Elmer Smith: West Philly High takes center stage - for a day

THE MAYOR'S caravan turned off Walnut onto 47th Street right on schedule. Megastar Wyclef Jean was being escorted through a throng of excited students in the marble hall outside the East Auditorium.

The Philadelphia 76ers, who were finishing practice at St. Joseph's University, would arrive in their work clothes a couple of hours later.

For a few hours yesterday, West Philadelphia High School was the center of the universe. Volunteers from City Year in bright red jackets led reporters on a tour of the century-old, brown-brick building where they volunteer daily.

After brief speeches by the mayor and the megastar, the Sixers and dozens of other friends of West Philly High attacked the old girl with hammers and paint brushes. It was something to see.

But the buzz of activity seemed more symbolic than substantive. In two years, they will pack up all the improvements and move them three blocks to the new West Philadelphia High School, which will be erected at 49th and Chestnut streets on the grounds of what had been West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys.

This wasn't quite like dressing a corpse for a funeral. West will house students and staff for two more years. So, yesterday's work won't be wasted.

A new seniors' lounge and outdoor environmental classroom will get good use. So, too, will a weight room that the 76ers have stocked with gymnastic equipment. A fresh coat of paint and the portable murals completed yesterday will do a lot to brighten the dark hallways.

But there is a bitter irony in all this activity. The school seemed barely a blip on the radar screen going back to when I started there in 1960.

There were seven principals from 1998 to 2006. The staff turnover rivaled the dropout rate, which averaged more than 40 percent.

To call West Philly an afterthought is a stretch. You have to be a thought before you can be an afterthought.

Lincoln High School. in Mayfair, built almost 50 years after West Philly, was scheduled for replacement before the district got serious about replacing West Philly High. University City High School, within walking distance of West Philly, was built 30 years ago and has seen at least one major renovation since.

A few miles away, the High School of the Future, with all of its high-tech gadgets and gizmos, seemingly mocks this high school of the past where my mother went to school during the Great Depression.

The good news, of course, was the groundbreaking ceremony at the new site last week. The 170,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art building will occupy a 4-acre, landscaped site. Its auditoriums and public spaces will be a neighborhood asset.

It's long overdue. West Philly boosters, including an active alumni association, the Philadelphia Student Union and a host of neighborhood and civic groups, had fought for years to move up on the school district's capital-budget agenda.

The William Penn Foundation funded research that took students and activists as far as Oakland, Calif. They devised plans for a new school and new curriculum seven years ago. It was a model of civic engagement.

Saliyah Cruz, in her third year as principal, was thankful for the intervention yesterday. But she was, at the same time, brutally candid.

"Three years ago, if an organization had been looking for a school to help, West Philly would not have been the place," she told the assembled students.

"The perception was 'Weren't these the students who set the place on fire and beat up teachers?' There wasn't anyone who would touch us with a 10-foot pole."

That may be a slight exaggeration. But it is a fairly accurate account of the way the school has been perceived.

But yesterday, West Philadelphia High School was the center of the universe. And, for a day at least, it felt like a trend.

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith.