The Philadelphia Board of Education took the first steps in advancing its facilities master plan last Thursday by greenlighting upgrades to four schools, including Franklin S. Edmonds Elementary School in East Mt. Airy.

The modernization projects will cost $200 million, add 700 seats and impact 2,400 students, district officials said. The renovations are part of the district’s 10-year, $3 billion facilities master plan that was approved in April. Elected officials, city councilmembers, union leaders and school community members have protested the plan mainly over the decision to close 17 schools, including Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School in Upper Roxborough among others in Northwest Philadelphia.

Under the plan, the district will change the catchment areas for the Edmonds K-8 school starting in the 2027-28 school year to accommodate students from Samuel Pennypacker School in West Oak Lane, which is scheduled to close. The board on Thursday approved a project that would to grant Edmonds accessibility improvements and restroom renovations, as well as more space to increase the building’s capacity.

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said at the board meeting that the modernization projects reflect “our commitment to making meaningful investments that ensure students have access to safe, healthy and modern learning environments.”

Whitney Jones, the only board member to vote against the upgrades, asked Watlington how the district decided on these four schools and expressed concerns that the district’s plan will not be sufficiently funded. The district plans to cover one-third of the facilities master plan with its own funds and is working on securing the rest from the state government and other sources.

Watlington said there’s an urgent need to start the plan, as many schools don’t have adequate air conditioning or heating.

“We’ve got to start somewhere, and no matter what data points we put on the table, our needs are so great that if we pick a different form, somebody could challenge them,” he said.

In addition to Lankenau and Pennypacker, the district’s master plan is set to close Parkway Northwest High School in Mt. Airy/Germantown, Fitler Academics Plus in Germantown, and the Academy for the Middle Years at Northwest in Roxborough. A total of 17 closures would start as soon as the end of the 2026-27 school year.

Rally

Scores of students, faculty members, elected officials, union leaders and city councilmembers rallied outside the school district headquarters just before the board meeting. Students played the drums and held signs that read messages like “Don’t Grab Our Land, Plant Our Future” and “Save Our School.”

City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, chair of the Council’s education committee, and Councilmember Jamie Gauthier organized the rally to demand the board reconsider the plan, and to call on Mayor Cherelle Parker, who appoints the board, to get involved in preventing school closures. Parker has expressed her support for the facilities master plan.

At the rally, Thomas wore a “Save Lankenau” shirt and reiterated his call for Board President Reginald Streater’s resignation. Thomas, Gauthier and other members of City Council have vehemently opposed the plan and shut down the board’s April meeting several times. Thomas has threatened to sue the school board and block the reappointment of board members who voted for the plan.

Thomas urged board members to reconsider the plan before the special selection process closes on Nov. 24 and to work with City Council and the mayor on an alternative solution. He said closing public schools could lead to an increase in violent crime in impacted neighborhoods.

“If we close these schools, if we don’t reverse the decision by Nov. 24, we recognize people will die,” he said.

Streater said if the board revised the plan, they would do so publicly.

Democratic state Rep. Andre Carroll, who represents Germantown and West Oak Lane, said at the rally that closing schools “creates blight” and is a “land grab.” Carroll attended Germantown High School, which closed in 2013 and merged with Martin Luther King High School. Developers turned GHS into a luxury apartment complex, which the Local reported in September had been operating without a rental license since it opened in 2024.

Councilmember Jeffery Young, Jr., an alumnus of AMY Northwest, and Gauthier at the board meeting called out the fact that the school closures mostly impact Black and brown students.

“We have high schools like Parkway Northwest that graduate 100% of their student majority of Black and brown kids…where’s the equity and where’s the balance in that?” Young said.

Transition teams

Each of the 17 schools will have a transition team consisting of staff and community members. They will work with the senior advisor of the new School Transition Office, Shakeera Warthen-Canty. Watlington said the transition office hosted meetings with principals of the affected schools in August. The district plans to host a meeting with transition teams in November and December.

On Thursday, board member Joyce Wilkerson defended the facilities plan, including the decision to close Lankenau and merge it with W.B. Saul High School in Roxborough.

“I’d hate to see us forfeit the opportunity to come up with a really exciting curriculum because we’re so dug into what has been in the past,” she said.

“I encourage further conversations with families in our district, and [I’m] determined to strive for more successful programs for the children of Philadelphia,” she added.

Councilmembers Thomas, Curtis Jones, Jr. and Nina Ahmad have introduced legislation to change the zoning of the land where Lankenau sits to be used for the “development and preservation of public-serving institutions.” It passed on Oct. 15. The district plans to turn Lankenau into an environmental center.

Rodrigo Fernandez, a Spanish teacher at Parkway Northwest, said at the board meeting that the school closures plan is already negatively impacting students’ mental health. The district wants to co-locate Parkway Northwest to Martin Luther King High. Fernandez said some students have become more aggressive and depressed in light of their peers and teachers leaving.

“We can see that they are struggling with things that they weren’t last year,” he told the Local.

Kathryn McQuade, an art teacher at Overbrook Elementary School in West Philadelphia, agreed with Fernandez.

“There is a little dark cloud over our sweet little castle on the hill of Overbrook Elementary this year, because of the imminent decision where more and more we feel like we really don’t have a say in this story,” she said.

Fernandez, a member of the transition committee for Parkway Northwest, said that starting meetings in November doesn’t give the district enough time to adequately carry out the school closures. He disagrees with the district’s plan to close Parkway Northwest.

“I don’t see why we need to to close a school that is in good shape in terms of being structurally sound; [it has] no environmental hazards, there’s AC in every room and it has elevators,” he said.

Streater said the board stands “for uncompromising transparency and unyielding commitment to putting students’ outcomes above politics” and “our responsibility to Philadelphia’s taxpayers and families, and more important to our children, is nonnegotiable.”