{"id":181384,"date":"2026-05-01T16:55:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/181384\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T16:55:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:55:07","slug":"philadelphia-school-closures-lankenau-among-17-to-shutter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/181384\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia school closures: Lankenau among 17 to shutter"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk<\/a>, bringing you news and solutions for our changing region.\n<\/p>\n

From the Poconos to the Jersey Shore to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, what do you want to know about climate change? What would you like us to cover? Get in touch<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School<\/a> in Northwest Philadelphia is slated to close as early as 2027 under the facilities plan approved Thursday by the Philadelphia Board of Education.\n<\/p>\n

Despite pressure from City Council members, students, parents and teachers to preserve the school, the board voted 6-3 to approve the School District of Philadelphia\u2019s $3 billion facilities plan<\/a>. Protests from City Council members and others forced the board to pause its meeting twice and abruptly move proceedings online.\n <\/p>\n

Alana Rothman, a sophomore at Lankenau who had hoped to graduate from the school in 2028, said she is considering trying to graduate early or earning a GED<\/a> rather than transferring to a different school for her senior year.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m devastated,\u201d Rothman said. \u201cI\u2019ll miss the people most, I think.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Lankenau is among 17 schools that will close under the district\u2019s plan to right-size and modernize its building stock to deal with underenrollment and aging facilities. The 10-year facilities plan also includes modernizing 169 school campuses and colocating school programs in six facilities. District officials say it will improve opportunities for students and reduce the number of buildings rated as \u2018unsatisfactory\u2019 or \u2018poor\u2019 to zero.\n<\/p>\n

Members of City Council promised to reject any future reappointments of school board members who voted in favor of the plan and to do \u201ceverything in our legal power\u201d to sue the board over its approval during a Council meeting earlier Thursday. City Council confirms the mayor\u2019s appointments of members to the school board and controls roughly half of the district\u2019s funding.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\u2018Sacrificing Lankenau students for the greater good\u2019<\/p>\n

District officials say that with around 225 students, Lankenau is enrolled at less than half its capacity, and its remote location in Upper Roxborough makes it expensive to transport students to attend.\n<\/p>\n

But students and teachers say the school has a unique, hands-on environmental science curriculum that depends upon the roughly 400 acres of natural land surrounding the school\u2019s 17-acre campus beside the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. The school also boasts a 100% graduation rate, well above the district\u2019s average.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cLankenau is a good school,\u201d said Dan Rothman, Alana Rothman\u2019s father. \u201cIt\u2019s successful. They\u2019re doing well.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Rothman said he worries Alana\u2019s junior year at Lankenau could also be disrupted if teachers and staff begin to leave for other jobs ahead of the closure.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like they\u2019re sacrificing Lankenau students for the greater good,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

Board members who criticized the plan Thursday said it lacks a \u201cclear path forward\u201d<\/a>, would not be financially viable and would not lead to improved academic outcomes for students, but conceded that some school closures are necessary.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me be clear, we do need to close schools,\u201d said school board member Crystal Cubbage, who voted against the plan. \u201cWe do need to make hard decisions, and people are going to be upset. But those decisions need to be grounded in a coherent vision that gets us somewhere better.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The school district plans to fund one-third of the plan\u2019s cost itself through capital bonds, and seek money from state government and philanthropic organizations to cover the remaining two-thirds.\n<\/p>\n

In the face of pushback after the plan was first unveiled in January, the district revised its original plan to merge Lankenau with Roxborough High School and convey the Lankenau property to the city for affordable workforce housing or job creation. The district now plans to convert Lankenau into an honors program within the nearby Walter B. Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences<\/a> and retain ownership of the property to create an environmental education center for students across the district.\n<\/p>\n

City Councilmember Nina Ahmad said during Thursday\u2019s meeting that Council had not received a \u201ccost-benefit analysis\u201d backing up the decision to close Lankenau and the other 16 schools.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to make an environmental center when there\u2019s one right next door, who are begging for the school district to use them,\u201d Ahmad said, referring to the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. \u201cWhat are we doing?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Erin Mooney, executive director of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, testified during the school board meeting after it was moved online that the district\u2019s plan to turn Lankenau into an environmental education center lacked transparency and would duplicate her own organization\u2019s services.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like building a Sheetz next to a Wawa,\u201d Mooney said. \u201cIt makes no sense.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

After Thursday\u2019s vote, Jonathan Hoffmeier, who teaches algebra and agriculture business at Lankenau, said he felt \u201cextremely frustrated\u201d that school board members did not listen to students who spoke out against the planned school closures.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can\u2019t say they support children if they voted \u2018yes\u2019 to this plan,\u201d Hoffmeier said.\n<\/p>\n

Lankenau offers a three-year Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Career and Technical Education Program, which the district has said would transition seamlessly to Saul. District spokesperson Monique Braxton said last month that preserving the school\u2019s signature hands-on curriculum, partnerships, dual enrollment and internship opportunities is a \u201cpriority\u201d for the district.\u00a0<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

District Superintendent Tony Watlington defended the plan to close Lankenau last week, saying former Lankenau students will get access to the new environmental education center \u201cas often as they need it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot drive faster improvement and at the same time support really small high schools,\u201d Watlington said. \u201cIt is just inevitable that we\u2019ve got to reallocate some of our resources.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The facilities plan could evolve over time. The resolution the board passed Thursday specifies that the board will retain authority to require changes to the plan\u2019s \u201csequencing, timing, scope, and prioritization of recommendations.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Last week, Board President Reginald Streater framed the plan as mere \u201cguidelines of where we\u2019re trying to head,\u201d and said more board votes will be necessary to approve specific school closures and capital projects.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk, bringing you news and solutions for our changing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[223,69,25116,71,70,24003,16381,5206],"class_list":["post-181384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-pennsylvania-education","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-board-of-education","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philly-schools","tag-school-closures","tag-whyy-news-climate-desk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}