{"id":279108,"date":"2026-09-04T17:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T17:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/279108\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T17:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T17:40:07","slug":"district-moves-forward-with-controversial-school-closures-even-as-it-continues-to-catch-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/279108\/","title":{"rendered":"District moves forward with controversial school closures, even as it continues to catch heat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 The School District of Philadelphia is moving ahead with its plan to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.audacy.com\/kywnewsradio\/news\/local\/philly-school-board-approves-facilities-plan-close-17-schools\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">close 17 schools<\/a>, but parents and staffers haven\u2019t given up the fight to keep them open.<\/p>\n<p>At a school board public hearing Thursday night, teachers at Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School continued their campaign to keep the district from closing their school next year. <\/p>\n<p>Celia Flores-Rivera pleaded with the board to reconsider.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the point that you guys say that you are listening to the village. This is what this meeting is about. And I\u2019m going to say it over and over and over again: Don\u2019t close Lankenau,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Teacher Jonathan Hoffmeier questioned the transition committees that the district is forming at each affected school.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead of truly working with us, decisions were made. And now you\u2019re asking communities to plan to shut down the traditions of their own schools? That\u2019s not community engagement,\u201d he argued. <\/p>\n<p>Hoffmeier said they have repeatedly invited school board members and the superintendent to the school, but \u201cno one has come.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt seems like members of the board will only show up if the media\u2019s around,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Superintendent Tony Watlington didn\u2019t address the issue at the hearing, but in a back-to-school interview with KYW Newsradio, he said the facilities plan was proceeding as planned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe certainly don\u2019t want to be inflexible,\u201d he said, \u201cbut we\u2019ve got our north star, we\u2019ve got our marching orders, and we\u2019re moving forward with a fierce sense of urgency to get this work done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 The School District of Philadelphia is moving ahead with its plan to close 17&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,521,1998],"class_list":["post-279108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-school","tag-school-district-of-philadelphia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279108","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=279108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}