Christopher Johnson, the principal of Science Leadership Academy (SLA) at Beeber, knew he had a math problem.

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Starting five years ago, the School District of Philadelphia introduced a central lottery system that changed how students were admitted into criteria-based schools, including West Philly’s SLA Beeber. Previously, SLA was able to take students who might not meet all the district’s eligibility requirements, but whom school leaders thought would be a good fit for the school. That, Johnson says, allowed SLA to maintain a healthy enrollment.

After the change, SLA Beeber, a project-based 5th through 12th grade school on Malvern Avenue, went from averaging about 710 students annually to 520, he says. Coupled with the fact that people are having fewer children, and therefore sending fewer to school, Johnson saw the writing on the wall.

About two miles away in Mill Creek, Will Brown, who leads Parkway West High School, was experiencing a similar conundrum. The magnet school started the year with about 150 students in 9th through 12th grades last year, and it was operating at 40 percent capacity. Just 18 children were in 11th grade, Brown says.

Parkway West’s enrollment was growing and academics were improving, but “it was too little, too late,” Brown says.

Even if the school hit its capacity at 330 students, it would still remain small — not the size the district had in mind for high schools, he says.

“We had to put our school communities on our shoulders, start to meet, and have our staff talk so that everyone could get an idea of both school environments.” — Parkway West High School Principal Will Brown

So when district administrators briefed Brown earlier this year that his school would close and merge with SLA Beeber, he wasn’t totally surprised. And he immediately made two calls: The first was to his staff to tell them to stick around; the second was to Johnson to start working on the transition. 

“We had to vent some when we first talked — that was normal,” says Johnson, who led SLA Beeber from its start 14 years ago. “Then we were like, OK, we have to plan something. Ever since that day we’ve been planning on trying to make the transition as smooth for children as possible.”

Brown, who is in his fifth year as a principal, says they didn’t have a roadmap at that point.

“We just figured that we had to put our school communities on our shoulders, start to meet, and have our staff talk so that everyone could get an idea of both school environments,” he says.

No one has to lose 

With public school enrollment shrinking in many parts of the country, district leaders are finding they can’t shy away from the school closure conversation.

The School District of Philadelphia’s $3 billion facilities master plan — it’s not calling it a closure plan — envisions shuttering 17 schools and modernizing 169 over 10 years.

Science Leadership Academy at Beeber and Parkway West are among schools undergoing transitions this year, either because it’s the last year they’ll be open or because they’ll be welcoming students from schools that will no longer exist.

While closures, mergers and grade reconfigurations may be necessary to right-size school districts and expand academic options, they’re also disruptive to students, staff and districts. And what school leaders and district administrators do before and after buildings are shuttered can have huge and long-lasting impacts.

“Successful transitions are more than a plan. It’s about people, and their lived experiences, and their ideas about how to make these transitions work well.” — Superintendent Tony Watlington

Staff members stand to lose jobs or scatter across the district. Students could lose the familiar faces of adults and peers who’ve known them for years. Two school communities with different cultures, histories, curriculum and academic norms are expected to weave together a common identity. (Does the school welcoming new students keep its old mascot or create a new one? Does it change its school colors?)

In Chicago, where the district closed 47 elementary schools in 2013, researchers found that student test scores declined the year the closures were announced — before even the first building closed its doors. And the academic impacts lasted for years, with math scores remaining low for the four years researchers at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research looked at those schools.

Schools that took in students were also affected, with test scores declining there, too. Attendance also dropped in the first year, researchers found.

The impacts go beyond academics. Chicago researchers also found that the mergers elicited grief as communities severed physical and emotional ties to buildings and people. And the new communities needed investment from the district to make the transition work after the first year.

Johnson and Brown get this. That’s why they started early.

“That’s the toughest part for me,” Brown says. “Our school family is going to be broken up. Our students have gotten to know a lot of our staff, with this being such a small environment. After next year — after this school year — our staff will be moved around, our students will go one place, and we will not really see those students graduate.”

The district has created a transition office, led by former principal and administrator Shakeera Warthen-Canty, to help schools manage the questions and logistics around transitions, closures and mergers.

At a press conference at SLA Beeber last month to highlight Brown’s and Johnson’s collaboration and announce how parents and others could participate in their schools’ transitions, Superintendent Tony B. Watlington said the district will track the needs and performance of each student and family affected by the transition on “an internal dashboard”  to ensure they’re getting “red-carpet, white-glove treatment.”

“Successful transitions are more than a plan,” he said. “It’s about people, and their lived experiences, and their ideas about how to make these transitions work well.”

The two principals’ work shows that “we can make tough decisions, and we can do it in a way that all of us absolutely can become winners and not losers. Our gain doesn’t have to necessarily come at anybody’s expense,” he said. 

An uneasy time

“I’d be lying if I said this was an easy time for the Parkway West community,” Brown said then. “The word merger makes it seem pretty easy, pretty simple.”

But he admitted there was still lots of uncertainty, including for staff members who might have to transfer to other schools and 11th and 12th graders who’ll be applying to college or getting ready for the workforce and might have to work with new counselors and staff who don’t know them.

Brown and Johnson are both lifelong Philadelphians and they belong to the same network of schools within the district. But they’d never worked closely together before.

Brown says he’s always looked up to Johnson as a mentor.

“He is someone who always questions things,” he says. “He just doesn’t look at one solution. I always liked that about him.”

Since that first call last winter, Johnson and Brown have talked nearly every other day and text frequently. Brown says he regularly stops by SLA Beeber to speak with Johnson and the school’s leadership team. Johnson’s staff has visited Parkway West. There was a recent Zoom meeting for Parkway West’s parents to ask questions about the merger, Brown says.

“We don’t do stepbrothers. We don’t do stepsisters. We do family.” — SLA Beeber Principal Chris Johnson

That initial call, before the district publicly announced the master plan, laid out some questions they’d have to tackle, including how they’d support their students and staff.

At a Parkway West’s leadership team meeting, which Johnson joined by phone, staff peppered the leaders with questions, including whether they’d go over to SLA Beeber with Parkway West’s students, what would happen to students who didn’t want to attend SLA Beeber and whether SLA Beeber would offer some of Parkway West’s unique programs.

“We didn’t know, so we couldn’t answer,” Johnson recalls. “There were so many questions Will and I couldn’t answer.” 

They now have some answers, but many still remain up in the air. District spokesperson Monique Braxton says no one will lose their job.

Brown says Parkway West’s early childhood education program will continue at SLA Beeber. The program, which has an intensive internship with a local childcare center, helps students explore careers in education, including teaching.

The school’s self-contained autistic support program will also transfer, Brown says.

The district has also said there’s no guarantee that all Parkway West’s staff will end up at SLA Beeber, but Brown and Johnson are pushing for more to go with the students, Brown says. That will be determined by SLA Beeber’s final enrollment, Brown says.

“We do need people that know the students … to be able to work with the students, to follow the students,” he says.

He also worries about his staff, many of whom are veteran teachers who have not applied for a job or interviewed for one in years.

“It’s definitely creating a lot of anxiety for a lot of our staff, most of whom are committed to staying even through the final year to make sure all of this works out for our students,” Brown says.

Brown will continue to be a principal in some capacity, but not at either school.

Helping the process along

Brown, along with some 10th and 11th grade Parkway West students, were also at SLA Beeber last month for the press conference with district leaders. Three SLA Beeber students gave their Parkway West peers a tour of the building and classes. Then they and a few staff members asked Johnson questions about his school.

Questions ranged from the school’s start time to extra-curricular activities.

When a student expressed concern over potential divisions when the two schools merged, Johnson reassured them that he was working to create a unified body.

He said he’d told his students that they’ll have new family members, and if they had issues with them, they could leave.

“We don’t do stepbrothers. We don’t do stepsisters. We do family,” Johnson said.

A question about aligning credits from Parkway West, which had a more traditional grading system, to Beeber, which has a heavy project-based approach, stumped Johnson.

He says he hadn’t realized that was something he had to think about.

“We have to come up with a solution to work for 12th graders next year,” he says.

Throughout the year, Johnson and Brown plan to be visible at each other’s schools, and they want students to spend time together so that by the time Parkway West’s students show up at Beeber next year, it won’t feel like the first day of school.

Parkway West students were scheduled to visit SLA Beeber last Saturday as part of the school’s open house, but the event was rescheduled because of the weather to Saturday, October 3. They’ll also shadow grade-level peers at SLA Beeber over several days next month. A shadow day is also planned for parents.

Brown says they want students to have as much information as possible to decide if Beeber is the best place for them. They still have the option to apply to another school, which some students are considering, he says. There’s both fear and anxiety, he says, and the merger adds another layer of uncertainty onto the teenagers’ already complicated lives. 

“We don’t want anyone to make a decision without being properly informed,” Brown says. “Chris has been adamant about making sure students know about SLA Beeber so they can make a decision. He understands that he has to win them over. … He is not just sitting back and relying on the district to send the students. He wants to make sure they get the red-carpet treatment.”

There was also discussion of a joint homecoming dance and a trip to a museum, Brown says.

They’ll need funds to help with transportation and the joint activities. Brown called on the district to provide resources to help with transition activities before and after the merger.

There’s still a lot to iron out. And there will be adjustments even when the new school year starts. The two schools’ days are structured differently (SLA Beeber has more classes and shorter periods), and SLA Beeber’s teachers write their own curriculum, while Parkway West’s teachers use one from the district. And although the early childhood education program is heading to SLA Beeber, the school still has to figure out how to fit it into its schedule, Brown says. Parkway West’s staff and students will also have to get used to project-based learning, he says.

Johnson says that the two leaders are entering with their eyes wide open, ready for anything to happen. 

“It’s a process, right?” Johnson says. “We don’t know what we don’t know.”

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