District staff present data to community members at Bluford Elementary (Photo: Lisa Haver)
Cherelle Parker was not my first choice for mayor. I voted for her in November 2023 because she was one of the few elected officials who came out to fight against the closing of twenty-three public schools in 2013. Then-State Representative Parker appeared at several community meetings and was instrumental in saving John McCloskey Elementary in East Mount Airy.
So it’s disappointing to see Philadelphia’s Board of Education, appointed by and controlled by Mayor Parker, now moving to close more public schools. Her campaign platform centered around providing more resources to children and families, not fewer. Neither the mayor nor the board has explained their reasons for closing schools as part of the district’s current facilities plan.
Superintendent Tony Watlington Jr. has promised an “aggressive communications strategy” as part of the facilities planning process. Yet the district had scheduled only one round of community meetings last Fall before the board’s final vote on the closings one year later. Their presentations were vague, with misleading figures about how much the district saved by closing schools twelve years ago. District staff pointed out that the “average age” of a district school building is 70 years, implying that age of a building would be a deciding factor, not its condition. Numerous buildings in Philadelphia, including City Hall, Independence Hall, and Mother Bethel Church, are over 100 years old; there is no push to close any of them. The facilities plan also proposed “co-location” in which a building would close but the school entity would take up residence in a school with low enrollment. It’s hard to imagine how the district would be able to justify the cost of operating two schools with two separate staffs and administrations in one location.
The district includes their various appointed committees as part of the community engagement but fails to mention that none of those meetings are open to the public. In May, APPS filed a Right to Know request for minutes of the Facilities Team Project Committee meetings and asked that all subsequent meetings be open to the public. The district denied our requests.
Last month, members of one committee, the Education and Community Partners Council, told Chalkbeat Philadelphia that despite the district’s promises that the process would be “data-driven and transparent”, it had actually become more “opaque”. They felt that their time was wasted by “bureaucratic presentations and unspecific brainstorming sessions”. They expressed concerns that they were being used to “add credibility to a flawed process” and that the district was not seriously considering their ideas on how to prevent school closures. One member of the committee, Penn professor Akira Drake Rodgriguez, told the board in her testimony at the May action meeting that the Council members wanted a facilities plan “that prioritizes community needs, not just the district’s.”
After the Chalkbeat report, and after APPS members demanded more public participation, the district scheduled another round of neighborhood meetings in July. A Watlington administration representative told Chalkbeat that the district was “committed to completing a facilities plan that includes deep and thoughtful community engagement.” Actually, these tightly packaged sessions have included even less opportunity for public dialogue.
Packets of data are distributed to participants, who are immediately herded into small groups. Scores are already assigned by district staff to area schools in categories including “Program Alignment” and “Capacity/Utilization”; questions to participants focus on those scores. APPS members at several sessions asked when, in meetings billed as a “conversations”, the parents, students, educators and community members who came out would be brought together to offer their own questions and comments. We were informed that was not part of the program.
The board has yet to disclose which schools are being considered for elimination or even how many. Part of the district’s message is that they learned from the mistakes made in the 2013 closings. The biggest mistake was closing the schools, not how they went about it. Germantown lost its venerable high school just one year before celebrating its 100th year, and the building sat vacant for over ten years before being sold for a paltry $100,000. Families in North and West Philadelphia had to send their children on longer and often more dangerous journeys every morning and afternoon. In the years following the closings, the School Reform Commission created almost as many charter schools. Just last month, the board approved creation of a new charter, despite the fact that over half of the city’s existing charters are underenrolled.
Mayor Parker has addressed other issues facing the district, including teacher shortages, and she has called on state legislators to end the underfunding of public schools.
The mayor should explain to her constituents why her appointed school board is closing public schools while opening more charters and explain how the city would be a better place with vanishing public schools. Mayor Parker must give her constituents a real voice in the future of our children’ s education.
Lisa Haver is a co-founder and coordinator of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools.
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