The School District of Philadelphia enters Phase Eight of five-year plan Accelerate Philly. This phase is dedicated to a comprehensive facilities planning process, which emphasizes the value of community insight. (Credit: WKPS)
More than a dozen Philadelphia residents — including City Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson — joined a virtual meeting for one of the School District of Philadelphia’s public facilities planning sessions, part of a new effort to gather community input on the future of school buildings.
The meeting, held Monday morning, is one of 16 sessions scheduled throughout July to source feedback from students, families, staff, and community members before the District presents its recommendations to the Board of Education in the fall.
Such recommendations will be whether to maintain, modernize, co-locate, repurpose, or close schools in the district.
“The School District of Philadelphia remains dedicated to offering high-quality academic and extracurricular programs in every school and in every neighborhood, especially as many of our aging facilities are either under-enrolled or over-enrolled,” said Superintendent Tony B. Watlington, Ed.D, in a release.
“The facilities planning process is positioning us to use our limited staff and facility resources more efficiently by analyzing a complex set of data and using that data to recommend action.”
During the July 14 installment, Deputy Superintendent of Operations Oz Hill guided viewers through an example of what the in-person sessions look like.
Joined by three project team members — Walette Carter (President of the Philadelphia Home and School Council), Daniel DiMartino (Kindergarten teacher at Shawmont School), and Kenzy Ahmed (student School Board representative) — Hill presented data from different learning networks on where various schools lie on a utilization versus vulnerability grid.
Those factors, in addition to school building score and program alignment, are the four metrics the District is using as a foundation of analysis for the decision-making process. The grids illustrated spatially what priorities each school needs.
For example, the John Welsh Elementary School in Kensington has the lowest utilization score of Learning Network 8, meaning it is under capacity. At the same time, it has a high neighborhood vulnerability score, signaling that the school’s surrounding community is experiencing adverse conditions such as poverty, lack of transportation, and language barriers.
Hill shared three different learning networks to show how “varied the challenges are across the district.” With over 331 schools, each faces unique circumstances and different socioeconomic makeups.
“Our goal is to ensure that every neighborhood has access to strong academic and extracurricular programming, while also addressing disparities in enrollment and facility conditions that leave some schools overcrowded and others underutilized,” said Hill.
The July community engagement sessions are a part of Phase Eight of the District’s five-year plan, Accelerate Philly, which was proposed in 2023. This phase is dedicated to a comprehensive facilities planning process, which emphasizes the value of community insight.
The increased attention to community voices likely stems from the heartache felt by many Philadelphia residents the last time the District issued school closures in 2012.
Throughout the session, Hill invited feedback and observations from the chat and then posted a form at the end for further input. “What challenges, opportunities, or dynamics in your neighborhood are important for us to consider as we continue along in this process?” asked Hill.
The next meeting is later Monday afternoon from 3:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Delaplaine McDaniel School. The full schedule can be found here.
