In which city will it be recommended to close public schools? Which could get new buildings or move to other school buildings with extra rooms?

Philadelphia School District officials said they will complete a preliminary plan next October, then hold public hearings and prepare a final plan 13 months from now, in December 2025. Updates will also be made in January, May and August.

Detroit, Chicago and St. “That’s an aggressive timeline,” said Interim Deputy Superintendent of Facilities Oz Hill, who said similar processes in St. Louis are happening within 18 to 24 months, not the year Philadelphia hopes. “What we do that they don’t do well is data and community engagement.”

” READ MORE: Philly is beginning a process that will likely lead to school closures and new buildings. Here’s what you need to know.

That previously vague timeline was announced at the first public hearing session on the facilities planning process that promises to significantly transform the nation’s eighth-largest school system, which has 64,000 empty seats in district-run schools and 6,000 unused seats in neighborhood schools. Schools in district buildings.

As the Philadelphia School District officially kicked off community listening sessions Monday night at a healthcare facility in Northeast Philadelphia, Hill said he understands the city still bears scars from 2012 and 2013, when the district closed 30 schools to save money.

Hill said this process is deeply flawed.

“Even though we saved $24 million a year, the performance of the students who were transferred to another school, as well as the students who accepted those students, dropped,” Hill said. “This turmoil, this instability with this movement and the way we have conducted this process has not led to the academic performance growth and success that we wanted.”

Hill said new buildings and co-locations are possible in addition to school closures, but he promised district officials have no preconceptions about which schools might be targeted in this process. The region’s unmet facility needs are estimated at $8 billion; The average age of the 216 schools is 73 years.

“This is not a political decision we’re making,” Hill said. “This is a data-driven process.”

Hill suggested that if schools were to close, the district’s first choice would be to “reuse these buildings in a way that benefits the community” rather than “selling these buildings for pennies.”

Germantown High School, for example, was closed in 2012 by the former School Reform Commission. The once massive structure languished for nearly 10 years before being sold to a developer.

“This is about increasing student achievement and also improving our community through the use of facilities,” Hill said.

From an academic perspective, the cost of having many small schools or schools with hundreds of empty chairs is the inequitable distribution of pre-kindergarten programs, elementary school playgrounds, and upper-level courses.

Consider the hypothetical case of a school with enough students to offer Advanced Placement courses and a school that is short-staffed and under-enrolled. The latter school cannot offer AP courses.

“By figuring out how to make our usage more efficient, our goal will be to ensure that every student has access to a teacher with advanced courses,” Hill said.

Officials emphasized the importance of community engagement and parent, student and staff feedback, but only five members of the public attended Monday’s pre-Election Day session; three parents and two students.

The district made a plan several dozen more listening and learning sessionssome in person and some virtual. Hill also asked people to raise their hands to join advisory groups that will meet between January and May to help examine area conditions and offer feedback to shape the plan.

Applications for these advisory groups will open on November 13.

Melanie Silva will be closely involved in the process. Her daughter attends Rhawnhurst Elementary School, a school that recently won the prestigious National Blue Ribbon award from the U.S. Department of Education.

But Silva attended the meeting because he was concerned about the conditions of the Rhawnhurst building, which had been promised a major building upgrade that seemed to have stalled for now, Silva said, though even school staff had no knowledge of what was going on.

Meanwhile, the school had to be evacuated multiple times last year due to concerns about gas leaks, he said.

While some schools in the area have hundreds of vacancies, Rhawnhurst, like many schools in the North East, is crammed with one classroom in a trailer and more students in an annex that needs to be replaced. There are 39 children in each of the three second-grade classrooms, and there is a fourth teacher between all three because there is no room for an extra classroom.

“Thirty-nine is ridiculous,” Silva said, adding that students in the school’s English Language Learner program had to sit on the hallway floor because there was nowhere else to put them. “Occupancy is definitely an issue.”

Silva also asked district staff to consider their own experiences as district students; He graduated from the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts in 2002, shortly after the school moved to its current building, a large structure on South Broad Street. He said learning in a building with state-of-the-art facilities was magical.

“We didn’t want to leave there, and that building had a big part in that,” Silva said; “It’s very different from where my daughter was at Rhawnhurst.”

Horace Clouden, a former district civil engineer and longtime community activist, said the district needs to address “education deserts” in West Philadelphia and the school system’s general failure to educate Black children well. Clouden believes the district should bring back middle schools.

“This doesn’t work in at least 80% of K-8s,” Clouden said.

Lisa Haver, a retired district teacher and founder of the Philadelphia Association of Public Schools, vividly remembers listening to the cries of students, parents and community members as the district closed its schools a decade ago.

“When you say this is not political, I have to disagree,” Haver said. “This is definitely a political process,” he said.