Real estate agents get upbeat tour of city schools

The grand houses of Northwest Philadelphia aren't a tough sell for real estate agents. The schools are another matter.

Lifelong West Mount Airy resident Rich McIlhenny, a RE/MAX real estate agent, had not set foot inside a neighborhood public school until Wednesday, when he and others whose job it is to sell the city toured five of its schools.

The aim was to show that, very real budget crisis aside, the city schools can be a solid option for many families.

"I do a lot of my work in this area, and people are always asking, where are the good catchments?" McIlhenny said outside Emlen Elementary in East Mount Airy.

So McIlhenny and others found themselves in an unusual position: on the receiving end of a series of sales pitches.

Check out Houston Elementary's fully-functioning recording studio. Did you know Lingelbach offers yoga? Emlen sports a brand-new computer lab. J.S. Jenks fields four separate choirs. C.W. Henry has a beautiful playground, and teachers stay at the school for years.

Katey McGrath, operations director for Elfant Wissahickon and parent of two Jenks students, helped run the tour, now in its second year.

"At every school last year, there was shock and awe in every room," McGrath said. "It was like, 'Wow, the ceiling isn't leaking. The heat's on. The kids are smiling and quiet. And wait, you have science? I didn't think you had science anymore.' "

A case in point was McIlhenny, who has lived a few blocks from Houston for decades. He played "epic street hockey" there and taught his children to ride bicycles in its schoolyard.

But Wednesday was his first trip inside. Like many parents in the neighborhood, he pays for private school tuition. McIlhenny's children attend Germantown Friends.

Standing outside an orderly Emlen classroom, McIlhenny nodded approvingly.

"This has exceeded my expectations," he said.

Tyree Gladden, Home and School Association president, understood the skepticism. Gladden, who lives a stone's throw away from Emlen, felt it, too - his oldest attended a charter school for a few years.

"We had a fear of our neighborhood public school," Gladden said. "But now, I think Emlen is the best public school in the Mount Airy area."

Each school rolled out the red carpet for the tour-goers, some of whom rode a yellow school bus from stop to stop. There were goodie bags and pretzel trays, fact sheets and smiling parent ambassadors.

And there were lots of questions.

At Henry, in West Mount Airy, one real estate agent asked if the school offered sports.

"We absolutely do," principal Fatima Rogers said. "Basketball, volleyball, dragon boating, softball, track."

In a lively but orderly kindergarten there, one real estate agent counted heads and asked if one teacher really did have 30 students. "Thirty is a lot," the agent said.

Parent Lynda O'Leary smiled. "But we also have a core group of seasoned teachers," O'Leary said.

Later, leading a group through the halls, O'Leary elaborated:

"It is a public school. If you're looking for a small, self-contained group of everybody like you, this isn't the place. But I love that."

There is no painting over the fact that the district's dismal finances color everything, even in schools that have the plus of strong family involvement and community partnerships. And in many schools, academics suffer.

Lingelbach, for instance, began the school year with a $160 discretionary budget. Emlen, principal Tammy Thomas said, must improve academically.

But get the real estate agents in the door, and the schools begin to sell themselves, believes Abby Thaker of Mount Airy USA, which sponsors the neighborhood schools coalition.

"The budget in particular is a really scary thing," Thaker said. "That's not a misperception. But I don't think people necessarily realize the degree to which school communities are able to make things happen anyway."

As a poised group of fifth graders at Houston Elementary in West Mount Airy explained everything from Greek word roots to what special-admission high schools they'd like to attend, Kristin Stever took it all in.

Stever lives in the suburbs but often shows homes in Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill. She liked what she saw Wednesday.

"Lively and vibrant," Stever pronounced.

That's just what principal Mary Lynskey of Jenks was aiming for.

"I want you to tell everybody you sell a house to that they should come to Jenks," Lynskey told the real estate agents. "That's my goal."