The Philadelphia school board is set to vote Thursday on the future of its 200 school buildings — including a proposal to close 17 schools.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that School Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. has announced a revised version of his facilities plan, which calls for 169 schools to be modernized and 17 schools to be closed.
The price tag for the plan has risen to $3 billion, instead of $2.8 billion, over a decade. The district says it will cover $1 billion of the bill itself, with capital funds, and is asking for $2 billion from state and philanthropic sources that have not been identified and are not assured.
if the plan is approved by the board, none of the targeted schools would close until 2027.
Watlington presented the first iteration of his facilities blueprint in January; it called for 20 closures. Two schools — Conwell Middle School and Motivation High — were removed from the list in February. Ludlow Elementary was dropped from the closure list in the most recent update.
School board president Reginald Streater says that any plan the board adopts may shift as conditions change. And the scheduled board vote will not actually trigger closures, which are governed by state education code and require separate closing hearings.
The district now has about 70,000 empty seats in its school buildings across the city. It once enrolled about 200,000 students and now has about 114,000
