April 30, 2026
Molly McVety/PhillyVoice
City Council members Kendra Brooks and Isaiah Thomas addressed dozens of people during a contentious school board meeting on Thursday night before the board approved a facilities plan to close 17 schools.
The Board of Education voted to approve the School District of Philadelphia’s 10-year, $3 billion facilities plan that includes closing 17 schools, modernizing 169 buildings and co-locating six others.
During a highly contentious meeting Thursday night, six board members agreed that the plan was the best path forward to address the district’s budget and resource shortfalls. Three board members — Crystal Cubbage, Whitney Jones and Wanda Novalés — rejected the proposal.
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The meeting was highlighted by protests from dozens of community members, faculty members and elected officials who interrupted remarks from the board and Superintendent Tony Watlington with boos, chants and loud whistles.
City Council members gathered in the front of the auditorium and accosted board members, calling for the resignation of anyone who voted to pass the plan and forcing Board President Reginald Streater to call for a recess less than 15 minutes into the meeting.
Following the recess, Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, chair of the Education Committee, passionately addressed the crowd.
“We will fight them until the bitter end,” he said. “If they vote for it, not only are we calling on resignations, we are committed to suing them.”
After returning from recess, board members were again interrupted by protestors while making their statements about the proposal, which led Streater to shut the meeting down once more and turn to a virtual format, where the vote was conducted while community members were left watching from the auditorium.
School board members went to a virtual format during their meeting Thursday before voting to approve the school district's facilities plan.
For Alexis Gitman, a music teacher with Stetson Middle School, which is one of the schools slated to close, the meeting being held virtually felt like an affront to her school's community.
"We're feeling like the board is full of people who really are not interested in listening," she said. "Everyone knows that when you have the truth and what's right on your side, you don't have anything to be afraid of. But they ran away. They didn't want to hear what we had to say or look into our faces."
The three board members who rejected the proposal agreed that closures need to happen for the financial sustainability of the district, but they cautioned against rushing the decision.
"We do need to make hard decisions and people are going to be upset," Cubbage said. "But those decisions need to be grounded in a coherent vision that gets us somewhere better. Urgency is not an excuse for approving a flawed first draft."
Board member ChauWing Lam, who approved the plan, said there are aspects that remain of "deep concern" for her, but she wanted to address the deteriorating conditions of the aging infrastructure.
"If we can reduce the number of unsatisfactory facilities in our district to zero, and if we can also increase access to rigorous academic opportunities while preserving access to music, arts and extracurriculars, I am willing to take the first step in that direction," she said.
The School District of Philadelphia said in a statement Thursday evening that it would "immediately" being to implement the facilities plan and officials would commit to working with students, families and staff members throughout the process.
As the district has looked for additional revenue streams to close a $300 million budget deficit, Mayor Cherelle Parker has suggested a plan to implement a $1-per-ride fee on all rideshare services in the city that would raise an estimated $50 million annually for schools. The plan is subject to council approval, and some members have threatened to reject the proposed tax if more schools aren't saved from closure.
The original facilities plan that was introduced in January planned to close 20 schools as a means to better allocate the district’s resources as enrollment continues to dwindle. In February, the district modified the proposal to shutter 18 schools. Then last week, Watlington again provided an update, saving one more school from closure and saying the board was “ripe” to vote on the latest plan.
Last week, all City Council members co-signed a letter urging the board to push back a vote so their constituents could better understand the plan. Hours before a scheduled hearing, the school board released a statement to postpone the meeting to Thursday.
