There is no single formula or algorithm by which the Philadelphia School District will close schools, officials say.
But the data it will use to help make those calls soon — which officials released widely for the first time on its website Wednesday — is sobering.
A significant chunk of the district’s buildings have been judged to be in poor or unsatisfactory condition or have poor or unsatisfactory program alignment, meaning they lack adequate spaces for the programming the district wants to offer, like art, music and physical education. And some schools fall into both categories.
And while some buildings are significantly overcrowded — 15% of all schools, by the district’s count, mostly in the Northeast — 23% of the district’s buildings are considered severely underutilized and another swath are.
System-wide, the district educates 118,337 students in 307 academic buildings. But it has seats for 186,736.
The majority of the district’s schools fall into the “moderately underutilized” category.
A school board vote is expected by the end of the year on whether to close, co-locate, repurpose, or rebuild some school buildings.
Officials underscored that the decisions are complicated, and have vowed to carry out a more sensitive process than in 2012 and 2013, when dozens of schools were closed. This time, there’s a major factor not considered in the last round of mass closures.
The “neighborhood vulnerability index” considers whether the community surrounding a school has withstood closures in the past, and whether it struggles with transportation, housing, or unemployment.
Schools’ academic achievement levels were also part of the calculus in 2012; that’s been removed from the equation this time around.
“The data alone does not dictate the outcome of a school, and it’s just a piece of a puzzle that will be a part of deeper analysis — for a short term, midterm and long-term recommendations,” said Alexandra Coppadge, the district’s chief of communications and customer service.
Months after promising a public airing of the data, the district released a searchable database Wednesday, the first time it has made such information available. The Inquirer, using numbers school leaders had made available via paper copies at in-person planning sessions, compiled and analyzed the district data earlier this summer, with similar findings.
“There are no fixed decisions at this point,” Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. told reporters at a briefing Monday, “and the short answer is we can’t answer any of those questions right now about which schools will close, but we can surely say some will.”
Poor scores aren’t the same as safety or school quality
Officials acknowledged whatever plan Watlington presents is likely to stir deep emotions — some community members are already galvanizing to fight it.
But given Philadelphia’s status as a historically underfunded school system, and the disappearance of federal COVID-19 relief funds, “we’ve got to better utilize our budgets, our people, our buildings, all of our resources in service of providing more high quality academic and extracurricular programming across all the neighborhoods of Philadelphia,” Watlington said.
Members of some school communities are already braced for possible attempts to close their school, and may feel offended by poor scores. But the superintendent said officials realize the district’s buildings crisis is a systems problem, and not the fault of staff or students.
“The scores really focus on facilities,” Watlington said. “They do not reflect the quality or safety of a school’s academic program.”
Of note: there are also some tweaks to the data that officials handed out to those who attended this summer’s round of facilities master plan meetings. Officials said there were “over 200″ updates based on reality checks from principals and 65 additional building walkthroughs completed this summer in response to questions that came up about the data initially presented. (Every district building got a walkthrough prior to the summer.)
Changes between preliminary and final data
An Inquirer analysis of the data handed out at public meetings this summer compared to the numbers in the final database released Wednesday show some changes.
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Overall, 38 schools have building utilization scores that changed by 10% or more since the preliminary numbers were shared.
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The original data showed 68 schools were less than half utilized. That is revised down to 65 schools.
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Nine schools had between 100% and 104% capacity initially. That’s up to 10 schools with the addition of Baldi Middle School, which moved from 93% utilization to 102%.
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Twenty schools were considered severely overcrowded in the early data, with capacity exceeding 104% in the preliminary analysis. That decreased to 16 schools.
The added reviews led officials to give higher marks on 24 schools for their program alignment. Seven schools improved from “good” to “excellent.” Three schools saw lower scores, including Robeson High, which was rated ‘unsatisfactory.’
What’s next?
Some summer facilities sessions had robust engagement, but at others, attendance was lackluster.
This fall, school communities and other members of the public will have more opportunities to weigh in, both before a plan is presented, likely in November, and after that, but before the school board votes. (The board has said it will vote on a final plan in December, though no such vote has yet been scheduled.)
Coppadge, the communications chief, said the district hopes to attract big crowds for those meetings, whose dates have not yet been announced. Principals will communicate directly with families to provide information and to stress the importance of weighing in on the district’s future direction.
“We know this is not just an emotional issue for parents and families, particularly in some school communities — it’s an emotional issue for school leaders and school staffs,” Watlington said. “We want to wrap our arms together and make sure that folks know that we’re going to work through this together, and that we’re going to come out better on the other side of this, because we’ll be able to provide more, better, stronger academic and extracurricular programming across the district, across all neighborhoods.”