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Shortchanged ... on school facilities
About the author
Sarah Mills was an editorial intern at the Notebook this summer.
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After years of organizing, a groundbreaking is near
Tired of seeing their new school delayed, the Willard community turned up the heat
by Sarah Mills
The aging Willard Elementary School had already spent at least seven years on the District’s list of buildings to be replaced by the time the School District launched a $1.5 billion construction program in 2002.
The pace of school construction in the District sped up. But still there was no action at Willard.
Willard might have languished on that list for many years more but for Willard parents’ work with the Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project (EPOP) and the Free Church of St. John’s in Kensington. Now the District is scheduled to break ground on the new, 100,000 square-foot K-8 Willard building early in 2008.
Few schools need new digs more than Willard, which is spread across three structures, one 10 blocks away, to ease overcrowding. The oldest un-remodeled structure in continuous District usage, the main building lacks a library, gym, cafeteria and handicapped access, and it has only one set of bathrooms – in the basement.
“The building is outdated!” said Reverend Donald T. Graff, who has been with the Free Church of St. John’s since 1976 and has worked with EPOP and Willard parents for a new Willard. “How can you teach kids in the 21st century in a building that was made [over 100 years ago]? If it’s not illegal, it should be. I would think it violates all the codes because of its condition.”
Joseph Frometa, a former Willard student who is now a senior at Central High School, said the hardest things about being at Willard were the water fountains that spurted “dirty” water and the ordeal just to use the bathroom. “You had to take a partner to the basement,” he said.
“Also, we didn’t have a gym or a cafeteria, so we were cramped in a small room all day.”
EPOP, formed in 1992 by Kensington church congregations that wanted to improve the community, had connected with Willard parents shortly after its inception. EPOP leaders heard about Willard’s conditions almost immediately from a listening campaign it conducted with parents. According to Graff, EPOP filled the void left by a weak Home and School Association, bringing community members together around the issue.
“We had to find something that was going to get people moving,” said EPOP leader Kathy Cruz. “There’s a lot of issues with this school that have gone unnoticed for a long time. The media just says, ‘Oh, well, no one is getting hurt,’ so you need something to show it’s a hazard.”
That “something” came when, during a routine fire drill, adults had to leave a student with a disability in a fire tower instead of escorting him down four flights of stairs with the other students.
But such stories were old news to Willard parents.
“When my son was there for four years, he needed special education, and where was that provided for him? In the hallway! There is no privacy in that building,” said Carmen Rivera, a former Willard parent and EPOP member who helped lead the campaign for a new building.
Since Willard extends only from grades K-4, there is frequent turnover of concerned parents. But through organizing with Graff’s church, EPOP was able to forge a connection with the school and community that kept some parents connected to the cause.
“Whatever my kids suffered in that school, my ‘revenge’ is to fight for a new school so that the next generation does not have to suffer the same,” said Rivera.
Proponents of a new Willard saw it as no accident that this community has waited since the 1990’s for a new building, whereas a fast-tracked project such as the Microsoft-backed School of the Future was completed barely two years after it was proposed.
District officials maintain that the design for the new Willard had been done during Paul Vallas’ first days, but that it was much-publicized property problems that kept the project at bay. The site chosen for the new Willard was once Franklin Cemetery, then a recreation center, and is now an overgrown lot that had to be acquired from the city. One major complication is that some bodies are still buried there and need to be removed.
But some Willard families maintain that the community’s low-income status caused the project to languish. They point to the fact that Willard’s section of Kensington is divided among several City Council districts and isn’t an important “base” for any one politician. Frometa said, “You rarely see politicians in this area and there aren’t as many votes coming out of it, so [the politicians] overlook it.”
Through community meetings and presentations to the School Reform Commission, EPOP was able to build grassroots political pressure and get the school’s plight in the news.
“Thank God EPOP came along and rescued us. The parents in Willard were not organized, and once EPOP helped us to organize, we started to work together,” said Rivera. “The Vallas administration tried to play a game with us, but finally someone helped to support us.”
Sharon Kelly, a kindergarten teacher at Willard for the past 10 years, hopes a new school will help revitalize the community. “There’s a lack of hope in the community. Having a brand new school where the kids feel welcomed and cared for – as opposed to farmed out as an afterthought through three different buildings – will fix that.”
Frometa’s hope is for the people he remembers from Willard. “I’m so happy that they’re getting a new school because the teachers there really worked hard for it,” he said. “They really deserve it.”