Their elementary school is closing. These West Philly students took to the streets with puppets and joy.
“People take joy for granted, but not today,” said Jennifer Turnbull, co-executive director of the arts nonprofit Spiral Q, which has worked with Blankenburg Elementary students for 12 years.
The large, cheering group turned left onto Belmont Avenue in West Philadelphia — a noisy, joyful spectacle of more than 200 students holding puppets as high as their arms could reach, trailing streamers, waving flags, and drumming.
Aminata Sandra Calhoun, a neighbor who lives on Belmont Avenue, stood in a patch of shade, waiting for them.
“Blankenburg!” Calhoun shouted. “That’s my school!”
For 10 years, the K-8 school near 46th and Girard has marked the end of the school year with a parade through the streets around its historic building, celebrating who Blankenburg students are, what they care about, and the art they make with the nonprofit Spiral Q.
The Blankenburg Parade took on a special significance Wednesday: It will be one of the last such celebrations. The school board’s April 30 vote means Blankenburg and 16 other Philadelphia School District schools are now slated to close next June.
“Don’t make me tear up,” Calhoun, who graduated from Blankenburg in 1963, said when asked what the school means to her. “I am so sad, disappointed, angry. Why does this have to be? It doesn’t have to be.”
Spiral Q invests $200,000 annually into Blankenburg through puppetry and other art-making; the parade represents the culmination of its work for the year. The centerpiece of Spiral Q’s work, and the parade, were the giant puppets made by Blankenburg fourth graders: several larger-than-life representations of people they wanted to represent.
Fourth graders hoisted puppet Timothy, a teenager in long braids in a Lakers jersey; Navayah, a cashier styled in shades of pink who loves dance and is frustrated by the trash in her neighborhood; and Albert, a mechanic dad of two toddlers, dressed in work clothes.
Other students recited chants they wrote — “Blankenburg is red hot!” — and toted colorful, carefully made signs. “Up High! With Love for Everybody, 2nd Grade,” and “We Have Passion, We Make Decisions,” and “Save Blankenburg!”
Jennifer Turnbull, Spiral Q’s co-executive director, said the parade is the living embodiment of the organization’s motto, “Joy and Justice.”
Each of the 10 parades has been meaningful, Turnbull said. Thursday’s felt joyful, but also bittersweet.
Because of the closing, “it’s been rough,” Turnbull said. “It’s been an emotional drag. But Blankenburg is an amazing school partner, despite all of the challenges they have to go through.”
Turnbull, and many in the community wonder what’s next for the property, named for a former Philadelphia mayor and built atop part of the old Mount Olive Cemetery, a 19th century burial ground for Black Philadelphians. (The district originally said it would give the building to the city for housing or job creation, but backed away from those plans — for now.)
But the focus, Wednesday, was on collective movement, on celebration.
“People take joy for granted, but not today,” Turnbull said.
As the students readied for their 45-minute, one-mile trek — up Wyalusing, over Belmont, across Mantua to 43rd, right on Westminster, then back to Merion — there was a sense of occasion, a hum.
Making the puppets was difficult and involved, one fourth-grade girl said. But she and her friends were proud to walk them through the neighborhood.
“But we wish our school could stay open,” the fourth grader said. “But it’s nice because we get to enjoy this, before we close.”
Standing with the kindergarteners, including his son, Antonio Jr., Antonio Porter Sr. said he was happy to watch Blankenburg show out for the neighborhood on Wednesday. His son has been happy at the school.
“I wanted him to stay here until eighth grade,” Porter said.
The district has said it will send Blankenburg students to James Rhoads Elementary, Edward Heston Elementary School, or Martha Washington Elementary. But Porter isn’t waiting around.
He enrolled his son in a charter school for first grade.
All along the route, neighbors waved as they walked their dogs, pushed babies in strollers, and poked their heads out of rowhouses to smile at the eager students.
Kareem McLaughlin, who lives on 43rd Street and attended Blankenburg in the late 1980s, was working on his porch. He looked solemnly as two little girls joined hands and shouted “Blankenburg! Blankenburg!”
“This neighborhood needs the school,” McLaughlin said.
