West Philly School Faces Big Changes To Start Year
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Students returning to one West Philadelphia school will find a complete change when classes begin in September.
It'll be an entirely new staff and management at what was Huey Elementary at 52nd and Pine.
The school is now the Global Leadership Academy Southwest. It's one of 22 struggling schools that have been turned over to charter operators under the district's six-year-old Renaissance initiative.
Principal Tamika Evans acknowledges that not everyone in the neighborhood welcomed the conversion:
"As soon as we got out of our cars and started to walk, we had someone who came up and said, 'we don't want charter schools here. We don't want you here.' And then as we walked, maybe 150 other people said, 'we do want you. And we are excited you're here'."
Evans wants parents to give the charter a chance to prove itself:
"We believe that after they give us a chance, then they'll see in the first year that they really want their children here."
City Councilwoman Helen Gym, though, has called for a hold on Renaissance charters -- saying they've shown mixed results with little accountability.
