OUT & ABOUT: The Number 37

BY DENISE CLAY/ Let’s start this column out with a number: 37.

Thirty-seven is the number of schools the School District of Philadelphia announced it would shut down in a press conference last Thursday. New Superintendent William Hite told reporters the reasons for the shutdowns were primarily financial. It makes no sense to keep schools open that are underutilized (read: mostly empty…) and in many cases too old to fix up without considerable expense.

Now, I think I should explain here why building maintenance and how much it costs is an issue here. It’s because of how the State looks at it.

If a School District builds a new school, it gets reimbursed for most if not all of that money through a funding formula. If you need to repair your building, you can get some money back if the building isn’t too old. Most of the district’s buildings are pushing 100 years old. See the problem?

But while building age and occupancy are issues, they’re not as big an issue to parents as what happens to the programs being displaced by the move. For example, will the kids from Bok Technical HS be able to get what they need at South Philadelphia HS?

And what about safety? Some of these kids have been traditionally been kept apart for a reason. Will the gang fights that students have in their neighborhoods find themselves in the classroom?

These are some of the issues that come up at parent meetings like the one I’m going to at the Martin Luther King HS tonight at 6. I wanted to go to this one because of another number: 18.

That’s the number of schools closing in North Philadelphia. As in, a large chunk of the district’s schools in that section of the city. Stay tuned.

I leave you today with an invitation to check out the National Alliance of Women Veterans potluck at the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce today. Admission is $5 or a donated women’s feminine-hygiene product that will go to women serving in Afghanistan. For more information or to donate, go to www.nawvphilly.webs.com.

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