The School District of Philadelphia is asking for more community feedback on its facilities planning process that will help decide which schools the district will recommend closing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The newly launched Facilities Planning Process Emerging Themes Survey<\/a> identifies four main themes that have emerged from community input on the district\u2019s Facilities Planning Process (FPP), and offers a chance for community members to submit their feedback on each theme.\u00a0<\/p>\n The themes include:<\/p>\n Strengthening pre-K through eighth-grade programming through better use of space.<\/p>\n Reducing unnecessary school transitions for students.<\/p>\n Reinvesting in neighborhood high schools as community anchors.<\/p>\n Expanding access to grades 5 through 12 criteria-based schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n The district was expected to release<\/a> its updated list of school closure recommendations to the Board of Education in November. The district has also missed other deadlines throughout the FPP<\/a>, including data sharing.\u00a0<\/p>\n The final recommendation plan to the Board of Education will sort schools into five possible outcomes: maintain, modernize, co-locate, repurpose or close.\u00a0<\/p>\n The decision-making process will be informed by four data categories:<\/p>\n The school\u2019s building score, based on the condition of the space.<\/p>\n The program alignment score, based on how well buildings support \u201chigh-quality\u201d programs like special education and physical education.<\/p>\n The capacity\/utilization score, based on the school\u2019s enrollment level compared to its capacity.<\/p>\n Its neighborhood vulnerability score, based on which schools are located in places experiencing \u201chigh social vulnerability\u201d conditions, such as poverty, lack of transportation and crowded housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many schools in the district are currently over- or underenrolled or are housed in older physical spaces.\u00a0<\/p>\n The district has maintained that it is \u201ccommitted to robust community engagement\u201d throughout the process, citing<\/a> 47 public listening and learning sessions, 35 principal data verification sessions, a district-wide survey with over 5,700 responses, and the release of a data website sharing all school-based scores. But some advocates, parents and community members have expressed concerns<\/a>, ranging from lack of data to concerns for the transitions for students and staff at closed schools.<\/p>\n Superintendent Tony Watlington has maintained his stance that the goal of the process is to \u201cprovide greater access to high-quality academic and extracurricular programs across neighborhoods.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The survey will close on Thursday, Dec. 11. The district said a summary of this feedback will be released \u201clater in December\u201d and will be used to inform the final presentation on school closure recommendations.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The School District of Philadelphia is asking for more community feedback on its facilities planning process that will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[227,24002,69,71,70,24003,50,1998,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-39483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-facilities-planning-process","10":"tag-philadelphia","11":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","12":"tag-philadelphia-news","13":"tag-philly-schools","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-school-district-of-philadelphia","16":"tag-schools"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39483","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=39483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}