{"id":317535,"date":"2026-10-30T09:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T09:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/317535\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T09:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T09:54:10","slug":"philadelphias-saul-high-school-prepares-for-merger-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/317535\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia\u2019s Saul High School prepares for merger next year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                    \u2018A square peg in a round hole\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Puntel, the Spanish teacher, said she feels constant stress over the merger.<\/p>\n<p>As the school\u2019s union representative, she worries about who will get seniority among Saul and Lankenau teachers and about retaining excellent newer teachers. Worries about the merger have literally kept her up at night, she said.<\/p>\n<p>Having seen the district through many changes, Puntel said she has developed \u201ca trauma that lives in my body, and it\u2019s exhausting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Above all, she emphasized that staff support saving Lankenau. While the two programs are similar, they aren\u2019t necessarily a great fit \u2014 at least not without an adequate on-ramp, she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe both care about agriculture and we both care about the environment, but they\u2019re two very distinct schools and different communities,\u201d Puntel said.<\/p>\n<p>She said the mergers and closures represent larger problems as school districts everywhere grapple with declining enrollment and underfunding.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-757614\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/pa-youth-vote-march-rr-102526-05-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Messiah Stokes holds up a sign protesting the closing of his high school.\" width=\"640\" height=\"960\"  \/>Messiah Stokes, a senior at Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet School, has advocated against the proposed closure of his school. (Rana Rastegari for WHYY)<\/p>\n<p>Puntel pointed to the ongoing demonstrations in Paris, where <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/france-school-protests-what-to-know-4e3bea86a5be39904c90f15ee96e3a24\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">mass protests have formed<\/a> around the poor condition of public school buildings, disinvestment in young people\u2019s futures and the rising cost of living. What\u2019s happening in Philadelphia is much the same, she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have all kinds of all kinds of things happening around the world at this moment around inequality and education, and I think it speaks to those that are in power that do not see children or learning as a priority,\u201d Puntel said.<\/p>\n<p>In their uncertain situation, Saul staff have adopted the term \u201cLanken-Saul,\u201d after the fictional Frankenstein, whose well-intentioned but unthoughtful creation ends in disaster.<\/p>\n<p>If both programs could engage in extensive collaboration on a unified school, it could have strong potential, Puntel said. But without this opportunity, they\u2019re left feeling unprepared.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re excited beyond belief to have the possibility of getting to <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/lankenau-proposed-school-closure-philadelphia\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">learn and study with those [Lankenau] students<\/a>, but we also have students also say very clearly that there\u2019s no way that this is happening, right? Because we\u2019re not ready, right?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Puntel said she and her team \u201cdo not see any evidence of any kind of successful merger in our future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf [the district] is going to push this through, you are pushing a round peg into a square hole,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018A square peg in a round hole\u2019 Puntel, the Spanish teacher, said she feels constant stress over the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[129359,223,69,71,70,8973,23941,129360],"class_list":["post-317535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-magnet-schools","tag-pennsylvania-education","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-school-district","tag-philadelphia-schools","tag-upper-roxborough"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317535","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=317535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}