a wide-ranging interview with PhillyVoice<\/a> published Wednesday, Watlington said the district is confident it can cover $1 billion of the plan\u2019s cost through its bond borrowing process. The remaining $2 billion would need to come from state funding and philanthropic sources.<\/p>\n\u201cAt the end of the day, Philadelphia will have to decide: Do we want to modernize 169 schools or do we want to modernize significantly less than 169 schools?\u201d Watlington said. \u201cHopefully, elected officials will continue to push and make the case for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
District officials plan to use this school year to evaluate some of the plan\u2019s funding shortfalls and fill in finer details. Beyond the closures, the plan also calls for co-locating six schools.<\/p>\n
Council opposition and talk of legal action<\/p>\n
City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who chairs the Education Committee, has been one of the plan\u2019s most vocal opponents. During the April board meeting, Thomas vowed to \u201cfight until the bitter end\u201d and threatened to cut off sources of district funding to prevent closures.<\/p>\n
Last month, Thomas repeated claims that he is considering legal action against the school board and asked members to return to the negotiating table, Chalkbeat reported. Watlington said he remains open to working with council members but that his duty is to carry out the board\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am absolutely committed to staying at the table to keep dialogue open about the way forward,\u201d Watlington said. \u201cAs superintendent, I am marching down the road to implement it, but I\u2019m not walking down the road with earplugs in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Transition committees open to applicants Sept. 18<\/p>\n
The district is setting up School Transition Committees of 20 members each for any school closing or being phased out at the end of the 2026-2027 year, as well as schools receiving displaced students. Applications will be open to parents, students and \u201ccommunity partners\u201d from Monday through Friday, Sept. 18, the district said.<\/p>\n
Watlington described the committees as largely self-governing. Members can dedicate as much or as little time as needed to make recommendations about how the plan will affect their communities. The groups will report to the district\u2019s newly formed School Transition Office, which will handle community engagement, project management and information sharing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt won\u2019t just be a token, \u2018We just brought you here to have one meeting and get the photo op,’\u201d Watlington said. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about true, authentic engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Details about the selection process, what information applicants must provide and how much influence the committees will have over implementation remain unclear. A district representative did not reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: USDAgov \/ Wikimedia Commons (Public domain) School District of Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington said he is moving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-275182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275182","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=275182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}