Families try to cope with neighborhood school closings
In North Philadelphia, families were confronted with a shrinking pool of school options.
by Connie Langland and Mark McHugh
Photo: Harvey Finkle
George Metz (left) with stepson Shyheim Saunders, a senior who is attending his third high school in three years as a result of two successive rounds of school closings. Metz’s three daughters were also affected by a school closing – at Anna Pratt Elementary.
George Metz’s family is all too familiar with school closings.
His stepson, Shyheim Saunders, 17, attended FitzSimons from 7th to 10th grade. When that got shuttered in 2012, he transferred to Roberts Vaux for 11th grade. Now, heading into his senior year in high school, Shyheim will switch once again, attending Benjamin Franklin High School due to the recent closing at Vaux.
That adds up to three schools in three years for Shyheim.
That’s bad enough if you ask Metz, whose family lives in a two-story townhouse in Raymond Rosen Manor, a housing project in North Philadelphia.
But then there was even gloomier news for the family. Anna Pratt Elementary, across the street from the housing project, closed in June, except for its pre-K program.
In many ways, Pratt Elementary had served as an anchor in the neighborhood. Metz, a self-proclaimed overprotective father, could stand at his doorway with his wife, Lakeisha, and watch his children cross Susquehanna Avenue onto the school grounds.
Metz has three young daughters who were enrolled at Pratt – Diamond, 10, Danasia, 8, and Cheyenne, 5.
The school, which abuts the project at 22nd Street, had an enrollment last year of about 400 students from pre-K to 6th grade. A vivid mural still dominates one wall of the school, and the clean, polished playground behind it was built just three years ago with funding from the
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