PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Declining enrollment took center stage Wednesday at the School District of Philadelphia’s budget hearing before City Council, with the impending possibility of school closings. But one Council member vented her personal frustrations with the district’s enrollment process.
Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson was fed up.
She said she had tried to enroll her son in kindergarten in a school seven-tenths of a mile from her home, but the district’s online system kept pointing her to a school more than two miles away.
“It should not be this hard to enroll our young people in our closest local public school,” said Gilmore Richardson. “Then you come here and complain that you have no money. I don’t want to hear it.”
Gilmore Richardson said if it was happening to her, it must be happening to other parents.
“Council President, excuse me. I apologize for my anger,” Gilmore Richardson added. “But I am sick of the School District of Philadelphia.”
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District Chief of Student Support Services Karyn Lynch responded that the system was working properly, but that in Gilmore Richardson’s case, her neighborhood's school assignment had to be altered.
“We need to do a boundary change and reassign the addresses of the schools that are in your immediate area,” Lynch said.
District Chief Financial Officer Uri Monson told Council that enrollment was dropping by 2.5% per year, as students move to cyber charter schools or homeschool.
“You are projecting a 7,000-student enrollment decline for next year, and staffing cuts that include the loss of nearly 350 teachers,” said Councilmember Helen Gym. “350 fewer teachers in our schools will not make our schools stronger.”
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Gym said in this context, the district’s Facilities Planning Process could be seen as a precursor for closing schools.
“This is literally an existential crisis,” she added. “As the board begins to roll out its facilities master planning process, it becomes really hard to not see the facilities master plan as a blueprint for potential school closings, especially as the federal funds dry up and we hit the 2025 fiscal cliff.”
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