Philly schools transition committee app opens as district moves ahead with $3B facilities plan

Chris Johnson, principal of Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, looked at the students in front of him — 10th and 11th graders at Parkway West, a school that’s closing in June.

“What’s coming up for you?” Johnson asked them.

“Division,” one student said plainly.

SLA Beeber won’t be doing that, Johnson said. On the first day of school last week, Johnson told his students if they were going to have issues accepting the Parkway West kids coming next year, they could leave.

“We don’t do stepbrothers, stepsisters. We do family. Ain’t no division. We’re family,” said Johnson.

The conversation came as Philadelphia School District officials toured SLA Beeber to tout a new process for managing school closings.

Applications opened Monday for transition teams that will affect how changes will happen at 50 schools that will be closed or beginning phaseouts at the end of the 2026-27 school year, and those receiving students from those schools in 2027-28.

Ten Parkway West students traveled to SLA Beeber Monday to get a preview: tours of the school, a sit-down with Johnson, shaking hands with Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr., school board members and others.

“We’ve got to do some things differently in Philadelphia to address the fact that we have a 65% occupancy rate across the district, which means 35% of our seats in our buildings in the district-operated schools are empty,” Watlington said at a news conference in a third-floor classroom.

The school board in April approved a $3 billion facilities plan that will close 17 schools and modernize 169 over a decade, though the timeline and scope is not set in stone, as more than half of the plan is not yet funded. Some public officials, including several City Council members, are still pushing against the plan, demanding some schools be removed from the closing list.

Shakeera Warthen-Canty, whom Watlington appointed this summer to lead a new School Transition Office, said transition committees will help think through concerns about safety, transportation, space planning and more.

“We understand that for some communities this is very hard, but we want to make sure that we are hearing them and we’re providing as much support as we can,” Warthen-Canty said. “The red carpet, white-glove treatment Dr. Watlington talked about, that’s what we want to make sure our principals, our staff, our students, and our families have.”

Each transition committee will have about 20 members. Applications, available through the district’s website, will be open through Sept. 18. Those who are selected to sit on committees will be notified by Oct. 1, with work expected to begin the week of Oct. 12.

When Parkway West first showed up on the list of possible school closings, principal William Brown and Johnson of SLA Beeber began meeting regularly, they said.

“I’d be lying if I said this was an easy time for the Parkway West community,” Brown said Monday. “There’s a lot of uncertainty out there for the people involved.”

SLA Beeber enrolled 533 students in grades 5 through 12 last year; Parkway West had 151 students in grades 9 through 12.

While Parkway West students will have the opportunity to go to SLA Beeber, most staff will be force transferred to other schools, without a chance to follow their students. Still, Brown said, the focus is on children.

“These are our young people, we really have to make sure they’re OK,” said Brown, who said the SLA Beeber and Parkway West communities “are united” around that goal.

Later, SLA Beeber students Mohamed Ali, 15, and Sebastian Delgado-Colón, 16, showed Watlington, board president Reginald Streater, board member Whitney Jones, and others around their school. Other SLA Beeber classmates took Parkway West students on a tour.

What do you think of the coming changes, the dignitaries asked Ali and Delgado-Colón.

“I can’t imagine what they’re feeling, going into a completely new environment,” said Delgado-Colón.

At first, Ali said, he thought about what the change would mean for SLA Beeber students.

“Our teachers are very one-on-one with us. Is this going to change that? But we’re going to make the best of it,” said Ali.

“We were looking at it in more of a tense way - now we’re looking at it as a net positive,” said Delgado-Colón.

“It can build on community,” Ali added.

District officials have stressed that closing schools will enhance resources citywide.

The cooperation between Parkway West and SLA Beeber, Watlington said, is a hopeful one.

“It shows that we can make tough decisions and we can do it in a way that all of us absolutely can become winners and not losers,” the superintendent said. “Our gain doesn’t have to necessarily come at anybody’s expense.”