Nearly 5,000 Philadelphia students would have their schools closed in the coming years based on the district's proposed facilities plan. (Hannah Yoon for Chalkbeat)
The Philadelphia school district wants to close 20 schools starting in 2027 as part of a reorganization plan that will affect 1 in 3 traditional district schools and reshape the city’s public education landscape.
Nearly 5,000 students would have their schools closed in the coming years, based on this year’s enrollment counts. Another 2,800 students would have their schools moved to a new location following the district’s plan to co-locate and relocate eight current schools to different facilities.
The changes will mean major shifts for school enrollment across the city. More than 20 schools would add seats or grades to accommodate students from closed schools, and some catchment boundaries in the Northeast would shift. The district would also open four new schools in existing buildings and upgrade infrastructure at nearly 160 school facilities.
In total, the plan would affect roughly 30,000 students, or a quarter of current district enrollment. That includes students at schools that would be new co-location sites and those at schools that would add one or more grades.
The proposal would have a particularly large impact on middle schools, with more than a dozen elementary schools turning into K-8 schools to absorb students from six closing middle schools.
The plan represents the district’s effort to address some fundamental challenges facing Philadelphia’s schools. Many schools are below capacity by hundreds of students after a long-term decline in district enrollment. Over the past decade, district enrollment has declined by around 17,000 students, reflecting a citywide population decline and a jump in the number of students enrolled in cyber charter schools.
Crumbling asbestos, broken sinks, and poor ventilation plague the city’s school buildings, which are on average more than 70 years old. Fixing those problems would cost billions that the district doesn’t have.
Yet the proposal — which the Board of Education must approve — will likely ignite fierce opposition. Some have been warning the district for months about the downsides of fracturing school communities. Bitter memories from the last round of school closures could be a factor: After the district closed 24 schools in 2013 largely to save money, some students’ academic performance and attendance took a hit, and the district’s financial problems persisted.
Superintendent Tony Watlington said during a press briefing this week that the plan would improve the quality of education the city’s schools can offer.
“We must find ways to more efficiently use our resources, so we can push higher quality programming into all our schools, while at the same time addressing under and over enrolled schools,” Watlington said.
The district has begun sharing its plan with affected schools this week and will present its recommendations to the Board of Education at its February meeting. The board ultimately must approve the changes and could reshape them before any closures begin.
Teachers and staff at schools that will close will keep their jobs to help fill the district’s vacancies, Watlington said. Principals “in good standing” will remain employed by the district.
Philadelphia school closure plan likely to trigger protests
Students and staff will begin to be affected by the changes at the start of the 2027-28 school year. The exact timeline for closing individual schools remains unclear. Some closing schools will gradually phase out grades over several years, while others will close at once and students will merge into a different school.
For neighborhoods where schools are slated to close, empty buildings will likely become a looming concern. After the last round of closures, several buildings were left deteriorating for more than a decade. The district now owns more than 20 buildings considered persistently vacant, meaning they haven’t been used in several years.
Under the proposed changes, the district would close 20 school buildings over the next 10 years. It has specific plans to repurpose 12 for district use, including opening a year-round high school in one.
But the future of the other eight closed buildings is unclear. The district wants to turn many over to the city to create housing or other public infrastructure. Though Mayor Cherelle Parker has broadly supported turning empty schools into housing, those changes would require specific action from the city.
District officials say they are aware of how challenging these changes can be — and how worried many Philadelphians are after the last round of closures. Over the past year, they hosted dozens of community engagement events and sent out several surveys to solicit feedback.
Watlington said the responses helped guide the recommendations. But many educators and community members said it was difficult to give feedback without yet knowing which schools would see changes. The new list will likely result in pushback and protest as teachers and neighborhoods hope to keep their schools from closing, as some successfully did ahead of the 2013 closures.
Watlington promised students and families will be supported through the transition. He said 90% of students who will change schools will be reassigned to schools with comparable or better academic outcomes.
Watlington pledged the plan would also result in specific improvements for district students. No district students will go to a school with a building rated as poor or unsatisfactory, he said. Other improvements include:
Doubling the percentage of kindergarten students who have access to district-operated pre-kindergarten from 25% to 50%.
Increasing the number of high schools that offer five or more AP classes by 12%.
Increasing the percentage of schools that offer “robust” music, art, and physical education programming from 57% to 70%.
Increasing the number of middle schools that offer Algebra 1 from 53% to 100%.
The plan addresses some of Philadelphia families’ common concerns, like limited space at some of the most desirable magnet high schools and severe overcrowding in the Northeast. It also expands career and technical education program offerings and access to other sought-after programming, like pre-K.
Under the proposal, the district would increase the number of seats at five criteria-based schools, including Central and Masterman, which are consistently two of the top-ranked schools in the city. It would also open a new middle school to feed into Palumbo High School, another top-ranked magnet school.
In the crowded Northeast, the district would modernize several schools to expand capacity, including by creating a new building for Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush and turning its old building into a new catchment high school.
The district is also planning for some high schools that would close to live on in a different form. Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School, Motivation High School, Parkway Northwest High School, and Paul Robeson High School will each close and become honors programs integrated into other schools.
Still, these changes will mean huge disruptions for students and families across the city. After the last round of closures, researchers found school absences for students whose schools closed increased, and they missed more days of school and received more suspensions the farther they traveled to their new school building.
The district originally planned to release its proposal for school closures last November, but then delayed it. Now, school leaders say they’re waiting on the support of the Board of Education, Parker, and funders to move forward.
The district doesn’t have enough money on its own to fund the plan’s price tag. The school changes and upgrades would cost $2.8 billion, which the district wants to pay for with $1 billion in district funds and $1.8 billion in new public and philanthropic dollars.
Without that funding, Watlington said the district would have to “scale down” the plan and keep students at dozens of schools rated as poor or unsatisfactory.
Watlington acknowledged that many people do not want their schools to close. He pledged the district would create a designated team to help families with any transition and give them the “gold standard red carpet treatment directly from the Superintendent’s office.”
“We have one shot at this to get this right,” Watlington said.
Sammy Caiola contributed reporting.
Kensington Voice is republishing this story thanks to Chalkbeat Philadelphia and its generous republishing policy, which makes Chalkbeat’s reporting available for other news outlets to share.
