Good things are worth waiting for, as the expression goes.
And West Philadelphia High School has been waiting for a long time.
But the school finally got its wish last week, when the city's School Reform Commission declared that ground would be broken this fall on a new West Philadelphia High School campus, to be completed by the first day of school in 2009; the school has gone a century without a new building.
The high school's new campus will be on 48th and Locust streets, two blocks from the current campus on 47th and Walnut streets, which has never in its history undergone major renovations.
The announcement came after weeks of anticipation, during which West Philadelphia residents were told by the city that the project might be permanently shelved.
But now that the project has been given the green light, West Philadelphia residents and school officials, in association with Concordia, LLC - a planning and design firm - will try in the next two years to make their vision a reality.
"The current building is really old and really outdated. It looks like a prison and acts like a prison," said Bobbie Hill, Concordia's Director of Planning.
But the full vision will not only be a new building -it will be a significant shift in the school's educational philosophy.
Instead of a single 1,200 student school, the new campus will be divided into four smaller schools of about 300 students, each having a professional focus such as, for example, the health care industry. The four schools will share a gym, library and principal.
The goal is to provide more individualized attention to students in a smaller atmosphere - a method of learning that has already proven successful in cities such as New York and Oakland, Ca.
Designers of the project hope the school's new layout will improve both the quality of education offered at West Philly High, as well as the students' experience.
"Small schools mean that students have stronger and deeper relationships with peers, teachers and administrators," Hill said.
Ira Harkavy, director of Penn's Center for Community Partnerships, agreed that the small-school approach would be enormously beneficial for the high school's students.
"In a truly caring environment, students won't be anonymous," Harkavy said.
However, Harkavy warned against this shift becoming a magic-bullet solution.
"This won't do it alone," he said.
And, certainly, the school has room for improvement.
In 2006, 92 percent of the student body had below-proficient scores in math, and 83 percent had below-proficient scores in reading.
In comparison, throughout the Philadelphia School District, 58 percent of students had below-proficient scores in math, and 62 percent had below-proficient scores in reading.
Echoing Harkavy's endorsement of the school's design, College junior Saken Kulkarni, an executive board member of Penn's West Philadelphia Tutoring Project, said the new building would help students in class and in WPTP's tutoring efforts at the school.
"In smaller classes, students are more likely to focus and less likely to fall behind," Kulkarni said. "When they get more attention, they will feel like learning."
