Levering Community Looking For Logic in Potential School Closing

Not long after the school district recommended that be closed to allow AMY Northwest to move into the facility, the biggest question in the minds of the Levering community seems to be why?

"It just doesn't make sense," Irene Klein, a second grade teacher at the school said at a meeting at Saturday to address the issue. "Our school has 200 kids, AMY has 200 so why can't be just both use the school?"

If the recommendation to close the school is approved in March, the school district has said that displaced students can go to , or Mifflin in East Falls.

But Klein said Cook-Wissahickon, where she believes most families will want to go, is already overcrowded.

"These kids aren't going to have a choice," she said, adding that although the school district hasn't mentioned the idea, she believes the closing could be the first step toward a major middle school in the area.

It doesn't make any sense to Kerrianne Mullens, the mother of a fifth grader at the school, either. 

"The school is absolutely amazing," she said. "My son keeps asking me when he's going to have to leave."

Although the students are cognizant of the possibility, Gina Steiner, the school's principal said they're still positive.

"The students have been great, they made all their signs to come out here today," she said. "We can't have a defeatist attitude, because we're not giving up."

Some Levering graduates aren't giving up either.

"I went to Levering for six years," Jeremy Schmeltzer, a sophomore at Roxborough High School said. "I don't want it to close, the teachers here are great and really make an effort to help us."

John Kahan, the parent of a sixth grader and kindergartener at Levering, is upset because his family moved for the school.

"We left East Falls so our kids could go to Levering," he said. "If the district needs some money why don't they take some of that $900,000 back from Ackerman. How can they uproot all these kids?"

Kahan also questioned the savings.

"If they're bussing kids all over the place, how much money are they going to have?"

Other concerns included overcrowded classrooms, lack of a choice in new schools because of overcrowding in some, location of new schools, ineffective boundary lines for neighborhood schools.

Patricia Berrian-Marrujo, a classroom assistant in an emotional support classroom in the school, said she was concerned with the psychological impact the move is going to have on the population.

Berrian-Marrujo also said closing the school who end a historical chapter in the Roxborough. Levering was established in 1748.

"Your slogan at the school district is children come first, but the children are not coming first," Patty Lee, a school-based teacher leader said. "There is no reason AMY can't come over here and we can stay open."