This West Philly high school is among the last of the area’s small, specialty schools. Now, the district wants to close it.

Parkway West High School is small, by design.

Its size is also a reason the Philadelphia School District wants to shut it down.

It is among the 20 schools the district is proposing to close, citing its low enrollment. The district plans to merge the Mill Creek magnet school into Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, two miles northwest in Overbrook. That move would dissolve the Parkway West name — and its storied history of alternative education, its supporters say.

Community members say the merger would do away with what makes Parkway West special and successful: the only curriculum in the city tailored for teens interested in becoming early childhood educators, specialty classrooms to support students with disabilities, and intimate class sizes that foster tight-knit relationships. And some say it would unfairly limit school options in West Philadelphia.

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“It’s a safe environment — a small school which allows for greater touches, and you just don’t get swallowed up in the size of a big school,” said Earl Morgan, a Parkway West special education teacher who coaches three Hoya sports teams.

Morgan added: “We’re losing a real, safe alternative to private education in West Philadelphia.”

The district’s facilities plan, which the school board is expected to vote on this winter, looks to address systemic issues like declining enrollment, aging infrastructure, and disparate programming in part by targeting some schools with large numbers of empty seats. Parkway West is operating with 140 students, or 40% capacity; its 11th-grade class — possibly its last graduating cohort — has just 18 students. Comparatively, there are nearly 500 students at Beeber, which is 54% full.

Dwindling numbers, however, are in part a product of a 2021 overhaul to the district’s special admissions process, which stripped principals at criteria-based schools of their discretion to admit students who did not fulfill all the academic or attendance requirements. Parkway West’s 2022-23 freshman class was 54 students; the next year, it was 19.

Morgan said the proposal poses a “logistical nightmare.” Community members have raised concerns about safety and transportation woes to get children to Beeber. Inside Parkway West, emotions range from indifference to outrage, Morgan said.

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The closure would leave “a hole” in the neighborhood, said Cecelia Thompson, a Mill Creek resident and former school board member who regularly interacts with the Parkway West community.

West Philadelphia is now staring down an educational landscape devoid of choice: The number of small, individualized magnet high schools, like Parkway West, in the area would shrink to one, while the district prioritizes reinvesting in neighborhood schools. The proposed school closures would disproportionately affect Black students, according to an Inquirer analysis, though the district says its plan is aimed at boosting opportunities and achievement.

This troubles City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, whose district includes Parkway West and a handful of other schools affected by the plan.

“It feels like they’re hollowing out my district,” Gauthier said. “They’re essentially shuttering criteria-based schools that people value and that are accessible to Black and brown children in West and Southwest Philadelphia. They’re completely taking it away … or dumping them into much larger schools that are not going to provide the experience that people want.

“Those kids deserve to have high-quality options right where they live.”

The consolidation of Parkway West into Beeber also threatens to erase a few of the last remnants of Philadelphia’s famed “school without walls.”

The Parkway model was a pioneering approach to alternative education, hallmarked by nonconformism, wandering classrooms, and a casual, personable learning environment where students called teachers by their first names, alumni told The Inquirer. Shaunda Watson graduated from Parkway Gamma, which later became Parkway West, and said the program took her from a C average to honor-roll student.

“Students like me will get lost in larger classrooms,” Watson, 48, of West Philadelphia, said. She added: “We have students that are exceptional and they will get lost in the sauce if they have to go to neighborhood schools. I don’t think that’s fair.”

For Gamma graduate Shannon Sherrod, 54, of Delaware County, preserving the model is more important than the name: “It’s bittersweet. I hate to see it die off,” Sherrod said.