Asbestos closed Southwark Elementary School. Most students will relocate to South Philly High.
Southwark Elementary is the first building to close because of damaged asbestos in the 2023-24 school year. The temporary shutdown is one example of decades of under funding, one parent said.
Asbestos has closed another Philadelphia school.
Southwark Elementary, on South Ninth Street, will be closed for “several weeks,” officials have said.
At a meeting with parents late Friday afternoon, Southwark principal Andrew Lukov and district officials announced that the bulk of Southwark students — prekindergarten through fifth graders, and sixth graders in the school’s two-way Spanish immersion program — would begin learning at South Philadelphia High School at 2101 S. Broad St. beginning Nov. 6, according to people who attended the meeting.
Southwark is the first Philadelphia School District building to close in the 2023-24 school year. Six schools closed in the 2022-23 year because of damaged asbestos.
In a letter to Southwark families, Lukov said the asbestos was discovered Thursday, when district environmental teams were checking the school’s house fan to ready the school for cooler weather and “discovered areas of dust and debris in the attic.
“The attic has floors made of plaster-containing asbestos. This dust could contain asbestos and must be immediately addressed to prevent it being circulated throughout the building if the house fan is turned on in cold weather,” he said.
Under the plan unveiled Friday, South Philadelphia High students and Southwark’s students will occupy different floors of the sprawling high school building, and the two schools will have different arrival and dismissal times.
The remainder of the school’s sixth graders, plus seventh and eighth graders, will be moving to Childs Elementary, at 1599 Wharton Ave. in Point Breeze.
Friday was already planned to be teacher training day, with students off; students will learn virtually until South Philadelphia and Childs are ready for Southwark students on Nov. 6.
“I know this is disappointing news, and we appreciate your patience as the district addresses this important work so we can maintain safe and healthy learning spaces,” Lukov said.
The closure had staff and families reeling.
It hit home on several levels for Dan Urevick-Acklesberg, father of a Southwark student — and a lawyer who represented plaintiffs in the landmark lawsuit that resulted in a Commonwealth Court judge ruling Pennsylvania’s school-funding system is illegal.
Southwark’s closure, Urevick-Acklesberg said, is “insane, and it’s also unconstitutional. It’s just one more instance of the reality of decades of disinvestment. It just happens to be at my own child’s school.”
In a way, it’s no surprise. State officials testified at trial that the Pennsylvania Department of Education knew about serious environmental issues like asbestos at schools around the state, but said the Commonwealth’s current funding sources aren’t enough to cover remediation.
Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer wrote in her opinion that the court “has concerns whether all the facilities are, in fact, safe.”
Cohn Jubelirer ordered the state legislature to change the way it funds public schools; a commission is holding hearings across Pennsylvania and is expected to issue a report on its findings, though the timetable is not yet clear.
And though Southwark staff and families are now scrambling, “this is the kind of thing that never happens to kids who are lucky to be born in a well-funded zip code,” said Urevick-Acklesberg. “This is a now-or-never moment — either this is the start of a real solution that’s enacted in the upcoming budget cycle, or we will be back in court.”
State Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler (D., Philadelphia) has two children at Southwark; she walked to the school Friday to pick up computers and other supplies.
“This is a sad day for the Southwark community,” said Fiedler. She said she appreciated the district’s transparency and its move to handle the problem swiftly. But, she said, the closure never should have happened.
It’s Southwark’s turn now, but the problem is emblematic of a larger one, Fiedler said.
“The physical condition of our buildings is a huge problem — bigger than any one school — that needs immediate and significant financial and logistical support,” said Fiedler.