of the Bok Bar can have a beer with some Sweet Amalia oysters and look out over the twinkling lights of the Center City skyline.

What can be done about school closings and gun violence in Philadelphia?

While the Philadelphia school district says it will take into account which neighborhoods have already been hurt by school closings — or might have heightened vulnerability in the event of a closing — officials have haven’t yet released information about which schools may be on the chopping block and what steps the district might take to mitigate neighborhood impacts.

Every school that gets closed won’t experience worsening gun violence afterward. But since many of the 30 schools shuttered back in the 2010s did, it makes sense to take into account which neighborhoods are already experiencing high levels of violence when decisions on closures are made, while also taking steps to try and reduce gun violence around the next schools to be shuttered.

The Blueprint for a Safer Philadelphia created by the City Council calls for early interventions like trauma-informed counseling in schools, more access to parks and recreation facilities, conflict resolution training and funding summer school. Ensuring students displaced by the closures have access to these supports could make a difference.

Similarly, the city’s Anti-Violence Community Partnership Grants were credited with helping to fuel the significant decline in homicides since the peak in 2021. Could future grant cycles prioritize at-risk neighborhoods looking to counter the destabilizing effects of losing a neighborhood school?

Rev. Greg Holston, a pastor and anti-violence activist who spent four years as senior adviser on policy and advocacy to the Philadelphia district attorney’s office, believes such investments could make a huge difference.

“With that level of investment, from September of 2020, to until the end of 2023, we had a 31% decrease in gun violence,” Holston said. “We saw the kind of decrease that happens when you put real investment in the community. So that’s the key. When you take schools out, you take investment out and violence goes up because that also impacts the business corridors, the recreation centers, and the libraries. When you put it back in, the violence goes down.”

Data analysis for this story was led by Julie Christie. Reporting for the story was supported by the van Ameringen Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund.

Advocates want Philadelphia school district’s long-term facilities plan to prioritize climate preparedness

2025-11-06T21:03:16+00:00

This story was reported with Green Philly through the Philadelphia Journalism Collaborative.

In a school district that struggles to balance aging infrastructure, funding challenges, and equitable service to a largely low-income population, advocates say that prioritizing climate preparedness could proactively reduce costs, improve health, and retain staff.

Philadelphia schools are experiencing the impacts of climate change. The beginnings and ends of the academic calendar are increasingly hotter with each year, leading to more school closures and early dismissals that send students home. On the days in which students remain in hot classrooms, studies have found that students are unable to learn, while the cost of cooling buildings becomes steeper as fossil-fuel powered energy sources deplete.

According to district data, nearly 26,000 students at some 57 district schools currently have “inadequate cooling” systems. That’s more than 26% of the district’s 218 school buildings.

The district’s extensive facilities upgrades planning process, years in the making, has echoed parts of these concerns. According to the school district’s survey and stakeholder feedback from families and teachers, 56% called improving air conditioning a high priority; 34% of respondents named installing energy-saving measures a high priority as well.

School staff and community activists say they’ve known that many school buildings need upgrades, but the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the forefront the “very specific concern for air quality and amplified calls for proper heating and cooling systems,” explained Katy Egan, an educator and the co-chair of the Safe Air for Philly Schools campaign launched by the Philly Democratic Socialists of America. “HVAC systems not only make classroom temperatures better, but they also filter.”

Air quality is connected to rising global temperatures. Heat waves coincided with poor air quality for several days just this past summer in Philly.

But for Egan and many others, the most pressing concern in the facilities upgrades process is the looming threat of school closures. As part of facility improvements, the district aims to modernize and renovate some schools – but will also shutter an undefined number of schools throughout the city. Community and advisory group members say the process for community engagement regarding closures has been lacking in accuracy and transparency, and at times, seems to have been simply a public relations tool.

This month, the district announced it would delay the release of its closure plan in an effort to gather more community feedback.

“I think [the district] is paying lip service to community participation and using that to manufacture consent for school closures,” said Egan. “We are glad that they are talking to community members; I don’t believe that they are fully listening.”

Egan said she thinks that the district places environmental concerns low on their list of priorities. “I think they don’t view it as their responsibility,” Egan said.

Monique Braxton, a spokesperson for the district, however, said in an email that climate preparedness is a priority in the long-term facilities planning process. She pointed to the development of a transportation plan to transition from diesel to low- and zero-emission school buses. She also said that the facilities plan is prioritizing more climate-resilient infrastructure, including a Guaranteed Energy Savings Agreements Program and green stormwater management systems.

Other stakeholder responses during the facilities feedback sessions echoed Egan’s stance. Out of 333 comments on capital and environmental investments, more than one-third were about equity, and about a quarter were calls for greater transparency.

Akira Drake Rodriguez is an assistant professor of urban planning at the University of Pennsylvania and member of the district’s Education and Community Partners Advisory Group for the facilities planning process.

Rodriguez said that the district is failing to strategize for the long-term. She says that conversations with facilities planners do not include a concrete, ongoing building maintenance plan. “We basically only have emergency maintenance,” said Rodriguez. “And when there are emergencies, then you’re paying two and three times the amount for emergency trades to come out and emergency repairs to be done.”

As the impacts of climate change, like rising temperatures and flooding, are expected to become more prevalent, Rodriguez said those maintenance emergencies may become more frequent each year.

Rodriguez believes that it is a “no-brainer” to include sustainability plans in the facilities upgrades process. “If you’re in the process of doing a facility plan, why not think proactively about how to make school facilities greener in an effort to both reduce costs, retain students, retain staff?”

Rodriguez co-authored a study along with Samantha Shasanya that examined school district sustainability plans for justice and equity. The authors discovered that the ability to think proactively and long-term is key to building a successful sustainability and climate action plan.

The barriers that Philly’s school district faces to proactive planning, however, are steep. “It’s really hard to be proactive in Philly because there’s always a crisis,” said Rodriguez. Earlier this year, the children’s advocacy group Children First PA released a report revealing the dismal state of Philadelphia’s children and families. Titled “A decade of stalled progress,” the report found that many school district children withstand high levels of poverty, food insecurity, teacher turnover, and language barriers.

The report also found environmental factors at home and school including poor indoor air quality and exposure to lead and mold “exacerbate respiratory health disparities, leaving affected children at higher risk of missed school days, hospital visits, and chronic complications.”

Hence, school districts that have successfully implemented climate change preparations tend to be smaller and a bit wealthier. Denver is one such school district.

Denver as a model

With half of the enrolled students and a median income that is roughly $28,000 more, the Denver school district may not encounter the same level of challenges as Philadelphia. Nevertheless, Denver scored higher than Philadelphia for justice and equity in Rodriguez and Shasanya’s study for their sustainability and climate action plan, or SCAP.

Miles Hoffman, the operations manager of the Sustainability team at Denver Public Schools, said that much of the progress and the high score of the district’s SCAP comes down to placing students at the center of the work. “The development of the CAP was really a student-led movement supported by the district,” explained Hoffman.

Hoffman said students have seen the impact of climate change firsthand. Wildfires – like the Marshall fire of 2021 that tore through neighboring Boulder County – are becoming more frequent and more destructive in the state as the planet warms. “This was a reaction and response to climate change” from the students, said Hoffman.

DPS Students for Climate Action is the award-winning campaign that led that response. Students spoke in front of the school board and developed the climate action plan with the sustainability team. The plan was then adopted and is now policy.

“Having it as a board policy gives us a leg to stand on,” said Hoffman. “It is well-communicated and well-understood that climate action is of great importance.”

Baked into the plan is clear language regarding equity and environmental justice: a recognition that Black and brown communities bear the brunt of climate change, as is the case in Philadelphia. The district prioritized running EV buses through underserved communities first; is building solar projects that will help offset energy costs for district families; and is utilizing a heat and air quality vulnerability map to prioritize HVAC upgrades throughout the district. They are installing AC at 29 schools, 20 of which will be air source heat pumps.

Denver Public Schools aligned its SCAP with that of the city, since it was clear that reaching the city’s climate goals would depend on the action of the district. Hoffman says the district meets regularly with the city, and that departments outside of the sustainability teams have ownership over shared goals. He feels that that ownership creates a sense of urgency for all parties to collaborate.

The School District of Philadelphia introduced its first SCAP back in 2016 called GreenFutures, which was modeled after Greenworks, former Mayor Nutter’s sustainability plan. Under this plan, SDP has been able to enter into contracts with Philadelphia Energy Authority to improve energy efficiency in 24 schools and has partnered with the city’s Philly Tree Plan. The district also partnered with Philadelphia Gas Works to conduct a study on the feasibility of geothermal energy at John F. McCloskey Elementary and a neighboring recreation center.

They are now working on the second version of the plan, GreenFutures 2.0, yet to be released. Rodriguez hopes that there can be greater collaboration between the city and district in the next plan. Moreso, though, she hopes it will be a priority.

“Climate change isn’t going away, so schools are going to have to eventually green themselves.”

Angie Bacha is a Philadelphia-based solutions journalist, you can reach her at angiebacha1@gmail.com

How should Philadelphia handle school closures? Here’s what parents, educators, and others say.

2025-11-05T21:43:45+00:00

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Philadelphia school officials say they want more feedback before they announce which schools will close in the coming years — and educators, families, and other city residents hope they plan to listen.

At an event Chalkbeat hosted in partnership with Germantown Info Hub on Saturday, people reflected on the last mass school closures in 2013, when the district shuttered 23 schools despite community protests. Many said those closures left deep scars across neighborhoods, fractured trust between residents and the district, and left neighborhoods without key community spaces.

In Germantown specifically, the district closed the nearly 100-year-old Germantown High School. That experience shows what could go wrong — and what could be improved — this time around, residents said.

School officials have promised this upcoming round of closures will be different from what happened in 2013 — in large part, they say, because robust community engagement will inform the process.

Already, the district has assembled advisory groups and hosted community engagement sessions that school leaders say will inform the facilities planning process. On Tuesday, district officials said they were delaying a long-awaited facilities plan announcement to conduct a districtwide survey to gather more feedback.

Still, some residents of Germantown and other Philly neighborhoods said on Saturday they remain skeptical about how the district will factor community feedback into its ultimate recommendations.

But, they said, if the district genuinely intends to listen, they have lots of feedback to share. Here’s what some of the more than 20 people who attended Chalkbeat and Germantown Info Hub’s event said the district should keep in mind.

Philadelphians urge district to continue meaningful community engagement

Several Germantown residents said that even though the district has made efforts to solicit feedback, it must do much more to ensure families feel like their perspectives are considered in the process.

Janice Tosto, who moved to Germantown seven years ago, said families at the schools the district wants to close “have to be front and center in all of this.” That’s why, she said, it’s essential that the district stay in touch with families at schools affected by closures.

“They need to be prepared to have conversations with people,” said Tosto. “And to check in with people to see how they can be supportive of people who are really dealing with that trauma.”

Some people said it seems like many Philadelphians still don’t know closures are coming — or if their schools will be affected.

“People need to ask, ‘Which schools are you closing in my neighborhood?” said Cecelia Thompson, a former member of the Board of Education. “Stop being sketchy with it.”

Philadelphia residents said they want district leaders to give serious weight to community feedback in their school closure plan.

Advocates worry that even language the district is using to describe what’s happening, like the term “facilities planning process,” does not make it clear that school closures are coming.

“Nobody knows what it is,” said Ilene Poses, a member of the advocacy group Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, which opposes the closures. “They all think it’s going to be about making the schools environmentally better, less toxic.”

Fate of closed schools concerns many Philadelphia residents

District officials have said the aim of the process is to create better educational environments for students, with more access to programming like AP classes and extracurriculars. Superintendent Tony Watlington has said that to do so, the district needs to reduce the number of empty seats and close some schools.

But Watlington and other school officials have shared very little information about what would happen to schools after they close.

Longtime Germantown resident Jill Saull was involved in community pushback against the closure of Germantown High School in 2013. As part of the Philadelphia School Closings Photo Collective, she documented that school and Fulton Elementary to capture what the schools looked like before they shut down.

She said after the school board voted to shutter Germantown High School, she and other neighborhood residents organized to propose alternatives for what the building could become.

One idea, she said, was to turn part of the building into a small career and technical education program for hospitality and restaurant management. Another part of the building would be turned into a boutique hotel that students would help run and attract more visitors to Germantown.

At first, Saull said she remembers the school board and the developers who ultimately bought the building seemed interested in the community’s feedback and ideas. At one community meeting about the future of the school property, she said, more than 400 people showed up.

But ultimately, the developers nixed each idea from local residents. The building is now largely market-rate apartments.

“There was a moment where we did feel we came together … we were able to communicate,” said Saull. “But as the process went on, things kind of fell apart.”

At community engagement meetings over the summer, district officials said all options remain on the table for closed school buildings. But some worry the district will prioritize selling the facilities for top dollar instead of what local neighborhoods want.

Facilities planning process seems rushed, some say

Some advocates have welcomed the district’s delay for announcing the facilities plan. To them, it indicates the district is taking more time to consider what Philadelphians want from schools.

But others want the district to release a draft list of schools to close, so that Philadelphians can know what’s at stake and provide feedback that could make a difference before it’s finalized.

In 2013, the district held hearings about schools initially slated for closures and had time to come up with alternative plans. Officials ended up closing many fewer schools than the district initially proposed.

But this time around, officials appear to be front-loading community engagement, said Adam Blyweiss, a district parent and teacher who has been involved with the Stand Up for Philly Schools group, which opposes school closures. He worries the district may rush the process after it eventually releases the list of recommended schools to close.

Separately, the district needs better partnerships with external groups to make sure students who must change schools are supported, said Justin Ennis, executive director of Philadelphia Outward Bound School.

Ultimately, Ennis said the lessons from what happened in 2013 could help shape a much better process this time around — just as long as the district makes genuine progress building trust with communities and partner organizations.

“There is an opportunity to harness all of the folks in a community,” said Ennis. “So it’s not like 2013, which felt like a cold and sterile financial decision.”

Germantown Info Hub’s Rasheed Ajamu and Pryce Jamison contributed to this story, along with Sara Shahriari from Resolve Philly.

Sign up for Germantown Info Hub’s community texting project here.

Philadelphia school district releases data that will inform school closures

2025-09-10T19:42:22+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district released a long-awaited data repository Wednesday that officials say will help guide decisions about which schools it will close and which ones it will invest in.

But for those waiting for concrete information on how school data will inform the district’s facilities plan — and which schools it will shutter — details remain scant.

The data website includes information on school enrollment and capacity, and gives schools utilization scores from “severely underutilized” to “severely overcrowded.” It also scores schools on a 100-point scale for building condition, neighborhood vulnerability, and whether a school’s space meets the needs of students. Schools receive ratings per category between “unsatisfactory” and “excellent” based on those scores.

However, the calculations behind those scores are unclear. If a school’s building quality is rated as “poor,” that means a building requires “moderate repairs,” according to the district’s data FAQ. But that could be because of a lack of adequate air conditioning, or the presence of toxic materials like friable asbestos or lead. Or it could mean the building’s electrical system is outdated.

The data shows the scope of many schools’ problems. Forty buildings are rated as having an “unsatisfactory” building condition. Fifty-five are enrolled at less than 50% capacity.

District officials say an “unsatisfactory” score does not mean a school will close, but that instead it will help officials understand different needs.

“This is the first time that we have one repository with all of our data that informs what the needs are,” said Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill. “It really paints a very broad and comprehensive picture, or mosaic, of what the school’s needs are, where we’ve been making investments, and how we move forward with this process.”

On mobile devices, the dashboard was difficult to view when it launched; graphics often overlapped, for example.

Throughout the facilities planning process, which began in 2022, Superintendent Tony Watlington has repeated that the aim of the facilities plan is to provide more resources and better opportunities to all public school students. The data, he said, will help ensure the district spends its limited resources well. He also said he can’t provide further details about how the district weighs different factors.

“We’ve got to better utilize our budgets, our people, our buildings, all of our resources in service of providing more high quality academic and extracurricular programming across all the neighborhoods of Philadelphia,” Watlington told reporters in a briefing before the data release. “That’s what this is about.”

The district began sharing initial data during more than a dozen community engagement meetings over the summer at schools across the city. Many educators and families Chalkbeat spoke with said they appreciated learning more about the process. But some voiced concerns that the district’s data did not accurately reflect their schools.

District officials said they met with principals over the summer and walked through dozens of schools to ensure the data is accurate. Some updates are now apparent.

At a community meeting over the summer, for example, the district’s handouts showed that Feltonville Arts & Science middle school was at 62% utilization, with 542 students enrolled in a building meant for 874. But many educators connected with the school said that did not seem accurate. In the new data release, Feltonville Arts & Science’s capacity is listed as 756, and its utilization score is 72%.

District officials say they plan to host more engagement sessions this fall, and have met with principals to explain how they can share information with families.

Time is limited. Watlington said the district still plans to share recommendations for which schools to close, colocate, repurpose, and modernize to the Board of Education this fall. They plan for the board to vote on the recommendations by the end of the year and roll out changes starting next school year. Some recommendations, he said, will be phased in over a longer term.

Still, Watlington said, “there are no fixed decisions at this point.”

Here’s the data Philly is using to pick which schools close — and here’s what’s missing

2025-07-24T23:32:20+00:00

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School officials in Philadelphia say closures are coming — and they’ve promised to use data about building needs, enrollment, and neighborhoods to decide which schools shut their doors.

But more than a year into the district’s facilities planning process, details on which schools are desperately in need of repairs and which ones are struggling most with enrollment remain murky.

For months, the district has pushed back a promised release of the information officials have said will inform its recommendations of which schools to close, colocate, modernize, repurpose, or maintain as they are. And the data the district has shared — which officials have only made available via printouts at community engagement sessions — includes serious limitations and inconsistencies, according to principals and educators in attendance.

At community engagement meetings held by the district this month, some educators pointed out that the district’s stated capacity for their schools did not seem accurate, based on their experiences in their buildings. Others noted that the data creates an incomplete picture about the city’s enrollment, as it only captures a moment in time and does not include charter or parochial school enrollment.

Ultimately, some principals worry their schools could be targeted for closure or colocations based on data that does not accurately reflect their schools. And some community members said that failing to holistically review their schools’ strengths and challenges could result in decisions that harm children and neighborhoods.

Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill has been telling community members "nothing is etched in stone" and that their input is still valuable.

Many educators and community members attending meetings also asked for clarification about how the data would be used to determine school recommendations. Despite assigning scores and color codes to different school factors, the district did not explain how these scores and codes could make different outcomes for schools more or less likely.

District officials said there was no formula, but that they would take many factors into account including comments and concerns shared at the meetings.

“Nothing is etched in stone,” Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill told a group of educators and community members at an engagement session at Thomas K. Finletter School. “We are still at a point where your input can make a difference.”

Chalkbeat’s analysis of the district’s data revealed further inconsistencies and gaps. The district provided Chalkbeat with a list of each district school’s capacity based on its current metrics. But the figures provided did not match the numbers shared during the engagement meetings. For example, the Abram S. Jenks School is 87% full according to the spreadsheet given to Chalkbeat. But in the printed handouts from the engagement meetings, the school has the same number of students enrolled but is marked “severely overcrowded” at over 130% full.

The data the district gave to Chalkbeat also did not include information for several schools, including schools that recently returned to district control after being operated by charter organizations.

The capacity figures the district provided to Chalkbeat and the capacity figures shared at the community meetings were “collected at different points in time,” according to Monique Braxton, a district spokesperson. The district did not further explain the discrepancies. And updated capacity data for the schools “will be available when we launch the public website,” Braxton said.

District officials have repeatedly said the data they have shared during engagement meetings is preliminary and will be updated after walkthroughs of each school and a review by principals, some of whom have been away on vacation this summer.

The new data will be released before the facilities plan is made public, several district facilitators at the meetings said.

But time is running out. The district plans to solicit feedback on a draft facilities plan beginning in October, which it will then present to the Board of Education in November.

At a session at Thomas K. Finletter School, several teachers and school leaders affiliated with Feltonville Arts & Sciences expressed concerns about the school capacity numbers the district shared at the meetings.

If the district doesn’t have accurate information on its buildings, the educators said, they have serious reservations about the validity of the process overall.

“Don’t make it neat on paper,” said Malcolm Cooper, a music teacher at Feltonville Arts & Sciences, at the risk of making things “messy in real life.”

District’s scores for schools spur confusion, concern

Throughout July, district officials hosted more than a dozen engagement sessions to explain the facilities planning process, solicit feedback, and share printouts of school data. Chalkbeat attended half of these sessions, speaking with parents, educators, community members, and district officials in attendance.

The data printouts included enrollment and capacity numbers, as well as color-coded designations for each school based on building quality, neighborhood vulnerability, and program alignment.

District officials said that school building scores were based largely on a 2024 building audit.

Program alignment scores reflected whether a school’s space adequately serves its programming needs, like having a gym or space for prekindergarten programs.

Neighborhood vulnerability scores combined two factors. One is the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social vulnerability index data for a school’s neighborhood that considers poverty and housing density. The other is whether a neighborhood has experienced a district school closure in the past.

For example, a school with more students enrolled than its building capacity allows may be marked “red” for overcrowding, but have a program alignment of “good,” and a neighborhood vulnerability score of “moderate risk.”

In the community meetings, district officials have said their decisions will primarily consider the neighborhood vulnerability score, then a school’s capacity, utilization, and building’s structural condition, and then the further “nuance” of a school community, including where students could be moved and what special programs schools offer.

But the officials did not make a direct connection between how schools were ranked on these different factors and how likely it is that the district would decide to close, colocate, or modernize them.

But at every session Chalkbeat attended, at least one person asked for more clarity about how the district arrived at the summary scores for each school and raised concerns about their accuracy.

Luisa Velasquez, co-director of the Friends of Vare-Washington nonprofit that raises money to support the elementary school, said she believed the “moderate risk” vulnerability designation assigned to the school didn’t reflect the school’s real needs.

Velasquez noted that though more wealthy families have moved to South Philadelphia, many have chosen to send their kids to private schools, charter schools, or selective admissions schools. As a result, the demographics of Vare-Washington Elementary’s neighborhood don’t necessarily reflect the school’s demographics, she said, “because we have kids from all over the city coming to us to get a decent education.”

In a similar vein, others have noted that the data doesn’t capture the location of charter schools.

Velasquez told Chalkbeat she left the community meeting skeptical of how the district will use its data for decisions about schools.

School data reflects limited timeline and scope

Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill said the engagement sessions so far have been eye-opening. He urged families to attend more meetings, which district officials have said will continue throughout the fall.

“Every single engagement [session], I learn things about these schools and the communities that I didn’t know before,” Hill told Chalkbeat at one such meeting on Monday.

Some attendees also worried that the capacity data was too rigid. In Northeast Philadelphia, for example, school leaders said a growing immigrant population means a school’s enrollment can fluctuate throughout the year. If Feltonville Intermediate School filled its classrooms to 100% capacity on the first day of school, educators asked what would happen after winter break when a handful of new students want to enroll.

A community engagement session about school closures, colocations, and modernizations at Philadelphia's Andrew Hamilton Public School on July 17.

Sabrina Scott-Feggins, principal of General Philip Kearny Elementary who attended a session at the district’s headquarters, said she still has questions about the district’s process and calculations.

For example, since COVID, her school decided to take two underused classrooms and turn them into a makeshift library because the school didn’t have one. Though on paper those rooms may count as empty, she noted that they are in use and provide a vital resource.

But she said she was heartened by the opportunity to provide feedback directly to district officials. And as a principal, she can get on board with a decision that benefits students — even if it means reconfiguring schools.

“I feel hopeful,” said Scott-Feggins. “I feel like this is the beginning of being heard.”

Clarification: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect Principal Sabrina Scott-Feggins’ comments about the district’s planning process.

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that impact students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Q&A: What Philadelphia can learn from Washington, D.C., about fixing crumbling schools

2025-07-18T19:22:58+00:00

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The School District of Philadelphia’s facilities planning process aims to “rightsize” school buildings across the city by renovating some, co-locating or repurposing others, and likely closing some schools.

District officials have promised they’ve learned their lesson from the previous closures in 2013 that had detrimental effects on student academics and cratered community trust in school officials. This time, they said, they want community members to better understand the district’s challenges and involve the public’s input in the decisionmaking.

The district’s decades-long neglect of its facilities coupled with years of unconstitutional underfunding at the state level has had significant costs. The current price tag to make all needed repairs and upgrades to Philly school has ballooned to $8 billion. Of that total, some $4.5 billion is needed for deferred maintenance. Teachers and students say they have been sickened by asbestos and lead. And a number of schools have closed after the discovery of damaged asbestos.

Last month, the Department of Justice filed criminal charges against the district for its multi-years failure to conduct timely asbestos inspections.

Still, some community members have criticized the district’s ongoing facilities engagement process as opaque, perfunctory, and overly controlled. District officials are conducting more community engagement sessions and intend to present their plan to the public this fall.

Given the increased attention on school facilities, Chalkbeat’s partners at Swarthmore College spoke with Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund and a parent activist who was instrumental in the facilities planning process in Washington, D.C. Since the 1990s, District of Columbia Public Schools has invested over $6 billion to modernize 70% of its public schools. In many respects, Washington, D.C., has accomplished what Philadelphia experts say they hope to achieve.

Washington has also grappled with many of the same challenges Philly has: stagnating student enrollment, a previous closure process that traumatized communities, and difficulty obtaining state or federal funding.

Filardo said Washington has lessons to offer about organizing across the city, securing money to modernize and maintain buildings, and how to build a robust community engagement process.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Roseann Liu and Abby Hong: Given the financial constraints of a lot of urban school districts, what do you think would make the biggest impact in remediating toxins in school buildings?

Mary Filardo: Philadelphia is one of the great cities of the United States. It can manage big problems, but it can’t accidentally fix toxic schools. You actually have to purposefully fix toxic schools. You can’t accidentally make things equitable and high quality. You have to purposely do it.

And so that means you have to put on the table what actually is the problem, not what you politically wish the problem was.

Liu and Hong: Reflecting on your experience with the D.C. Public Schools, what do you think are the top ingredients for a robust community engagement process?

Filardo: You have to do whatever processes are going to be required for your particular neighborhood or community to build trust. You have to have to be open, you have to share data, you have to share information, you have to share it in a timely way. And you have to be willing to not know. The system itself has to say, “I don’t have the answers. I want your input in the answers.”

You also have to share your technical people. You can’t hoard the technical people. They have to be used by the community and the administration.

You have to have a dialogue, you have to actually talk to each other and wrestle together. It isn’t just like, I’m going to get input from you, and then I’m going to put it together. The community actually has to be in dialogue with you and with the support of technical folks.

Liu and Hong: If you were in a room with the Philadelphia school district how would you advise them?

Filardo: I remember in Washington, D.C., we had a lead in the water tested, and it tested really high, so they just turned off all the water and they didn’t want anybody to know. I said to the head of facilities, “The public should know that we’ve got lead pipes, lead service, lead everything, and this is a problem. Why are you trying to hide this? You should be using this to make the case.” They didn’t know how to make it public, because of course, one of the main things schools are responsible for is healthy, safe environments for kids.

And you’ve got to engage your people, whether they’re custodians or building engineers or principals or teachers, or whatever, and kind of put it out there. How can we get this done? What can we do to help? It’s very tricky. But it doesn’t go away when you ignore it.

And so that to me, that’s the first thing. You’ve got to sit down, you’ve got to do plans, and you’ve got to try to prioritize, and you have to get the dollars.

Liu and Hong: One of the ongoing challenges of urban school districts is underfunding. How did the D.C. public schools get the money it needed to fix school buildings?

Filardo: You don’t get money unless you have a vision and a plan. You have to do the planning work. It’s not like the building industry or the real estate sector doesn’t understand what it costs to do the work that you’re describing that needs to be done.

So that’s partly where we got our real estate and our building industry saying, “Yes, this is what needs to be done. Yes, you should be doing it.” And realizing, of course, that they were going to benefit from it.

Liu and Hong: What do you think are the biggest lessons that Philly can learn from D.C., both as a cautionary tale, but also maybe some things that we can imitate?

Filardo: I think that a parallel push that we spent some time on, but not nearly enough on is this planning on the day-to-day operations and maintenance. That, too, really requires that the stakeholders engaged, communities looking at it, technical people, trying to figure out, okay, how do we manage this? It’s a little bit like being in an emergency room.

We actually put a lot in our City Council legislation. I think you’re not going to get it unless there’s some requirements for planning, requirements for hearings, requirements for some kind of engagement. Now it doesn’t mean that it gets done well, but it’s a tool.

Liu and Hong: Can you provide a big-picture timeline of the efforts to improve DCPS buildings?

Filardo: [School district] enrollment had been declining and there had been a huge amount of white flight from desegregation. In the early ’90s, they said, “We have to close schools because we can’t afford to fix them.” So they set out to close 10 schools. They put 40 schools on the list and told the community that you had to pick the 10. Well, [there was] a huge outcry.

We essentially looked at the vision from an educational perspective, from an environmental perspective, from a financial perspective, and we worked with the task force. We had utilization data.

The District [Congressional] Committee was a very prominent, powerful thing at that time. They put in the budget bill that there had to be an update of this plan. It became an accepted part of what was going to be happening in the city. From a financial perspective and a management perspective, it was messy, people were still trying to figure out, well, how do we get the work done? And where exactly is the money coming from?

[Eventually the mayor at the time] got how powerful it is from a political perspective to do infrastructure work. People care about the schools in their neighborhoods. So he helped push that and also helped identify a more stable funding source, which was the real estate transfer tax for commercial real estate. We didn’t have any federal money. This was all local money that was going into our renovations and modernizations and all of the repair emergencies.

Philadelphia school officials eye closing standalone middle schools

2025-07-02T17:29:50+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district intends to reduce the number of standalone middle schools as part of its plan to cut the number of empty seats and support student achievement, Superintendent Tony Watlington recently revealed.

The district currently operates 14 standalone middle schools, enrolling students from fifth or sixth grade through eighth grade. Watlington said his aim is to reduce the number of grade bands so that students move from one school to another less frequently, and to use district resources more efficiently.

“I want to be clear that does not mean that the traditional middle school is good or bad,” said Watlington at last month’s Board of Education meeting. “We want to limit the number of transitions that our students have to make from one school to the next, as a strategy to continue to keep our enrollment and to build the enrollment and to meet our young peoples’ needs.”

Watlington’s comments about standalone middle schools were part of an update about the district’s facilities planning process, which officials have indicated will lead to school closures — as well as new co-locations and building modernizations — as a way to “rightsize” the district. They’ve also stressed that there is no list yet of which schools may be closed, and that they will continue to engage families and community members in the process before they make any decisions.

The district plans to consider multiple factors, including which neighborhoods have previously experienced school closures, in its recommendations about which schools to close.

There’s a longstanding debate over whether sending students to separate middle schools helps or harms them.

Watlington said that studies of district data show that students in Philadelphia do better with fewer school transitions. One study from 2001 found that Philadelphia students who stayed at their elementary schools for middle grades generally performed better. Some national research has found similar results.

But other studies that compared outcomes of students who attended standalone middle schools with those at K-8 schools found that there was not a significant difference.

Watlington said reducing the number of grade bands also aligns with the facilities planning process’ emphasis on ensuring students get better access to school programs, like AP classes and arts programming.

“Our school district needs to increase access to high quality academic and extracurricular programming across all neighborhoods,” said Watlington. “Because right now, there are huge disparities based on where you live.”

Many school board members expressed support for reducing the number of middle schools, noting that they hoped it would result in better academic opportunities for students.

“I am really happy to see the reduction on the grade bands,” said board member Wanda Novalés. “I think we’re going to see a great benefit from that in our schools.”

Majority of Philadelphia’s standalone middle schools are underenrolled

District officials have said one goal of its facilities planning process is to ensure that there are enough seats for students in crowded schools and fewer empty seats in schools where enrollment has shrunk over the past decade.

The district’s middle schools show how lopsided the city’s enrollment has become in terms of geography, with enrollment numbers peaking in the Northeast while falling elsewhere.

The majority of the district’s standalone middle schools enrolled less than half the number of students their buildings had capacity for last school year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of district data.

Tilden Middle School, for example, had just over 260 students in a building meant for 1,200. At the Academy for the Middle Years at Northwest, which enrolled 150 students last year, nearly a quarter of its seats were empty.

But the two middle schools that were overcapacity last year were both in Northeast neighborhoods, with Baldi Middle School enrolling 200 more students than it had space for.

Board President Reginald Streater urged families and community members to attend upcoming engagement events to voice their feedback.

“There is no secret plan hidden in a drawer somewhere,” said Streater. “This is really, truly intended to be a process that’s co-created with the public.”

The district plans to hold 16 engagement sessions in July, in-person and virtually, about its facilities planning process. See the list of those events here.

Concerns grow over potential plan to close Philadelphia schools

2025-06-10T20:17:43+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district has pledged that any future school closures — which officials have said are likely — will be markedly different from the last, brutal battle over shuttering local schools more than a decade ago.

Rather than impose the district’s closure plans onto Philadelphians, officials have said that moves to close, colocate, or repurpose schools would be guided by local community members and experts. They also pledged the process would be data-driven and transparent.

“This isn’t the district’s plan. This isn’t the Board of Education’s plan. This is Philadelphia’s plan,” Deputy Superintendent of Operations Oz Hill said at a November community meeting. “These are our children that have to live with this plan.”

But several parents and community leaders participating in the district’s formal advisory groups say the facilities planning process has already become opaque. After sitting through meetings filled with PowerPoint presentations that lack crucial financial or school-specific data, some advisory group members have called for an overhaul of the district’s approach and more clarity.

“It’s been extremely frustrating how little our input actually gets heard,” said Elaine Simon, former co-director of the Urban Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the community leaders advisory group. “Meetings are overly structured and artificial, because we never get information or understanding of what their process actually is.”

Advisory group members said they took time off work and rearranged their schedules to attend the meetings, often scheduled for the middle of the day. But to Simon and several other members of the parent and community leader groups who spoke with Chalkbeat, the time has felt wasted by bureaucratic presentations and unspecific brainstorming sessions. Many worry the district is using them to add credibility to a flawed process, without considering their feedback about how to prevent closures in the first place.

The district’s final facilities plan is due in December, but the district has missed some of its own deadlines related to various parts of the process.

In an email, Alexandra Coppadge, the district’s chief of communications, said the district’s aim is to create a facilities plan that supports communities and student achievement, maximizes the use of school buildings, and provides more access to programs like prekindergarten and arts classes.

“The District is committed to completing a facilities plan that includes deep and thoughtful community engagement,” Coppadge said. She added that the district plans to host additional listening and community engagement sessions and will share more data in the coming months.

Since January, Simon and other advisory group members have met with district staff for an hour around once a month on Zoom, with one recent meeting scheduled in-person at the district office.

The advisory board members Chalkbeat spoke with emphasized that they want the process to go well. As the district tries to address a budget deficit, deteriorating infrastructure, and some school buildings with hundreds of empty seats, several members said they understand the district’s challenges and hope to contribute to a thoughtful solution.

“We do want a facilities plan,” Akira Drake Rodriguez, an assistant professor of city planning at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of one of the advisory groups, told the school board last month. “But we want one that prioritizes community needs and not just the district’s.”

Philadelphia district officials indicate school closures are likely

School districts across the country, including Denver and New York City, have been mulling school closures to cope with enrollment drops since the pandemic. But some people in those communities have urged districts to invest in their neighborhood schools and keep up regular building maintenance, rather than resort to closures.

Around 115,000 students now attend Philadelphia district schools, marking a 12% drop from a decade ago. Though enrollment grew slightly last year, several schools have hundreds of empty seats, while others are at capacity or are overcrowded.

District officials have said school closures are on the table. But they’ve stressed that they plan to avoid repeating the mistakes of the last round of closures in 2013, when 23 schools closed. That process decimated community trust in the city’s schools. And district officials readily admit it had a negative impact on students. The performance of displaced students declined, the performance of students attending schools where those displaced students were reassigned also declined, and student absences increased.

“It was not worth the cost,” Deputy Superintendent Hill told families last year.

This time, officials say the aim is to improve students’ learning environments, not just save money.

Last year, the board hired a public relations firm at the cost of $179,500 to facilitate community outreach and feedback sessions, and hosted more than 30 in-person public listening sessions. More than 500 people participated, according to the district. But several of those meetings that Chalkbeat attended consisted of mostly district representatives, with few parents or other members of the public in attendance.

Then, last November, the district launched its advisory group process, asking community leaders, parents, and educators across the city to attend regular meetings with district officials.

But those meetings have been extremely disappointing, Rodriguez told Chalkbeat. “We don’t ever get our questions answered,” she said.

Generally, advisory groups spent at least half of each meeting listening to district presentations of information that could mostly be found on its website, according to several group members Chalkbeat spoke with.

Though district representatives attended the meetings, several members echoed Rodriguez’s concern, saying their requests for more detailed information went unanswered.

Rodriguez said meetings have focused more on closing and colocating schools, instead of maintaining buildings. She wants the district to avoid closing schools entirely. Ultimately, she worries that her participation may be used to rubber-stamp a plan she does not agree with.

Other advisory members who don’t want closures say the focus on school closures and colocations in some meetings have made them worry the district has already decided that some closures are inevitable.

“At best, we are being given a window into a process,” said Adam Blyweiss, a member of the parent advisory group and a teacher at Jules E. Mastbaum High School. “At worst … we are being given the data-driven tools to effectively have us be the hatchet man instead of the district.”

School district behind on its own deadlines

The district has already missed some of its own deadlines to share key information, leaving advisory group members concerned that any proposal will be extremely rushed.

In May, the district was set to share a community update about its plans. But at that month’s board meeting, that didn’t happen.

Reporters were scheduled to receive a briefing about a new data website about the district’s facilities in April, with a public launch scheduled for Monday, April 7. The district told advisory group members that it would provide them with data in April too, according to an official document Chalkbeat obtained. But neither reporters nor advisory group members ever got access to the website. Advisory group members that Chalkbeat spoke to said their April meetings were cancelled.

Coppadge said the district plans to provide an update on the facilities planning process at its June board meeting. She said the district “held the release” of the data tool “in order to not disrupt our focus on accelerating academic achievement and state testing,” and that it plans to release the tool later this month.

Some advisory group members say that delay has undercut their ability to provide feedback and recommendations.

“We don’t have enough information,” said Kristen Goessling, director of participatory research at Pennsylvania State University and a member of one of the advisory groups. “Where is the data? What are we actually considering?”

Goessling said she understands that school closures are a sensitive issue. But she worries that the district’s concern about how it presents information could undermine its ability to form useful partnerships.

“I have more confidence than I can contain about us solving this problem,” said Goessling. “But we are not looked at as resources. We are looked at as obstacles.”

Mayor Cherelle Parker has also missed her own related deadlines. In December, Parker announced her administration would convene a committee of elected officials and labor and business representatives to review the district’s planning process. Parker said that committee would be formally introduced last winter. But today, no such committee exists.

The city’s Deputy Chief Education Officer Sharon Ward said in an email that Parker is “finalizing the membership list and intends to announce the group soon.”

The district has now begun gathering advisory group members in person at its headquarters.

Melanie Silva, a parent of a student at Rhawnhurst School who is also a member of the parent advisory group, attended the first round of those meetings on Monday. She said the meeting was the first time she saw preliminary data about potential schools that may be considered for closure or colocation. The district insisted information shared remain confidential.

Silva said it was useful to finally see some data, but it largely consisted of summary scores that rated the condition of buildings and the vulnerability of neighborhoods, without explaining what the scores were based on. It was the kind of information Silva thought the district would have prepared before starting its community engagement process.

To Silva, the experience leads to a bigger question about the district’s approach to potentially closing schools: “It’s like, do you want to be transparent or not?” she said. “Do you want people to know or not?”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Q&A: Lessons learned from Philly’s school closures

2024-12-11T19:49:15+00:00

Next year, Philadelphia school leaders have warned their “rightsizing” process will likely result in more school shutdowns for a city that’s still recovering from the last painful spate of closures.

School buildings in Philly are on average 73 years old and are ridden with asbestos, lead, aging electrical systems, nonoperating bathrooms, and a host of other major issues. Demographic shifts have also meant several schools in the Northeast region of the city are bursting at the seams, while others stand nearly empty.

Superintendent Tony Watlington has said reorganizing the district — and closing some buildings that are too costly to renovate — will allow resources to be spread more equally. But Watlington and city residents are haunted by the last school closure process in 2013, which negatively impacted students’ academic performance and mental health.

This time, district leaders have sworn, things will be different.

In light of the district’s promises, our partners over at Shelterforce spoke with Akira Drake Rodriguez, an assistant professor of city planning at the University of Pennsylvania, about how school closures in Philadelphia affect neighborhoods, what alternative visions could be for those schools, and how communities are starting to organize to change the way school facilities planning is done.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read the full interview here.

Shelterforce Editor-in-Chief Miriam Axel-Lute: Thank you for joining me, Akira, to talk about school closures and equity. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into studying this topic.

I started looking at public schools as infrastructure, whether it’s physical infrastructure or social infrastructure, in Philadelphia. We had this earlier experience in Philadelphia in 2013, where about 30 schools were closed. [I looked at] what changes to the neighborhood and the community and the built environment followed after the closures, and how to incorporate those lessons into future school facility planning processes.

You’ve said, “A good school is an open school.” Let’s look at a neighborhood and talk about what can happen when a school closes. I know you have some examples of some different ways that it happened in Philadelphia in the 2013 closures.

The 2013 closures were initiated through a private process. It could be framed as a planning process, but there was no community engagement or even a broad awareness that this was happening. The school district of Philadelphia engaged Boston Consulting Group to write a report on school facilities in the city. This looked at very technical data, such as what we call Facilities Conditions Index or FCI, which analyzes the systems of a school — plumbing, roof, electricity, etc. — estimates the condition of them, and then estimates the cost to get it into good condition.

If the cost of the repair is higher than its replacement, usually you’re going to remove that system. If enough systems need to be removed, then that translates into the closure of the school.

Another data point that they used was this idea of utilization. Philadelphia is a very old city. We had massive school construction at the turn of the 20th century and mid-century as the city is growing. It reached its peak of about 2 million residents in 1950.

We had high schools that were constructed for 2,000, 3,000 students that, by the time this planning process is happening, are serving literally 200 students. In addition to closures, a lot of the recommendations in the Boston Consulting Group report [were for] consolidation.

There were about 250 schools, and about 60 schools were [recommended] in this report for a closure or consolidation. The board, at the time, was a state-run board. The school district’s local control had been taken away by the state in 2001.

At that point, people are organizing to counteract these closures and consolidations. Some schools are saved, but are still what I consider to be vulnerable in future processes; others are closed or consolidated.

This caused some destabilization. One of the areas that was hardest hit was an area that’s on the border of one of our more affluent suburbs, the western part of our city, an area known as Overbrook, which borders Montgomery County, a very affluent county. Residents and organizers have actually done a school funding walk where they walk from Gompers Elementary in Philadelphia over to Lower Merion School. In that 1-mile walk, there is a disparity of basically 100 percent in additional funding for the suburban school student versus the one in Philadelphia.

That particular area saw a great deal of school closures and populations have continued to decline in those areas. North Philadelphia was also an area that was hard hit. Within a few years, you see the rise of school choice in these neighborhoods. A great deal of charters reappear in the wake of these closed schools.

I recall you telling me that in some of the different neighborhoods there were different effects on the housing market when their schools closed, some of them really deteriorating, some of them actually seeing some gentrification. Can you talk about the different kinds of things that might happen?

It’s funny, I’m at home right now. I live right across the street from a school that is closed. The house that I live in is my grandmother’s house that we moved into. I was actually supposed to go to this elementary school before my family moved out of Philadelphia. During 2013, this elementary, Smith Elementary, closed. The building has been converted into rental units, market rate. The playground and parking lot are about 12 single-family townhomes that average about $650,000. The house that was my grandmother’s house, [is] worth about $150,000, to give you some comparison.

There has been a lot of development in this area, which brings a lot of young couples that eventually become young families. There’s no school. This is happening further east in South Philadelphia with a school known as Southwark, which is a K-8 school.

Right across the street is a school known as Bok, which was a technical high school. It closed in 2013 and was repurposed into a bunch of different things — a maker space, a kiddie care center and gathering spot, a place that sells soccer equipment, a cafe, and at the top, a beautiful restaurant and bar.

This space has attracted a lot of families into the neighborhood. Southwark, which was never fully utilized, especially during the closures, but was not up for closure, is now overcrowded. Ironically, they lease the gym space from Bok because they don’t have room for all their activities.

In Overbrook, we see population decline and growth of school choice. In South Philly, we see a gentrification that’s happening as a result of the closure of this inefficient state good, the redevelopment of it into housing or to new uses, the attraction of a new type of resident and homeowner, and then the slow depopulation as families move away because they don’t have school options in this neighborhood.

Are there alternatives to closing underutilized schools that would preserve the public infrastructure for public good in a different way?

Sure. We had a public housing development in North Philadelphia that was demolished and redeveloped in a HOPE VI Choice Neighborhoods initiative approach. Part of that demolition included the closure of a local school. Then this school was actually purchased by the housing authority. They put a new school in. They hired teachers from the union. It’s effectively operating as a public school, drawing students from the neighborhood. Because the space was still so large, and the population was not utilizing that full space, they started leasing to other nonprofits that had connections to [the] school — after-school program for writers, different job training [programs], different public goods and services and advocacy groups. The results have been successful; they’ve been retaining teachers and students. You’re seeing above-average graduation rates and completion rates. This is how to adapt a public school and still keep it a public good.

Communities are going to change over time. We know that. It makes sense to adapt the public good in the public space to fit the community needs. That way you’re not having to lease auditorium and gymnasium space from private developers because you’ve sold your public good.

In contrast to the planning process in 2013 that led to all those school closures, Philadelphia has been working to embark on a different kind of school facilities planning process recently. Can you tell us about how that is going and how it’s different from what happened before?

Philadelphia schools were returned to local control in 2017. The school reform commission dissolved itself, and now we have a school board that is appointed by our mayor. This school board rightly understood that populations were still continuing to decline, and traditional public schools were underutilized and also in poor condition.

The planning process that began in 2019, when it was announced, said, “You can expect some closures and you can also expect some changes in our catchment areas, which determine, based on your address, where your local school is.”

Surprisingly, in 2019, the first reaction to this announcement was not from school organizers or teachers, but from real estate developers. The one or two really good K-8 schools in the city are highly advertised and signaled in real estate ads. The idea that some catchments would be redrawn was a little frightening for the real estate industry.

With this announcement, there was also the idea that there would be a public process. The consultants from the school district would form stakeholder groups by study areas, which were geographic areas containing about six or seven K-8 schools. They would produce some recommendations that would be presented to the public, adopted by the school board, and implemented in the following year. It was a pretty traditional planning process.

The study areas were very different from each other. For instance, that Overbrook area that I mentioned, where there were very few schools, and many were in bad shape and underutilized as a result of the previous closures. An area in North Philly that also had a lot of school closures, a rise in charter school options, but also a growing immigrant population, and new schools actually being constructed. And a third area in South Philadelphia, pretty close to our downtown, where populations were growing to the point where a new middle school was under discussion.

So we have one area where school closures are pretty imminent because we have a history of declining population; one area that’s growing, but is pretty marginalized within the city; and another area that is gentrified and growing, and needs new school options.

From the start, there was a lot of suspicion, obviously because of the legacy of school closures, which had really just happened six years before. If you’re a child whose school was closed in second grade, you’re in eighth grade now and facing possibly another closure. This isn’t a long time at all. People were a little upset about how the stakeholder groups were handpicked by principals. Elected officials and community planners dominated within these stakeholder groups.

Parents, teachers, and school advocates who were left out of the stakeholder groups took a few different approaches to improving the process. First, they pushed for stakeholders to hold community and public meetings to provide what they were learning to the public before the mass public meeting.

Second, communities that were not included in the first round of study areas were beginning to hold their own meetings and discuss the alternatives so they could prepare a counter-narrative when it was their turn in the facilities planning process.

Then a third group formed, drawing in a councilmember and three parent and neighborhood groups, which was focused on the idea of working across these study areas, instead of fighting about closures within a constrained geography — thinking about the resources we have across the city and how we can start to reallocate them more effectively.

Through this disruption of the school district’s planning process, we were able to insert some more participatory opportunities, such as expanding the number of meetings, and removing the idea of closures from the list of recommendations that were provided to stakeholder groups to start with.

This all sounds fairly similar to a lot of things that housing and community development groups get involved in, wanting to have more neighborhood input in a planning process.

Community quality of life was really centered in these discussions. I’m thinking about a group in the North Philadelphia, the high immigrant population area that I mentioned earlier. They were really concerned about school closures translating into gentrification. I felt that one of the most striking takeaways during these different meetings across the city was that people could draw a really straight line between a school closure and the construction of $400,000 townhomes in areas where that was not the median home value.

They saw this [process] as just a further coalition or growth machine that’s emerging between downtown and the school district. That was really a primary concern.

You also have concerns about segregation. There were parents — particularly in the growing neighborhood near the downtown, who didn’t like that there was a big racial divide across one street in Philadelphia — who said, “We’re going to build a middle school. Can we draw that catchment for the middle school across this racial divide so that we can have an integrated school and set that tone?”

These were discussions that were really thinking about “We have a lot of power in this conversation. How can we set a model for something that reflects the community’s needs?”

That makes a lot of sense. It also strikes me that they could maybe step into a conversation about school closure with some of those ideas you were talking about earlier, about other ways to use underutilized space.

Yes, the co-location is, I think, so critical. Key to why [the housing authority school is] so successful now was that thoughtfulness of “this is not just an asset to monetize and sell off to fulfill our bottom line . . . this is a key public good.”

One of the hardest things is breaking through to people who have no skin in the game of the public school. You really have to sell it as, like, “These are your tax dollars, this is what your tax dollars is going to support. You shouldn’t see a school closure as something that improves your property value. You should think about how can you improve the school and your property value at the same time.”

People don’t get upset when you close a public school, but they would get upset if you closed a public park. You have to think about them in the same way: you may not directly engage with it, but it serves a broader good and anchors your community.

This story was originally published by Shelterforce as part of their Under the Lens series, exploring the ways the educational justice and housing justice movements overlap. Sign up for their newsletter here. And if you prefer listening to the series, you can do so here.

Philadelphia Mayor announces new committee to guide school closure plans

2024-12-09T21:21:45+00:00

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Philadelphia’s city leaders want to weigh in on the district’s school facilities planning process that will likely result in school closures, co-locations, and building repurposing.

Mayor Cherelle Parker announced Monday that in the next two weeks, her administration will be formally introducing a new “interdisciplinary facility planning committee” to review the school district’s facilities plan and give guidance and feedback.

Representatives from Parker’s office, City Council President Kenyatta Johnson’s office, as well as real estate developers, labor union leaders, and members of the “finance industry” will sit on the committee, in addition to Superintendent Tony Watlington, Parker said.

Parker told City Council members that the committee will give the district advice on how best to rebuild schools and raise funds.

“We are boldly moving ahead with our plans to improve public education in Philadelphia, even as our school district continues to be underfunded,” Parker said.

The district’s school closure and “rightsizing” process has gripped Philadelphia’s education community and surfaced wrenching memories of closure meetings in 2013. Families, teachers, and advocates have been sharing their concerns and pleas for improved facilities at public meetings across the city this month and last month.

Oz Hill, the district’s interim deputy superintendent of operations, said the district is facing a growing building maintenance backlog: His office receives some 650 new work orders for building issues every week, he said.

Watlington told Chalkbeat last week that he recognizes how painful school closures can be and the persistent negative impact closures can have on students’ academic performance and mental health. He said it’s his intention to minimize the harm to students even as they consider closing and combining schools.

School board members also teased a new initiative at the city council meeting they’re calling Project RISE (reimagining school excellence) to revise the district’s performance framework for charter schools.

School officials have been talking about reimagining the charter school authorizing process for nearly a decade. Pennsylvania’s charter school law has remained mostly unchanged since 1997. Some charter leaders and representatives have come before the school board arguing that the current process is confusing, burdensome, inefficient, and rife with systemic inequities. Pennsylvania’s Auditor General meanwhile has concluded that Philadelphia’s process complies with all relevant state laws.

The board has not approved a new charter school since the city regained local control of its schools from the state in 2018, but it has renewed several existing schools’ charters.

“The board knows that strong accountability systems must evolve over time,” Board member Whitney Jones (who used to work for the KIPP charter school network) told City Council members. Project RISE, he said, will “determine how the charter school performance framework should evolve to best support the needs of our students.”

The three-phase process will involve gathering feedback, putting out a request for proposals for an outside group to review the existing charter school performance framework, and eventually developing updated administrative procedures.

Board members said they’re in the process of considering four applications for new charter schools. Hearings on these applications will be held Dec. 19 and sometime in January.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.