Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr. on Thursday pledged to share more about his proposal to let City Council impeach members of the School District of Philadelphia’s board “very, very soon.”
Speaking at the first City Council meeting since district officials revised their facilities plan to close 18 schools instead of 20, Young had a pointed message.
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“I hope the school district is listening to residents of the city of Philadelphia because this plan, even as it’s tweaked, doesn’t make any sense, particularly in my council district,” said Young (D-5th). “As I stated to the school board, there are a lot of contradictions in the goals of your plan in how it really impacts the 5th Council District, so I’m going to continue to say something about it and do something about it.”
The district’s $2.8 billion, 10-year facilities plan initially called for the closure of 20 of the district’s 307 buildings. Following community pushback, Russell Conwell Middle School and Motivation High School were removed from that list. The plan also calls for modernizing 159 schools and co-locating another six. Last week, hundreds of parents and community members who oppose the closures made their voices heard at the school board meeting.
On Jan. 22, the day the district shared its initial plan, Young introduced legislation that would allow City Council to remove members of the Board of Education. The board’s nine members are appointed by the mayor and serve four-year terms that run simultaneously as the mayor’s. However, they must first be confirmed by City Council.
Young’s bill must be voted out of committee before it can return to the floor for a full vote, and it’s unclear where most council members stand on it. But Council President Kenyatta Johnson said he was in “full support” of it.
If approved, the measure would be put to voters as a ballot question during the Nov. 3 election because it requires amending the city charter.
Councilmember Cindy Bass (D-8th) urged the school board to consider the impact of the 24 school closures in 2013 before voting on the new facilities plan. Those closures displaced thousands of students, had an adverse impact on academic performance and left some buildings vacant for more than a decade.
“There’s a lot more that I think we can do and could be done to keep our schools open. Those schools don’t have to be closed — that’s the easy solution,” Bass said. “That’s the easy thing to do, but the important and the hard work behind it means that we need to go back to the drawing board, look at what was done 10 years ago and make the corrections rather than just closing those schools.”
City Council also approved a resolution renaming a block of Buttonwood Street after Constance E. Clayton, the school district’s first Black, female superintendent. Following the measure’s approval, Johnson said “we knew she cared about us, and she wouldn’t be closing all these schools, either.”