The Philadelphia Board of Education voted 6-3 last Thursday to approve Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr.’s $3 billion plan to close 17 schools, including some in Northwest Philadelphia, and modernize 169 buildings.

But the decision met with vehement protests from elected officials and community members, and as tensions flared, the board finished its vote virtually, with the meeting streamed in the auditorium. Many people had signed up to give public comments, but only a portion were able to speak during the online meeting.

After the vote, City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas called for the board members who voted yes to resign, vowing, “This fight is not over.” Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr., said the vote will kill Mayor Cherelle Parker’s “Uber tax,” which would help fill the district’s $300 million deficit.

City Council also is threatening to sue the school board, block the reappointment of those who voted yes, and use other powers to fight the plan. The board is appointed by the mayor, but City Council confirms these members and approves funding.

“I’ve never seen elected officials get pushed to that point where they are so frustrated that they’re not being listened to… that their only recourse is to shut it down and to practice civil disobedience,” said state Rep. Tarik Khan, calling the board’s decision “demoralizing” and “incredibly sad.”

Also at the meeting were more than a dozen students from Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School in Roxborough, who showed up with “Vote No” signs and “Don’t sell Lankenau Environmental” shirts.

Amy Szymanski, a special education compliance monitor and assessment coordinator at Lankenau, walked out of the meeting in disbelief.

“I definitely had faith. I was the one who really thought the school board would vote no,” she said.

The district says its 10-year plan will improve access to high quality academics, renovate aging buildings and address over- and under-enrollment at some schools. Goals include co-locating six schools, increasing the number of pre-K-8 schools, expanding access to career and technical education schools, and offering Algebra I to every middle school student.

Critics say the plan is rushed and will disproportionately impact Black students.

“This is what this is about — to make sure that students are getting access to the highest quality public education. You don’t do that by closing schools down. It is counterproductive. It’s counterintuitive. It’s against common sense to close down these schools that are high performing, like Lankenau,” said Khan, who represents the 194th District.

City Councilmember Nina Ahmad said she and her colleagues feel the board has steamrolled the plan without properly consulting City Council and other stakeholders, with board members refusing to have individual conversations with them.

“I said, tell me the rationale of what you’re doing and then we can go point by point and say, which ones can we fix? Which ones can we not? You are not willing to do that. You just came out and told us, oh, we talked to everyone and this is our plan. That is not talking to the community,” she told the Local at Thursday’s meeting.

The board said it can change the “sequencing, timing, scope, and prioritization of recommendations determined to be necessary after consultation with the superintendent.” And school closures require hearings and procedures under the state school code.

“I am not done fighting for our schools and our children. The school district may think this is finished, but it’s not,” Ahmad said on social media.

City Councilmember Cindy Bass said in a statement that while she’s “especially troubled by the impact on families in the 8th Council District, my concern extends to every school affected across our city.”

“History has shown that closing schools without clear, thoughtful, and well-resourced plans for students’ safety, stability, and development does more harm than good,” she said. “These decisions impact not just buildings, but entire communities. They are disrupting learning environments and creating uncertainty for children and families.”

Impact on NW schools

Under the plan, Samuel Pennypacker School in West Oak Lane would close and students would move to Franklin S. Edmonds Elementary School and Anna B. Day School.

Fitler Academics Plus in Germantown would be phased out. Parkway Northwest High School, also in Germantown, would close and merge into Martin Luther King High School as an honors program. The building would be repurposed as “swing space.” In Roxborough, the Academy for the Middle Years (AMY) at Northwest would be phased out and the district would retain the property. These changes would take effect starting in the 2027-28 school year.

As for Lankenau, it would turn into an honors program at Walter B. Saul High School, two miles away, and all students will move there starting next fall. District officials changed their initial plan, which was to merge Lankenau with Roxborough High School.

Board members, including those that voted against the plan, have argued that school closures are essential and inevitable. But local community members and councilmembers have asked why Lankenau, a high-performing school with mostly Black students and a 100% graduation rate, is on the chopping block. Lankenau is the city’s only environmental magnet school and it partners with the neighboring Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education for programming. Students take GIS mapping and intern at places like the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Academy of Natural Sciences.

The school district has cited low enrollment and declining applications as reasons for closing Lankenau. Less than half of the building is utilized and there are 225 students. But critics say the enrollment decline was caused by the district’s change to its enrollment process in 2021.

The property was slated to be used for workforce housing and/or job creation, with the land having a market value of $5 million. But the Schuylkill Center, which sold the land to Lankenau decades ago, says it has the right to repurchase the property if the district considers selling it for anything other than environmental education, according to a 1973 legal agreement. As a second line of defense, Jones, Thomas and Ahmad introduced legislation in April to change the zoning of the area to be used for public-serving institutions.

Following the pushback, the district revised the plan to say Lankenau will turn into an environmental education center that will be used by all district students.

“We cannot drive faster improvement and at the same time support really small high schools,” Watlington said at an earlier board meeting in April. “It is just inevitable that we’ve got to reallocate some of our resources.”

At Thursday’s meeting, Erin Mooney, the executive director of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, criticized the board’s plan to use the Lankenau property for environmental education when her 365-acre facility is next door and already serves Philadelphia students.

“Turning Lankenau into an environmental education center is like building a Giant next to an Acme. It’s like building a Sheetz next to a Wawa. ...It makes no sense,” she said in her public comment.

Daniel Rothman, chief technology officer for the City of Philadelphia and a Lankenau parent, said he doesn’t understand why some schools were saved from closure while Lankenau remained. He said board members avoided answering his questions and failed to engage in a “real conversation” with the public.

“They have a script. If they’re caught with something that isn’t on the script, they just shut down. It really is a frustrating process,” Rothman said.

On Thursday, board president Reginald Streater said the board engaged the public in its decision process before the vote, sparking outrage from the crowd. Engagement included 90 public listening sessions, 35 data verification sessions with principals, two district-wide surveys and two town halls, the district said in a press release.

“I believe this plan is a necessary step to address the long-standing challenges the district has faced while ensuring every student has equitable access to high-quality opportunities,” Streater said.

Board member Crystal Cubbage, who voted against the plan, said it needs to be better thought out, isn’t “financially viable” and lacks a “clear path forward.” But she reiterated that school closures are necessary and inevitable.

“We do need to make hard decisions, and people are going to be upset,” she said. “But those decisions need to be grounded in a coherent vision that gets us somewhere better. Urgency is not an excuse for approving a flawed first draft.”

Local reactions

Rothman said he and his family moved to Philadelphia from Boston last year, and he was happy to see his daughter in a school that she loves. Now, he worries that the curriculum will be disrupted and that faculty members will leave in search of better positions.

“I worry about her next year. Is it going to be a functional school next year?” he said. “My daughter’s education situation is in jeopardy.”

Sophomore Christian Bowser, sporting a tree costume, said the school’s location by the Schuylkill Center allows him to do lots of hands-on learning, including raising trout and testing water.

“We’ve got a rich culture here and we’ve got a different culture [than Saul]. You can’t replace that by trying to relocate us somewhere else,” he said.

Kris Soffa, an Upper Roxborough resident and founder of Toxic Free Philly, said Lankenau sits as the gateway to more than 600 acres of preserved open space in Philadelphia and Montgomery counties, making it a “critical entrance and living classroom.”

“It doesn’t make any sense to kick out this highly functioning school, the kids, the faculty and the whole program,” she said, “and then have a magic pie in sky environmental center.”

Abby Weiss is an environmental reporter for the Local and a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at abby@chestnuthilllocal.com.