Math, Memory, and Mistrust: Insights on Philly’s 17 school closures

Last week, schools across Philadelphia celebrated the opening of the 2026-207 school year; for some, this may be their last. On April 30, the Philadelphia Board of Education voted 6-3 to approve Superintendent Tony Watlington’s $3 billion “Accelerating Opportunity” facilities plan – a decade-long blueprint that closes 17 schools starting in the 2027-2028 academic year and modernizes 169 others. The board arrived at the vote after months of public hearings, City Council pushback, and community organizing that shrank the original list of 20 closures to 17.

While the vote finalized the number, it didn’t settle the question on everyone’s mind: How will students, families, and community be impacted, and do they have a say?

Generocity took that question to local leaders and community members; what we heard is a story about math, memory, and mistrust – and about what “community input” is supposed to mean when the decision arrives before the process ends.

“That’s such a long, long, arduous journey that we’ve gotten here,” says Reginald Streater, president of the Philadelphia Board of Education. “Some might say it’s 208 years in the making with the school district that has historically been underfunded, undervalued as a public good.”

His numbers are the argument. The district is carrying roughly $7 billion in deferred maintenance and replacement costs – a figure he notes is in dollars from four or five years ago, unadjusted for inflation. It runs a $300 million structural deficit inside a $5.4 billion operating budget, which he estimates is $1.2 billion underfunded every single year. Fifty-two schools have no air conditioning. Some buildings hold 100 students in spaces designed for 1,200 to 1,500.

“I know that the district really thought about equity, and I’m going to keep it real with you,” Streater said. “There could have been 40 closures — 40 school closures – but we thought, and I think the superintendent thought, is there a way to address the issue without having the unintended consequences of what 40 closures could have been, that we could have defended as well?”

The plan the board approved is what he calls the compromise version. It closes fewer schools, invests more in existing buildings, and – the board says – begins fixing a facilities footprint the district cannot afford to keep running as is.

“No one ever wants to close a school,” Streater said. “It’s hard for people to say, you know what, I support the district’s plan, it makes sense, we’re really doing the best we can with what we have.”

Councilman Isaiah Thomas has been in the room for every version of this fight. He is a former teacher, chairs the Education Committee, and says he’s been through this movie before.

“It’s important for people to recognize that a lot of us who are born and raised in the city of Philadelphia, we’ve been through this before,” Thomas said. “We’ve seen this episode. We know how the story ends.”

His frustration is not primarily with the total. It’s with the logic behind which specific schools ended up on the list.

“We started with a plan that was closing 20 schools, and then some schools you’ll say, okay, well, maybe certain schools do need to close,” he said. “But… the logic behind some schools just doesn’t make sense. And the idea of displacing young people who go to schools that work already, that don’t have some of the issues that some of the other buildings or some of the enrollment issues have presented themselves with, is just really frustrating.”

Thomas said City Council has repeatedly asked the school board to return to the table and negotiate a compromise below 17. “They’ve refused to,” he said.

His public position is clear.

“Right now I’m focused on Plan A,” he said. “There is no Plan B. Plan A is to not close 17 schools. We can think about what transitions look like. We can maybe settle on a different number of schools. But there is no Plan B.”

Generocity spoke with local educators and staff members.

An educator at Penn Treaty – one of the schools set to phase out beginning in 2027-2028 noted how active their school community was. Parents and staff started petitions. Students spoke at public hearings. Neighbors turned out. In the end, the decision felt like it had already been made before anyone shared anything with the community.

A charter staff member echoed that sentiment. Staff input, they said, didn’t feel like it influenced the final decision. They shared concerns such as longer commutes for displaced students, transportation logistics that don’t yet exist on paper, school safety along new routes, and – most pressing – whether the schools receiving those students will actually be able to meet their academic, emotional, and special education needs.

Those worries may not be abstract. Under Pennsylvania school code, every individual school closure still requires its own formal hearing before the doors can close. However, the board’s April 30 resolution set the direction of travel, and families now describe planning their next few years around a decision they say they never actually got to shape.

“We learned from the mistakes of 2013, I believe, where we didn’t think about the facilities transition process,” Streater said. “Around, how do we protect students, and how do we ensure learning can not only be better for those students, but the students writ large?”

That is why, he said, the plan is structured across multiple phases rather than as a single vote – and why the board is now standing up transition committees for the roughly 50 schools that will be closing, phasing out, or receiving displaced students starting in 2027-2028.

“We’re going to continue being transparent,” Streater said. “This is the transition year. We said it’s coming, and now we’re begging people – please apply to be on the transition committees, because there’s nothing for us without us. And that’s why the plan looks the way it looks. Also, it’s not fully baked, because I believe if it was fully baked, people might have been saying, you guys are disingenuous, you already have it all figured out. That’s not what the plan is.”

Streater’s framing is that the board has been signaling this outcome for years – through op-eds, biannual City Council hearings, and public resolutions written for public comment. “We have screamed from the rooftops,” he said, “that we have $7 billion of deferred replacement costs due to historic underfunding, and if we don’t do something about this, we’re going to have issues. And this board will not kick the can down the road.”

The gap between the board and its critics is not really a gap about numbers. Streater and Thomas agree the district is underfunded. They agree buildings are failing. They agree 2013 left scars.

The gap is about who has the standing to make the call – and about whether a process that ends in the outcome the district proposed months earlier can honestly be called a community process.

Two things appear to be true at once. The district’s fiscal condition is real, and the timeline for acting on it is not infinite. And the community influence over which specific 17 schools ended up on this list has been, by the accounts of the people organizing against it, limited.

The transition committees Streater is recruiting for are the board’s answer to the second half of that equation. Whether they function as real decision-making bodies – with authority over receiving-school readiness, transportation planning, safety, and special education continuity – or as consultation venues for a plan already in motion will decide whether “nothing for us without us” is a governing principle or a slogan.

Thomas, for his part, isn’t waiting to find out.

“The advocacy is going to continue,” he said. “I can tell you that.”