Penn is investing $4.1M in Lea Elementary. That’s both promising and risky, the community says.

Henry C. Lea Elementary stands on the precipice of great possibility — and the city is watching.

Come next school year, Lea, a K-8 at 47th and Locust in West Philadelphia, will be the beneficiary of $800,000 annually from the University of Pennsylvania, money and services that are likely to transform the school, for better or worse.

The gravity of the five-year deal, formalized by the school board Thursday night, is not lost on Aaron Gerwer, principal of the 470-student school.

“It’s super exciting. At the same time, you really want to make sure you do right by the community,” said Gerwer, who’s been Lea’s principal for two years.

Stephanie Fahringer, parent of a Lea second grader and a child who will enter kindergarten next year, feels “cautiously optimistic” but said the deal inspired many questions.

“We’re well aware of the complicated history that Penn has with West Philly, West Philly schools in particular,” said Fahringer, who’s president of the Lea Home and School Association. “There’s this mixture of excitement for what could be, and a little trepidation for what could also be.”

» READ MORE: Penn to invest nearly $5M over 5 years in another West Philly school

Penn and the Philadelphia School District have the stated goal of replicating the success of Penn Alexander, the nationally hailed school a few blocks from Lea. That school was started from scratch in 2001, with Penn pouring in $1,000 per student (the sum is now $1,300 per child) to ensure small class sizes, top-notch professional development, and strong programming — extras designed to build a strong neighborhood school where Penn employees would want to send their children.

Penn Alexander has met its founders’ goals, but it’s also gentrified its neighborhood, pricing out many long-term residents and people of color.

Lea, by contrast, has been around for more than 100 years. Penn Alexander is whiter and wealthier than the district as a whole; Lea’s demographics reflect the district’s diversity. The majority of its students are Black and come from economically disadvantaged families.

Penn is no stranger to Lea; its relationship with the school dates back decades. In recent years, the university has provided targeted supports at Lea leaders’ request — teacher training in literacy and math, family and community engagement help, opportunities for students like after-school and summer programs, athletics, and homework help and tutoring, said Pam Grossman, dean of Penn’s Graduate School of Education. A handful of staff who work at Lea daily are already Penn-paid.

Given the growing partnership, it made sense to think about “expanding opportunities for young people in West Philadelphia,” Grossman said. (The university provides some supports, like math coaching and after-school programming, at some other West Philadelphia schools, but they will not get the same kind of financial commitment Lea and Penn Alexander receive.)

All told, Penn’s current supports at Lea are worth about $300,000 annually, Grossman said. The additional commitment — and guaranteed five-year partnership — deepens the ties, but the vision will be guided by what Gerwer and the community want, Grossman said.

“We are working together to expand again the opportunities for young people, to provide support around instructional vision and what could be,” said Grossman. “It could be a model for ‘what does that look like at other schools?’”

Activists have called on Penn not just to support individual schools but the district as a whole by committing to Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOTs), a move the university has rejected. (It has pledged $100 million over 10 years to help the district remediate environmental hazards in schools citywide.) Some Lea parents have even called for rejecting the Lea contribution and pushing Penn to do more for all city schools.

Grossman said she understood the urgency around improving all city schools but said the Lea deal was a start.

“School reform is often slow, steady progress, and this partnership is part of that evolution,” she said.

» READ MORE: Philly school board approves a $4.1M Penn partnership with Lea Elementary

Currently, just 43% of Lea’s students come from the neighborhood surrounding the school; some are English-language learners or students receiving specialized services bused in from other neighborhoods. Those types of students will continue to have a place at Lea, both Grossman and Gerwer said.

“That’s been really important, a big part of the school for a long time,” said Gerwer, who understands community skepticism. “I have tried to be really clear to them and emphatic: We have a trusting relationship with Penn that’s been built over a number of years. We want to keep the community that we have intact.”

Rashene Davis knows Lea well. She grew up visiting the building where her uncle worked as a school police officer for years. She herself was a Lea classroom teacher in the early 2000s, when Penn and the district opened Penn Alexander. For the last six years, Davis has been assistant superintendent for the West Philadelphia network that oversees Lea.

Penn has been a valuable partner, Davis said, stepping in with assistance for all her schools when she asked for support helping teachers transition to remote instruction early in the pandemic, for instance. Penn saw the difference its resources were making at Lea under Gerwer and the school’s formal principal, Davis said.

“They were ready to step up and make a more long-term commitment,” she said.

Davis has watched gentrification transform her city — South Philadelphia looks vastly different from when she grew up there, for instance — and while she understands a community wary of promises made and broken in the past, she rejects the notion that another Penn partnership will hasten changes in West Philadelphia.

“Gentrification is happening all around the city,” said Davis.

Lea, like many schools in the district, has lost students over the years with the rise of charter schools and shifting neighborhood populations. Its building can hold 716 children, 250 more than currently enrolled.

Lea will focus on project-based learning, a cause close to Gerwer’s heart. A California native who started working with children as a teenager, Gerwer has worked as a paraprofessional and as a special education and English teacher at Frankford and Dobbins high schools in Philadelphia. He got hooked on the idea of students learning through projects, collaboration, and technology, and landed at Science Leadership Academy as a principal intern, then coprincipal.

After time spent leading a charter school, Gerwer returned to the district to take on the Lea principalship in 2020. Running a school in an underfunded district in an old building through COVID-19 has been challenging, but there have been wins, like the colorful mural that dominates one hallway — it’s not just something beautiful to look at, but the product of students working with a literacy nonprofit to put a meaningful mark on their school.

“That’s the kind of stuff that we’re hoping to see a lot of,” said Gerwer.

Gerwer has his wish list: more space, an extension of the classroom modernization project that spruced up the lower-grade rooms, for sure. But he was really excited at the first two town halls on the Penn partnership, held Wednesday, where parents were sharing their own dreams for the school.

“It was awesome to see that energy,” Gerwer said.

Still, Fahringer, the Home and School Association president, feels conflicted — she wants this kind of game-changer for every school in the district.

In the meantime, she’s choosing to remain hopeful, “especially with how difficult things have been over the last few years. It is encouraging to see something that could bring a lot of good things for a lot of kids in our community.”