At Lankenau Environmental Magnet High School in Upper Roxborough, it’s all hands-on learning. Erica Stefanovich teaches students about the urban heat island effect for her Geographic Information System mapping class every year. Her students record the temperature around the school’s campus and the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education across the street.

“We can then put that into a data collector, come back inside, map it and look at how those different surfaces are presenting different data,” she said. “And we can look at city data and say, ‘What are the surfaces that we have in the city? What is the tree cover? What is our risk for heat wave? How can we take the knowledge that we’ve gained here to make recommendations for where to add more trees in the city and make recommendations about how to have surfaces that are less prone to retaining heat?’”

Stefanovich fears students could lose these outdoor learning opportunities if Philadelphia’s only environmental magnet school closes.

The School District of Philadelphia has proposed to turn Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School into an honors program at Walter B. Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences, two miles away. The district plans to use the Lankenau property for “affordable workforce housing and/or job creation,” Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. announced at a Feb. 26 Board of Education meeting.

Lankenau High is one of the 18 schools that is targeted for closure in the district’s 10-year facilities plan. The district had proposed merging the school with Roxborough High before announcing the new plan two weeks ago. The Board of Education is scheduled to hold a town hall on Thursday to hear public feedback.

The district’s plan to close Lankenau has been met with fierce opposition from educators, parents, students and elected officials, as well as the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, which serves as an extension of the grounds.

Erin Mooney, executive director of the center, said Lankenau relies on nature for its educational programming. It’s in the best interest of the Schuylkill Center and the Upper Roxborough community to preserve Lankenau’s 17-acre campus for environmental education and remediation.

“It’s been part of the flavor of this area of Philadelphia for many years, and it’s part of the nature that is so important,” Mooney said.

A 50-year-old legal agreement could potentially help the center’s efforts. In 1973, the Schuylkill Center of Environmental Education in Roxborough (then the Schuylkill Valley Nature Center) sold a portion of its grounds to the Lankenau school. The deal was to use that parcel for environmental education. The 1973 deed says that the center has the right of first refusal on the property if the land is sold for anything other than environmental education. A lawyer for the center alerted the school district about the deed prior to the Feb. 26 meeting.

If the district considers a sale of the property or using it for purposes other than its continued use as a school, the center has a right to repurchase, lawyer Sean T. O’Neill wrote to Watlington. “The school district must provide [the Schuylkill Center] with reasonable advance notice of any potential conveyance or change in use and allow [the Schuylkill Center] the opportunity to exercise its right to repurchase,” the letter reads.

The school district is reviewing that letter, district spokesperson Naima DeBrest said in an email on Monday.

“Our desire is that Lankenau High School remains open,” Mooney said. “It’s the only environmental education high school in the city of Philadelphia, and it’s important to keep it open.”

The decision to close Lankenau is part of the school district’s 10-year, $2.8 billion plan to address major challenges facing Philadelphia schools, such as aging buildings, declining enrollment and lack of funding compared to its suburban counterparts. The 18 school closures would not take effect until the 2027-28 school year.

Lankenau students would move starting in the 2027 school year, the current plan reads.

All current Lankenau students will be able to enroll in Walter B. Saul High School, Naima DeBrest said in an email. The district is conducting “modernization work” at schools to increase capacity, but officials do not anticipate that will be needed at Saul, DeBrest said.

“By moving the program to W.B. Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences as a criteria-based CTE pathway, we can preserve the programming and culture that make Lankenau unique while creating greater access and expanded opportunities for students at both schools. This recommendation will also allow the district to better utilize its limited resources by increasing the utilization of Saul High School,” her email reads.

The city’s board of education still must approve the plan, but it’s unclear when members will vote on it.

The location

Amy Szymanski, special education compliance monitor and assessment coordinator at Lankenau, said there are a lot of unknowns to the district’s plan, how many Lankenau teachers will move to W.B. Saul and how course credits would transfer.

Lankenau offers the state’s only three-year agriculture, food and natural resources career and technical education (CTE) program. The CTE pathways offered at Saul are different from Lankenau’s three-year program. Saul’s mission focuses on production agriculture, while Lankenau’s is geared towards environmental remediation and conservation.

Szymanski said Lankenau’s learning environment is unique to Philadelphia, offering outdoor learning, lots of green space and a small student population.

“There is a certain type of student who will thrive in that environment, and if they’re in another school, there would not be the same outcomes,” she said.

Tiona Brown, a Germantown resident and parent of a Lankenau ninth grader, said the environmental school provides her son with a safe learning environment. With just over 200 students, it has a tight-knit community where the principal knows every student by name.

“Your child would not fall by the wayside,” Brown said.

Stefanovich said that Lankenau’s location provides students with access to a range of environmental opportunities, that aren’t as accessible from Saul. Students collect data from nearby groundwater streams, raise mussels and trout, have birdwatching and beekeeping clubs, conduct soil sampling and intern at the nearby Manatawna Farm.

The Schuylkill Center serves as an expansive outdoor classroom with its nearly 400 acres of fields, ponds, streams, forests and wildlife habitat. Every year, the center hosts several senior interns to learn about environmental nonprofit work and assist with land stewardship, field trips, plantings and caring for wildlife at its clinic.

“Everything that place affords them is unique. It makes it a magical place for them,” said David O’Neil, a Roxborough resident of 40 years and advisory board member for the Schuylkill Center.

O’Neil said the rural area isn’t the best location for affordable housing. It has no public transportation or sidewalks, he said.

Lankenau is surrounded by preserved green spaces, like the Schuylkill Center, nature preserves in Whitemarsh Township and the Wissahickon Valley Park. O’Neil is concerned that replacing the school with housing could disrupt the local ecosystem and result in more urban development near natural lands.

“I’m not against dense development, but I think Philadelphia is big enough that you can have dense places, and you can have a varied landscape,” he said.

“Nature is strong, but it’s fragile when you inject politics into it,” he added.

DeBrest told the Local in an email that the school district will establish a transition team that will collaborate with school community members on “a thoughtful, transparent, and supportive transition process at each impacted school, including Lankenau.”

“During the transition year, the transition team will work with the Lankenau school community to ensure that the partnerships, dual enrollment opportunities, and internship experiences that define the Lankenau program continue at Saul,” she said.

When asked how staffing will be impacted at Lankenau, DeBrest said union members in closing schools will receive “enhanced support while navigating the transition process and support of a dedicated transition team.”

The plan

In public meetings, community members have questioned the district’s decision to close Lankenau when it has a 100% graduation rate, and students receive multiple honors at the Philadelphia Flower Show and intern at places like the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Stefavonich is skeptical about the property’s $5 million market value.

“What is their driving force behind trying to close a school that’s working if it’s not the value of the land?” she said.

DeBrest said in an email that each school building that is slated to be conveyed to the city will be repurposed in a way that aligns with Mayor Cherelle Parker’s goals, which include affordable workforce housing and job creation.

The school district is proposing to close Lankenau due declining application numbers and low enrollment, a district spokesperson told WHYY. Just 49% of the school is utilized and has 225 students. The district must use resources to transport students to the remote Upper Roxborough school. Lankenau’s curriculum better aligns with W.B. Saul versus Roxborough High, the district told WHYY.

But Szymanski said the enrollment decline was caused by a change to the district’s special enrollment process, not declining interest in the school. In 2021, the district centralized the enrollment lottery and prevented schools from admitting students who didn’t meet the academic requirements, even if they came close, as they have done before. Several schools including Lankenau saw a drop in enrollment following the change.

Szymanski and other school community members are working to garner more support from elected officials and engage school board members heading into the March 12 meeting.

A Change.org petition started by Stefanovich had more than 4,200 signatures as of Monday and more than 50 community partners have written letters in support of the school staying open, Stefanovich said.

Lawmakers such as state Rep. Tarik Khan, City Councilmembers Nina Ahmad and Cindy Bass, and state Sen. Sharif Street have voiced their opposition to Lankenau’s closure.

When Jermaine Dawson, the school district’s deputy superintendent of academic services, spoke at Lankenau last week, City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas asked him if the district would be closing Lankenau if the school was “98% white.” Around 84% of students there are Black. Dawson declined to comment.

“It’s always our Black and brown kids,” Brown said. “I’m getting sick of that narrative that we don’t deserve [an education]. Because they can perform. And our kids deserve the same education as the other children.”

Kris Soffa, an Upper Roxborough resident and founder of Toxic Free Philly, testified with Lankenau students before the City Council in February. She said environmental education is becoming more important in the face of climate change.

“It is the best use of the land to train these future environmental leaders,” Soffa said. “The city needs them.”

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