Amid growing rumors of doom, school district officials insist they have not yet decided on the fate of South Philly’s embattled Audenried High.
Paul Vallas, CEO of the School District of Philadelphia, is expected to announce major reforms to the city’s high schools by month’s end. The changes will include construction of new high schools, conversion of some middle schools to high schools, and the closing of some existing schools.
Could Grays Ferry’s only public high school be on the hit list?
District spokesperson Paul Jackson denied that Audenried, 33rd and Tasker streets, has been slated for closure.
"We are not closing any high schools at this point," Jackson said. "No decisions have been made."
Ellen Savitz, the district’s new deputy chief academic officer for school development, has been working on plans to revamp the city’s public high schools since leaving her post as principal of the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. Changes at Audenried will be included in those plans, she said, but it has not been determined whether or not the school will be closed.
"I don’t think it’s bizarre to say Audenried needs some careful attention," Savitz said. "The building is very old and they have had issues.
"We are looking very closely at all of our high schools because Paul Vallas is committed to changing the environment in all of our high schools," she added.
The district also is looking at changes that would affect South Philadelphia High, Furness and Bok Technical.
Savitz described Vallas’ proposal as an immense undertaking that will touch nearly every school and every neighborhood in Philadelphia.
In the next five years, she said, the district will spend as much as $1.6 billion rehabilitating buildings and constructing new schools, including 15 to 18 high schools. Some will be newly built, she said; others will be created from converted middle schools. And some middle schools will be transformed into elementary schools.
In the end, Savitz said, enrollment at each new high school will not exceed 1,000.
Vallas is expected to outline the specifics of this proposal in the coming weeks. In January, the school district will begin holding public hearings — as many as nine in different sections of the city, said Savitz — to get residents’ feedback.
"We don’t expect to close many schools," she said, "but we do expect to fix a whole bunch." The schools on the chopping block will have individual meetings, she added.
Ted Kirsch, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said no one told him about Audenried or any other high school closing. PFT members would be transferred to positions at other schools if a school did close, he noted.
Reducing enrollment at the high schools will not automatically eliminate problems, said Kirsch. After all, Audenried already has fewer than 1,000 students.
To the union leader, it is an example that a high school can be small, "but if you don’t give [teachers] training and programs for kids, it’s not going to be successful."
Kirsch was the PFT’s vice president when the district decided to convert Audenried from a junior high to a senior high in the late 1980s. He believes it was a bad decision for several reasons. First, he said, the move racially isolated the youths living in the Tasker Homes development who used to attend Southern.
"I always felt they were trapping those kids in a ghetto," said Kirsch. "These kids were never going to leave the community. There is another world out there."
And the school’s staff suddenly switched from being junior-high teachers to senior-high teachers, Kirsch added, with no training or preparation.
The union leader said he has confidence in Vallas’ teacher-training programs, however, and is not concerned about any future conversion.
Several students leaving Audenried at the end of classes Monday said they heard the rumors about their school being permanently closed.
Ninth-grader David Allen defended Audenried, even though he said most of his classmates felt differently.
"I love my school," he said. "I think it is the best school there is."
Demetreius T. Gantt, a junior and vice president of Audenried’s twilight school for students who work during the day, worries about the fate of the evening classes if the school closes.
"There are a lot of people here who messed up before who are coming back here now and making a difference," Gantt said. "It would hinder the people who are trying to go back and make a difference in their neighborhoods."
Audenried grabbed headlines earlier this school year when violent incidents occurred in and around the school.
In September, two female students on their way home after school were attacked from behind and stabbed on the 2600 block of Tasker Street near Tasker Homes.
A 14-year old victim was stabbed twice in the back and a 15-year-old was knifed in the back of the head, allegedly by a 14-year-old student at nearby James Alcorn Elementary, 32nd and Dickinson streets.
Less than a week later, with stepped-up security at Audenried, nine male students were arrested for disorderly conduct following a fight in the school. Officials later said they believed the two incidents were related.
This week, students leaving Audenried reported that someone had lit fires in the building on Friday and Monday. School district officials confirmed that two pieces of paper were ignited in hallways and another two fires were set in trashcans on Friday. On Monday, another trashcan blaze was reported, officials said.
The fire marshal is working with the school to investigate the incidents, according to the district. The students involved in the fires will face expulsion. In the meantime, additional school police officers have been assigned to Audenried.
School Reform Commission chairman James Nevels last summer told the Review that Audenried was "a nightmare" that haunted him every morning as he passed it on his way to work. At the time, he suggested the school would be on a short list of high schools taken over by a private manager such as Edison Schools.
