THE FIGHT TO SAVE PHILLY SCHOOLS:
Building Coalition on the Playground,
the Pick-Up Line, and PTA Meetings
A member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers
2 January 2026
The 2025 school year started much like any other in the School District of Philadelphia. As school teams prepared to greet students and families on the first day, the majority of the work felt reassuringly familiar: setting up classrooms and creating inviting spaces for our school communities, working with partners and community organizations to bring resources into the school, and preparing to implement new curriculum. But there was anxiety lingering over the start of the 2025–2026 academic year. This year, we faced the threat of possible school closures hanging over everyone. The Facilities Planning Process (FPP), a key part of Superintendent Tony Watlington’s Accelerate Philly plan, is to blame.
The Accelerate Philly plan, designed and enacted in 2022, seeks “to position the School District of Philadelphia, the nation’s eighth-largest, to be the fastest improving large, urban school district in the nation.” This plan includes an eight-phase facilities planning process that will result in development of a District Facilities Plan that is designed to carve a path to ensure that all students throughout the district learn in buildings that not only meet their needs academically, but in terms of physical health and safety as well. The district highlights their use of community engagement throughout this process, noting a series of public meetings held throughout July 2025 with the stated goal of allowing participants to both learn about the decision-making process at the district level while also providing an opportunity for folks to share what district leaders should know about schools and neighborhoods. However, many questions remain about the actual role of community feedback in this process. On August 4, 2025, The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article by Kristin Graham and Dylan Purcell, outlining the data that the district plans to use in making decisions about the future of its schools. The article named fourteen schools that comprise the most under-used buildings in the district. Graham and Purcell made it clear that district officials planned to close some schools, co-locate others, and that some may get new construction and/or repairs to improve current conditions. Many principals and other school-based staff were blindsided by the article. The district had repeatedly promised to share data and information regarding this process with stakeholders – but the first public mention of the actual numbers came in this reporting. Suddenly, school communities found themselves not only worrying about how to navigate K–12 educational shifts under the Trump administration and the near-constant threat of budget cuts, but with the possibility that their school may not even exist beyond the 2025–2026 school year. It was not until the end of September 2025 that the School District of Philadelphia released their Facilities Data Dashboard, which organized the data gathered on each school in the district. (It’s worth noting that some schools have questioned the validity of the data, with members of some communities stating that the data reflected on the dashboard is inconsistent with what they see playing out in their own experience. Vaux High is one such school, and indeed the Inquirer later recognized these objections in a tiny “clarification” at the end of the article and updated some of its reporting on that school.)
When the Inquirer article dropped in August, PFT leadership was focused on contract negotiations in the hopes of avoiding a teacher strike during the second week of school. Many members I spoke to during summer trainings encouraged me to be patient: the PFT would undoubtedly say something about the looming closures. We just needed to wait while they worked everything out with the contract. Contract negotiations have now ended and the new contract has been approved both by PFT membership and the Board of Education, but there is still radio silence on steps schools should be taking to position themselves to prevent closure. Knowing that the district moved forward with closing 23 schools at the end of the 2012–2013 school year under the guise of saving money, many PFT members are not willing to wait for PFT leadership to provide guidance. There is a real need to get organized now, before an official list of schools slated for closure is shared. But what should this organizing look like? How do we prepare for a fight when we aren’t even really sure who we are fighting for? What does it look like to organize against school closures if your school isn’t in danger of closing?
At the end of September, the Debt Collective, PARCEO, and other organizations hosted a K–12 Critical Budget Institute. While the primary focus of the weekend was on the impact of debt-financing on school budgets, a small group from Philadelphia was also able to come together to discuss the connections between debt, school budgets, and this impending school closure process. In addition to PFT members, we were joined by members of Stand Up for Philly Schools (SUPS), a coalition fighting for better public school building conditions. I was grateful to hear from folks who have been involved with SUPS and attending not only the Board of Education meetings, but also the district-led community engagement events focusing on the FPP. The general consensus is that this fight will be won on the playgrounds and the pick-up lines, highlighting the real need for PFT members to partner with families at their school to build a larger coalition against school closures. We discussed ways for school-based PFT chapters to get started with organizing their school communities. Here are some of our suggestions:
Educate Your School Community About the Facilities Planning Process
Over the past few months, it’s become clear that while the district talks about transparency, the Facilities Planning Process has been very opaque. I’ve found that for my own school community, there are more families who aren’t even aware that the district is engaged in a process that will ultimately lead to school closures for some communities. Those familiar with the FPP have shared that the Data Dashboard is cumbersome to use, making it difficult to actually engage with the publicly available data. Ensuring that community members are well-informed of the process itself, and the potential impact on your school community is extremely important. This process won’t only impact school communities that face closure – the schools that remain open can expect increased student enrollment as a result of the closures. SUPS has begun providing support to schools interested in organizing against closure in the form of resources and toolkits that can be shared with school communities, as well as facilitating information sessions on the Facilities Planning Process. Thus far, they’ve attended a few home and school association meetings across Philadelphia. For PFT chapters who don’t feel like experts, partnering with SUPS is a great first step in ensuring that your community understands how this process will play out for your school. A great first step is to ensure that your staff is informed and ready to engage in conversations about the process at the key times that they see families every day, such as admission and dismissal. These are key times where parents and family members are coming to the school every single day. Maximizing this brief contact empowers families to get involved. Many chapters and outside organizations have created one-pagers with information on the FPP- making sure these one-pagers make it into the hands of families helps ensure they remain informed and are able to continue that conversation with other parents and families.
Educate the Wider Community About Your School
Our schools cannot solely be defined by data collected by the same district that has under-resourced our schools for decades. Members of your school community can speak to what makes your school unique: What programs are you proud of? How has your school become a key part of the community? What might be missing in the data? SUPS has also begun partnering with schools to provide support with creating infographics to share such points of pride with Philadelphians outside of your school community. School-based PFT chapters can partner with other unions in their building to host canvassing events to share their infographic with community stakeholders, inviting them to join in the fight to save their neighborhood school.
Engage with Local Politicians
Exposure is key to preventing school closures. Make sure that local politicians, like City Council Members in Philadelphia or State Legislators, are informed on the importance of your school to your community. Share the infographic with them and invite them to visit your school. Let them see first-hand what your school offers the community. Encourage them to take a stand against school closures in future legislative sessions.
Prepare for Future School Board Meetings
The most important part of organizing is ensuring that the school district, school board, and city council know that your community won’t lose their school without a fight. This is what saved schools like Isaac A. Sheppard School during the 2012–2013 fight. Start by asking folks to sign up to attend Board of Education meetings where the FPP is slated to be discussed. The more people you can get to attend, the better. You can also help folks prepare to testify at these meetings to share their school stories. (Don’t forget: Philadelphia, like many districts, requires folks to sign up to testify in advance!) SUPS has already begun gathering stories to ensure the voices of those directly impacted by school closures are amplified. Consider having folks start by sharing their story with SUPS as a jumping off point, or for those who would prefer to remain anonymous.
Petitions
Realistically, there will be community members who want to show their support for the school, but who may not be able to attend in-person meetings for a variety of reasons. Create a petition to allow family members to demonstrate their commitment to the school community. Petitions for schools likely to face closure should emphasize excitement for remaining at the community school and a refusal to attend school elsewhere within the district. Losing students as a result of the FPP will be a point of concern for district leaders, as dwindling enrollment would directly contradict their plans under Accelerate Philly. These petitions can be delivered to Superintendent Watlington at district headquarters or during a Board meeting.
Not on the List? Partner with Schools Who Are
Once again, we have to remember: a closure for one is a problem for all. When one school closes, catchment areas are shifted, thereby impacting enrollment at all schools. If overcrowding is already bad at your school, it will intensify directly as a result of other school closures. If your school isn’t on the list for possible closure, reach out to schools in your area that are to find out how you can get involved in their organizing efforts. Educating your school community is still important – families and community members need to be informed of any and all potential impact. We have to come together around the common cause of preventing school closures first so that we’re able to fight for other facilities issues.
Engage in/Organize Direct Action
In the past few weeks, we’ve also seen attempts at direct action specifically opposing school closures. On October 22, 2025, Philadelphia hosted the 69th Annual Fall Conference of the Council of Great City Schools. District leaders proudly publicized the event and their excitement at showcasing all of the great things happening in Philly schools. SUPS partnered with several other organizations, including Philadelphia Democratic Socialists of America, Reclaim Philadelphia, and Parents United for Public Education to host a rally during the opening reception of the conference. Actions like this will be a key component of the fight to keep schools open as they force a spotlight on the district’s efforts to ignore the voices of families and communities fighting for their schools. While there hasn’t been much mention of the rally from district leadership, it put a wrench in their efforts to highlight “greatness” as both elected officials and constituents showed up to amplify the concerns about the Facilities Planning Process. By disrupting an event that held significance for district leaders, they shared a message while forcing district leadership to contend with their choices regarding how to address crumbling buildings and a lack of budget allocation to maintain the buildings where our students learn. Direct actions like this one have a demonstrable impact on outcomes for our district. On November 4, 2025, the School District of Philadelphia announced that they would be delaying the announcement of a school closure plan in order to allow for additional time for a survey and public comment period. This is the key step towards meeting the demands of SUPS and other organizers of the rally to pause the FPP. We’ll have to wait and see if the feedback gathered through the survey is anything more than performative participation in the process, but any delay to the process gives organizers more time to gather folks and prepare to continue the fight.
Philadelphia has been here before. After the 2012–2013 school year, the School District closed 23 schools. When the Facilities Planning Process was announced, those of us who were not with the district back then turned to those who were to seek guidance: What will the process consist of? Was anyone successful in navigating the process and avoiding closure? As these discussions became more frequent, I heard more and more people pointing to the lessons learned from Isaac A. Sheppard School and their successful fight to prevent closure in 2013. Sheppard is a K–4 school located in West Kensington, a neighborhood plagued by drugs and gun violence. As a result of the city’s failure to provide adequate support, schools in the neighborhood are vital to the community. They are sanctuaries where students and families can get access to resources and feel welcome, no matter what goes on outside their walls. It’s no surprise then that the conversations around what worked for Sheppard center around one thing: partnering with parents and families. Parents and families have significant power within the district, power that often gets overlooked due to frustrations with a school system that doesn’t always feel designed to support the students and families it’s supposed to serve. But the staff at Sheppard partnered with their families in order to organize and send a strong message to the district- Sheppard is our home and we won’t go to another school. The suggestions for organizing around school closures that were articulated by our small group in September are rooted in the knowledge gleaned from Sheppard’s fight in 2012. They worked with their families to get them organized around a single message. That message was that they could go ahead and close Sheppard; but the families would pull their students and refuse to send them to another district school. Both parents and staff at Sheppard seem to be taking this route once again this time around. On August 10, 2025, Kristin Graham published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about Sheppard’s continued fight to remain open. In the article, Graham shared the plans of one parent who says that “‘if they do close Sheppard, I’m going to end up homeschooling [my second grader]’… [this parent] doesn’t have a car, and she wouldn’t be comfortable walking her daughter to a school that’s farther from home.”Making such plans public, both through articles like this one and through more traditional methods of protest like petitions and testimony at Board meetings, have helped keep schools like Sheppard open in the past. We are hopeful that similar efforts will be successful once again. If such efforts aren’t successful, there are lessons we can learn from other teacher’s unions that have successfully fought to protect schools through use of worker strikes and other direct action.
The biggest lesson here is that no one group will successfully fight school closures on their own. We build coalitions because we are more powerful in larger numbers. While partnering with your home and school association or other parent groups is often the easiest place to start, it’s important to remember that partnering with other unions will also be essential. Imagine the power we’d have if teachers unions, administrators unions, and unions representing our food service workers and student climate staff joined together in a wall-to-wall fight for a common cause. At the end of the day, if there are no families to serve and no school-based staff to do the work, there would be no district to run. I don’t know what the fate of my school community will be come January. Come March? Come June? All of that is up in the air. But I do know that the only way we move forward is through working together to ensure that everyone is informed about what’s going on in their school buildings.