Philly teachers and parents from schools closed by asbestos petition the district for better information

The immediate crisis is past, and Ta’Mora Jackson’s daughter is back at C.W. Henry Elementary after damaged asbestos closed the school to in-person learning for two weeks.

But Jackson stood on the steps of the Philadelphia School District’s headquarters at 440 N. Broad St. on Thursday to demand that the school system operate with more clarity and coordination as it confronts future environmental crises — of which there will likely be many.

“As a school community, we should have access to more transparent information,” said Jackson, the president of the Mount Airy elementary school’s PTA. “We needed a better, more comprehensive plan about how asbestos was going to be remediated.”

Jackson’s message was echoed by the dozen parents and teachers who delivered petitions to school district officials Thursday — first rebuffed by security, and then received by Oz Hill, the district’s chief operating officer, and district spokesperson Monique Braxton. The group hailed from Henry and Mitchell elementary schools, and Building 21 and Frankford High — four schools closed by asbestos problems this year.

“Seventeen days for our families in Southwest Philadelphia to have a face-to-face meeting with anybody from 440. To us that’s not acceptable,” Sara Nissley, a teacher at Mitchell Elementary, told district officials.

The school system is dealing with a city full of aging buildings, most of which are more than 70 years old. Officials estimate it would cost more than $5 billion to fix or replace everything that’s wrong with the district’s facilities.

Hill said he heard the concerns and would address the group’s questions “in a reasonable amount of time,” though he didn’t say how long that might take.

”This is a challenge that is decades in the making,” beyond any one administration, Hill said. He said the district was “doing everything humanly possible with the resources that we have.”

While petitioners acknowledged the issues aren’t the fault of the current school board or superintendent, it’s incumbent on those leaders to handle them, the petitioners said.

Among their demands is more information about the specific location of asbestos in their buildings, more details and transparency about remediation plans, relocation options, and safe working and learning conditions.

David Gavigan, an English teacher at Frankford, said he worries every day about what he was exposed to. Was asbestos in his classroom? He doesn’t know.

“It feels like we are not being given information that you would think people put in harm’s way with dangerous materials in our classrooms deserve,” Gavigan said.

Frankford remains closed, and Gavigan and other staff there have not heard anything definitive about a plan for the rest of this school year. Officials originally said they had hoped to relocate all of its 900 students, but with Memorial Day looming, only the school’s students with special needs have been moved to an alternate location, at Olney High.

Teaching is Gavigan’s second career, and he chose to be a teacher in Philadelphia deliberately.

“I don’t want to go teach in New Jersey,” Gavigan said. “I don’t want to teach in the suburbs. I live in Philadelphia, and part of the reason I wanted to be a teacher was to make an impact here. But I’m thinking about my family, and the future.”

Communities are wary of the district, said Maeve Rooney, the art teacher at Mitchell, in Southwest Philadelphia, which was shut in April and will remain closed for the rest of the year. Students and staff have been relocated to McMichael Elementary, in West Philadelphia.

Asbestos abatement was performed at Mitchell in 2019.

“We were told everything was OK, and now all of this,” said Rooney. “They won’t tell us specifically where in Mitchell the asbestos was. The school was built in 1915, it’s probably everywhere. There hasn’t been clear communication around what they’re going to do to fix the problem, and next steps.”

Atiya Davis, whose daughter is in sixth grade at Mitchell, said parents hadn’t been given enough information.

”It’s just also about safety,” she said, whether worrying about kids getting into fights outside the building — or being inside “and inhaling chemicals for years.”

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. has acknowledged that situations such as Mitchell’s — where asbestos-containing material was erroneously labeled safe — are likely to crop up elsewhere in the district.

The district said in a statement Thursday evening that the majority of the more than 270 district buildings already inspected in the current three-year cycle have remained open and operating. In the meantime, the ones with safety issues had to be closed.

“We are working on a comprehensive plan to identify and prepare more alternative spaces for in-person learning...,” the statement read. “These swing spaces must also meet environmental standards, as well as be capable of accommodating the needs of our students and staff.”

Officials have said Mitchell should be able to return to its building at the beginning of the 2023-24 school year.

“But a lot of us are scared the’re going to blindside us with a decision late in the summer, before the school year,” Rooney said. “The unknown is always scary. Even with the district, if they don’t know, they should communicate, ‘We’re working on something.’ It would put us at ease, parents at ease.”

Sheila Johnson lived with uncertainty for months. Her daughter attends Building 21, a high school in West Oak Lane, which was closed for two months, then open for one day before it was shut down again for damage from a rainstorm. It is now open again, but Johnson said the district has not handled the process well.

“We need accountability. They need to have a plan and bring the parents to the table — that has been my speech from the beginning,” said Johnson. “If something happens to our schools again, what’s the plan? Do I drop my daughter off at your house? We need a contingency plan.”