SRC to close 8 schools

THE PHILADELPHIA School Reform Commission voted Thursday night to close eight public schools - but spared two high-performing schools whose communities have rallied for months to save them.

Closing are Harrison, Drew and Levering elementary schools; Pepper and Sheridan West middle schools; and FitzSimons and Rhodes high schools and the High School for Business and Technology.

E.M. Stanton and Issac A. Sheppard schools will stay open.

"Thank you for listening, for having a genuine process, an engaged process," Stanton parent Temwa Wright gushed after the SRC removed Sheppard and Stanton from the closing list. "I am just so proud to be a parent in the Philadelphia School District."

SRC Chairman Pedro Ramos said that despite its pressing money problems, "I don't think we can afford to close academically successful programs any more than we can afford to ignore chronically low-performing schools."

Sheppard supporters, in purple, and Stanton boosters, in yellow, turned out in large numbers and reacted with tears, cheers and clapping when it became clear that their schools would remain open.

Even amid the elation, there was an acknowledgement that the closing process is not over. The district has shrunk by 50,000 students in the past decade and still has tens of thousands of excess seats in its aging buildings.

"We continue to have too many facilities that are too old to support a modern academic program," Commissioner Wendell Pritchett said.

"We must work harder to invest our resources in facilities that are sustainable."

The commissioners suggested that schools like Sheppard and Stanton, which have good programs in old, small buildings - Sheppard, at Howard and Cambria streets, in West Kensington, and Stanton, at 17th and Christian, in South Philadelphia - might need to be relocated.

Commissioner Lorene Cary said that the district has much to learn from the work of Sheppard and Stanton, which, she said, have led their own turnarounds over the years.

"We need to bottle that, figure out how to do it everywhere, and support it," Cary said. "We must do better for kids, and we have less to do it on."

State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, D -, Phila., a charter school proponent who at times had harsh words for the last SRC, said he was "extraordinarily and exceptionally impressed" with the current SRC, especially for its leadership around the Stanton issue.

"Stanton is not just a school," Williams said. "It's an example of what can happen in public education in Philadelphia."

Williams said that the challenge is now to replicate what goes on at Stanton "in the face of a crippling deficit"-$26 million remaining this year, and $186 million for 2013.

The SRC's vote came after months of community meetings on the closures. On Thursday, three speakers urged the SRC to spare Pepper, in Southwest Philadelphia, and one presented the case for Levering, in Roxborough.