PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Philadelphia School District will launch a series of community meetings Monday evening to illustrate how decisions will be made to fix, consolidate or close schools.
Sixteen community meetings will be held in July to show how the district will consider building conditions and community factors in making facility recommendations.
The district's facilities plan, due by the end of the year, will include school closures, Superintendent Tony Watlington said at the June 26 board meeting.
"Unfortunately, there will be some schools that we will come back to the board in the late fall and that we will recommend to close," Watlington said.
The superintendent stressed that no schools have been identified for closure.
"There are no decisions — there are no predecisions, President Streater and board members, about the disposition of any school buildings at this point," Watlington said.
However, Watlington indicated that the district is looking at closing middle schools because children perform better when they have fewer school transitions.
"Students perform better with fewer transitions as they matriculate through their education," he said. "We are going to move in a direction to recommend that we reduce significantly the number of grade bands that currently exist."
At the community meetings, the district plans to show how the condition of individual school buildings will be weighed alongside what's called a "neighborhood vulnerability score." The goal of the process, Watlington said, is to give all Philadelphia students access to high-quality academic programs and extracurricular activities.
"Right now, there are huge disparities based on where you live. And the disparities are real and they are stark," Watlington said. "We're going to take the time to engage the public in a deep public engagement campaign to talk about this decision-making framework before we go any further."