Teacher-prep high school to open in Kensington

A new small high school devoted to preparing would-be teachers to work in Philadelphia will open in Kensington next fall, district officials confirmed yesterday.

Tomas Hanna, chief of staff for Philadelphia School District Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, said an urban-education academy would open as the fourth building in the Kensington High complex at 2051 E. Cumberland St. The school, he said, will help the district build a pipeline of teachers of color and bilingual teachers, two areas of need for city schools.

In September 2005, the old Kensington High, a school of about 1,400 students, was broken up into three schools, each with about 500 students and its own theme: culinary arts, business, and creative and performing arts. The urban-education school will be in space used by the creative and performing arts students, who will get a new building in September.

Hanna said a principal would be hired next semester so he or she could have time to plan, select staff, and work with the community.

Despite publicly sharing her distaste for the small-school building boom that took place in Philadelphia in the years before she came to the district in 2008, Ackerman told the School Reform Commission yesterday that the new academy fit with Imagine 2014, her five-year strategic plan, which called for a new school to prepare teachers for city classrooms.

The announcement made it a banner day for Youth United for Change, the student activist group that has long pushed for the Kensington school. Yesterday, dozens of members thanked the commission and district officials for keeping a promise first made in 2003 by then-schools chief Paul Vallas.

Saeda Washington, a 2008 graduate of Kensington Business High School, said that as a freshman at the old Kensington High, she had coped with "a bunch of fights every day. It wasn't a place you wanted to be."

Washington, a Youth United for Change member and now a business major at Pennsylvania State University, said she worried at times that the new school might never be built.

"But it's a necessity for the community," she said.

Ashley Rowell, a senior at Kensington Creative and Performing Arts High School, gave kudos to Hanna and Ackerman for giving future students more career choices, but she urged the district to keep the community in the loop.

"How would anyone know what is going on in the schools if they don't ask the people who are sitting in the classrooms every day, the parents whose kids attend the school, and the community who has the history with Kensington?" Rowell asked.

Hanna, a former principal of the large Kensington High, said the community's participation would be crucial.

"Honoring our commitment is really important," Hanna said. "This is a validation of the voices of young people."

The commission also heard from a group of students working for two months on a campaign to combat truancy. Last year, truancies averaged 11,000 a day.

The "Tackle Truancy" campaign, to which the commission awarded a budget of $50,000 through the end of June, plans to use a Web site, public-service announcements, ads, a "truancy march," mentorship program, and a documentary to boost student attendance.

To committee member Ryan Jordan, 19, the work feels very personal. He dropped out of the district after he fell in with the wrong crowd.

"I would miss a day, start cutting, miss a lot," said Jordan, who started at Frankford High, then got transferred to a disciplinary school. This fall, he's back in school, and determined to make sure what happened to him doesn't happen to others.

"Truancy must be stopped - as of today," said Jordan.

After its regular meeting, the commission held a sparsely attended hearing on its amended 2009-10 budget. Chief business officer Michael Masch reiterated what the district would do to trim spending from its $3.2 billion budget.

The budget the district first adopted planned for $180 million more in state aid than Philadelphia received. To fill the gap, the district will trim central administration budgets by 3 percent and school budgets by just under 1 percent, among other cuts.

It will also spend less money on Ackerman's strategic plan, holding off business system upgrades, an additional student reengagement center, and other initiatives.