PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Applications are now open for the transition committees that will guide the Philadelphia School District as it closes 17 schools.
The district is forming the committees at schools that are closing and schools receiving students from the ones shutting down to provide input on areas including transportation and space planning for next year and beyond.
Shakeera Warthen-Canty, who heads the district’s transition office, said her team is heading to back-to-school nights to support those school communities.
“We want them to have the answers. It might not be the answers they want to hear, but we do want to make sure they have the correct information,” Warthen-Canty said.
She said her office and school leaders will choose up to 20 members for each committee.
“Everyone has to write a reason why,” Warthen-Canty told KYW Newsradio. “We are going to look at those reasons and make sure that we have a well-balanced team.”
Among the changes under the district’s facilities plan, Parkway West High School will close, and its students will go to Science Leadership Academy (SLA) at Beeber in Overbrook, where junior Sebastian Delgado-Colon on Monday predicted that students at the two criteria-based schools will get along.
“It’s going to be a difficult change for both parties involved,” Delgado-Colon said. “But really I think it’s just going to be an expansion of the student culture which is like already based on acceptance and cultivating a safe learning environment.”
Parkway West Principal Will Brown said he’s already been meeting with SLA-Beeber Principal Chris Johnson about the transition.
“Anytime you make a huge movement like that, that typically hurts students, right? That causes disruptions. And so Principal Johnson and I, we just have to be very intentional about the events that we plan, the student services that we put together for our young people so that that disruption is minor.”
The application window closes Sept. 18, with committees expected to be named by mid-October.
