Community rallies to save Gompers, Overbrook schools [photos]
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<p>Students from Gompers and Overbrook elementary schools to protest the district's proposal to close their schools. (Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)</p>
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<p>About 150 parents and students gather in front of Gompers Elementary School for a rally and march against school closures. (Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)</p>
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<p>Taking their message to the streets, about 150 parents and students march around their West Philadelphia neighborhood to protest the district's proposal to close Gompers and Overbrook elementary schools. (Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)</p>
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<p>With her 5-year-old son Aiden on her shoulders, Lee Jones, vice president of Gompers Home and School, marches to protest the proposed closure of her son's school. (Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)</p>
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<p>ElVee Pryor, who has three children at Overbrook Elementary, joins the march to save the school. "They just spent over a half million dolllars to fix it up, now they're going to shut it down," he said. (Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)</p>
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<p>Singing "We Shall Overcome," and chanting "the people united will never be defeated," about 150 protesters marched around the West Philadelphia nieghborhood surrounding Gompers Elementary School to protest school closings. (Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)</p>
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<p>Sodonay Williams, who has two children at Gompers, says closing the school doesn't make any sense. She joined protesters who object to the district's proposal to send Overbrook and Gompers students to Beeber Middle School. (Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)</p>
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<p>Lee Jones shouts to passing motorists on Lincoln Highway during a protest against school closings. She described the proposal to close Gompers and Overbrook elementary schools as "despicable." (Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)</p>
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<p>Gompers School second grader Taylor Jenkins adds her voice to the school closing protest in West Philadelphia. She says she wants to help save her school and others. (Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)</p>
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<p>Protesters marched in the cold for more than two hours with the hope of persuading the Philadelphia School District to keep Gompers and Overbrook elementary schools open. (Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)</p>
Philadelphia public schools had the day off Monday, but parents and students of Samuel Gompers Elementary and Overbrook Elementary in West Philadelphia showed up anyway.
Gompers and Overbrook are two of 37 School District of Philadelphia schools slated for closure.
Superintendent William Hite made the announcement in December that he intends to close, relocate and merge several schools as part of the district’s reconfiguration plan.
Parents at several other schools have already spoken out against the plan, arguing the changes will make for longer commutes, leave some neighborhoods without any schools, and force some students into rival neighborhoods.
Last week, the Philadelphia Student Union members dressed as zombies as they protested the closings outside district headquarters.