School Board OKs $200M, 17 Closures Loom
The Philadelphia Board of Education voted 6 to 1 on Thursday, October 29, to authorize up to $200 million for modernization projects at four schools, putting the first real money behind its $3 billion facilities plan. The same plan closes 17 schools, and for Northeast families, the vote cuts both ways.
The four projects are Bache-Martin Elementary in Fairmount at $68 million, Catharine Elementary in Southwest Philadelphia at $48 million, Patterson Elementary in Southwest Philadelphia at $53 million, and F.S. Edmonds in East Mount Airy at $12 million. Together, the projects add 700 seats and affect 2,400 students, district officials said. The board gave the construction work to the Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development, which will run bidding and manage the agreements.
Superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. said the projects reflect “our commitment to making meaningful investments that ensure students have access to safe, healthy and modern learning environments.” He told the board the work cannot wait, pointing to schools without adequate air conditioning or heating.
Board member Whitney Jones cast the only no vote. She also voted against the master plan in April, and she pressed Watlington on how the district picked these four schools and whether the full plan can ever be paid for. The district will cover about $1.1 billion itself and is counting on about $1.9 billion from the state and philanthropy that it has not secured.
That funding gap is the backdrop for the closures. The plan, called Accelerating Opportunity and adopted by the board on April 30, closes 17 schools, with the first closures taking effect at the end of the 2026-27 school year. The district’s own facilities page lists them: Blankenburg, Fitler Academics Plus, Morris, Overbrook Elementary, Pennypacker, Welsh, and Waring elementary schools; AMY Northwest, Harding, Stetson, Tilden, and Wagner middle schools; and Lankenau, Parkway Northwest, Parkway West, Penn Treaty, and Robeson high schools. The district calls the plan a living document, and officials have said further hearings and votes are needed to finalize any closure.
The Northeast feels the plan on both sides. Harding Middle School in Frankford is on the closure list. The district is building a new facility for the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush at the old Fels school site, expanding it to grades 5 through 12, and turning the current Rush building into a new catchment high school to ease Northeast overcrowding. The district has pointed to severe overcrowding in the Northeast as one of the problems the plan is meant to fix.
Opposition was loud on the day of the vote. Scores of students, faculty members, elected officials, union leaders, and Council members rallied outside district headquarters before the meeting. Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who chairs Council’s education committee, organized the rally with Councilmember Jamie Gauthier and demanded the board reconsider before school selection closes November 24. “If we close these schools, if we don’t reverse the decision by Nov. 24, we recognize people will die,” Thomas said at the rally. He has threatened to sue the school board and block the reappointment of members who voted for the plan.
Board member Joyce Wilkerson defended the plan at the meeting, including the decision to close Lankenau and merge it with W.B. Saul High School in Roxborough. “I’d hate to see us forfeit the opportunity to come up with a really exciting curriculum because we’re so dug into what has been in the past,” she said. The district plans to turn the Lankenau site into an environmental center, and Council passed legislation on October 15 to rezone the land for public-serving institutions.
Each of the 17 schools will get a transition team of staff and community members, working with the district’s new School Transition Office, which met with principals in August and plans team meetings in November and December. The school selection window, which opened October 5, closes November 24 at 11:59 p.m.
The board’s next action meeting is Thursday, November 19, at 4:30 p.m. at 440 N. Broad Street. Until then, the $200 million is approved, the 17 closures stand as voted, and Northeast families are left watching both the new high school at Rush and the fate of Harding.
