September Newsflash
Questions raised about decision to close Wanamaker
Members of the John Wanamaker school community in North Philadelphia are expressing concerns about the abrupt announcement, made just before the school year’s end last June, that the District would permanently close the school at the end of the 2004-05 school year.
Wanamaker had been scheduled to drop seventh grade and serve grades 8-10 this fall as part of the process of being converted to a small high school under the leadership of its school manager, Temple University.
But due to the closing, 250 students in grades 7-9 transferred out and the school will serve only about 85 eighth graders when school opens.
Although District officials met with members of the school community to discuss the decision to close the school, public hearings were not held to enable community participation in the decision. Both District and Temple officials say the final decision to close the school was made by the District.
“It’s a disappointment not to be creating a high school, but it gives us a clear focus for our work in the next few years, which is to build a network of really great K-8 schools,” said John DiPaolo, Temple’s executive director for partnership schools.
Elverson, the other middle school in the North Philadelphia neighborhood surrounding Temple, is also scheduled to close at the end of the upcoming school year. District CEO Paul Vallas said K-8 conversions of the neighborhood’s elementary schools eliminated the need for middle schools in the Temple area.
Vallas said Wanamaker was already “seriously underpopulated” prior to the decision to close the school and it didn’t make sense to spend an estimated $16 million needed to fix the building’s extensive structural problems.
“There’s not the population to support another high school in the area. You’re just not going to open the building for the sake of having the building open,” Vallas said at a July 21 press briefing.
Vallas dismissed speculation that a deal was involved for the Wanamaker property, which directly adjoins the Temple campus.
“There’s no real estate deals in the works. We haven’t promised Temple the Wanamaker property,” he said.
Teachers interviewed by the Notebook said Wanamaker staff first got wind of the school’s closure on a local radio show when District CEO Paul Vallas confirmed rumors of the closing for a caller. School staff then initiated a meeting that took place with representatives from the District’s high school office, Temple, and the teachers’ union, where the District officially revealed that the school would close.
“I didn’t like the way [the District] went about it. It was very disrespectful,” said Rosaline Morgan, a physical education teacher at Wanamaker for 33 years. “I don’t think it was fair to our kids.” Morgan said she wondered why a new Wanamaker couldn’t be built.
Home and School Council President Patricia Raymond said parents also raised concerns about the timing of the announcement to close Wanamaker.
Announcing Wanamaker’s closure in June meant that students missed the crucial fall deadlines for choosing high schools – including applying to selective admission schools – and teachers missed the spring deadline to apply for voluntary transfers to teach in other schools.
Despite Wanamaker’s closing, Morgan said the three eighth grade teachers who will remain in the school this year have already met to create a plan for increasing student achievement in the upcoming year.
“We want to make sure that these kids get everything they possibly can to be academically ready to go onto high school,” said Morgan. “We want to do the best that we can for the kids.”