When the school board votes on Thursday, it must save Lankenau
It makes no sense to close the only environmental magnet school in the city — which operates with a 100% graduation rate — where students learn with forests, fields and nature outside their door.
The School District of Philadelphia announced a new plan on Monday for the future of Roxborough’s Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School — just three days before the school board votes on Thursday.
The school district’s latest idea is to close Lankenau, send its students to WB Saul High School in 2027, and to turn the school’s 17-acre property and its 6,000-square-foot school building into an environmental education center for the school district.
Superintendent Tony Watlington says the plan will save money. But caring for and operating the site as an environmental center, and busing students to the site, will cost the district money, not save it.
How do I know this? Because I run the 365-acre Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education — the largest privately held natural area in Philadelphia, which also happens to be directly adjacent to Lankenau High School.
In fact, the Center sold the property to Lankenau for its school in 1973. Given the Center’s mission of education and stewardship, a deed restriction was built into that sale, limiting the use of that property to environmental education, and stipulating that the Schuylkill Center has the right to buy the property back, at a discount, if the property is ever put up for sale.
Thousands of students come to our Center on field trips each year to learn about the environment. Most of those visitors are from schools where a large percentage of the students live in poverty. About 50 children attend our nature preschool each day, and 1,100 children attend our summer camp in nature. Adults come for a variety of programs, and our wildlife clinic treats 3,000 wild animals every year.
There is no need to create an environmental education center where one already exists. It is like building a Giant next to an Acme. Or a Sheetz next to a Wawa. Or, like they used to say back in the day, putting a Macy’s next to a Gimbel’s.
Lankenau students benefit from their school remaining where it is. Taking the environment away from an environmental school simply makes no sense. Moving students to Saul, an agricultural school on a farm site, is not the same.
The immersive high school education that Lankenau provides in environmental science, hands-on learning, stewardship, technology, and the green economy make it truly singular in our school district. It makes no sense to close the only environmental magnet school in the city — which operates with a 100% graduation rate — where students learn in the environment, with forests, fields and nature just outside the front door.
The superintendent says the school is closing because of underenrollment — but this is a self-created problem. The district can solve it by opening enrollment in this high-performing and award-winning magnet school to more students.
The students at Lankenau are thriving with nature as one of their teachers. And they have been united in their plea to keep their school open.
I urge the school board to listen to them and the voices of their community, and to conserve what is precious and cannot be replaced.
Save Lankenau High School.
Erin Mooney is the executive director of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education.