Philly’s missed opportunity to fix asbestos problems in schools

I didn’t go to school in a building built after World War II until I went to college. For 12 years, I attended classes in Philadelphia public schools that were built in the 1930s.

Many of these Depression-era buildings — often constructed with New Deal funds through the Works Progress Administration — are still in use across the district. And they should be. They are well-made, beautiful structures that have stood up to decades of abuse from generations of students.

They’re striking artifacts of a bygone age. They’re also chock full of asbestos.

Built when building fires were more common and before the dangers of asbestos were well-known, most buildings contained the substance. But by the time I was in high school in the ‘90s, the presence of asbestos was often a topic of conversation among the students.

We were told our schools were perfectly safe because the asbestos was contained in the building’s internal structures and not flaking into the air, where it may increase the risk of cancer. This is true. But it is also true that any construction material will eventually break down, especially in a building as roughly used as a school.

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Knowing that the hazardous insulation was in the walls and around the pipes should have served as a warning to School District officials that they would have to take care of it eventually.

Of course, it’s easy to justify a delay. It was not an imminent danger and other, more pressing problems required attention. It’s the same in any endeavor: Everyone wants to cut the ribbon on a new building, yet no one wants to spend money on the unglamorous work of maintaining the old ones.

One would hope the government would not fall for that same kind of short-term corporate thinking, but people are the same everywhere. And besides, when would they fix it? When would the schools be empty for an extended period? When would the district have a massive infusion of cash to pay for the fix to be done correctly and safely?

You can see where I’m going. Buildings were closed for a year during the COVID-19 lockdowns. At the same time, Congress pumped out billions to schools, even as their usual tax funding was still coming in.

Philly public schools got $1.8 billion in federal COVID relief funds over the past three years. Colin Evans looked into where this money went in an analysis for WHYY’s Billy Penn website and found that the answer is maddeningly unclear. As of November, the district appeared to have only spent 25.5% of the funds it received through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund created in 2021. (Philadelphia is not the only school district that has failed to use most of its federal windfall, but that should not excuse it from responsibility.)

I asked the district last week if it had used any of this lockdown time and pandemic money to remediate its well-known asbestos problem, or if it had even thought about doing so. It did not respond to my emailed questions. If it had given this problem any attention before it was too late, it would probably have said so.

Instead, it seems it did nothing, and students are now paying the costs.

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At the end of April, district officials announced that a sixth school was closed for asbestos reasons. This one is a charter school, Universal Vare, but the building is owned by the School District and first opened in 1924. Another school, Building 21, recently reopened after two months of emergency asbestos remediation. It immediately closed again when plaster started falling off the ceiling.

This is likely not the end of the story. If it’s a problem in six old schools, it will likely become one in the rest. In the meantime, kids are shuffled to different schools, or worse, sent back into the virtual learning that failed them during the pandemic. This entirely avoidable problem will now mean it will be even harder for Philly public school students to make up for the pandemic-era learning loss.

In any other part of the commonwealth, this would be a hot topic in school board races. Voters would be angered at a board that allows conditions in their buildings that pose serious health hazards to teachers and students. Someone would pay the price at the ballot box. But sadly, this is Philadelphia, one of the only school districts in the country that is not responsible to the voters.

School District officials might say now that there was no way they could have predicted the learning loss that would result from remote learning. I don’t think that’s a very credible thing to say, but people will say it. The presence of asbestos, on the other hand, has been known for decades.

But, as with so many of the decisions of the last few years, School District officials did not think ahead. They had the time, and they had the money. This was a failure of leadership, not a lack of resources. The voters have no say in how their taxes are spent on schools, but the next mayor will. Whoever takes over for Jim Kenney should consider how long this disaster can continue without anyone being held to account.