Philly parents are worried and shocked over the proposed school closings across the city. And they’re not holding back: ‘That can’t happen.’

Letitia Grant was gobsmacked when she learned her daughter’s school was slated for closure.

“That can’t happen,” she said.

Penn Treaty High School, where Grant’s daughter is in the eighth grade, is one of 20 schools proposed for closure as part of a massive reshaping of the Philadelphia School District announced Thursday.

» READ MORE: Philly could close 20 schools, colocate 6, and modernize 159: Superintendent Watlington shares his facilities plan

The plan — which Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said he would present in full to the school board on Feb. 26 — would affect every neighborhood in the city. In addition to closing 20 schools, it proposes colocating six others, and making changes, including renovations and grade restructuring, at an unspecified number of schools.

But Grant is focused on what it means for her daughter, who loves her teachers, her counselor, and the friends she has made at the Fishtown school.

Grant was looking forward to seeing her daughter cross a stage to collect her diploma at Penn Treaty’s 2030 high school graduation, she said. She is not sure what will come next.

Penn Treaty, which now has just 345 students in grades six through 12 in a building that can accommodate 1,200, would cease to exist under the plan, and Bodine High, a district magnet in Northern Liberties, would move to the Penn Treaty building and add a middle school.

After dismissal Thursday, the day families learned of the closure, Grant’s daughter and her friend stopped their biology teacher to chat. The teacher is her daughter’s favorite, Grant said.

Grant fears the changes will mean the district will be “piling too many kids per classroom.”

The facilities plan will touch every neighborhood in the city for years to come, with ripples for students, teachers, and families. Here are some of their stories.

As parents dropped their children off Friday morning at the Laura Wheeler Waring School in Spring Garden, faces were grim.

“We’re pissed off because it’s a great school,” said Isheen Bernard, whose son attended Waring and whose daughter is a third grader there now. Waring was identified for closure; under the plan, Masterman middle school students would eventually take over the building, with Waring students sent to Bache-Martin.

Nysheera Roberts graduated from Waring herself, and so did her mother. Now, she has children there, and her nieces and nephews also attend.

Shutting the school down would be hurtful and heartbreaking, Roberts said. Waring has just under 200 students in a building that can house 437.

“It’s a piece of our history,” she said.

Taking her daughter to Bache-Martin would be a major inconvenience for her, her children, and other neighborhood families, Roberts said. Now, she can easily drop her baby off at a nearby daycare before popping over to Waring with her children, then heading off to work. But Bache-Martin is too far for younger children to walk to from the family’s home — a problem because Roberts does not always have access to a car.

“They shouldn’t be taking our school away from these children,” she said.

Every Waring parent she has spoken to is upset, Roberts said. She knows the district plans to allow public comment on its plan, and thinks affected families won’t hold back.

“They’re gonna have a lot of parents speaking,” Roberts said. “And I’m gonna be one of them.”

Robert Mack has six children who attend Robert Morris, a K-8 school in North Philadelphia.

Many schools Mack attended as a child have been closed, so he was not completely surprised that Morris was identified for closure. But he worries about the effect the closing will have on the younger children at the school, who are just settling into the rhythms and routines of Morris.

“You’re telling kids who are already not used to school to go to a new environment and just kind of pick up where they might have left off,” he said. “That’s not conducive to a positive learning environment.”

His older children, who are in fourth through eighth grade, have not always had an easy time — often, the teacher they had in the fall left before the spring, and they had to cope with many new teachers or substitutes.

“The kids know they’ll be here longer than their teacher in many cases,” Mack said. “Teachers just pass through, and a lot of kids think that way.”

When Mack was growing up, teachers knew his parents, and they often grew up in the same community as he did, attended the same church. He understands those connections may not still be possible, but said the generational relationships schools used to build produce results.

“Schools have a lot of behavioral issues that I feel as though permanent teachers who have that longevity, of knowing your mom and having been friends with your auntie, add credibility and respect to a teacher’s voice,” Mack said.

Moving more students into existing schools will tax those schools, he said. Will they be overcrowded? Can they guarantee equal or better learning outcomes?

“I think it falls on the school district to pour more resources into teaching staff, because teachers are going to have to wrangle 30 kids in a classroom,” Mack said. “One effort I’d like to see is for the district to identify and vet teachers who want to teach in Philadelphia, in the same schools, for their career.”

Moffet Elementary shows up nowhere on the school closing list.

But parents at Moffet, in Kensington, learned that massive changes are planned for their school, too. Moffet families were told that children in grades K-4 will be shifted to Hackett Elementary. Moffet, now a K-5, will become a 5-8 school. Hackett is now a K-5; it will become a K-4 with a larger catchment.

“Parents are very upset,” said Katy Hoffman-Williamson, mother of a first grader and president of Moffet’s Family School Organization. “Our WhatsApp thread is blowing up.”

Moffet, she said, is “this really special gem of a school in our neighborhood. There’s only two classes per grade, the Family School Organization is super involved, and all the teachers go above and beyond what they’re supposed to do. It’s an incredibly diverse school, a really special place.”

Technically, Hoffman-Williamson’s catchment school is Ludlow, which was tagged for closure. She chose Moffet carefully and doesn’t love the idea of sending her son to a larger school, or having him transition to a new school in third grade, when he will have to start taking state tests.

“If I didn’t find a school like this, I would have moved, and there’s so many families that are like mine,” Hoffman-Williamson said. “Some families might find the transition to middle school easier, but for the most part, we’re really upset.”

Julie McWilliams, an anthropologist of education and codirector of the University of Pennsylvania’s urban studies program, studied past city school closings for her forthcoming book Schools for Sale: Disinvestment, Dispossession, and School Building Reuse in Philadelphia.

McWilliams, who is also a Philadelphia School District parent — her children attend Fanny Jackson Coppin in South Philadelphia — said she was not shocked by the number of school closures, based on history and the district’s messaging this time around.

But she was “horrified” by some of the choices the district made, including closing William T. Tilden Middle School in Southwest Philadelphia. The 5-8 school previously took in students from two schools in Southwest Philly that the district previously closed. And she hopes that the school board listens to the people these decisions will galvanize.

“I’m hoping that this is just a starting point to really tease out which choices here are big mistakes and actually were just thoughtless choices,” McWilliams said. “North Philadelphia got crushed in closings last time. Southwest got crushed. I know that’s where the empty seats are, but they’re going to be creating deserts in neighborhoods that have already suffered.”

Akira Drake Rodriguez, a Penn assistant professor who, with McWilliams, is part of the Stand Up for Philly Schools coalition organizing against closures, was also alarmed by the Tilden closing in particular.

“That whole neighborhood of Southwest Philly is charter schools,” Rodriguez said. “Do you really think they’re going to stay in traditional public schools when you close Tilden?”

She predicted enrollments at some schools marked for closure would plummet as parents face uncertainty around their future.

“The district hasn’t really given people a ton of confidence around managing large-scale modernization efforts,” Rodriguez said.

Edwin Mayorga, a SUPS member, an Academy at Palumbo parent, and an associate professor of educational studies at Swarthmore College, said any school closure is troubling.

“It’s about asking ourselves, ‘What are the conditions that have produced a school that has declining enrollments, or toxic conditions in the facility?’ and trying to start from there,” he said.