After a long road of outreach meetings, surveys and public townhalls — where many parents expressed concerns — School District of Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington is set top present a master plan that calls for 20 district owned properties to be closed.
On Thursday, at noon, Watlington is expected to present the plan to the board. And, though it won’t happen on Thursday, the board will then be expected to vote on the proposal.
Unveiled last month, the facilities plan calls for the closure of 20 district-owned facilities. Officials have said 12 of these properties to be repurposed for the district’s use while the remaining eight properties will be conveyed to the city to be used for workforce housing or job creation.
Beyond these closures, the district is looking to modernize nearly 160 of the district’s facilities while continuing to maintain 122 others.
In a statement released along with the plan, School District of Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington said the sweeping changes followed a long process that saw shareholders provide input on the future of the district’s aging properties — with many residents pushing for properties to be re-used.
“The development of this plan was rooted in partnership and a commitment to community engagement including 47 public listening sessions, 35 data verification sessions with principals, two District-wide surveys that received over a total of 13,000 responses,” noted Watlington in a statement. “The engagement is not done. We are scheduling another round of community conversations to take place in February, before the final plan is submitted to the board, so that the community can provide feedback on our recommendations.”
District officials have said that students at schools impacted by the changes in proposal would be reassigned to other schools with comparable or better academic outcomes and comparable or better building conditions.
To fund the plan, Watlington said, though a two-year capital borrowing cycle, the district would “commit $1 billion of its own resources and seek an additional $1.8 billion in public and philanthropic funding to fully realize this vision.”
Still, nothing is set in stone as the board will need to vote to approve the proposed plan.
And, school officials have said no vote will take place after the plan is presented on Thursday.
Officials have said that, following Thursday’s presentation, the board will review the proposal and consider community feedback before determining and announcing next steps.
For more details on the proposal, including information on which schools are set for closure, check out the School District of Philadelphia’s website on the plan, here.