Report: Phila. SD must prepare for painful school closing process
Complete coverage of the Philadelphia School District by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Kristen Graham.
Report: Phila. SD must prepare for painful school closing process
Kristen Graham
As it prepares to close schools, the Philadelphia School District must prepare for a potentially politicially painful process that probably won't generate much revenue, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts' Philadelphia Research Initiative released today.
The report examined districts that have engaged in large-scale school closings over the past decade, including Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Washington.
It concluded that short-term financial gains have “been relatively small in the context of big-city school-district budgets, with the largest savings achieved when closings were combined with large-scale layoffs. Longer-term savings are difficult to project.”
In many cities, researchers found, vacant old school buildings have proven to be a tough sell. As of this summer, there were 200 unoccupied, unsold school properties in the districts Pew studied.
Researchers found that school closings appear to have little long-term effect on student performance, but often mean serious political fallout.
In Washington, anger over the way the closings were handled led in part to the mayor and schools chancellor losing their jobs; in Chicago, the process led to a new law dictating how school closings will play out in the future.
Recommendations on Philadelphia closings and consolidations are expected later this month or early next month.
The district’s enrollment has dropped 23 percent in 10 years, from 201,190 students to 154,482. Fewer school-age children and a boom in charter schools have hastened the decline.
Though it has closed a handful of schools and given others to charter organizations, who lease district space, the district still runs 249 schools, many of which are old and in bad shape.
The average district school is 63 years old. One school, Francis Scott Key, was built in 1889.
Though some sections of the city have thousands of excess seats, others are full. Schools in the Northeast operate at 100 percent capacity, for instance; in the Southwest, schools are only at 55 percent capacity.
Officials estimate that after recommendations for closures, consolidations and grade and boundary changes are made in the next few weeks, public hearings will be held with a School Reform Commission vote to be held in February.
The first round of schools will be closed in June, with another round of closures expected in 2013.
Researchers point out that Philadelphia officials have researched other cities’ school closing procedures and followed best practices – making an early case why they must close schools and establishing measurable criteria to guide closure decisions.
But, they say, “the most difficult parts of the process – those that impact specific students, parents and neighborhoods – are yet to come.”
Read the full text of the report here.
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Why not bring back Jim Crow huh...Schucks...Why not just reverse the 13th Amendment while we are at it and if you all didn't know that a civil war to end all wars would break out...THIS FOOL CONGRESS WITH THE HELP OF THE TEA PARTY MIGHT ACTUALLY CONSIDER THAT IDEA.
I say keep moving to the surburbs...There are no perfect Metropolitan cities in the USA and honestly when times were good economically this rhetoric was toned down and that is where it needs to be now.
poor is poor and hard times are hard time no matter what your race. During the great depression rich found out the hate gets spread when times are hard.
I could go there on Race and Culture in America but I don't think it matters to small minded people. My best Friend was Irish/Polish and I remember hearing his Grammy say how mean people could be to them...GO FIGURE and now some of those same folks whose ancestors were put down are turning the tables.
I like the melting pot and for the record the Bible gives way to how to deal with these problems.— PreacherTeacher- Way to take it too far ... see my comment below. — Kennedy
- @ zangtron, JJL2 has it right. I don't think sending kids all over the city to attend school is fair to anyone. Not fair to the kids, their parents, the neighborhoods or to the tax-payers that have to PAY for all that busing. Last time I checked Yellow bird didn't work for free. ** And as far as "preacher teacher" goes, no one wants to bring back Southern discriminatory laws, however look at what the over-busing has done to the school district. It has almost completely segregated it. And it has turned once decent schools into bad/persistently dangerous ones. I Know. I attended BOTH Lincoln & North East high. Now those schools need metal detectors. Clearly something isn't working here.— Kennedy
- What does Jim Crowe have to do with people who want to end busing? Are you saying that minorities are incapable of bettering themselves and moving out of bad neighborhoods? That's a little insulting and inaccurate. Look around, it is no longer "the lilly white" Northeast. It is a very diverse area of the city along with many other diverse areas. However, if students stayed in their community there would be more of a sense of pride in their school and in turn their community. This may even improve schools in the city as opposed to having students transfer between schools several times a year. Oh, and I'm sure the free transpasses and busing have nothing to do with the dozens of assaults on septa or at transportation centers during the school day either.— nealc3
- PreacherTeacher, yea, the Bible does teach us many lessons, except we aren't allowed to have it in public schools. Nobody is asking to bring back Jim Crow, etc etc...the point that the folks were trying to make, not very nicely, is that school busing, taking kids from one are of the city, and sending them all the way across town, doesn't make sense "today." It might have made sense in the 1950s or 1960s, but today, every public school across the city is more or less the same (except for the SD's pet projects like Masterman, etc), thus there is no need to take a black child from a black neighborhood and bus him to a school in a white neighborhood. For what? What's the point? It's not about segregation, it's about going to your neighborhood school, schools & churches have been traditionally where communities are built around. If a child goes to school in a neighborhood other then his own, where is the community in that? What relationships are being built between the mothers and fathers of the other children and the children that come in from outside the neighborhood? There is nothing built. The false hope that inner city black youths would somehow get a better education if they were bused to a "supposed" better white school, proved to be just that, "false." All it did was destroy most of the schools that were working, as families that had the money, left the public school system, not because of racism, but because of behavorial problems, discipline problems, bad parenting by the parents of the bused kids, etc. It's racism, rather more like classism, people like to be amongst folks like themselves, be it by color, class, reliong, etc.— Anthony Palmer
- preacherteacher: where you go to school is not the issue. the issue is that there aren't enough good schools. this is not a matter of race. ove 80% of the district students are children of color. ther aren't enough white children to "integrate" the schools. as for anthony palmer, check out your calender. it's 2011.— pointguard
- Charter schools have been around awhile now and they are a failure. There are a few isolated cases where the quality of education had improved but the majority of charter schools are draining resources from public schools but are no better or worse than public schools. The original concept of using charters as labs and copying best practices in public schools was just a lie. There's been zero effort to make that happen. Now we're closing public schools so there's no going back. We're stuck with failing charter schools. Why are we closing schools when there's no cost savings, there's no improvement in the quality of education and there are no buyers for the empty schools? Another justification for charter schools is to give parents whose neighborhood school doesn't provide a quality education a choose. Why shouldn't they be able to choose another public school? Is it more cost effective to fix the underperforming schools or bus them to a better school? If the schools are all the same, why are parents choosing to bus their kids across the city? Republicans supported making for profit charter schools as a choice even thought the claim that they would provide a better education is false. They still support the failed charter school concept but don't want black kids bused to their school because they don't provide a better quality of education. Sounds like racism to me. Do you know what they call people who prefer to be among folks like themsleves be it by class or religion? Bigots. There's no place for racists or bigots in this country.— MikeP
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- I am waiting for the proposal to fix the PSD from CleanupPhilly and bill,atkins,... seems OK to rant and complain, but maybe throw an idea in now and then. Charters and vouchers only partially solve the problem... eventually someone has to educate the kids from disfunctional homes with no breakfast who don't have a parent to make them do their homework... how do we do that, or should we just put them in jail when they're 5?— CityRes
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During the school year, you’ll frequently find her hosting live chats about the district on Philly.com. Please do pass along the scoop about what’s going on at your Philadelphia public school; Kristen welcomes tips, story ideas and witty banter at kgraham@phillynews.com or 215-854-5146.
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