West Philadelphia is doing just fine, thanks

What do we do with the old West Philadelphia High School? It's inarguably a beautiful building. Built in the early 1910s, it was part of a movement to deliver better education to America's growing cities. With stone carvings, concrete castings, mosaic tiles, many of these schools throughout the northeast echoed prestigious institutions of higher learning like the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.

Later waves of educational investment are reflected in the Art Deco architecture of the 1930s and 40s.

But feats of architectural innovation, particularly aging ones, don't translate well in the modern world. The old West Philadelphia High School is massive, riddled with asbestos, and functionally out of date. Following the construction of its replacement, the old school has sat vacant with occasional interest in converting it into apartments, condos, dorms, or entertainment venues. 

One option may be to reopen it to education. But one company recently showed the school's neighbors exactly how to not make that happen: By being complete ass holes.

Pansophic Learning, a Virginia-based K-12 school system, has proposed leasing 90,000 square feet of the building from Strong Place Partners, who intend to convert the rest into apartments. Pansophic wants to provide the neighborhood with the Philadelphia Music and Dance Charter School. As fine as that sounds, they didn't just pitch the idea in the worst way possible, their methodology is perhaps the worst technique for training music and dance: distance learning. 

Pansophic bills itself as an "International Education Company." The word "company" is the first red flag. Commercial education belongs in the realm of undergraduate alternatives: Strayer, ECPI, ITT, DeVry. These organizations aren't useless when it comes to certification programs and business education. But they are second to the educational opportunities found in traditional four year colleges. And they do not belong in K-12.

So why exactly is Pansophic so bad? Well, besides their complete lack of engagement and understanding of the community (which I'll get to in a moment), Pansophic's goal is to deliver education to nations and communities without proper educational resources, in many cases, developing nations. When you're attending a school without basic plumbing and you have no other alternatives - say a brand new high school a block away - Skyping with a teacher in McLean, VA is a step up. But it's hard enough to learn English Literature in a classroom when you're twenty, imagine learning music and dance from a laptop when you're twelve.

Still, the methodology of this corporate school might not be its worst trait. That would be left to either its arrogance or complete cluelessness when it comes to addressing the neighborhood it fancies gracing. Pansophic referred to it as "this blighted part of western University City," claiming its school will "greatly support the resurgence of the community."

Do they mean the community that has been in resurgence for the last decade with improved affordable housing, transit, and a brand new public high school? Are they blinding peddling the canned sales pitch they've used around the globe? Or do they view the "blighted" neighbors as naive enough to spend their hard-earned paychecks on a piss-poor education? 

Maybe they're just one of thousands of companies around the nation that haven't gotten the memo, "Philadelphia isn't as bad as Philadelphians say it is." Thanks, Pansophic, but we're not a big Detroit, we're a small New York.

Ass Holes!

One thing is for sure, a company run by educators should know the definition of "patronization." 

Philadelphia has teachers, good ones. They're underpaid and overworked, and constantly fighting for the resources to do their jobs well. Do we thank them by outsourcing to virtual teachers from Virginia?

Virginia has one of the best public education systems in the country and some of the highest paid teachers. It's no mystery how Panosphic came to be. They're employing the state's surplus of education degrees in cities struggling with broken systems. But they're not the solution, they're the leach. 

West Philadelphia's community won't benefit from a distance learning system. That system only competes with our state funded teachers and schools, making their jobs even harder. Again, the word  "company" should have been the first red flag when it came to Pansophic because that's exactly what it is. They aren't a "charter school," they're a business, and their business model is to compete with Philadelphia's struggling schools and profit from their demise. 

If they were sending teachers too Philadelphia, teachers who would live in Philadelphia, that would be one thing. But that's not how these schools work. They hire low paid class moderators to maintain the peace while students stare at a somewhat interactive, virtual classroom on their laptops. They're masquerading as the savior of neighborhoods with struggling public schools, but they ran afoul in West Philadelphia because it's succeeding on its own. 

I think it would be great if Strong Place Partners leased 90,000 square feet of its space to an educational organization, but only if that organization was dedicated to education first and profit last. But that is not Pansophic. They just want to run your kids through a treadmill of standardized dynamic teaching methodologies, or some other politely worded translation of "low overhead and high profits."

Gentrification and the Future of West Philadelphia High School

The School District is currently unloading a number of shuttered schools, and has approved the sale of the vacant West Philadelphia High School at 47th and Walnut to Brooklyn based Strong Place Partners' Andrew Bank.


Bank is planning to convert the high school into a mixed use property housing 250 residents, primarily students, which could potentially extend University City's presence to 48th Street. 

Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell approves of the project, but has criticized the School Board for retracting their decision to retain its property for future uses that could be assets to education in Philadelphia. The Board has opted to trade them for cash.

While it's certainly a sign of the School District's struggles and cash strapped situation, many of these facilities are outdated. Modernizing a building like West Philadelphia High School to accommodate the needs of the School District would likely cost more than building a modern and sensibly scaled facility on vacant, publicly owned land. 

Our aging schools are dramatic feats of engineering, but education doesn't require the drama of architecture. It's pragmatic, and needs modern technology more than marble carvings and mosaic tiles.

This building's neoclassical design and high ceilings are valuable to developers and tenants, not the School District. Basically, the desirable traits to the buying party are a hinderance to the seller. Unloading these schools makes sense, with or without a beleaguered School District.

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However many long time residents have their own concerns. Namely, what would restaurants, shops, and 250 apartments mean to the neighbors near 47th and Walnut? Much of the concerns seem to echo complaints in Point Breeze and other emerging neighborhoods, but West Philadelphia tends to tolerate gentrification more diplomatically than areas in North and South Philadelphia.

Maybe that's because the power behind developers in University City is on par with Center City. But maybe it's that Penn and Drexel's residue isn't truly gentrifying anything.

Most of the housing west of 45th Street is still largely affordable, namely because it houses students who need affordable housing. Bank plans to charge $800 to $850 for a one bedroom, more than the average one bedroom at 47th and Walnut. But with tall windows and high ceilings, these will be more than average apartments. 

Some long time residents have noted improvements along Baltimore Avenue and the safer streets development brings with it. While several neighbors mentioned gentrification, even citing it as problematic. What's taking place in West Philadelphia isn't necessarily gentrification. 

Many students and young urbanites have chosen West Philadelphia for its affordable housing, and that's driven developers to build more. But gentrification occurs when the upwardly mobile displace less wealthy, long time residents. West Philadelphia is actually improving without doing that, at least not to the extent of other neighborhoods. It's getting safer without relocating poorer residents.

As the city continues to improve, true gentrification will probably find it's way to West Philadelphia. But it's a massive area with room to grow, and for the time being, its growth seems to be filling in the gaps, renovating buildings like the Croydon and West Philadelphia High School, rather than razing blocks for high end townhouses and relocating residents westward.

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Whatever the fate of West Philadelphia, gentrification will remain both contentious and inevitable. It's simply part of how Westernized cities evolve.

The word was first coined by British sociologist, Ruth Glass, in 1964. But it's evident in cultures dating as far back as Ancient Greece and Rome. Wherever at least some fraction of a society's citizens are free to work, vote, and purchase property, lower classes have been reluctantly displaced at the behest of those with more means.

That doesn't mean it has to be a bad thing. It's rare, and all to often it's offered up by developers who are simply making a pitch for the approval of long time residents. But if zoning and development can manage to accommodate new and long time residents side by side, an area of socioeconomic diversity can theoretically succeed. 

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Education is key. 

Unfortunately, Philadelphia has a uniquely problematic public school system. Although Councilwoman Blackwell's ire was directed at the physical assets of the School District, her anger is just. The city has long chosen to address our educational woes by creating charter schools and offering vouchers for private schools, effectively funding the School District's competition.

If our public schools were properly funded, new residents living amongst long time generational residents might send their kids to public schools, bringing neighbors together through their kids. But the city has created an inadvertent caste system, segregating the poor from everyone else at the kindergarten level. There's something to be said about keeping up with the Joneses, and neighbors both rich and poor can benefit from sharing everything from kindercare to block parties.