The School Reform Commission, as expected, has formally approved the partnership agreement between the Penn Alexander School and the University of Pennsylvania for another 10 years.

The agreement between Penn, the District and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, requires Penn to contribute $1,330 per student per year to the school to help maintain reduced class sizes and support other services.

Penn President Amy Gutmann praised the partnership.

“Nothing is more important to the health and vitality of a community than the quality of its public schools, and the Penn Alexander School illustrates this important fact every day,” she said in a statement. “This agreement recognizes the partners’ wish for Penn Alexander’s continued success and supports the University’s goal to enable every child to benefit from proven educational practices at this award-winning public school.”

Penn Alexander has come under much scrutiny in recent months after an announcement from the district that the school would have an enrollment cap that would prevent some children who live within its catchment area from attending. A parents group formed last month, Advocates for Great Elementary Education, is trying to get specific answers from the school, the District and Penn about the enrollment limitations.
 

The Spruce Hill Community Association (SHCA), an integral player in the formation of the Penn Alexander School more than 10 years ago, agreed last night to draft a statement  calling on the school to admit every child in first grade and above who lives in the school’s catchment area.

Parents new to the neighborhood and those with young children have been dismayed about the refusal of the school to admit many children even though they live within the school’s coveted catchment area. Several people who attended last night’s SHCA board meeting, as well as one association board member, shared stories about children who were not admitted and their frustration about not knowing how to proceed for the coming school year.

School and district officials have said that the school’s lower grades are at capacity, prompting them to advise many parents, even those with siblings already attending the school, to investigate other options. The SHCA board agreed that the policy was unjust.

Longtime Spruce Hill Community Association board member Barry Grossbach said it is the association’s obligation to pressure the school to accept any child who lives inside the catchment boundaries.

“I think we need to be very clear that kids who live within the catchment area need to go to the school,” Grossbach said. “This was the expectation that we had when the school was formed and that is the expectation we have now.”

Board members hope that the statement will help prompt a more open discussion about the enrollment policy, which so far is a mystery to most parents.

Most parents have tolerated a kindergarten enrollment cap because kindergarten is not required in Pennsylvania. But now the cap is being applied to the lower grades. Registration for those grades begins August 15 and many parents new to the neighborhood are unsure if their children will be admitted.

West Philly resident Monica Calkins spoke at the meeting on behalf of a new community organization confronting the enrollment issue at the school. The group, Advocates for Great Elementary Education (AGREE), officially formed last month after several parents commiserated about the lack of information coming from the school.

Like many parents who live in the Penn Alexander catchment, Calkins wants answers.

“We have a lot of questions,” she said.

Some of issues the group hopes to have clarified:

• Extent of the overcrowding at the school.
• The process for determining an enrollment cap.
• Penn’s position on the overcrowding issue.
• Whether other measures, such as temporary classrooms, have been considered.

A key question that many are asking is whether the influx of students to the school is a temporary surge in the population that might be relieved by temporary classroom space similar to what is being done at some crowded schools in Northeast Philadelphia.

AGREE also echoes many residents’ fears about “downstream effects” of the enrollment cap, including a drop in real estate prices.

Property sales, which surged after the school was built, have reportedly already begun to reflect the confusion and anxiety over admission to the school.

Realtor Melani Lamond told SHCA board members last night that if the enrollment policy is not cleared up soon real estate sales will likely drop further and prospective homebuyers will look to buy elsewhere.

“I guarantee you this will be a one-time problem if there is no guarantee that their kids will get into the school,” said Lamond.

School officials have advised some parents to investigate other neighborhood schools, including Henry C. Lea School (4700 Locust St.), which has seen a surge in community interest in recent months.

Many parents who live inside the catchment have said that they would consider Lea, but first want a definitive answer to whether their child might have a chance to get into Penn Alexander.

Several questions have arisen since the publication yesterday of the story about the Penn Alexander limiting enrollment.  We have been pursuing two things today:

One is a legal clarification on what exactly a catchment area means. More information on that is included below. We have also offered an official from the school or the University of Pennsylvania to write a note to parents and community members advising them on further steps for enrollment that we would publish. So far we have not received a reply.

Here is a list of questions to continue the conversation and some answers (Any comments or further clarification are greatly appreciated. Please leave a reply below):

• Is there no school that is obligated to take our kids?

This is where some clarification on the law probably would help. Some have asked if a class-action lawsuit is possible. The wording on the Penn Alexander Home and School Association website about what a “catchment” means is a reflection of the School District of Philadelphia wording: “Any school-age child living within this area is eligible to attend the school.” “Eligible” is the operative word. An education lawyer and former teacher from West Philly (apologies for the anonymity) wrote us that:

The district is under no legal obligation under state or federal law (short of potential mandates under the IDEA or mandates for schools that are under desegregation orders) to place any student in any particular school within its boundaries.  Under state law, a district must “enroll” every eligible student within its boundaries in “a” school, but there are no legal mandates giving students an entitlement to a particular school.

There are rights, he continued, to transfer out of “persistently dangerous” schools, but there are no legal requirements for the District to maintain a “neighborhood” school.

• If we don’t get a spot in our neighborhood school (PAS) we’re just supposed to apply to other schools and hope for the best?!

“If I wanted to apply to charter schools or apply to other neighborhood schools I would not have moved into ‘the catchment,’” one reader wrote. Parents with school-age children in the area who want their kids to stay in their neighborhood (to “walk to school”) have the option to send their children to the Henry C. Lea School (4700 Locust) or the Alexander Wilson School (1300 S. 46th St.). West Philly Local is not in business to recommend schools to people, but it should be noted that a tremendous amount of activity has been happening recently at the Lea School. It has a Home and School Association that is growing and the West Philly Coalition for Neighborhood Schools, which now includes nearly 200 parents and community members, is devoting much of its resources and efforts to the school. The website PhillySchoolSearch.com has an excellent primer on the transfer process.

My children may have to attend separate schools?

Penn Alexander officials have said that there will be no provisions made for siblings. As for other schools, again it depends on where you look.

Are there no future plans to expand PAS in the future?

So far, no.

How will enrollment for kindergarten happen if not a lottery?

A Penn Alexander official we talked to was emphatic that there would be no lottery. So in the near future it looks like lining up for the 50 or so spots is the only way. In March January the line-up began the night before registration began. The same school official said preference for first grade for next fall would be given to those students whose parents lined up but did not get a spot in kindergarten, making the fate of those who have to wait for the August 15 registration date even more precarious. This whole process is obviously not sustainable, but an alternative has not been announced.

How much of a dip in our home’s value should we expect?

No one can answer this for sure. Home prices have tripled within the catchment area since the school opened and everyone knows about the catchment premium on houses within the bouadaries (sometimes speculated to be as much as $100,000). It would seem logical to assume that this news will prick the housing bubble in the catchment boundaries. Real estate agents have capitalized on the catchment (see photo above). But home prices near the catchment have also appreciated greatly and if the Lea school keeps improving, there is reason to believe that home prices near it will continue to rise. One question is how many who have been on the fence about selling might be interested in selling right now?

Penn’s Institute of Urban Research has released a report that confirms what everyone who has been house shopping in West Philadelphia already knows –  home prices in the Penn Alexander School catchment area have quadrupled since 1998.

The average home sale price in the catchment, which roughly runs from 40th Street to 47th and Sansom Street to Chester Avenue and parts of Woodland Avenue, has risen to about $430,000, a 211 percent increase since 1998. Home prices in the PAS catchment far outpace prices in the rest of the city. Home prices during the same period elsewhere in West Philadelphia and in University City have roughly doubled. Prices in Center City have risen 87 percent.

Average home prices in the Penn Alexander catchment are now roughly on par with properties in Center City.

Home prices have outpaced rent increases as well, which “suggests that the households in University City has shifted in composition from renters to owners,” according to the report.

The report credits the creation of the University City District, Penn’s mortgage program for employees and the Penn Alexander School with the rise in home prices.

We’re not sure whether to laugh or cry after this ABC6 story about parents braving frigid temps to get their kids into Penn Alexander’s kindergarten, which is capped at 50 students. We’re happy that such a school exists (full disclosure: we have a child there) and that parents care so much about their child’s education, but we’re sad that they are so scared of the alternatives that they feel they have to sleep outside on the coldest night of the year to get in.

This kind of stand-in-line, first-come-first-serve enrollment system obviously isn’t sustainable. Penn Alexander, which prides itself on small classes, is filling up quick in the lower grades as parents move to the neighborhood (some before they even have children) looking for the Holy Grail of a nice urban neighborhood and a good public school.