Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.
Philadelphia schools are getting nearly $17 million from the state to repair and upgrade seven aging buildings, officials announced Tuesday.
The money will pay for everything from fixing bathrooms that don’t work to patching up roofs and auditoriums. It’s part of a statewide $175 million grant program in the 2024-25 state budget for school building upkeep, said state Sen. Vincent Hughes, one of the legislators who fought for the funding.
“Tangible action and financial investments like this signal to young people that they are important,” said Mayor Cherelle Parker at an event held at West Philadelphia’s Martha Washington Elementary School, which was built in 1929. “We can’t have students, teachers and administrators going into buildings with leaking roofs and unreliable bathrooms.”
The investment comes at a time when the district has embarked on a facilities planning process that officials warn could result in the closing of some school buildings, including those that are costly to maintain and under-enrolled — a description that fits Martha Washington, located on 44th street near Lancaster Avenue.
Current enrollment at Martha Washington is just over 200 students, in a building that takes up most of a city block.
Philadelphia’s share of the grant, $16.7 million, will fund eight renovation projects in seven schools, including Martha Washington. Several of the school’s 17 bathrooms are nonfunctioning, said Principal Lakeisha Patrick.
“This is an old building, but a gem in West Philadelphia,” she said, adding that staff and students “deserve a nice environment.”
But the $16.7 million represents a small fraction of the need in Philly: some estimates have put the total cost to repair and upgrade schools anywhere from $5 billion to nearly $10 billion.
State and local governments jointly fund schools’ operating costs along with the federal government. But state aid for capital expenditures like school construction and repair is a separate matter.
The state has a program called PlanCon designed to help school districts fix and modernize school buildings, Hughes said. But funding halted for that program in 2015, even though schools all over the state need help to meet 21st century needs, Hughes said. He described a visit he took with a colleague to a rural school in western Pennsylvania a few years ago that was built during Reconstruction, but is still in use.
“We went into the sub basement, and the backup generator was literally a car engine,” he said.
Students’ lack of access to working, clean, well-stocked bathrooms was also a key issue in Monday’s City Council hearing. Oz Hill, the district’s interim deputy superintendent of operations, told council members the district has eight plumbers servicing over 2,000 school bathrooms.
Other grants will go to bathroom renovations at George W. Childs, window replacements at James G. Blaine, and roof replacements at Cayuga and Francis Hopkinson elementary schools. Edison High School will get nearly $900,000 to upgrade the ventilation system in the culinary section of its career and technical education program.
Nearly half the amount, $8.3 million, will be used to repair the auditorium and the roof at Overbrook High.
In an interview after the event, Hughes acknowledged that the district is in the process of reevaluating its building needs on a path to rightsizing and efficiency. The state facilities grants program “in some respects is a bridge” to the more permanent plan, he said.
School officials on Monday held a virtual public meeting to emphasize the work it is doing to maximize the environmental safety of each school building.
Victoria Flemming, executive director of the district’s office of environmental management and services, and other officials explained how each school building is inspected twice a year, with every room and surface examined for hazards such as friable or loose asbestos, mold, and lead in paint and drinking water.
These inspections comply with the mandates of the federal Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act, known as AHERA, Fleming said. They came up when Philadelphia had to close three schools in early 2023 due to damaged asbestos.
Room-by-room inspection reports for 297 school buildings, some of which run to hundreds of pages, are available for the public to access both online and in paper copies at school offices.
Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.
