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Anger, anguish for Palmer Charter students after sudden closing

X'Aria Elliott had been hearing rumors for days that the Walter D. Palmer charter might close its high school program.

X'Aria Elliott, center, and her sisters, Sa'diyah Solomon, left, and Layla Solomon inside their Hunting Park home on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014.  X'Aria is one of the more than 200 seniors displaced by the abrupt closing of Palmer.  (Andrew Thayer / Staff Photographer)
X'Aria Elliott, center, and her sisters, Sa'diyah Solomon, left, and Layla Solomon inside their Hunting Park home on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014. X'Aria is one of the more than 200 seniors displaced by the abrupt closing of Palmer. (Andrew Thayer / Staff Photographer)Read more

X'Aria Elliott had been hearing rumors for days that the Walter D. Palmer charter might close its high school program.

But the senior was stunned nevertheless when she got a call from a friend Sunday night saying her school was shutting down immediately.

"I didn't get a reality check until the next morning," said Elliott, 17. "I just wanted to cry."

Elliott, who enrolled at Palmer after being home-schooled in seventh and eighth grades, said her senior year had been ruined.

"The Class of 2015 has been waiting to graduate," said Elliott, who wants to attend Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island. "The majority of us have been there since ninth grade, patiently waiting our turn. Our opportunity to graduate was snatched."

She is also heartbroken she will not be able to continue to run track in her Palmer uniform.

The shuttering of the high school program at the Walter D. Palmer Leadership Learning Partners charter six weeks into the academic year is displacing nearly 300 students, including 77 seniors, and sending students and families scrambling to find new schools.

"We're upset," Edward Solomon, Elliott's father, said Tuesday. "We're looking at different schools. That's a process in itself - to see what the curriculum is. It's a big transformation."

The closing was triggered by a series of recent court decisions that found Palmer, which had nearly 1,300 students in kindergarten through 12th grade on its rolls, was entitled to be paid for only the 675 students in its 2005 signed charter. That agreement allowed the school to serve students in grades K-8 only.

At a sometimes-raucous meeting on campus Monday night, several parents voiced their frustrations to founder Walter D. Palmer about the closing of the school. Later, they met representatives from the district, charter, cyber, and Catholic schools to learn what was offered.

Julian Thompson, an operations coordinator in the district's charter office, said more than 30 alternative schools were listed on the district's online application alone.

Some students have expressed interest in the district's West Philadelphia High School and Parkway West, but he said it was too soon to say where the displaced Palmer students would go.

"We're projecting that the former Walter Palmer students will be in a wide variety of educational settings," he said, "including all types of district schools."

The district also has encouraged city charters to accept students if they have space.

Veronica Joyner, founder and chief administrative officer of the Mathematics, Civics, and Sciences Charter School on North Broad Street, said her school had received numerous inquiries and was trying to help.

"It was very sad," she said. "I think this could have been resolved in September so that parents wouldn't be faced with looking for a new school two months into the school year."

Joyner said her school had some vacant seats and was focusing first on Palmer's displaced seniors.

Savannah Jett, 17, of North Philadelphia, may be one of them.

Jett said she and her mother could not believe her senior year had been upended.

"She was shocked and so was I," said Jett. "Now we have to find a good school, and we didn't have a backup plan."

Jett, who also runs track, said some classmates planned to transfer to West Philadelphia High, which has room.

She's not interested.

"I don't want to be part of no drama," said Jett, who hopes to study nursing at Norfolk State University.

She has researched several charters and planned to apply to Joyner's.

Although the high school's closing does not affect students in Palmer's lower grades, they were rocked by an Oct. 16 lottery the charter held to reduce enrollment of younger students by 250.

Elliott's sisters, ages 7 and 9, lost their spots at Palmer charter and have not found new schools.

Solomon said the family considered placing the younger girls in a charter in West Chester but concluded it was too far from the family's North Philadelphia home.

"That was not working out," he said. "I would have had to drive them."

Elliott has received responses from several charter schools and from Parkway West. She is not sure what to do, but says she expects to apply to Joyner's school.

"I don't want to go to another school," she said. "I want to go Palmer. It's like a family there."