Photo via schoolclosingcollective.tumblr.com.

Thankfully a lot of artists were around over the spring and summer to document the closure of Philadelphia public schools and the devastating blow those closings dealt to students, parents, teachers and neighborhoods across the city.

This Wednesday, Oct. 16, you can see the work of the Philadelphia School Closing Photo Collective up close and personal at the Scribe Video Center (4212 Chestnut St., 3rd floor) beginning at 6 p.m. The exhibit, which is free and open to the public, will feature about 50 images from schools around the city.

Also on Wednesday, you can catch the new documentary, Goodbye to City Schools (see trailer below), directed by filmmaker and Howard University lecturer Amy Yeboah for the Philadelphia Public School Notebook. The 30-minute film starts at 7 p.m. and admission is $5 (free for Scribe members). Yeboah will also be screening her film (Re)Inscribing Meaning, also 30 minutes, which is about “how closing the excellence gap for Black youth in the face of disruption begins at home with the Black family.” Yeboah will be on hand for both screenings.

Here’s a description of Goodbye to City Schools from the Scribe Video Center website:

Goodbye to City Schools focuses on experiences of staff, students, families, and community members of Germantown, Bok and University City High schools, and Fairhill Elementary school, Goodbye to City Schools reveals stories on the impact of closing 24 public schools in the City of Philadelphia. The interviews, observations and photos present a deep narrative that extends beyond the words “school closing.”
 

Trailer “Goodbye to City Schools” from Amy Yeboah on Vimeo.

As West Philly Local reported, Mighty Writers  recently opened its West Philly location, Mighty Writers West, in the People’s Emergency Center at 3861 Lancaster Avenue. Mighty Writers West welcomed their first students on Monday:

Day 1 at MW West! pic.twitter.com/h5ovxudj1i

— Mighty Writers (@MightyWriters) September 16, 2013

One of the programs offered by Mighty Writers is a daily after-school Academy where students get help with their homework and learn how to produce informative, persuasive, narrative and poetry writing.

This free program runs from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday during the school year and spaces are still available for students in grades 3-8. To download an application, click here. For more information, visit: http://www.mightywriters.org/west-philly-academy/

Public school students returned to understaffed buildings across the city today under a cloud of uneasiness that has hung over the School District of Philadelphia all summer. Many of the city’s 137,000 public school students are off to new schools after last year’s closure of 24 schools and nearly every school will be missing personnel as a result of mass layoffs.

Here are a few things that parents can do to help get through the first week:

• Parents United for Public Education has a thorough guide to filing official complaints about a child’s education experience. Complaints could be about anything from seriously overcrowded classrooms (35 students or more), to the need for a school counselor when none was available, to special needs students not receiving adequate services. The Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia will also help out with complaints.

Parents United stressed that these complaints are not meant to target specific teachers or principals. “The purpose of this effort is not to file complaints against principals or school staff but to focus on the mandates of the state constitution,” the organizations website reads. “It’s important to make clear this is not a lawsuit. These are administrative complaints that are intended to document and make public how terrible the impact is on young people across the city.”

• For students heading to new schools, the city has come up with “safe routes” that will be staffed by volunteers from 7:30 a.m. – 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. – 5 p.m. each day of the school year. You can access those here. Locally, that includes students who attended Alexander Wilson, which closed last spring, who have been assigned to Henry C. Lea. Parents are already questioning these.

• If you are on Twitter, follow the local public school movement at #phillyeducation. Also, include #Philly1stday, on tweets about your experience on the first day of school.

• Last but not least, thank a teacher, a principal, a security officer, a secretary. These are trying times.

The “safe routes” map from Alexander Wilson to Lea.

Penn Alexander School (archive photo).

UPDATE (8/29/13, 8:32 a.m.): District spokesman Fernando Gallard said that the wait list will expire each June 30, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian. So students on the list before July 1 will retain their spot. Letters should be going out soon, he said. Gallard’s explanation of the new policy is not consistent with what some parents who have contacted the school have been told. Further clarification will be needed and Penn Alexander’s School Advisory Council will take up the issue in the fall. Basically, our original  suggestion still stands: If you are enrolling a student this year, call the school.

UPDATE (8/28/13, 9:30 a.m.): We asked the chair of the School Advisory Committee Terrilyn McCormick about the new process at Penn Alexander School and whether the school is contacting parents directly to let them know about the new policy. Here are her responses: 

“It’s really not clear. I’m going to work with the SAC in September to make it more clear. People need to contact the school right now.”

(8/27/13, 6:00 p.m.): The School District of Philadelphia has changed the admission policy for the Penn Alexander School two weeks before school is due to start, according to the chair of the School Advisory Committee.

Effective this month the school will no longer recognize the previous year’s wait list for spots in grades 1-8, Terrilyn McCormick told West Philly Local in an e-mail. McCormick said that parents who were on the wait list should contact the school immediately (215-823-5465).

Penn Alexander’s wait list for the lower grades, many of which are at capacity, had become controversial in the past couple of years. Parents often complained that the process of getting on the list was not transparent. The District has apparently agreed.

Penn Alexander’s lower grades, particularly grades 1-3, have become difficult to enter, particularly for students who are new to its catchment area or were not admitted to school’s kindergarten. Students from the kindergarten are automatically admitted to first grade, but the school is not obligated to take students from its catchment area once its classes are at capacity, according to the District.

In January the District instituted a lottery for kindergarten admission after students lined up outside the school in frigid temperatures four days before registration was scheduled to begin.

–Mike Lyons

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) will hold a rally at the Henry C. Lea School (47th and Locust) on Tuesday to protest cuts in school funding.

The rally is scheduled to begin at 3:30 p.m. and is one of many events that the PFT is holding at neighborhood schools around the city in response to cuts in school funding. The PFT contract expires on Aug. 31.

Gov. Tom Corbett has made it clear that the state will contribute another $45 million to help close the $304 million budget shortfall if the union agrees in millions of dollars in concessions in its new contract.

The School District of Philadelphia laid off about 4,000 school personnel, including hundreds of teachers, in response to the budget crisis.

Come September, Spark, the national nonprofit providing professional apprenticeships to underserved youth, will launch its first yearlong program in Philadelphia and is currently recruiting new mentors across West Philadelphia through this Friday.

As West Philly Local reported in December, the award-winning Spark came to Philadelphia in the spring to test-run a pilot program in the city, partnering with Henry C. Lea School, McMichael Promise Academy, and Mastery-Shoemaker Charter School to serve about 60 at-risk 7th and 8th grade students and connect them with two-month long apprenticeships at local businesses to complete career-related projects with their assigned mentor. Through these apprenticeships, students learn a variety of personal and professional  skills and build confidence and their personal identity in order to improve their educational career and goals, and keep them on the path to graduation. This fall, Spark expects to work with over 100 students based on the success of the pilot program.

Last year, West Philadelphia students worked with mentors from Honest Tom’s Taco Shop, the Enterprise Center, and the University of Pennsylvania. Those local businesses will partner with Spark once again this fall, along with the City of Philadelphia, WHYY, Reading Terminal Market, Duane Morris, and 16 other companies.

If you are a local business owner and would like to participate in this program, please fill out a mentor application here.

–Annamarya Scaccia