In 2022, the governor of Pennsylvania stood on a stage at Paul Robeson High in West Philadelphia and hailed the small school as “a model for what can happen in Pennsylvania.“
But four years later, the Philadelphia School District has recommended closing Robeson, suggesting its small size limited students’ opportunities. Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. wants its students to attend Sayre High, where Robeson would become an honors program, losing its separate identity, administration, and staff.
Having Robeson listed among 20 schools slated for closure was the worst kind of déjà vu for some in the Robeson community: In the last round of large-scale Philadelphia school closures, district officials recommended closing Robeson and sending students to Sayre, which is about two miles away.
“This is the exact same plan,” said Andrew Saltz, who helped organize the Robeson community against closure in 2013 and who is doing it again 13 years later. “We need a different plan.”
The community is speaking out, hoping to persuade the school board to save Robeson again when it votes on Watlington’s recommendations later this winter.
An upward trajectory
Robeson soared after successfully fending off its last attempted shutdown.
By 2017, it was named the district’s most-improved high school. It built upon its core of dedicated teachers and students; though most Robeson students come from its own West Philadelphia neighborhood, it is a citywide school, meaning they have to apply to be there.
Robeson expanded existing partnerships and formed new ones that gave students opportunities to get onto nearby college campuses. Richard Gordon, who came to lead the school in 2013, was recognized as national principal of the year. (Gordon has since been promoted to assistant superintendent in the district.)
Multiple Robeson teachers have been honored as among the district’s best.
The school sent a student to Harvard, a coup for any district high school, let alone one without strict academic criteria. Its students successfully pushed to get their school air-conditioned. School staff secured outside funding to renovate the cafeteria.
Then-Mayor Jim Kenney visited Robeson to tout its success. So did then-Gov. Tom Wolf.
Elana Evans, a beloved Robeson teacher and the school’s special education compliance monitor, has already weathered one school shutdown — she taught at the old University City High School, closed in 2013
That loss was brutal, Evans said. But she is proud of what the community has built at Robeson.
“It’s an amazing story that continues to stay amazing because we still keep growing,” Evans said. “To say, ‘OK, you’re going to merge with this school, and your name is just going to fade to nothing,’ is, to me, disrespectful.”
District officials are pitching Robeson’s closure — and the closings writ large — as a move to expand opportunities for all students.
Sayre, with Robeson as a part of it, would get modernized career and technical rooms and equipment in the facilities plan, Sarah Galbally, Watlington’s chief of staff, told the Robeson community. Sayre would get more accessibility features; renovated stormwater management, roof, and restrooms; and new paint.
But that didn’t convince Evans.
“You say one thing, ‘This is how it’s going to look like,’ but for real for real, stop gaslighting me,” Evans said.
‘They needed something small’
Samantha Bromfield homeschooled her twins for seven years, and was wary when she enrolled her children in public school — until Robeson made her believe.
The move to shut the school frustrated and saddened her, Bromfield said. She and many other Robeson parents said they would not send their children to Sayre.
“If you as a board choose to close Paul Robeson, I choose to pull my children from the public school system,” Bromfield said at meeting held at Robeson on Saturday. “They needed something small. They needed a family. They needed someone who could hold their arms around the children and say, ‘Hey, are you having a bad day?’”
Multiple parents echoed Bromfield’s statements.
The district is choosing to invest in some schools but not others under the facilities proposal, they said.
“Cassidy got a new school, why not us?” one parent told district officials, referring to a $62.1 million new building for a West Philadelphia elementary school.
‘Y’all don’t know’
Ahrianna DeLoach, a Robeson ninth grader, struggled in middle school but is soaring at Robeson, she said, because of the nature of a place where teachers know every student’s name.
“I don’t want it to close down,” DeLoach said. “I was looking forward to graduating from this school. It would devastate me if I couldn’t.”
West Philadelphia resident Antoine Mapp Sr. graduated from University City High, but has been spending time at Robeson since he was 11. Mapp’s West Powelton Steppers and Drum Squad rehearses inside the Robeson gymnasium.
It feels especially cruel to lose Robeson as gentrification creeps in, Mapp said, and with gun violence still plaguing Philadelphia. He worries about the routes children would have to take to get to Sayre, and about neighborhood rivalries.
“You guys don’t understand what it’s like living in the community or our neighborhood, or what we go through,” Mapp said. “Y’all don’t know how hard it is just to go to the store in our community. Y’all don’t know what it’s like trying to go to an activity in our neighborhood. We have none of those things. Now you want to take this school away from us and send our kids to different communities. I want you to know that the crime rate and the murders are going to increase and there’s nothing y’all can do about it.”
