Which city public schools are recommended for closure? Which communities could receive new buildings or move to other school buildings with lots of additional space?

Philadelphia School District officials said they would finalize a preliminary plan next October, then hold public hearings and submit a final plan in December 2025. There will also be updates in January, May and August.

“This is an aggressive timeline,” said Oz Hill, interim deputy director of facilities, who said similar trials in Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis took place in 18 to 24 months. “What we do and what they haven’t done well is the data and community engagement.”

” READ MORE: Philly is beginning a process that will likely result in the closure of schools and new buildings. Here's what you should know:

That timeline — previously unclear — was revealed at the first public hearing on a building planning process that will dramatically transform the nation's eighth-largest school system, with 64,000 vacant seats in district schools and 6,000 unused seats in charter schools than neighborhood schools in district buildings.

As the Philadelphia School District officially launched its community listening sessions Monday night at a healthcare facility in Northeast Philadelphia, Hill said he understands the city still bears scars from 2012 and 2013, when the district closed 30 schools to save money .

This process is deeply flawed, Hill said.

“While we saved $24 million annually, the performance of students who were transferred to another school and the students who absorbed those displaced students suffered,” Hill said. “This turmoil, this instability that has accompanied this move, and the way we have carried out this process has not resulted in the academic performance improvement and success desired.”

In addition to school closures, new construction and consolidations are also possible, Hill said, but promised that district officials have no preconceived ideas about which schools might be targeted. The county has an estimated $8 billion in unmet facility needs. The average age of the 216 schools is 73 years.

“This is not a political decision we are making,” Hill said. “This is a data-driven process.”

If schools close, Hill suggests that the district's first choice would be to “repurpose these buildings for uses that benefit the community” – health clinics, food co-ops, or even teacher housing – rather than selling them “for pennies.” sell”. Dollar.”

Germantown High, for example, was closed in 2012 by the old School Reform Commission. The huge, once magnificent building fell into disrepair for almost ten years before being sold to a developer.

“It’s about improving student achievement and also improving our community through the use of facilities,” Hill said.

On the academic side, the cost of several small schools or schools with hundreds of empty seats is an unequal distribution of preschool programs, elementary school playgrounds and secondary courses.

Consider the hypothesis that one school has enough students to offer Advanced Placement courses and another school is understaffed and under-enrolled. The second school cannot offer AP courses.

“By figuring out how to make our use more efficient, the goal will be to ensure that every student has access to that teacher with advanced courses,” Hill said.

Officials emphasized the importance of community engagement and feedback from parents, students and staff, but only five members of the public showed up for Monday's pre-Election Day meeting – three parents and two students.

The district has scheduled a few dozen more listening and learning sessions, some in person and some virtual. Hill also asked people to raise their hands to join advisory groups that will meet between January and May to help study county conditions and provide feedback that will shape the plan.

Applications for these advisory groups will open on November 13th.

Melanie Silva will be watching the process closely. Her daughter attends Rhawnhurst Elementary, a school that was recently awarded the prestigious National Blue Ribbon by the U.S. Department of Education.

But Silva attended the meeting because she is concerned about conditions at the Rhawnhurst building, which was promised a major upgrade but now appears to have stalled, and even school staff have no information about what is happening. she said.

Meanwhile, the school had to be evacuated several times last year due to concerns about a gas leak, she said.

And while some schools in the district have hundreds of empty spaces, Rhawnhurst, like many schools in the Northeast, is bursting at the seams, with a classroom in a trailer and more students in an addition that was supposed to be replaced. There are 39 children in each of the three second grade classes, with a fourth teacher vacant between all three as there is no space for an additional classroom.

“Thirty-nine is just absurd,” Silva said, adding that students in the school’s English Language Learner program have to sit on the hallway floor because there is no other place for them. “Occupancy is definitely an issue.”

Silva also asked district staff to consider their own experiences as a district student; She graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts in 2002, shortly after it moved to its current building, a large building on South Broad Street. Learning in a building with state-of-the-art facilities is magical, she said.

“We didn’t want to leave this place, and this building had a lot to do with it,” Silva said — a far cry from “where my daughter is in Rhawnhurst.”

Horace Clouden, a former district civil engineer and longtime community activist, said the district needs to address West Philadelphia's “educational deserts” and the school system's overall failure to educate black children well. Clouden believes the district should bring back middle schools.

“It doesn’t work for at least 80% of these K-8s,” Clouden said.

Lisa Haver, a retired district teacher and founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, vividly remembers hearing students, parents and community members cry when the district closed its schools a decade ago.

“If you say this isn’t political, I have to disagree,” Haver said. “This is definitely a political process.”