March Newsflash
New struggle for parents: keeping building projects on track
Waiting in bitter cold temperatures on a street corner in the Haddington section of West Philadelphia, a crowd of elementary school students from Commodore John Barry School prepares to board a school bus to North Philadelphia.
Ever since a December 2003 boiler "implosion" at Barry's neighborhood site at 59th and Race Streets forced the closing of the school, Barry students have been making the ten-mile roundtrip by bus each day to the former Walton School, the school's interim home at 28th and Huntingdon Streets.
This was supposed to be the last winter Barry students would be bused to a school outside their neighborhood. The Barry School reconstruction project has been written into the District's sweeping capital program for school construction and renovation since May 2003, months before the school was closed. But District officials maintain that deciding where to build the new Barry took longer than expected, and so projected opening of the $30.2 million new building has slid back from September 2006 to September 2008 at the earliest.
That means two additional years of busing the school's 600 students to and from Walton - a 105-year-old District building originally intended to serve just 300 kids - at an annual price tag of $500,000.
Barry parent Taneaka Alston said she is not pleased about waiting until September 2008 for a new school building.
"Somebody is always getting hurt on the bus," said Alston. "It would be better if they could just go right there to Barry rather than catching the bus to North Philly."
Alston's daughter Naja - a Barry second grader - said she doesn't feel safe riding the bus to Walton, noting that last week one student on her bus came home with "a fat lip."
"They be hollering, screaming, and fighting," Naja said.
Alston said she has told the Barry principal about her concerns more than once, but nothing has changed.
"She said she can't do nothing about it," Alston said.
Latrese Pickett walks her younger sister Joyce - a Barry second grader - to meet the bus each morning near their home. Pickett said her family is requesting a transfer to another school rather than wait two more years for the new building.
"The buses don't come on time and the kids are late to school," said Pickett. "I'm upset with the whole situation."
The new Barry will be constructed on the same 59th & Race site as the recently demolished school and is projected to be a multi-use facility open to the community and serving 650 students in 38 classrooms.
Capital Programs Director Pat Henwood said he regretted the delay. In an initial interview, he told the Notebook the Barry project was slated for opening in September 2009, but in follow-up conversations he called the new Barry building "a fast-track project" whose design phase would be completed in an unusually quick eight- to nine-month period once architects are secured in early March.
Asked if he was hopeful the District would meet the new September 2008 deadline for Barry, Henwood said: "We need to move this along very quickly if we're going to make the September 2008 date… We'll give it our best effort."
District officials first informed Barry School principal Darlene Beasley that the planned completion date is still more than two years away during a February interview for this article.
Asked if she was disappointed in the pushback, Beasley responded: "Of course we want to get back home, but we have to go with the flow."
School Reform Commission member Sandra Dungee Glenn - a Barry graduate - emphasized the need for capital projects to progress in a timely fashion.
"We should be very aggressively trying
to keep our capital projects on track,"
said Dungee Glenn, who added that delays
beyond 2008 "would not serve the interests
of the students well."
Citywide frustration with building
delays
The new construction delay at
Barry reflects a pattern among building
projects under the capital plan that has
led to complaints from parents.
Noting "a lot of dissent" from Barry parents, citywide Home and School Council President Patricia Raymond said the relatively slow pace of the capital plan frustrates parents across the District.
"Everywhere we go, we get parents who are upset about the capital plan," said Raymond.
District officials point out that since the $1.8 billion capital plan was launched in 2003, more than 120 projects have been brought to completion - a figure that conveys the massive scale of the construction program. Yet many of these have been small projects like bathroom modernizations and boiler or roof replacements. The total spending on completed projects since 2003 amounts to $151 million, less than one-tenth of the funds allocated for the five-year capital program, according to a District report. Another $324 million in projects are under construction, and projects totaling $1 billion are categorized as in design.
Parents and community members at the antiquated Willard School in Kensington - another K-8 school scheduled to receive a new building that has experienced years of construction delays - say parent organizing efforts are putting necessary pressure on the District to move that project forward. A parent action at a nearby church in December organized by the Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project (EPOP) drew a packed house and extensive media coverage.
A group of Willard parents met with School District CEO Paul Vallas on February 23 asking the District to commit to build the new Willard at the Franklin Recreation Center site, which is near the existing school. Vallas pledged to resolve the site issue within two weeks after an environmental assessment of the potential site was completed.
Carmen Rivera, a Willard parent leader with EPOP said she and other parents are also meeting with officials from the city - which owns the land where parents want the new Willard built - to move the project along.
Rivera said that despite challenges in the fight to get Willard built, she is optimistic about the new school.
"Parents have power. We can take action,"
she said.
Consequences at Barry
District officials acknowledge that the
relocation of Barry and subsequent wait
for reconstruction has been a setback
for both the educational program at the
school and its engagement with parents
and the community surrounding the original
school site.
District Chief Academic Officer Gregory Thornton called the Barry relocation "a mixed bag," citing uneven academic performance among the upper and lower grades, and an increase in suspensions paired with a decrease in serious incidents. Daily student attendance has increased by 3 percent over last year's 85 percent, according to District data.
The challenges associated with the relocation of Barry are amplified by the fact that Barry is one of 11"underperforming schools" in the District's newly formed "CEO Region." These schools were targeted last spring by the School District for tailored intervention plans to boost student achievement.
Since the relocation of Barry, teacher turnover has been high. Forty percent of the school's 35 teachers were new to Barry this academic year. Just a handful of the veteran teachers who were at the original school site remain on the current teaching staff, with some current staff members threatening to transfer at the end of this year.
Teachers were given the option to transfer both when the school relocation was announced in 2004 and when Barry became part of the CEO Region in 2005, Beasley explained.
Starting next school year, Thornton - who is a graduate of Barry School - said he hopes to improve academic performance and school climate by reducing the number of students attending Walton. To do this, some of the grades would be housed at a smaller location near the original Barry site.
Thornton added that his office is looking at offering extended day programs at community sites in Haddington rather than keeping students after school in North Philadelphia. Since students are bused outside of their neighborhood, attendance at the Walton site's afterschool "Power Hour" homework club has suffered. Extracurricular activities are not currently offered for students.
"It's never a good situation when you have to bus people out of their neighborhood," said Bill Montgomery, acting director of grade and space planning for the District. He maintained that Walton was "the most readily available" option for relocating Barry back in January 2004.
School secretary Alfreda Moore - who has been at Barry for 19 years - laments the effect of the relocation on the school's relationship with its community.
"It's upsetting because you don't have that village. How can they expect us to be accountable when we don't have the same tools?" said Moore, who is also Barry's Philadelphia Federation of Teachers building representative.
"We need to be in that [new] building. It's supposed to be a neighborhood school," Moore said.
Thornton added: "It really hurts parent involvement, which is a major concern."
Facilities improvements to ease overcrowding and fix recurring telephone and electric wiring problems at Walton are in process, but have not yet been completed.
The Walton building - constructed in
1901 - was closed due to a fire in the
late 1990s. After $2 million in renovations
covered by insurance, the school was later
reopened. It was closed again in 2002
due to insufficient enrollment.
Community wants information
Some community members charge that the
District has not done enough to inform
parents and community members about the
unfolding of the Barry reconstruction
plan.
Dr. Albert Campbell - pastor of the Mount Carmel Baptist Church located two blocks from Barry - said he was disappointed in the delay in rebuilding Barry.
"It always seems that if we are going to be informed, we have to take the initiative to come to the School District," said Campbell, whose church has had a close relationship with Barry for years. "They ought to be concerned enough to let us know."
Henwood said once architects are selected and the design phase is underway, school planning team and community meetings with the architects and building project manager would likely take place in late March or early April.
"We've gotten off to a slow start, but we are running at full steam. We are pushing projects as quickly as we can push them to serve the students of Philadelphia," Henwood stated.
Ultimately, said Moore, the fight to get a new Barry built in a timely manner is about the students.
"The children are the ones who are being affected," said Moore.
Beandrea Davis is a writer based in West Philadelphia. Reach her at beandrea@alumni.upenn.edu. Contact the Notebook at 215-951-0330 x107 or notebook@thenotebook.org.