Sharp-eyed worker discovers Solis-Cohen Elementary is crumbling

Hundreds of students who attend Solis-Cohen Elementary in the Northeast will not be able to start their school year on time due to serious structural problems at the building.

The building at 7001 Horrocks St. was recently discovered to be structurally unsound, Philadelphia School District spokesman Fernando Gallard confirmed.

The emergency repairs are part of an ongoing problem in the city school system, where many of the 200-plus buildings are old and in poor condition.

One district estimate put the unmet capital needs of the system at $4 billion.

Solis-Cohen's emergency repairs will require first- through fourth-grade students to delay the start of their school year until Sept. 16.

Other district students will begin Tuesday.

The school's kindergartners will start school on time - Sept. 17, as all city kindergartners will - and will attend school as scheduled in the early childhood annex, a separate building on the school's grounds.

Fifth and sixth graders will also begin the year on time, but will be relocated to Wilson Middle School, a short distance away on Cottman Avenue. Busing will be available for those who need it.

The fifth and sixth graders will remain at Wilson all year, but some structural fixes will be finished in time to safely house the second through fourth graders in part of the building.

The Solis-Cohen students who will be moved to Wilson will keep their regular teachers, and some administrators from the elementary school will be on site.

The original part of Solis-Cohen was built in 1948, and is where the major problems are.

Additions built in the 1950s and 1960s, once shored up, will be safe for occupancy by Sept. 16, Gallard said. The early childhood structure was built recently and is unaffected by the problems.

First graders will be shifted to the early-childhood annex, and second through fourth graders will attend classes in the additions.

The structural issues were discovered accidentally, by a sharp-eyed district employee who informed other district staff they ought to look under the building.

"Someone got in the crawl space and very quickly saw that there was something definitely going on with the support structure of the building - it was crumbling," said Gallard.

After a full inspection was performed, staff began to put a plan in place.

Teachers were told of the structural issues Wednesday, as they reported to their first official day of work of the school year.

Teachers' union staffer Joan McGowan, who represents the Solis-Cohen and Wilson staffs, was present as district officials helped break the news to the teachers.

Staff, many of whom had spent part of the last two weeks setting up classrooms in areas now known to be unsafe, were told they would not have access to those rooms. Movers have already begun packing up affected classes, McGowan said.

"Everyone was in shock," said McGowan. "It was a lot to absorb. But they were troupers - their main focus was the kids."

The emergency work also means changes for teachers at Wilson.

Some will need to be relocated before the end of the week to keep the Solis-Cohen staff together.

It's not clear whether the Solis-Cohen building will need to be replaced. The district had already planned on performing about $6 million of capital improvements at Solis-Cohen, including window and roof replacement, Gallard said.

Solis-Cohen is one of the district's largest elementary schools, with 1,300 students.

Parent meetings will be held Thursday and Friday at 6 p.m. at Wilson to explain the situation to families. Arthur Steinberg, head of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers Health and Welfare Fund, which monitors building conditions, said that Solis-Cohen had not been on his radar as having particularly problematic building infrastructure.

"To me, it's just another example of the awful conditions which exist in our schools," said Steinberg.

215-854-5146@newskag

www.philly.com/schoolfiles