Win for student group in small-schools effort

After four years of student organizing and pressuring the School District of Philadelphia to transform the large and aging Kensington High School into four small schools, members of Youth United for Change (YUC) finally have reason to declare victory.

The School District is issuing a request for proposals to build a new, small high school in the area, news that 10th-grade student and YUC member Terrise Thomas greeted with elation.

“I'm happy because they're finally going to give something back to this community,” she said in a recent phone interview. “They've promised for four years.”

Long before the District embarked on its own plans to create 28 new, small high schools, members of the student group researched and investigated small schools and delivered a proposal to the District for the creation of a quartet of small schools to replace Kensington.

YUC members toured acclaimed small schools in New York and Providence, R.I., and surveyed fellow students and community members on their idea.

This year, significant steps toward a small school model were taken. The old Kensington High School building reopened in the fall as two separate schools – Creative and Performing Arts and International Business, Finance and Entrepreneurship, while its annex reopened as a third school, Culinary Arts at the Emerald.

However, there was still uncertainty about the prospects for a newly constructed school building – perhaps one that would come with an athletic field. District officials said the project was being delayed by land-use issues and differing views in the Kensington area, as schools elsewhere in the city broke ground on or received commitments for multi-million-dollar construction projects.

But now the District is moving on plans that call for the fourth Kensington school site to be secured through a “turnkey” process, in which an outside party is hired to take on the often-complicated steps to secure land and construct a school and then sell or lease it to the District.

Thomas said the new school should lead to a “better opportunity to learn.” She expressed hope that with small high schools in Kensington, “teachers can finally get around to helping students who need more help.”