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  • See what roughly $765,000 can buy you in the Chestnut Hill, Riverton, and Upper Dublin housing markets | The Price Point

    See what roughly $765,000 can buy you in the Chestnut Hill, Riverton, and Upper Dublin housing markets | The Price Point

    The Price Point compares homes listed for similar sale prices across the region to help readers set expectations about house hunting.

    When homebuyers sit down to make their must-have lists, they usually have a property size in mind.

    Maybe they’re outgrowing their home and need something bigger. Maybe their home is too big and they need to downsize.

    A bigger home can mean a bigger price tag, but not always.

    The latest installment in the Price Point compares homes in the region that are listed for sale for about the same price but vary widely in size.

    The Upper Dublin Township home is about 1,000 square feet larger than the home in Riverton, Burlington County, which is about 1,000 larger than the home in Chestnut Hill.

    But they’re all for sale for between $765,000 and $770,000. That’s more than twice the typical price of a home sold in the Philadelphia metropolitan area last month — $380,000, according to the multiple listing service Bright MLS.

    Colonial in a special location

    What makes this house in Upper Dublin Township special is its location, said listing agent Frank Blumenthal with Keller Williams Real Estate Tri-County.

    It’s about three miles from Regional Rail’s Ambler and Fort Washington stations, close to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and other major roads, and not far from shops and restaurants.

    And the home is a few hundred yards from Mondauk Common, a public park that includes a one-mile walking track, sports fields, exercise equipment, playground equipment, basketball courts, and pavilions. The park also hosts community events throughout the year.

    The home has expansive side and rear yards.

    Inside, the large primary bedroom includes a sitting room. The kitchen flows into the great room, which has a fireplace and lots of windows. The home also has an unfinished basement.

    Within the last few years, the owner replaced the roof and heating and cooling systems. A buyer may want to update the kitchen and bathrooms, “but the big-ticket items are out of the way,” Blumenthal said.

    The property was originally listed for $834,000 in September. The price dropped to $828,000 in November and $769,000 in February.

    Fully renovated historical home

    This house is more than a hundred years old and part of a historic district.

    “Homes were just built differently back in the day than they are now, and they stand the test of time,” said listing agent Michelle Bishop with Real Broker LLC.

    Because the home is historically protected, the investor who is flipping the property was limited in the exterior changes he could make. But he installed a new roof and new windows and fixed the siding.

    The home’s interior was a gut job, Bishop said. The property was in rough shape before the renovations, which included tearing down walls and installing new mechanical systems.

    The owner built a one-car detached garage and fixed up the in-ground pool.

    The staircase and double-sided fireplace are original to the home. New features include an updated kitchen, striking light fixtures, and a soaking tub.

    “The perfect buyer for this property is somebody who really appreciates historical homes but enjoys living in modern-day comfort,” Bishop said.

    Bishop called Riverton “a cute little town” and said she’s seen families who like Moorestown but can’t afford to live there come over to the borough. The home is close to parks, the Riverton Country Club, the Delaware River, Routes 130 and 73, and a NJ Transit light rail station on the River Line.

    The property was originally listed in January for $799,999, but the price dropped to $769,999 in February.

    Detached house on a double lot

    This property isn’t one that a potential buyer would typically see in this twin-filled part of Philadelphia.

    “It’s a detached home in Chestnut Hill,” said listing agent Neil Dessecker with RE/MAX One Realty. And its double-wide lot offers large side and rear yards, which are fenced in.

    On tours, many prospective buyers said they liked the property because they were looking for more space, he said.

    The home also has more of the usual features of homes in the area, including a covered front porch and hardwood floors.

    The kitchen includes high-end Bosch appliances, including an induction range. The owners converted the home from oil heating to central air-conditioning and heating.

    The third floor is a flexible space that can be used as a bedroom, living space, or playroom.

    The home doesn’t include parking, which Dessecker noted “usually skyrockets the price.” But the sellers said they almost always parked their two vehicles on the street right in front of their home.

    “The sellers said it was an incredible block and they loved the people there,” Dessecker said.

    The home is not far from the shops and restaurants along Germantown Avenue and is near an Acme. The Wyndmoor station on Regional Rail is at the end of the street.

    “There’s just not a lot of inventory in Chestnut Hill,” Dessecker said. “So when something of quality becomes available, you have to seize the opportunity.”

    The property is listed for $765,000.

  • Philly school officials want to close Lankenau High and give it to the city. A 1970s legal agreement may snarl that deal.

    Philly school officials want to close Lankenau High and give it to the city. A 1970s legal agreement may snarl that deal.

    Could a 1973 legal agreement help save Lankenau High?

    The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education hopes so.

    The Philadelphia School District has proposed closing Lankenau, the city’s environmental science magnet school, and giving it to the city to help further Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s affordable-housing goals, or for job creation.

    Changes to Philly’s special-admission process exacerbated low enrollment at some magnets. Now, the district is trying to close them.

    But the Schuylkill Center, Lankenau’s neighbor, believes it’s prohibited from doing so, and just notified Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr.

    The Schuylkill Center “holds a right to repurchase the property in the event that it is transferred or conveyed or used for any purpose other than school purposes, pursuant to a restriction in the October 4, 1973 deed by which [the Schuylkill Center] conveyed the property to the Lankenau School,” a lawyer for the environmental center wrote in a letter sent to the district Monday.

    Students, staff, and community members who support Lankenau High School – including some dressed as trees – packed a recent community meeting at the school about its proposed closure.

    If the district is “considering a sale of the property or using the property for any purposes other than continued use as a school, this letter serves as written notice of [the Schuylkill Center’s] right to repurchase,” lawyer Sean T. O’Neill wrote to Watlington, “The school district must provide [the Schuylkill Center] with reasonable advance notice of any potential conveyance or change in use and allow [the Schuylkill Center] the opportunity to exercise its right to repurchase.”

    The center, which touts itself as “one of the first urban environmental education centers in the country,” was founded in 1965. It has trails and a visitors’ center and runs educational programs and a wildlife clinic.

    District officials had no immediate comment.

    Lankenau’s history

    Lankenau sits amid 400 wooded acres adjacent to the Schuylkill Center. The 17-acre parcel Lankenau High now sits on was originally the site of the private Lankenau School for Girls; after that school closed, the Philadelphia School District purchased the land.

    What is now Lankenau High was first a program of Saul High and then Germantown High, but in 2005, it became a standalone school as part of then-CEO Paul Vallas’ small schools initiative.

    Philly’s building plan would close this high-performing magnet. Lankenau is fighting back.

    Since then, Lankenau has soared as a diverse, hands-on magnet with a 100% graduation rate in a location like no other.

    News that Lankenau landed on the district’s closure list infuriated students, parents, community members, and elected officials, who have mounted a robust campaign to fight plans to shut the school and relocate it as an honors program inside Roxborough High.

    Teachers, students, and community members from Lankenau High School rally outside a Philadelphia school board meeting in January.

    They’re particularly alarmed that Lankenau’s small size, used to justify its closing, came as enrollment shrank after the school system ordered changes to its special-admissions policy.

    The Schuylkill Center’s first priority is for Lankenau to remain as it is, said Erin Mooney, executive director of the 60-year-old organization, which now partners closely with Lankenau.

    “We are in opposition to Lankenau’s closing,” said Mooney, “but should something change with Lankenau, we want to ensure that the site continues to be used to teach people about nature.”

    Mooney, who has been public in the Schuylkill Center’s support for the school, discovered the language giving the Schuylkill Center right of first refusal if the property ever ceases being a school in the 1973 agreement.

    Watlington is scheduled to present his sweeping facilities plan — which as of January included 20 closures, six co-locations and 159 modernizations — at a school board meeting Thursday.

    The Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School in Roxborough on Saturday, January 24, 2026.

    But the superintendent has said what he presents to the board may include some tweaks to his initial recommendations.

    Mooney hopes the information the Schuylkill’s lawyers sent Monday helps Lankenau come off the closing list.

    “We want Lankenau to stay,” she said, “and I wanted the school board to have this information as part of its decision-making.”

    Watlington’s recommendations are just that; the school board has ultimate say. It has not given a date for the final vote on school closings, but said no vote will happen Thursday.

  • ‘Courage is contagious.’ How Philadelphia churches and neighborhood groups are preparing to confront ICE.

    ‘Courage is contagious.’ How Philadelphia churches and neighborhood groups are preparing to confront ICE.

    Within the serpentine halls and stairways of Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, congregants have established several private, off-limits rooms ― each a potential last-stand space where members would try to shield immigrants from ICE, should agents breach the sanctuary.

    Church leaders call them Fourth Amendment areas, named for the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The plan would be to stop ICE officers at the thresholds and demand proof that they carry legal authority to make an arrest, such as a signed judicial warrant.

    “It’s a protective space,” said the Rev. Peter Ahn, pastor of the Spring Garden church. “While you’re here, you’re safe, is what we want to assert.”

    Could it come to that? A pastor confronting armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the hallway of a church?

    It’s impossible to know. But across Philadelphia, churches, community groups, immigration advocates, and block leaders are actively preparing for the time ― maybe soon, maybe later, maybe never ― that the Trump administration deploys thousands of federal agents. People say they must be ready if the president tries to turn Philadelphia into Minneapolis ― or Los Angeles, Chicago, or Washington, D.C.

    People participate in an anti-ICE protest outside of the Governors Residence on Feb. 6, in St. Paul, Minn.

    Know-your-rights trainings are popping up everywhere, often to standing-room-only attendance, and ICE-watch groups are abuzz on social media.

    The First United Methodist Church of Germantown held a seminar last week to learn about nonviolent resistance, “so that we will be ready for whatever comes,” said senior pastor Alisa Lasater Wailoo.

    “That may mean putting our bodies in the path to protect other vulnerable bodies,” she said. “We’re seeing that in Minnesota.”

    In Center City, Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel has ordered 300 whistles ― portable and efficient tools to immediately alert neighbors to ICE presence and warn immigrants to seek safety.

    “There was a sense of needing to support our neighbors if it comes down to it,” said Rabbi Abi Weber. “God forbid, should there start to be ICE raids in our neighborhood, people will be prepared.”

    In other places around the country, immigrant allies have similarly readied themselves for ICE’s arrival, and organized to react in concert when agents show up.

    In Washington state, the group WA Whistles has distributed more than 100,000 free whistles to create what it calls “an immediate first line of community defense.” Chicago residents set up volunteer street patrols to warn immigrants of ICE and to contact family members of those detained. In Los Angeles, people raised money to support food-cart vendors, and organized an “adopt a corner” program to protect day laborers who seek work outside Home Depot stores.

    A small sign at the Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, where the Rev. Peter Ahn is creating space to shield immigrants if necessary.

    Ask Philadelphia groups that advocate for immigrants — 15% of the population, including about 76,000 who are undocumented — and they say ICE isn’t about to land in the city. It’s been here.

    The agency’s Philadelphia office serves as headquarters not just for the city but for all of Pennsylvania and for Delaware and West Virginia as well. Arrests take place every day in the Philadelphia region.

    “You all seem to be ‘preparing’ for something that’s already happened,” veteran activist Miguel Andrade wrote on Facebook.

    What has changed, however, is the dramatic escalation in ICE enforcement, particularly visible in Democratic-run cities like Minneapolis, where agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in January.

    ICE detained 307,713 people across the country in 2025, a 230% increase over the 93,342 in 2024. What federal immigration agencies record as detentions closely mirror arrests.

    Today residents in communities like Norristown and Upper Darby see ICE agents on the streets all the time. Cell phone videos have captured violent footage, including the smashed front door of a Lower Providence home after agents made an arrest on Feb. 9, and two people roughly pulled from a car in Phoenixville earlier this month.

    For immigrants who have no legal permission to be in the U.S. ― an estimated 14 million people ― the rising ICE presence steals sleep and peace of mind. They know not just that they could be arrested and deported at any moment, which has always been true, but also that the U.S. government is expending vast resources to try to make that happen.

    A woman who came to Philadelphia from Jamaica last year, and who asked not to be identified because she is undocumented, said she rarely leaves her home. She said she steps outside only to go to the grocery store, a doctor, or an attorney.

    She recently asked her daughter to check something on the computer, and the girl balked ― afraid to even touch the machine, worried that ICE could track her keystrokes and identify their location, the woman said.

    “How can I tell her it’s going to be OK when I don’t know it’s going to be OK?” asked the woman, who came to the U.S. to escape potential violence in Jamaica. “You come here expecting freedom, but here it’s like you’re in jail except for the [physical] barriers of the four walls.”

    Even as arrests have soared, Philadelphia has been spared the federal intrusions visited on other American cities.

    Why?

    Some say President Donald Trump doesn’t want to ruin the summer celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday, or spoil the grandeur of the World Cup or Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Others suggest that he might be timing an ICE deployment to do exactly that.

    City Council President Kenyatta Johnson speaking at the City Council’s first session of the year Jan. 22. He said this month that it’s time to stand up for immigrants in Philadelphia. “It’s my responsibility to step up in this space and be more vocal,” he said.

    That as Philadelphia City Council prepares to consider “ICE Out” legislation that would make it more difficult and complicated for the agency to operate in the city.

    Trump told NBC News this month that he is “very strongly” looking at five new cities.

    Some people are not waiting to see if Philadelphia is on the list.

    The monthly Zoom meeting of the Cresheim Village Neighbors usually draws about 20 people. But a hundred logged on in January to hear a presentation: What to do if/when ICE comes to our neighborhood.

    The short advice: If it happens, get out your phone and hit “record.”

    “If I see ICE agents, I will film,” said neighbors group coordinator Steve Stroiman, a retired teacher and rabbi. “I have a constitutional right to do that.”

    Federal immigration enforcement agents shatter a truck window and detain two men outside a Home Depot in Evanston, Ill., on Dec. 17, 2025.

    In a sliver of University City, Miriam Oppenheimer has helped lead three block meetings where neighbors gathered to discuss how they would respond.

    They set up a Signal channel so people can communicate. And they formulated a loose plan of action: People will come outside their homes and take video recordings ― and try to get the names and birth dates of anyone taken into custody, so they can be located later.

    “Courage is contagious,” Oppenheimer said. “Everybody is waiting for somebody else to do something, but we have to be the ones.”

    Inside Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, doorways to some rooms now bear black-and-white signs that say, “Staff and authorized personnel only.”

    Issues around ICE access to churches have become more urgent since Trump rescinded the agency policy on “sensitive locations,” which had generally barred enforcement at schools, hospitals, and houses of worship.

    Legal advocates such as the ACLU say ICE agents can lawfully enter the public areas of churches, including the sanctuaries where people gather to worship. But to go into private spaces they must present a warrant signed by a judge.

    “There are many front lines right now,” said Ahn, the Olivet pastor. “We’re not trying to be simply anti-ICE, or anti-anybody. We’re just trying to be for the rights of the Fourth Amendment.”

    Staff writer Joe Yerardi contributed to this article.

  • City Council members grill school district officials on plan to close 20 schools — and superintendent says he could have closed 40

    City Council members grill school district officials on plan to close 20 schools — and superintendent says he could have closed 40

    Philadelphia City Council may not have a vote on Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr.’s sweeping facilities plan, but it indicated Tuesday that it will have a say in school closings.

    As a packed hearing began in Council’s chambers Tuesday morning, both Council President Kenyatta Johnson and Isaiah Thomas, chair of the Education Committee, said Council refused to be a “rubber stamp” to Watlington’s proposal to close 20 schools, colocate six, and modernize 159.

    Though only the school board gets to vote directly on the plan, Johnson has indicated he is willing to hold up city funding to the district over the school closure plan. And his colleagues echoed that sentiment Tuesday.

    “I’m infuriated that we don’t get a say,” Councilmember Jimmy Harrity said, warning the district officials who appeared before him. “But, Council president, you and I both know we do get a say, because budget’s coming. And we will be looking. Mindful is the word I would use for today — be mindful.”

    Concerned citizens stand with signs in support of Harding Middle School before the start of a Philadelphia City Council hearing Tuesday at City Hall on the school district’s plan to close 20 schools.

    About 40% of the district’s nearly $5 billion budget comes from local revenue and city funding, which City Council and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker must approve in the annual city budget by the end of June.

    Harrity, an at-large Council member, said he was “tired that every time cuts come, they come from a certain neighborhood. You know, I live in Kensington, in the 7th District. I talk to these kids. They’re good kids. They deserve everything that other kids in other neighborhoods are getting. … You can see that this isn’t what our people want.” Watlington has proposed closing four schools in the 7th District.

    More than 100 community members holding babies and waving signs opposing the facilities plan filled Council chambers on the fourth floor of City Hall on Tuesday as Council members spent hours grilling Watlington and other district officials.

    Watlington, meanwhile, stood by his plan in testimony to Council on Tuesday, saying that 20 closings was a much smaller number than he could have settled on.

    “We could have come here and presented a plan that closed twice as many schools and been able to defend it,” Watlington said.

    A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

    District officials have said the facilities process is not about saving money, but about optimizing education and equity for the city’s 115,000 students.

    But it was clear Tuesday that finances played a part: The district has lost 15,000 students in the last 10 years, and over 80,000 since 1997, when charter schools were first authorized in Pennsylvania. It has 300 buildings, many of them 75 years and older and in poor repair, and some schools with more than 1,000 empty seats, while others are overcrowded.

    Tony B. Watlington Sr., superintendent of School District of Philadelphia, speaks at a City Council hearing Tuesday on his proposal to close 20 schools.

    “We’ve got to be very careful with our limited resources in a historically underfunded district,” Watlington told Council.

    Watlington and board president Reginald Streater, who also testified, pitched the plan as a way to add things the district cannot now offer — Advanced Placement courses in every high school, the opportunity for all eighth graders to take algebra, more prekindergarten, and career and technical education programs.

    “I do not believe we’ll get this opportunity again in our lifetime,” Watlington said.

    The superintendent dropped a few previously undisclosed facts about the facilities road map, indicating that his recommendations could shift slightly before he presents the plan to the school board on Feb. 26. No date has been set for the board’s final vote, which is expected later this winter.

    “It’s premature to say how the final recommendations will land,” Watlington said.

    But, the superintendent said, “if there are schools that Council wants me to take off the list, and add others on that list, we are open to you telling me what those are, but we cannot get to a place where we address our 35% non-utilization rate in buildings if no changes are made.”

    Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson (left) greets Dr. Tony Watlington, Superintendent of School District of Philadelphia Philadelphia City Council holds hearing with board members of School District of Philadelphia, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. Reginald L. Streater, Esq., President Board of Education. (center)

    Debora Carrera, the city’s chief education officer, who spent three decades as a district teacher and administrator, told Council that Parker believes “the current district footprint is unsustainable.”

    Carrera said her own experience as principal of Kensington High School for Creative and Performing Arts shows that it is right for the district to focus resources on neighborhood high schools.

    “My high school was a small high school,” Carrera said. “I could only offer my children two AP courses, when other schools like Central — where my son went — could offer them over 20-plus AP courses.“

    ‘Breaking down of public education’

    The hearing got tense at times.

    “I feel like this is the breaking down of public education in Philadelphia,” said Councilmember Cindy Bass, who said some of the district’s own decisions had led to closures.

    Several members of Council raised questions about the plan’s price tag. Prior district and city estimates put the cost just under $8 billion, but members of Watlington’s team said they could they could actually do the work for $2.8 billion — $1 billion from district capital funds, and $1.8 from yet-unpromised state and philanthropic sources.

    In the past, the district had made public detailed facilities condition assessments for every school in the district, Councilmember Rue Landau noted.

    Residents could look up their school and see exactly what the condition of every system in the building was, and how much money would be required to fix those that needed repair.

    “We don’t have any of those details,” said Landau, who went so far as to say she believed the district should be spending more than $2.8 billion on the plan. “What is the increased investment, and why don’t we have any of those details? They are not out there in the public for us, so none of us have any understanding as to why this is happening, This should all be public so all of the public can see.”

    Jerry Roseman, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers’ longtime environmental director, who has had a first-row seat to district facilities conditions for decades, said he believed the $2.8 billion figure was not realistic.

    “You need much more money than that,” Roseman told Council. “We need more money than this plan comes close to.”

    Some Council members pushed the district and the board on the plan’s timing.

    The city has been asking for a long-range facilities plan for years, Councilmember Quetcy Lozada pointed out.

    “It’s taken us all this time,” Lozada said. “Now, you guys have come up with a plan, and now we want to rush through it. Now all of a sudden there’s this urgency to get through this plan, which I don’t understand.”

    Streater said the board is moving forward with hearing Watlington’s plan on Feb. 26, but won’t vote until it hears more feedback.

    But ultimately, he said, the board will vote on “a plan that is dynamic, that can evolve over time. … I think that we all understand that things change, facts change, funding changes, enrollment trends change.”

    And, Streater said, there will also likely be policy changes based on redrawing some catchment areas, or boundaries that determine which neighborhood schools children attend.

    Streater, who introduced himself at the beginning of the hearing as “Reggie from Germantown,” underscoring his history as a graduate of two district schools that closed — Germantown High and Leeds Middle School — said that changes must be made.

    “I think if we continue doing the same thing, expecting a different result — which I would argue is chronic underachievement — we are doomed.”

  • These Philly schools are slated for big upgrades as the district works to modernize buildings

    These Philly schools are slated for big upgrades as the district works to modernize buildings

    Nearly $58 million for South Philadelphia High School. Over $27 million for Forrest Elementary in the Northeast. Almost $55 million for Bartram High in Southwest Philadelphia.

    Ahead of a Tuesday City Council hearing on the Philadelphia School District’s proposed facilities master plan, district officials have dangled the carrot that would accompany the stick of 20 school closings.

    The district released Monday morning how much it would spend on modernization projects at schools in each City Council District if Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr.’s plan is approved by the school board this winter.

    The totals range from $443 million in the 9th District — which includes parts of Olney, East and West Oak Lane, Mount Airy, and Oxford Circle — to nearly $56 million for the 6th District in lower Northeast Philadelphia, including Mayfair, Bridesburg, and Wissinoming.

    The district’s announcement comes as the plan has already raised hackles among some Council members, and City Council President Kenyatta Johnson has said he’ll hold up the district’s funding “if need be” if concerns are not answered to Council’s satisfaction.

    Tailoring the release to Council districts — including highlighting one major project per district — appears to be an effort to calm opposition ahead of Tuesday’s hearing.

    Details on every school that would get upgraded under Watlington’s plan — 159 in total — have not yet been released.

    John Bartram High School at 2401 S. 67th St in Southwest Philadelphia.

    Watlington has stressed that the point of the long-range facilities plan is not closing schools, but solving for issues of equity, improving academic programming, and acknowledging that many buildings are in poor shape, while some are underenrolled and some are overenrolled.

    “This plan is about ensuring that more students in every neighborhood have access to the high-quality academics, programs, and facilities they deserve,” Watlington said in a statement. “While some of these decisions are difficult, they are grounded in deep community engagement and a shared commitment to improving outcomes for all public school children in every ZIP code of Philadelphia.”

    But at community meetings unfolding at schools across the city that are slated for closure, Council members have expressed displeasure about parts of the plan — a preview, perhaps, of Tuesday’s meeting.

    Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, represents the 7th District, including Kensington, Feltonville, Juniata Park, and Frankford. Four schools in her district — Stetson, Conwell, Harding, and Welsh — are on the chopping block.

    “The fact that they are being considered for closure is very concerning to me,” Lozada said at a meeting at Stetson Middle School on Thursday.

    Councilmember Quetcy Lozada is shown in a 2025 file photo.

    Councilmember Cindy Bass, speaking at a Lankenau High meeting, objected to closing schools that are working well. (Three schools in Bass’ 8th District, Fitler Elementary, Wagner middle school, and Parkway Northwest High School, are proposed for closure. Lankenau is in Curtis Jones Jr.’s district but has citywide enrollment.)

    “I do not understand what the logic and the rationale is that we are making these kinds of decisions,” said Bass.

    While Council members will not have a direct say on the proposed school closures or the facilities plan, Council wields significant control over the district’s budget. Funding for the district is included in the annual city budget that Council must approve by the end of June.

    Local revenue and city funding made up about 40% of the district’s budget this year, or nearly $2 billion. Most of that is the district’s share of city property taxes which, unlike other school systems in Pennsylvania, are levied by the city and then distributed to the district.

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    Where will the money go?

    Despite city and schools officials saying in the past that the district has more than $7 billion in unmet facilities needs, Watlington has said the district could complete its plan — including modernizing 159 schools — for $2.8 billion.

    Officials said further details about modernization projects and the facilities plan will be released before the Feb. 26 school board meeting, where Watlington is expected to formally present his proposal to the school board.

    Overbrook High School, in West Philadelphia, will get major renovations in preparation for The Workshop School, a small, project-based district school, colocating inside the building.

    Here are the total proposed dollar amounts per Council district and the 10 big projects announced Monday:

    • 1st District: $308,049,008. Key project: $57.2 million for South Philadelphia High, turning the school into a career and technical education hub and modernizing electrical, lighting, and security systems.
    • 2nd District: $302,284,081. Key project: $54.6 million for Bartram High, to renovate the school and grounds, career and technical education spaces, restroom and accessibility renovations, new painting, and new athletic fields and facilities (on the site of nearby Tilden Middle School, which is slated to close). Motivation High School would close and become an honors program inside Bartram.
    • 3rd District: $204,947,677. Key project: $19.6 million for the Sulzberger site, which currently houses Middle Years Alternative and is proposed to house Martha Washington Elementary. (It currently houses MYA and Parkway West, which would close.) Improvements would include heating and cooling and electrical systems, classroom modernizations, and the addition of an elevator and a playground.
    • 4th District: $216,819,480. Key project: $50.2 million for Overbrook High School, with updates including new restrooms, accessibility improvements, and refurbished automotive bays. (The Workshop School, another district high school, is colocating inside the building.)
    • 5th District: $290,748,937. Key project: $8.4 million for Franklin Learning Center, with updates including for exterior, auditorium, and restroom renovations, security cameras, accessibility improvements, and new paint.
    • 6th District: $55,769,008. Key project: $27.2 million for Forrest Elementary, including modernizations that will allow the school to grow to a K-8, and eliminate overcrowding at Northeast Community Propel Academy.
    • 7th District: $388,795,327. Key project: $32.3 million at John Marshall Elementary in Frankford to add capacity at the school, plus a gym, elevator, and schoolwide renovations.
    • 8th District: $318,986,215. Key project: $42.9 million at Martin Luther King High in East Germantown for electrical and general building upgrades and accommodations for Building 21, a school that will colocate inside the King building.
    • 9th District: $442,934,244. Key project: $42.2 million at Carnell Elementary for projects including an addition to expand the school’s capacity, restroom renovations, exterior improvements, and stormwater management projects.
    • 10th District: $275,829,539. Key project: at Watson Comly Elementary in the Northeast, an addition to accommodate middle grade students from Loesche and Comly, and building modernizations. District officials did not give the estimated cost of the Comly project.

    What’s next?

    The facilities Council hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday at City Hall. It will also be livestreamed.

    Members of the public also have the opportunity to weigh in on the facilities plan writ large at three community town halls scheduled for this week: Tuesday at Benjamin Franklin High from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., Friday at Kensington CAPA from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., and a virtual meeting scheduled for 2 p.m. on Sunday.

    Meetings at each of the schools proposed for closure continue this week, also; the full schedule can be found on the district’s website.

  • Lincoln Drive and dozens of other Philly roads get $13 million from PennDot

    Philadelphia is getting $13 million to support six traffic-safety projects in Philadelphia, courtesy of speeders caught and fined by automated enforcement cameras.

    The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation announced the grants Wednesday for an array of city projects, including $2 million for traffic-calming measures on Lincoln Drive between Kelly Drive and Wayne Avenue.

    Some of that money will help pay for speed humps at 100 additional public, parochial, and private schools in the city, PennDot said.

    Since taking office in 2023, the Shapiro administration has invested $49.7 million in city traffic-safety projects, all from revenues raised by speed cameras.

    Calming speeders

    Under the automated speed-enforcement program, grants are plowed back into the communities that generated the revenue. Philadelphia is so far the only municipality in the state where speed cameras are authorized.

    Next week, the Philadelphia Parking Authority is activating speed-enforcement cameras in five school zones under an expansion of the program.

    Pennsylvania also has automated speed enforcement in highway work zones, but that revenue goes to the Pennsylvania State Police for extra patrols and more troopers, the turnpike for safety projects and speeding counter-measures, and the general treasury.

    Lincoln Drive improvements

    Fed-up West Mount Airy residents pushed state and local officials for years to reduce speeding, aggressive driving, and near-daily crashes on and near Lincoln Drive, which has hairpin curves and a posted speed limit of 25 mph, and thick commuter traffic zipping through dense neighborhoods.

    It was a high-profile instance of Philadelphians rallying around and demanding projects from the city’s Complete Streets program, a road-design approach that seeks to make roadways safer for all users, including pedestrians and cyclists, as well as drivers of motor vehicles.

    The new grant is meant to continue traffic-safety work on Lincoln Drive that began a couple of years ago.

    That includes speed humps, speed slots, new phosphorescent paint, flexible lane delineators, a smoother merge point where the road narrows, and marked left-turn lanes.

    “It’s made a huge difference,” said Josephine Winter, executive director of the West Mount Airy Neighbors civic group, which organized residents.

    “People that live along Lincoln Drive are feeling positive,” she said — though there is a split between people who are angry at what speed bumps have done to their cars’ undercarriages and those who support what they say are life-saving improvements.

    “The city was wonderful, very responsive,” Winter said. “We’re been fortunate to get something done here.” Next up: working with other Northwest residents to get improvements on side streets, Wissahickon Avenue, and others.

    Other grants

    • $1.5 million for planning work to upgrade traffic signals, better lane and crosswalk markings, and intersection modifications.
    • $5 million for design and construction of safety improvements along commercial and transit corridors. Those include curb extensions, concrete medians, bus boarding bump-outs, and new crosswalks. Locations include: Frankford Avenue (Tyson Avenue to Sheffield Avenue); 52nd Street (Arch Street to Pine Street); Hunting Park Avenue (Old York Road to 15th Street); and Germantown Avenue (Indiana Avenue to Venango Street).
  • ArchWell Health is a new primary care provider for Philadelphians with Medicare Advantage

    ArchWell Health is a new primary care provider for Philadelphians with Medicare Advantage

    A new sign with orange letters outside a former Rite Aid in Germantown announces the arrival of a primary care model new to the Philadelphia region.

    ArchWell Health recently opened its first three of eight planned primary care centers here for people with Medicare Advantage, promising convenient and personalized care in neighborhoods with a relative lack of doctors.

    Two others have opened on North Broad Street, near Stenton and Susquehanna Avenues, also in former Rite Aid stores.

    A privately held company based in Nashville, Tenn., ArchWell says it can offer patients greater access to healthcare through lower patient-provider ratios.

    It plans to limit each of its physicians to no more than 500 patients — about a fifth of the patient load for typical primary care doctors. Nurse practitioners working under the doctors will manage a maximum of 250 patients, officials said.

    The approach is built around a financial model that differentiates ArchWell from Medicare-focused competitors already in Philadelphia like Oak Street Health and ChenMed’s Dedicated Senior Medical Centers. ArchWell only accepts patients who have private Medicare or are willing to switch to it. Oak Street and ChenMed also accept traditional Medicare.

    Privately run Medicare Advantage plans are increasingly popular among people ages 65 and older who qualify for government-funded Medicare coverage. Advantage plans appeal to people by covering services, such as dental and vision care, left out of traditional Medicare, but have come under scrutiny for exaggerating how sick patients are to rack up more revenue.

    ArchWell sees exclusively working with Medicare Advantage plans as helping doctors to focus solely on the best outcomes for patients, rather than on providing more services to bring in more revenue, a criticism of traditional Medicare, said Doron Schneider, its medical director for the Philadelphia market.

    Melissa A. Herd, community relations specialist for ArchWell Health in Philadelphia, is shown outside the company’s Germantown location, which is in a former Rite Aid building.

    “You have different incentives, you have different care models, you have different case management models, you have different ways to treat one person versus the other,” Schneider said.

    Before starting at ArchWell in late 2024, Schneider worked at Tandigm Health, an Independence Health Group company founded in 2014 with the goal of helping primary care doctors manage costs and improve care for their patients. He learned there how hard it is for doctors to work with different types of insurers and the varied incentives that go with them.

    How ArchWell conducts business

    ArchWell, which opened its first clinic in 2021 in Birmingham, Ala., operates under contracts with Medicare Advantage plans. The plans give ArchWell a portion of the monthly payment they get from Medicare for each patient. That money is supposed to cover all of the person’s medical costs.

    Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, and Devoted Health have contracts with ArchWell to cover the Philadelphia market. ArchWell is close to getting contracts with HealthSpring and Humana, Schneider said. Those five companies had more than 90,000 people in their plans in December, according to federal data.

    Aetna and UnitedHealthcare said they work with clinics like ArchWell’s around the country to improve health outcomes and leave patients more satisfied with their experience.

    “We are pleased that they are now an option for Aetna Medicare Advantage members in the Philadelphia area,” Aetna said in a statement.

    ArchWell declined to provide financial details, such as annual revenue from the more than 80 clinics it had in a dozen states before coming to Philadelphia or how much it spends to open each center. ArchWell representatives also did not disclose who its owners are.

    The interior of Archwell Health’s Germantown primary care clinic has Philadelphia-centric images painted on the walls.

    Company founder Carl Whitmer worked at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, a global private equity firm, before founding ArchWell.

    “We have partners that are focused on our sustainability and growth,” said Christina Cober, ArchWell’s vice president of marketing.

    But companies focused on primary care for seniors haven’t always been as successful as anticipated.

    Oak Street, founded in Chicago in 2012, grew rapidly and now services 450,000 patients at 230 centers across the country. It declined to say how many patients it has in Philadelphia. Oak Street arrived here in 2018.

    CVS Health bought Oak Street in 2023 for $10.6 billion, anticipating that it would expand to more than 300 centers by this year. Last fall, CVS announced it was closing 16 centers and taking a $5.7 billion write-down on its health-services business, largely because of slower anticipated growth at Oak Street.

    Patina Health, a Bala Cynwyd company that offered virtual and in-home primary care for Medicare Advantage patients through a partnership with Independence Blue Cross, shut down last year due to “unforeseen business challenges.”

    How ArchWell approaches patient care

    ArchWell says its lower patient-provider ratios allow more frequent interactions with patients. If a patient is diagnosed with high blood pressure, Schneider said, the message to the patient is: “We’ll see you back in a week. We’ll see you back in two weeks.”

    The repeat visits happen with no cost to the member and no extra revenue to ArchWell because all care is supposed to be covered by a monthly payment per member.

    ArchWell expects to add about 300 patients per year at each center, said Cober. Staffing at the centers starts out with a physician, a nurse-practitioner, two care navigators, two medical assistants, and a center manager.

    Among the early patients at ArchWell’s center on Germantown Avenue is Marcella James, 69, who lives across the street from the clinic and watched as the building was transformed from a shuttered Rite Aid.

    “I walked over there one day just to see what it was like and what they offer, and I signed up right away,” James said. James likes her doctor at Temple Health, but ArchWell was irresistibly convenient.

    “If I can get the same help or better help from ArchWell is to be seen because I just started with them,” she said.

  • A Main Line town leads the charge of new Philly-area restaurants for February

    A Main Line town leads the charge of new Philly-area restaurants for February

    February’s crop of restaurant openings includes two restaurants’ expansions to Narberth, a reopened brewery in South Jersey, a chic restaurant/lounge in Center City, an intriguing wine bar/bottle shop in Chestnut Hill, and two French newcomers.

    Restaurants can take awhile and owners are often hesitant to pinpoint an opening date. I’ve listed the targeted day where possible; for the rest, check social media.

    Duo Restaurant & Bar (90 Haddon Ave., Westmont): Brothers Artan and Arber Murtaj and Andi and Tony Lelaj, who own the Old World-style Italian Il Villaggio in Cherry Hill, are taking over Haddon Avenue’s former Keg & Kitchen with a pub serving a bar menu supplemented with seafood.

    Eclipse Brewing (25 E. Park Ave., Merchantville): Last August, food trucker Megan Hilbert of Red’s Rolling Restaurant became one of the youngest brewery owners in New Jersey when she bought this 9-year-old Camden County brewery, open as of Friday.

    Lassan Indian Traditional (232 Woodbine Ave., Narberth): The second location of the well-regarded Lafayette Hill Indian BYOB takes over the long-ago Margot space in Narberth.

    LeoFigs, 2201 Frankford Ave., as seen in January 2026.

    LeoFigs (2201 Frankford Ave.): Justice and Shannon Figueras promise the delivery of their long-awaited bar/restaurant, with an urban winery in the basement, at Frankford and Susquehanna in Fishtown. The food menu will be built around comfort-leaning small plates.

    The bubbly selection at Lovat Square in Chestnut Hill.

    Lovat Square (184 E. Evergreen Ave.): Damien Graef and Robyn Semien (also owners of Brooklyn wine shop Bibber & Bell) are taking over Chestnut Hill’s former Top of the Hill Market/Mimi’s Café property for a multiphased project: first a wine shop with indoor seating, then a courtyard with a full dinner menu, followed later by a cocktail bar/restaurant component. Opens Feb. 12

    Malooga (203 Haverford Ave., Narberth): The Old City Yemeni restaurant is expanding to Narberth with lunch and dinner service plus a bakery, with expanded indoor/outdoor seating and space for groups.

    Mi Vida (34 S. 11th St.): Washington, D.C.-based restaurant group Knead Hospitality + Design is bringing its upscale Mexican concept to East Market, next to MOM’s Organic Market. Target opening is Feb. 18.

    MOTW Coffee & Pastries (2101 Market St): Mahmood Islam and Samina Akbar are behind this franchise of Muslims of the World Coffee, offering a third-space experience at the Murano.

    Napa Kitchen & Wine (3747 Equus Blvd., Newtown Square): A California-inspired restaurant rooted in Midlothian, Va., opens in Ellis Preserve with an extensive domestic and international wine list in a polished setting. Opens Feb. 9.

    Ocho Supper Club (210 W. Rittenhouse Square): Chef RJ Smith’s Afro-Caribbean fine-dining supper club starts a six-month residency at the Rittenhouse Hotel, tied to the Scarpetta-to-Ruxton transition, serving tasting menus through July. Now open.

    Piccolina (301 Chestnut St.): A low-lit Italian restaurant and cocktail bar at the Society Hill Hotel from Michael Pasquarello (Cafe Lift, La Chinesca, Prohibition Taproom). Targeting next week

    Pretzel Day Pretzels (1501 S. Fifth St.): James and Annie Mueller’s pretzel-delivery operation is becoming a takeout shop in the former Milk + Sugar space in Southwark. Expect classic soft pretzels plus German-style variations (including Swabian-style) and stuffed options.

    Merriment at the bar at Savu, 208 S. 13th St.

    Savú (208 S. 13th St.): Kevin Dolce’s Hi-Def Hospitality has converted the former Cockatoo into a modern, bi-level dining and late-night lounge with a New American menu from chef Maulana Muhammad; it just soft-opened for dinner Thursday through Sunday and weekend brunch.

    Bar-adjacent seating at Side Eye.

    Side Eye (623 S. Sixth St.): Hank Allingham’s all-day neighborhood bar takes over for Bistrot La Minette with “French-ish” food from chef Finn Connors, plus cocktails, European-leaning wines, beer, and a late-night menu. Opens 5 p.m. Feb. 7 with 50% of the night’s proceeds going to the People’s Kitchen.

    Soufiane at the Morris (225 S. Eighth St): Soufiane Boutiliss and Christophe Mathon (Sofi Corner Café) say there’s a 90% chance of a February opening for their new spot at the Morris House Hotel off Washington Square. It’s billed as an elegant-but-approachable restaurant inspired by classic French bouillons/brasseries, with a menu spanning small plates and full entrées alongside Moroccan-influenced tagines. Expect evening service indoors, daytime service outdoors.

    South Sichuan II (1537 Spring Garden St.): A second location for the popular Point Breeze Sichuan takeout/delivery specialist, near Community College of Philadelphia; this one will offer more seating.

    Zsa’s Ice Cream (6616 Germantown Ave.): The Mount Airy shop’s end-of-2025 “grand closing” proved short-lived after a sale to local pastry chef Liz Yee. Reopened Feb. 7.

    Looking ahead

    March openings are in the offing for the much-hyped PopUp Bagels in Ardmore, as well as the long-delayed Terra Grill (a stylish room in Northern Liberties’ Piazza Alta) and ILU (the low-lit Spanish tapas bar) in Kensington.

  • ‘Sun Ra: Do the Impossible’ is headed to ‘American Masters’ on PBS

    ‘Sun Ra: Do the Impossible’ is headed to ‘American Masters’ on PBS

    Sun Ra, the Afrofuturist bandleader and intergalactic visionary who based his Arkestra in Philadelphia for decades, is heading to PBS.

    Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, the Christine Turner-directed documentary that screened at last year’s Black Star Film Festival in Philadelphia, will air as part of PBS’ American Masters series during Black History Month.

    It will be shown locally on WHYY at 9 p.m. Feb. 20.

    Sun Ra, who was born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Ala., founded Arkestra, now led by 101-year-old saxophone player Marshall Allen after Sun Ra’s death in 1993. He moved with the band to a house in Germantown in the late 1960s, where Allen still lives. The Morton Street house was originally owned by Allen’s father.

    Turner’s film includes how Blount, who was known as “Sonny,” experienced a “transmolecularization” in 1936 in which he claimed to have been teleported to Saturn and returned to Earth with a musical mission to bring peace and understanding to the world.

    Sun Ra’s music encompasses the history of jazz — from its New Orleans beginnings to out-there experimentation with electronic instruments, King Britt, Philadelphia DJ-producer-turned Blacktronika professor at the University of California San Diego, explains in the film.

    Other Philadelphians who offer analysis in the documentary include poet-musician-activist Moor Mother, and critic and WRTI-FM (90.1) editorial director Nate Chinen.

    The film’s title is inspired by a Sun Ra quote that Turner kept on her desk while she worked on the documentary. It read: “The possible has been tried and failed. Now it’s time to try the impossible.”

    From Germantown to Saturn and back: a new Sun Ra documentary lands in Philly

    The American Masters treatment arrives at a time when Sun Ra’s presence is larger than ever.

    Since 2023, the organization has released five Sun Ra tribute albums. Sun Ra’s oeuvre was central to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt” exhibit, and his image is featured prominently at the Institute of Contemporary Art’s “Entryways: Xenobia Bailey” exhibit currently on view.

    Do the Impossible adds to the growing Sun Ra film library that includes the 1972 movie Space is the Place, and Philly filmmaker Robert Mugge’s 1980 Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise. Another doc, coproduced by Allen along with his son Ronnie Boyd titled Sun Ra: Door to the Cosmos, is in the works.

    Sun Ra Arkestra bandleader Marshall Allen with “Sun Ra: Do the Impossible” director Christine Turner at the Sun Ra house on Morton Street in Germantown. The documentary will be shown on PBS on Feb. 20.

    “As a culture, we’re just catching up with a lot of the ideas and the music that was so ahead of its time,” Turner said of her film’s subject in an interview with The Inquirer in July.

    “He’s become an icon of Afrofuturism, and I think that is resonating with people because we’re deeply in need of new ideas and radically imagining another kind of future. And I think people are really hungering for that.”

  • Dozens of surveillance videos and cell phone data led Philadelphia police to Kada Scott’s accused killer

    Dozens of surveillance videos and cell phone data led Philadelphia police to Kada Scott’s accused killer

    Two weeks after Kada Scott vanished, Philadelphia Police Detective Joseph Cremen stood over a patch of disturbed ground in a wooded stretch near an abandoned school in East Germantown.

    He pushed aside a layer of loose twigs and pressed a six-foot branch into the soil. It sank only a few inches before stopping short.

    That, Cremen testified Monday, was when he realized he’d found a shallow grave.

    The Oct. 18 discovery ended a two-week search for Scott, 23, who disappeared on Oct. 4 after leaving the Chestnut Hill senior living center where she worked. An autopsy later determined that she had been shot in the head.

    Cremen testified that the location of the grave was not discovered at random, but emerged from weeks of reviewing surveillance footage, digital data, and tips that helped authorities trace a path from the Awbury Arboretum to the wooded area where Scott was buried — and that linked her killing to Keon King, who is charged with murder, abuse of a corpse, and related crimes.

    During a preliminary hearing Monday that stretched nearly five hours, prosecutors methodically laid out that evidence, replaying video after video on a courtroom TV as detectives testified about how they tracked Scott’s final movements and King’s efforts, they say, to conceal her death.

    At the conclusion of the hearing, Common Pleas Court Judge Karen Simmons ruled that prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence for the case to proceed and ordered it held for court.

    An attorney for Scott’s parents, Brian Fritz, called the ruling a “first step” in getting justice for their daughter.

    “Kada Scott’s family is grieving,” he said. “In fact, their grief is unimaginable. But, so is their commitment for accountability and justice for Kada.”

    Detectives testified that surveillance cameras at the Awbury Arboretum recorded a silver hatchback vehicle pulling into a parking lot less than an hour before Scott’s Apple Watch transmitted its final location at 1:14 a.m. on Oct. 5. Footage from the same cameras appeared to show two men removing an object from the car and walking in the direction investigators later followed to Scott’s burial site.

    An anonymous tip helped lead investigators into the woods nearby the Ada H.H. Lewis Middle School in East Germantown.

    Kim Matthews (second from left), mother of Kada Scott, holds a image of her daughter before a Domestic Violence Awareness walk at the Philadelphia Art Museum on Oct. 26, 2025.

    Additional street cameras, prosecutors said, captured the same hatchback parked in a driveway behind homes on the 2300 block of 74th Avenue. Moments later, video showed a sudden flash of light and flames as the car was set on fire, destroying what authorities believe may have been physical evidence inside.

    Investigators did not rely on any single camera, prosecutors emphasized. Instead, detectives testified that they reconstructed the timeline by stitching together footage from dozens of surveillance systems across the city. That effort, they said, led them to King, 21.

    Street cameras recorded a 1999 gold Toyota Camry registered to King traveling in the vicinity of the arboretum around the same times activity was captured there, they said. Police also tracked the movements of one of Scott’s Apple devices after she left work, comparing its location data with license plate readers and surveillance video, detective Robert Daly testified.

    “Everywhere this device went, Mr. King’s car went,” Daly said.

    Cell phone records presented at the hearing showed that King and Scott had exchanged text messages in the hours before her disappearance, Daly testified.

    The last message Scott sent asked King to call her when he arrived at the senior living center. The final incoming call on her phone, at 10:12 p.m. on Oct. 4, was from King, according to police.

    Before Simmons ruled, King’s defense attorney, Robert Gamburg, argued that the prosecution’s case relied too heavily on circumstantial evidence and failed to place his client directly at the scene of the killing.

    The surveillance footage, he said, did not clearly identify any faces and could not establish who was inside and around the vehicles.

    He also pointed to testimony from a senior living center employee who said she saw Scott leave work that night and noticed a dark-colored Jeep parked outside the facility, not a silver hatchback.

    “There is absolutely nothing connecting this young man to what happened to Ms. Scott,” Gamburg said, urging the judge to dismiss the case.

    “At this level, with this quantum of evidence, for this type of case, it should be discharged today,” he said.

    Assistant District Attorney Ashley Toczylowski countered that investigators had assembled a detailed and corroborated account of Scott’s final hours, one that showed not only King’s proximity to her disappearance, she said, but also steps taken afterward to destroy evidence.

    “This isn’t coincidence,” she told the court. “It’s corroboration.”