Deal will keep 25 Northeast schools open after-hours
City and school district officials have reached an agreement to keep gyms and theaters in public schools open on afternoons and weekends. Cost-cutting plans announced amid the district’s $61 million shortfall included closing the facilities at the end of the school day.
Forty-eight schools will keep their extra-curricular doors open after hours through Saturday, March 17, according to Thursday’s announcement from the city. Twenty-five of those schools are in the Northeast:
- Baldi
- Watson Comly
- Stephen Decatur
- Hamilton Disston
- Henry Edmunds
- Louis H. Farrell
- Fels
- Aloysius Fitzpatrick
- Fox Chase
- Anne Frank
- Frankford
- John Hancock
- Thomas Holme
- General J. Harry La Brum
- Abraham Lincoln
- William Loesche
- Thurgood Marshall
- Mayfair
- Austin Meehan
- Northeast
- Robert B. Pollock
- Rhawnhurst
- Solis-Cohen
- James Sullivan
- George Washington
Parks & Recreation programs administered through city schools will be consolidated into those 48, with the city paying $175,000 for the deal to help the financially struggling district.
“We really still have easily another $40 million to cut before the end of June,” School Reform Commission Chair Pedro Ramos said in a press conference. “So the net effect of this compromise takes us part of the way there.”
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