A mural at the Alexander Wilson School near 46th and Woodland. Wilson is one of the schools that may be affected by the consolidation planned that will be unveiled today.
We will know a lot more about which schools will close or consolidate in West Philadelphia after today’s School Reform Commission (SRC) meeting, which for the first time, will be streamed live online.
The SRC is scheduled to release its tentative master plan to address the estimated 70,000 empty seats in the district. The plan includes a list of schools that will be closed, consolidated or have grade changes. The list will be the subject of a series of community meetings over the next several months.
A leaked preliminary report that recommended that the Alexander Wilson School (1300 S. 46th St.) be closed and students transferred to the Henry C. Lea School (4700 Locust St.) fueled speculation that fairly drastic changes were ahead for schools in our area. The District responded that the leaked report was merely a rough draft that was far from the final recommendations. There was even speculation that the much-debated catchment area for the Penn Alexander School (43rd and Locust) would be redrawn, though that seems unlikely. A much more clear picture of those changes should emerge from today’s meeting.
The SRC meeting begins at 3 p.m. today and the announcement on the proposed changes is scheduled for 5 p.m. For the first time the SRC meeting will be streamed live at the District’s website. The meeting will also be broadcast on its cable channel, which is available to Comcast (Channel 52) and FIOS (Channel 20) subscribers.
November 2nd, 2011 at 3:07 pm
The report also mentions the Lea catchment (which is currently quite small) would need to be redrawn.
A map off the West Philly school catchments can be found here: http://tinypic.com/r/262a34y/5
November 2nd, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Looks like Drew is the only school scheduled to be closed at this point.
http://www.thenotebook.org/blog/114217/district-recommends-just-9-schools-be-closed
November 3rd, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Fox29 reported that Wilson’s 6th grade will be phased out to make it align with the district’s plan to have only K-5, K-8, 6-8 and 9-12 grade configurations. Unless Wilson adds lower level classes, this will only make the school more underutilized. I sense that this is just Round 1 of the school closings/consolidations (Nunery was quoted as saying pretty much exactly that) and we’ll be revisiting this in a year or two.
No idea if Powel will need to add a 5th grade in order to align. It certainly doesn’t sound like it has room to do so.
There was also mention of catchments needing be redrawn but it wasn’t clear if that only referred to schools specifically impacted by the closing of other schools.