Philadelphia’s teachers’ union said Wednesday that the 17 schools the district plans to close should be repaired instead, and put a price on the first year: $25 million. The schools it wants to save enroll a student body that is about 68% Black, against 40% in the rest of the district, according to an analysis by The Philadelphia Inquirer of the original closure list.
Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, pitched the plan as a signal to families. “By utilizing our plan right now, it will give families a clear indication that the facilities are going to improve,” he said, as Chalkbeat Philadelphia reported.
The Board of Education approved the district’s facilities plan 6 to 3 on April 30. It spends $3 billion over a decade to modernize 169 campuses and closes 17 schools, 12 of them in North Philadelphia and Kensington and five in West Philadelphia. The district has committed $1.1 billion and is looking to public and philanthropic sources for the other $1.9 billion. The closures begin in 2027.
The Inquirer’s analysis found that of the district’s schools where at least 90% of students are Black, more than half are set to close or to take in students from a closure. Across the 75 schools touched by the plan through closures, mergers or changes, 54% of students are Black. “It’s not fair. They’re hurting Black kids more,” Nysheera Roberts, whose children attend Waring Elementary, one of the schools on the list, told the paper.
Black Philadelphia has seen this before. When the state-run school commission shut 23 schools in 2013, Black students were about 58% of the district but 81% of the students affected, according to reporting at the time. Steinberg said before the April vote that it was his “gravest fear” that the new closures would “spur a similar spiral” to 2013.
The district’s case is not frivolous. Enrollment stood at 198,405 in 2025-26, and the district lost 15,546 students between 2014-15 and 2024-25 while cyber charter enrollment grew by more than 2,500%. Some buildings run at half capacity, and many have failing plumbing, asbestos and lead paint. Superintendent Tony Watlington has called the plan “an academic strategy” and said every student, “regardless of zip code,” deserves the programs and buildings they need.
But the district’s answer to empty buildings falls hardest on the neighborhoods that were already emptied once. And the union’s plan has gaps of its own: it prices only the first year, and the district needs $1.9 billion from sources it has not yet secured. Mayor Cherelle Parker, who appointed the board members, has stayed publicly quiet.
The district’s school selection process has a Nov. 24 deadline. With Democrats now holding all of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s schools have a better shot at repair money in 2027 than they have had in years. Philadelphia should spend that money on the buildings Black children are sitting in now, before it closes them.
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