Philadelphia’s derelict school buildings reflect the abandonment of its neighborhoods
City’s derelict school buildings reflect the abandonment of its people.
On Saturday, Oct. 18, the body of Kada Scott, a missing 23-year-old Mount Airy woman, was found in a shallow grave outside the long-abandoned Ada H.H. Lewis Middle School in Germantown.
For nearly two decades, that building has stood empty: a shell of what once was a center of safety, learning, and community. Now it stands as a haunting symbol of what happens when a city abandons its people.
As a teacher in this district and a mother raising my family in this neighborhood, I am sickened by how normal this has become: schools closed, windows boarded up, playgrounds overgrown, buildings collecting dust while the city pretends there’s no money to care for them.
This is not just a story about one building. This is a pattern of neglect that has stripped Black and working-class communities across Philadelphia of their public spaces, their stability, and their hope.
When Ada Lewis closed in 2008, it became part of a wave of school shutdowns that hit Philadelphia’s Black and working-class neighborhoods hardest. Over the next several years, dozens more schools across the city were shuttered in the name of efficiency and reform.
Fabric of community threatened
The reality was disinvestment. Every closure was another thread pulled from the fabric of our community; another after-school program gone, another safe space for children lost, another place of pride left to rot.
These buildings could be community centers. They could be affordable housing. They could be neighborhood hubs for families, the arts, and youth development. Instead, they sit empty year after year, falling apart in plain sight, while our leaders look away.
This is not inevitable. It’s a choice.
When we fail to care for our public spaces, we fail to care for the communities that depend on them.
Philadelphia’s abandoned schools tell us everything we need to know about our city’s priorities. We find money for luxury developments, tax breaks for corporations, and new stadiums, but somehow never for the schools where our children learn or the neighborhoods where they live. We are told to be patient, to understand “budget constraints,” to accept the slow decay of our public institutions as if it were a natural disaster instead of a policy decision.
Disinvestment is not just economic violence but moral violence. When a school is left to crumble, it sends a message: that the children who once filled those halls do not matter, that their futures are negotiable, that their safety is expendable.
Neglect creates danger
The tragedy outside Ada Lewis is a painful reminder of what happens when a city stops caring for its people. Neglect creates danger. Abandonment breeds despair. When we fail to care for our public spaces, we fail to care for the communities that depend on them.
It is time for Philadelphia to face this truth.
We need a bold, public commitment to reinvest in our neighborhoods. We need to invest in our schools, repurpose abandoned buildings, and return resources to the communities that have borne the brunt of austerity for far too long.
We cannot keep walking past vacant schools as if they are relics of a past we can’t fix.
They are mirrors, reflecting the choices we continue to make.
Kristen Peeples is a Germantown resident, a teacher in the Philadelphia School District, and a Teach Plus PA policy fellow focused on education initiatives.