The Philadelphia School District’s struggle to address its decades-old funding and facilities challenges erupted into shouting and angry accusations on Tuesday.
Lawmakers and education leaders held dueling press conferences. City Councilmembers berated district officials for planning a vote this Thursday on Superintendent Tony Watlington’s plan to close 17 schools, while council is simultaneously considering whether to approve a politically difficult $1-per-trip rideshare tax to help the district.
At a budget hearing, Councilmember Isaiah Thomas shouted at Watlington and other officials, saying he had just come from meeting special needs students at Lankenau High School — which is on the closure list — and contended the district wasn’t taking residents’ concerns seriously.
“I had to stand next to a young lady who is blind. She goes to a school where she’s very comfortable, and everything works for her,” Thomas said. “What about the deaf children at Lankenau? What about the blind children at Lankenau? You’re asking us to do some of the most ridiculous stuff I’ve ever heard anybody ask me to do, and then…tell them kids, ‘You can’t go to this school no more.’ That hurt! That’s tears!”
Councilmember Jamie Gauthier criticized the superintendent for keeping Robeson High School on the closure list when he revised his facilities plan this week.
“You are asking us to do something that, at this moment, feels very unpopular, and that’s fine. We are legislators. We are expected to do hard things and to engage in hard conversations. The problem is that you’re asking us to engage in this difficult conversation and decision with you while simultaneously telling us that you’re not going to listen to us or our communities,” she said.
At the end of the hearing, Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson asked Philadelphia school board President Reginald Streater to delay the facilities plan vote. He said he would check with the rest of the board and respond at a council hearing scheduled for the next day.
Seeking support in Harrisburg
Watlington and Streater argued that the funding and facilities issues are separate issues, but must both be addressed now.
A number of schools are underenrolled or have aging buildings with major repair needs, or both, and consolidating schools will let the district serve students more efficiently, Watlington said.
Responding to Gauthier, he said Robeson “has a poor business building score. I cannot, in a good fiduciary sense, recommend to go in and renovate that building. It’s not good business sense. It’s not good use of the public tax dollar,” he said.
Merging Robeson’s students into another school will allow the district to provide more resources, like Advanced Placement classes, a band, orchestra and possibly athletic equipment to the combined campus, he said.
At the same time, the superintendent said he wants to find a lasting fix for the district’s $300 million structural deficit, which has become acute due to the end of federal pandemic relief aid, higher staffing and healthcare costs, and the growth of charter schools.
That will come through cutting Central Office staff and other expenses, from the rideshare tax — which is projected to boost the city’s contribution to the schools by $48 million a year — and, eventually, from the Pennsylvania legislature’s compliance with a 2023 state Supreme Court decision on education funding levels, Watlington said.
Right-sizing the district and tightening the budget may help speed the process, he said.
“Our best estimate right now is that it will take a decade, at the rate we’re going,” he said. “Our kids can’t wait a decade. We can take some measures here in Philadelphia to help ourselves, and then go to Harrisburg and make the case that, ‘We’re doing our part. You do your part.’”
Blindsided by the upcoming vote
In January, Watlington initially proposed closing 20 schools. Following complaints and lobbying by students, families and elected officials, he reduced the number to 18 and then on Monday to 17, after deciding to spare Ludlow Elementary.
What he has called the “final, final” version of the plan would modernize 169 facilities, increase the district’s investments in City Council districts 3 and 5 in West and North Philadelphia, and boost the plan’s price tag from $2.8 billion to $3 billion. The district plans to borrow $1 billion and seek the rest from the state and charitable donors.
The district had planned to transfer Robeson and some other school buildings to the city for potential use as housing. Gauthier responded by introducing zoning bills that would restrict redevelopment of the Robeson property and three others, saying she didn’t want the district to be motivated by potential sale revenues.
Watlington revised his plan this week to maintain district ownership of Robeson and Lankenau, while still closing both schools.
Councilmembers said they were blindsided by his announcement of the “final” closure plan and the school board’s scheduling of a vote to approve it just three days later.
“How dare you rush this plan to a Thursday vote when you haven’t even taken the time to fully engage our communities, but then come in here and ask us to do something hard for you,” Gauthier said, referring to the rideshare tax. “That is why the tenor of this conversation in the room today is what it is, because partnership doesn’t look like that.”
Mayor Cherelle Parker proposed a few new business taxes in her annual budget plan last month, including a 20-cent-per-trip rideshare tax. After subsequently learning about the extent of the district’s planned cuts, she upped the proposal to $1 per trip.
Councilmembers criticized the changing tax proposal as one example of a bungled process that has alienated the public.
“The idea that we change the numbers, I hope you understand, undermines consumer confidence,” Councilmember Cindy Bass said. “It undermines the confidence in government, because it looks like we’re all over the place.”
Uber responded to the tax proposal with what it describes as a six-figure social media and email blitz. It has sought to characterize the levy as a “double tax” that would hurt working-class Philadelphia residents who frequently take rideshare trips.
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