With $2.8B plan, Philly school district calls to close or repurpose 20 schools
After conducting studies, collecting surveys and gathering input from stakeholders, the School District of Philadelphia, on Thursday, released a master plan that calls for 20 district owned properties to be closed.
The plan also calls for 12 of these properties to be repurposed for the district’s use while the remaining eight properties will be conveyed to the city to be used for workforce housing or job creation.
Some properties impacted by closures, co-merging, moves and phase outs include:
- Closing Robert Morris Elementary and reassigning students to William D. Kelley Elementary School and Bache-Martin School. The Morris building will be repurposed as a hub for the District’s Office of Diverse Learners.
- Closing Samuel Pennypacker School and reassigning students to Franklin S. Edmonds Elementary School and Anna B. Day School.
- Closing John Welsh Elementary School and reassigning students to John Hartranft School and William McKinley Elementary School. The Welsh building will be modernized and repurposed as a new year-round high school.
- Closing James R. Ludlow School and reassigning students to Paul L. Dunbar School, Spring Garden School, and General Philip Kearny School. The Ludlow building will be conveyed to the City of Philadelphia for repurposing for affordable workforce housing and/or job creation.
- Closing Laura W. Waring School and reassigning students to Bache-Martin School. The Waring building will be modernized and repurposed as the home of Masterman Middle School.
- Closing Overbrook Elementary School and reassigning students to Lewis C. Cassidy Plus Academics, Guion S. Bluford Elementary School, John Barry Elementary School, and Edward Heston School. The Overbrook Elementary building will be modernized and repurposed as District network offices.
- Closing Rudolph Blankenburg School and reassigning students to James Rhoads Elementary School, Edward Heston School, and the newly co-located Martha Washington Academics Plus School/Middle Years Alternative School. The Blankenburg building will be conveyed to the City of Philadelphia for repurposing for affordable workforce housing and/or job creation.
- Closing Fitler Academics Plus after phase out. The Fitler building will be conveyed to the City of Philadelphia or sold.
- Phasing out General Louis Wagner Middle School and growing Prince Hall School, Joseph Pennell Elementary School, William Rowan School, Julia Ward Howe School, and Ellwood School. The Wagner building will be conveyed to the City of Philadelphia or sold.
- Phasing out Stetson Middle School and growing Lewis Elkin Elementary School and William Cramp Elementary School. The Stetson building will be repurposed as District swing space.
- Phasing out Warren G. Harding Middle School and growing James J. Sullivan School (which will move to the old Harding site), John Marshall School, Henry W. Lawton School, and Laura H. Carnell School.
- Phasing out William T. Tilden’s Middle School and growing Thomas G. Morton School, John M. Patterson School, and Joseph W. Catharine School. The Tilden building will be modernized and repurposed into an athletics and sports facility for Bartram High School.
- Phasing out Academy for the Middle Years at Northwest (AMY NW). The AMY NW building will be conveyed to the City of Philadelphia or sold.
- Closing Lankenau High School and merging the Lankenau program into Roxborough High School as an honors program. The Lankenau building will be conveyed to the City of Philadelphia or sold.
- Closing Motivation High School and merging the Motivation program into John Bartram High School as an honors program. The Motivation building will be repurposed as District swing space.
- Closing Paul Robeson High School and merging the Robeson program into William L. Sayre High School as an honors program with investments in CTE spaces and dual enrollment opportunities. The Robeson building will be conveyed to the City of Philadelphia or sold.
- Closing Parkway Northwest High School and merging the Parkway NW program into Martin Luther King High School as an honors program. The Parkway NW building will be repurposed as District swing space.
- Co-locating Building 21 at Martin Luther King High School. The Building 21 building will be conveyed to the City of Philadelphia or sold.
- Co-locating Workshop School at Overbrook High School. The Workshop School building will be repurposed as a training facility for the District’s Operations Division.
- Co-locating The U-School at Thomas A. Edison High School. The U School building will be conveyed to the City of Philadelphia or sold.
- Phase out Penn Treaty High School for closure. William Bodine High School will move into this site to expand the number of seats available at Bodine, creating more access to more robust academic programming.
- Co-locating Martha Washington Academics Plus School (K-4) students to the same site as Middle Years Alternative School (5-8). The Martha Washington building will be repurposed as District swing space.
- Merging Parkway West High School into Science Leadership Academy at Beeber and adding grades 5–8.
- Moving Bodine High School to the old Penn Treaty building and expanding the number of seats available at Bodine (with Constitution High School moving into the old Bodine building).
More specifics and plans for additional schools are available in the plan, here.
In a statement released along with the plan, School District of Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington said the move comes after a long process that saw shareholders provide input on the future of the district’s aging properties — with many residents pushing for properties to be re-used.
“The development of this plan was rooted in partnership and a commitment to community engagement including 47 public listening sessions, 35 data verification sessions with principals, two District-wide surveys that received over a total of 13,000 responses,” noted Watlington in a statement. “The engagement is not done. We are scheduling another round of community conversations to take place in February, before the final plan is submitted to the board, so that the community can provide feedback on our recommendations.”
Among other plans for the district’s 307 properties, Watlington said 159 properties will be modernized, 122 would continue to be maintained by the district and six would be co-located.
In his statement, Watlington also shared some examples of what could be done under this plan:
- Modernizing Bache-Martin Elementary School in Philly’s Fairmount neighborhood to increase building quality and capacity.
- Modernizing South Philadelphia High School’s CTE spaces to be a state-of-the-art CTE hub and add a fifth through eighth grade CTE program.
- Building a new state-of-the art facility for Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush (which will become a grade 5th-12th facility) at the currently vacant site of the old Fels school.
- Repurposing the existing Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush High School facility to become a new catchment high school to help relieve high school overcrowding in the northeast.
- Modernizing Central High School to create a performing arts center and increase capacity at the school.
- Opening a new fifth through eighth grade Academy at Palumbo Middle School co-located with George W. Childs School with a feeder preference to Palumbo High School to create a new fifth through twelfth grade pathway.
- Addressing overcrowding at schools in Northeast Philly by modernizing Watson Comly school, and adjusting the applicable catchments and grade bands, so that the facility can accommodate middle grades students from both Comly and Loesche catchments.
- Addressing overcrowding in the northeast by modernizing and adding space to Edwin Forrest and Laura Carnell schools, and adjusting the applicable catchments and grade bands, so that both schools can accommodate more students.
- Co-locating a year round K-8 at Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School.
- Partially repurposing the existing E. W. Rhodes School site without disrupting current programming, to accommodate a renovated pool facility.
- Increasing the number of locations offering Pre-Kindergarten from 75 to 91.
- Increasing the number of schools that are aligned to the district’s ideal sixth-grade band configurations.
Watlington said that the district will propose this 10-year, $2.8 billion plan to the Board of Education later this winter and, if approved, no changes will take place before the 2027-2028 school year.
To fund the plan, Watlington said, though a two-year capital borrowing cycle, the district would “commit $1 billion of its own resources and seek an additional $1.8 billion in public and philanthropic funding to fully realize this vision.”
Teachers’ union reacts to facilities plan
In a response to the release of the plan, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur G. Steinberg lamented, what he called, a lack of transparency from the district on the plan, saying some of the proposals in the plan “make no sense.”
“Today, the District delivered a set of proposals without the transparency they promised. A number of proposed school closures and mergers make no sense based on the data we have, and equally as important, based on the experiences of our members in those buildings. That’s unacceptable. We will keep up our demands that the District explain its scoring methodologies,” read a statement from Steinberg. “Superintendent Dr. Tony Watlington, Sr.’s administration has repeatedly acknowledged the deep trauma still felt by communities that were lied to and railroaded during the mass closure of public schools more than a decade ago. They have repeatedly promised to do better. What we have today might be better than last time – we are no longer dealing with the [School Reform Commission], most obviously – but our students and communities deserve the best.”
For more information in the plan and the schools that would be impacted, if it is approved, click here.
