A Lincoln High parent and Mayfair resident want a judge to halt the move of Kensington HS students to a Northeast Philly school
Moving 400 Kensington High students to an already overcrowded campus in Northeast Philadelphia creates student safety and learning concerns, a lawsuit says.
A Lincoln High parent and a Mayfair resident are attempting to block the planned relocation of Kensington High School students to the former Austin Meehan Middle School in the Northeast.
Harold Brown, a Lincoln parent, and Peter McDermott, who is active in Mayfair civic life and Democratic politics, filed suit Thursday against the Philadelphia School District, Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr., and the city itself in Common Pleas Court.
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While the former middle school has been used as a swing space since it closed in 2022, Brown and McDermott say that moving 400 Kensington High students and 90 staff there will create student safety concerns because the campus is already overpopulated. Meehan is adjacent to Lincoln High and Northeast Community Propel Academy, both of which are overcrowded, with student bodies that exceed the capacity of their respective buildings.
The relocation, they argue, also violates the terms of a 2018 community benefits agreement that allowed the school district to build Propel.
Brown and McDermott want a judge to halt the move before school begins for students on Monday.
The district ordered Kensington relocated to the former Meehan site, more than seven miles away on Ryan Avenue, over asbestos concerns. A contractor working on a new HVAC system for Kensington this summer disturbed asbestos, then tracked it throughout the school, officials said.
District administrators initially believed they could fix the asbestos issues in time for school to start; after urging from the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, they decided to relocate staff and students through the end of the calendar year.
The district last year spent $11 million to place trailers at Lincoln, which houses over 2,000 students in a school built for 1,200.
City Councilmember Mike Driscoll last week raised worries about adding students from another high school to the Lincoln-Propel campus, and the district said it would prepare and share a school safety plan before classes began.
“The absence of a disclosed and tested plan prevents families from evaluating whether defendants can safely supervise two separate high-school populations and a K-8 population in the same immediate campus area,” the suit says.
The suit suggests students be moved instead to Penn Treaty High or Roberto Clemente Middle School. (The district had initially planned to move Kensington students and staff into Clemente, then judged that building did not have enough room.)
Moving Kensington to Meehan will overtax the campus on multiple levels, the suit said, from congestion and personnel to security and transportation.
“For Plaintiff Brown’s son and the existing Lincoln student body, adding another complete high-school population to an already over-capacity campus will predictably diminish teacher access, disrupt orderly transitions and arrival and dismissal, reduce access to shared services and activities, and materially impair the quality and continuity of the students’ daily learning and overall school experience,” the suit said.
Brown and McDermott also say the district has failed to live up to several promises made in the community benefits agreement — including demolishing Meehan, sprucing up fields, and replacing fencing. Those things have not been done, the suit says.
Philadelphia School District officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
