Students at the Henry C. Lea School kicked of the Philadelphia Science Festival recently with a schoolwide jump out on the playground in an attempt to see if their movement would register on a seismograph.

We haven’t received word yet if the jump actually worked, but it’s fun to watch.

Full-day kindergarten, thousands of jobs and after-school programs are just a few of the items in serious jeopardy as The School District of Philadelphia looks for cuts to meet a massive budget shortfall.

The district released a preliminary budget yesterday (see the “budget in brief” below) that includes a $22 million cut to kindergarten funding, which if passed would eliminate full-day kindergarten at every school in the district. Remedial and summer reading programs, after-school programs will also be eliminated under the draft budget. Special education liaisons will be cut 77 percent. Students transportation and gifted programs will also be drastically reduced.

School class sizes will revert to the maximum allowed in union contracts, which is 30 for elementary school and 33 for higher grades. The district, which serves 155,000 students, estimates that this will lead to an increase of three or four students per class.

The budget shortfall is the result of a $292 million cut in state funds earmarked for the district.

Presented to the School Reform Commission yesterday, the preliminary budget has sparked outcry from politicians, parents and teacher organizations.

The Inquirer reports today that Third District Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who represents much of West Philadelphia, joined Councilmen Bill Green and Curtis Jones Jr. in adopting a resolution calling on Gov. Tom Corbett to continue to fund full-day kindergarten.

“You think we’re in trouble now…it would hurt families everywhere,” Blackwell said. “People won’t be able to work. It affects socialization and education of children.”

Full-day kindergarten began in Philadelphia in 1996 under then-Superintendent David Hornbeck. Hornbeck told the Inquirer that cuts to full-day kindergarten should not be under consideration.

“Based on evidence in Philadelphia and across the country, I can’t think of any decision that would be more ill-advised for Philadelphia’s children,” Hornbeck said. “I would probably approach the challenges they face by saying, ‘What’s the first thing I’m not going to cut,’ and it would be full-day kindergarten.”

The School Reform Commission has until May 31 to pass the budget.

Here is the “budget in brief,” which includes a summary of the cuts.

Preliminary Budget

Students at the Henry C. Lea School (47th and Locust) returned from spring break today to find a giant rabbit hiding in a stairwell. This bunny stands about six feet tall and guards a little nook between the school’s first and second floors and is part of a program that organizers hope will transform Lea’s appearance.

Painted by muralist Jeremiah Johnson, the rabbit is part of Lea’s Mural Arts Program, a cooperative project between students, their art teacher, a former visual merchandiser and volunteers.

Like many public schools in Philadelphia, Lea’s interior has suffered as the school struggles to recruit and retain teachers and serve students’ educational needs on a tight budget. The school was built in 1914, two years after the construction of nearby West Philadelphia High School. Lea’s Visual Arts Program gives students a chance to leave their mark on the school, which serves grades K-8.

“It shows that people care and it gives students a hand in recreating their environment,” said John Try, Lea’s art teacher.

Last week’s spring break gave them a chance to do some major work on Lea’s first floor, where it’s kindergarten, first and second graders spend most of their time and where the giant rabbit, which looks like it jumped straight out of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, stands guard.

The rabbit fits well with the first floor theme in the beautification project – the ground.  The second floor, where third through sixth graders learn, will be painted to look like a biosphere, complete with clouds. Seventh and eighth graders are on the fourth floor, where space will be the theme. The three levels are the visual expression of the overall theme of “ascendency”to reflect students’ movement up through the school.

“They’re ascending in terms of age, but also in terms of maturity so I wanted the theme to reflect that,” Try said.

The program is focusing on transitional and high-traffic parts of the building like hallways, stairwells, cafeterias and rest rooms, where research shows that students feel most vulnerable to violence and bullying.

Yvette Almaguer, a visual merchandiser for luxury retailers like Lancome and Baccarat Crystal for 15 years who is now a graduate student at Penn’s Graduate School of Education, is taking the skills she learned in the retail world and applying them to help improve the aesthetic climate at Lea.

“Everyone talks about school climate,” she said during a break from painting last Thursday. “Positive school climate is not just about behavior, it’s also what you see around you.”

Try, Almaguer, volunteers and a team of students have been meeting after school on Fridays to plan and work on a number of visual projects.

Try and Almaguer hope to oversee the installation of at least a dozen more murals in the school. But they need help. Almaguer has reached out to community groups in West Philly and hopes to attract much-needed grant money for the ongoing project. She also hopes to add a research component that will systematically  investigate her hunch that the improved aesthetic appearance of a school may lead to improved student attitudes about being at school.

Eighth grader Gibron Wynne, a member of the visual arts team, spent his spring break days at school working on the project.

“I feel like I want to leave a little legacy here at my school when I leave,” he said. “They told me I didn’t have to do it for my spring break, but I wanted to do it.”

Wynne will leave his neighborhood school next year to attend the well-regarded magnet high school Academy at Palumbo in South Philly.

The goal of the Visual Arts Program is to get more students like him involved in changing the school. But the program needs adults too. Most importantly, Almaguer said, it needs Lea parents to participate with the students. They also need grant writers to help raise money to keep the project going and mural artists to help bring the “ascendancy” theme to life.

Wynne elaborated a little further on his ideas about what “ascendancy” means to him.

“If you make it to the third floor that means you made it to the stars,” he said.

Those interested in helping out can write Almaguer at yarecess — at — gmail.com or call 917-602-7998.

Here is video of the interview with Yvette Almaguer:

Author Jacqueline Edelberg, who co-wrote the book How to Walk to School about efforts to revitalize a Chicago neighborhood elementary school, will headline an event May 5 designed to bring parents, educators and community members together to talk about neighborhood schools. The program is part of an ongoing effort to help improve neighborhood schools in West Philly. The community group West Philly Coalition for Neighborhood Schools is sponsoring the event.

“How the Community Can Change a School” will run from 5:45 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Lea Elementary School auditorium (47th and Locust). Other panelists will include:

• Stanford Thompson, director of Tune Up Philly
• Sterling Baltimore, director of the Lea Community School at the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at Penn
• Maurice D. Jones, president of the Lea Home and School Association
• Daniel Lazar, the principal of the Grenefield Elementary School

Thanks to West Philly writer Patrick Kerkstra‘s piece on the development news website Plan Philly we know a lot more of how the closing and possible sale of schools may go.

The School District of Philadelphia plans to shutter up to 50 buildings. The district plans to announce in October which buildings will go. Communities have begun bracing for not only the closing of their school, but the possible resale of longtime community centerpieces.

This is where Kerkstra picks up the story with a detailed look at the district “adaptive reuse” policy (see document below). Schools could be sold to developers, non-profits or faith-based groups.

Kerkstra writes:

Unlike the existing policy, where the district’s goal is “to achieve the maximum market rate value in the sale” of property, the proposed new rules would offer discounts of up to 25 percent off the market value for would-be educational buyers, such as a charter school. Non-profits and community service providers – a faith-based charity, for instance, or a CDC – would be eligible for discounts of up to 15 percent, at the district’s discretion.

Click here for the rest of the story.
Proposed Adaptive Reuse Policy for Public Comment

Organizers of the Henry C. Lea Elementary School mural arts program are looking for volunteers to help with the installation of murals in the school from April 18-22, the week of spring break for the school district.

A planning meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 12 at 5:30 p.m. at the school (47th and Locust), where volunteers and community members can learn more about the project. A wide range of talents are needed to prepare the areas in the school for the murals.

The program recruited artist Jeremiah Johnson last month to design the murals that will be installed next week.

Interested volunteers should contact Yvette Almaguer at yarecess – at – gmail.com.