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Lankenau High’s 11th-grade class is tiny — just 25 students.

That’s one of the reasons why closing the school is for the best, Philadelphia School District Associate Superintendent Tomás Hanna said at a community meeting last week.

At small schools, Hanna said, programming options are limited and “what’s left behind is very difficult environment for young people.”

The district proposes merging Lankenau into Roxborough High as an honors program — a move that officials say will maximize opportunities for students at both schools. That proposal has been met with fierce opposition from the Lankenau community, whose members say stripping the school of its identity and removing it from its unique location on 400 wooded acres is unjustifiable.

But the district is responsible for some of the enrollment issues at Lankenau and some of the other 20 schools that Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. has recommended for closure. Schools with large numbers of empty seats were targeted under the plan, which the school board is expected to vote on this winter.

When the school system dramatically revamped its special-admissions process in 2021, moving to a centralized lottery from a system where principals had discretion over who got into the district’s 37 criteria-based schools, enrollment dropped at some magnets.

For the 2022-23 school admissions cycle, Lankenau, Motivation, Parkway West, and Parkway Northwest — four of the 20 schools tagged to close — had dozens of unfilled seats in their ninth-grade classes.

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The district set academic standards for admission to those schools, and stopped allowing schools to admit students who were close to meeting academic requirements and who demonstrated they would be a good fit for the individual schools, as had been done in the past. (Officials said they wanted to centralize admissions to avoid demographic imbalances at schools; those four magnets did not have a history of them.)

The district’s using Lankenau’s tiny now-junior class to justify closings infuriated many, including Matthew VanKouwenberg, a science teacher at the school.

Lankenau’s size “is a district-designed and district-created problem,” VanKouwenberg said. Though the lottery was begun for equity reasons, “the result is disastrous.”

But Tonya Wolford, the district’s chief of evaluation, research, and accountability, said Lankenau, Motivation, Parkway West, and Parkway Northwest had declining numbers of students applying prior to the lottery changes.

And for years, those schools accepted large numbers of students who didn’t meet the district’s criteria, Wolford said.

Dramatic enrollment drops after district orders

The data are clear: After the district pushed changes to the admissions process, the four schools all saw dramatic drops in enrollment — and some of them never recovered.

Motivation, in West Philadelphia, had a freshman class of 83 students and a total enrollment of 336 in 2022-23. It saw a 77% drop in its ninth- grade class — just 19 freshman in 2023-24. The school now has 151 students, and the district wants to close it and make it an honors program inside Sayre High School. It is operating at only 15% of its full capacity.

Lankenau, in Upper Roxborough, had 91 freshman in 2022-23, then 31 in 2023-24, a 66% decline. It now enrolls 225 students. The school is using 49% of its capacity.

Parkway Northwest had 77 ninth graders in 2022-23, then dropped to 30 in 2023-24, a 61% decrease, and is 60% full. It’s got 248 students this year, and the district wants to close it and make it an honors program of Martin Luther King High.

And Parkway West had 54 freshman in 2022-23, then 19 the following year, a 65% decrease. It now has just 140 students, and is using 40% of available seats. It’s proposed to close and become part of Science Leadership Academy at Beeber.

A staffer who worked at Parkway West as the special-admissions process changes rolled out said they were devastating to the school, which typically filled three-quarters of its slots for incoming ninth graders with students who qualified on every measure, and a quarter by feel.

“We found kids who maybe missed one criteria, but they were good kids, and had strong recommendations,” said the staffer, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to a reporter.

When Parkway West lost that ability, its enrollment tumbled, and never recovered.

Lankenau community members say interest in their unique school has never waned, but the size of their incoming classes continues to be limited by the district — even beyond the admissions changes.

For the applicant class set to start high school in the fall, 107 students listed Lankenau as their first choice, staff said, and 95 have accepted Lankenau’s school board offer.

But since 2022-23, district officials have limited Lankenau to two sections of ninth graders, and with class sizes capped at 33. So despite having interest and students enough for 99 freshmen, it won’t have staff for more than 66.

In the last few years, staffers said, more than 66 students show up at the start of the school year. But with only enough teachers for 66, classes are overcrowded and some students end up transferring out.

“That is the only reason we lose enrollment,” said Erica Stefanovich, a Lankenau teacher. “We wouldn’t be in this situation if they hadn’t put us in it. This is an artificial problem.”

But, Wolford said the trend lines were clear for Lankenau and other schools.

In 2019-20, for instance, the prior to the district’s admissions changes just 34 students met Lankenau’s criteria, but 81 students accepted offers for the ninth-grade class, Wolford said. That same year, eight students qualified for Parkway Northwest on paper, but 34 were admitted, according to district data.

Schools like Lankenau and Parkway Northwest “were existing without following the criteria,” said Wolford.

Trees, bees, and a Lorax

Lankenau is putting up a spirited battle to stay open.

Last week, an overflow crowd — more than 100 students, staff, parents, representatives from Lankenau’s many partner organizations, and community members — packed the school for a student showcase and district-led meeting about the closure. Some students dressed as trees, bees, and a Lorax, the Dr. Seuss character who “speaks for trees” — to emphasize the importance of their school’s setting amid 400 acres of woods.

First, Lankenau students wowed visitors with presentations — about their study of natural resources, about the experience of foraging for ingredients to brew their own artisan teas — and then, it was down to business. Lankenau is too small, officials said, and the district must find ways to offer a more equitable experience for all students.

“I don’t discount that there is magic inside of these walls,” Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill said. “What I’m sharing with you is if we can take that magic and enhance it with more extracurricular activities, more expanded academic programming, the sky’s the limit.”

The parents, students, and staff in the audience weren’t having it.

Lankenau was just certified to become the state’s only three-year agriculture, food, and natural resources career and technical education program — a designation that took years to achieve, and cannot transfer to a new building.

Officials are proposing closing Lankenau a year and a half from now; that’s not enough time for the district to reapply for the designation for a new Lankenau-inside-Roxborough CTE program.

District officials said at the meeting that they believe their “close relationship” with the state education department will give them enough time to get a new Roxborough program certified in time for the Lankenau closing.

Multiple parents told district leaders they would not send their children to Roxborough High.

And Akiraa Phillips, a Lankenau ninth grader, said she couldn’t imagine attending school in another setting.

In Lankenau’s current setting, “learning doesn’t stop at the desk. Our campus is the classroom,” Akiraa said. “We learn science by being in it. Here, we don’t just talk about ecosystems, climate, and sustainability, we walk through it. That kind of learning sticks with you. You can’t stick this into any random building and expect it to work.”

The community turned out in full force, but politicians and other decision-makers were in the room, too. Three school board members, including president Reginald Streater, attended the meeting.

State Sen. Sharif Street (D., Philadelphia), the front-runner to replace U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans in Congress, said he “was against closing the school,” but noted that the decision didn’t rest with him, and said the state needed to better fund schools “because we have not met our obligation to fully fund the program.”

And Councilmember Cindy Bass said she was particularly incredulous that the district was attempting to close a successful magnet — Lankenau has a 100% graduation rate.

“If it works, why are you breaking it?” Bass said. “I do not understand what the logic and the rationale is that we are making these kinds of decisions. We’re not just closing a school, we’re disrupting the lives of young people.”