Plan to Convert Philly Schools Kneecapped by Councilmember

Philadelphia Council member Jamie Gauthier is ready to teach a lesson about deference to local lawmakers amid a push to convert vacant school campuses into other properties.

Gauthier is floating measures that would remove five of the city’s school district properties from commercial and residential rezoning in her West Philadelphia neighborhood, Bisnow reported. Four of those schools are slated to close, but Gauthier wants to see them turned into civic properties, such as libraries, not residential or commercial developments.

“Our schools belong to our communities, not developers, and the school district does not get to hand them over to developers while our children’s backs are turned,” Gauthier said in a city council address, according to the Inquirer.

One of the five schools was no longer on the list of 18 schools expected to close that was published by the school system last month, but the other four schools were anticipated to be part of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s significant housing push.

Gauthier will likely prevail in her quest to take the schools in her neighborhood out of the movement due to the tradition to defer to councilmembers dealing with legislation impacting their own neighborhoods. It’s the same tradition that can often lead a single person to decide the fate of developments in major cities across the country.

At the end of last year, the Philadelphia school board voted 6-2 to explore transferring ownership of vacant school buildings to the city, potentially at little or no cost.

The proposal drew concern from opponents, including board members and advocates, over transparency, the lack of identified properties at the time and whether the financially-strained district should forgo market value for the buildings.

The district has been down this road before: in 2013, it identified dozens of properties for disposition, which private developers bought and converted into housing.

Parker made vacant schools a pillar of her Housing Opportunities Made Easy initiative, which aims to create or preserve 30,000 housing units by 2028.

— Holden Walter-Warner