Plan for new school
gets bad grade in Normandy

By Lauren Fritsky
Times Staff Writer

Plans for a new high school in Normandy got early dismissal at this month’s meeting of the Normandy Civic Association.
Many residents said the school, one of two proposals for the soon-to-be closed Philadelphia Memorial Armed Forces Reserve Center, would bring traffic and trouble to their neighborhoods.
Albert Bichner, deputy chief academic officer for the School District of Philadelphia, attended the March 14 meeting, along with representatives from the Philadelphia Police Department. The city’s Department of Public Property wants to put its police, 911 and backup emergency training centers at the AFRC site.
The AFRC, at 2838-98 Woodhaven Road, will close in 2011 under the federal government’s Base Realignment and Closure program. Personnel are being transferred to another site in Bristol.
The school district and the Department of Public Property were the only two agencies to bid on the property in October 2006. The City Planning Commission is in charge of crafting the redevelopment plan for the site. Normandy Civic plans to vote on which entity it wants in the community at its April meeting.
The school district wants to put a special admissions high school on the site. It would serve up to 500 students from the surrounding neighborhoods.
The school would offer three training programs, in Building and Construction, Information and Communication Services and Life Sciences and Health Care, Bichner explained. Only high-achieving students from the area could attend. The school would open in five years.
The goal is to give students more high school options, including smaller, neighborhood schools and special admissions schools like the one currently proposed at the AFRC, Bichner said. At smaller schools, students perform better and get suspended less often, he contended.
"We want to know students by name," Bichner said. "We want to have programs that prepare them for college and careers."
But many residents don’t think Normandy is the right spot for such a school.
"They’ll be walking through our neighborhoods," one resident said of the prospective students. "We in the Northeast don’t have enough police to watch the kids walking through the neighborhood."
Bichner pointed out that school district police would be stationed at the school and also serve other Northeast high schools like George Washington.
He acknowledged, however, that because school buses don’t service public high school students, many of them might be traveling through Normandy to catch public transportation.
While Bichner stressed that the school would be for the community and not become a disciplinary institution like the former Shallcross School in nearby Parkwood, resident John Burke was skeptical.
"Over the years I’ve seen these types of guarantees with the school district not happen," he said. "Quite frankly, sir, I don’t think you can keep your promise."
Bichner said he was unaware of a plan outline given to the planning commission stating that the district needed to build a 50,000-square-foot addition on the site.
Residents seemed to favor the Department of Public Property’s proposal, which was outlined by Deputy Police Commissioner John J. Gaittens.
Both recruits and current officers would use the site, and police would be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Gaittens said.
Most of the training would be conducted indoors during two shifts between the hours of 8 a.m. and midnight. On Saturdays, the police would host their Explorer program, which is for youths interested in becoming police officers, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
The only outside uses would include driving and scenario training, not weapons practice. Additional indoor training on the site would include training for 911 dispatchers and backup emergency training.
The police department wants to move into the space because its current training facilities on the 8500 block of State Road are inadequate, Gaittens said.
"The facility we have on State Road is in pretty poor shape," he said. "We desperately need this new facility."
The only external change the department plans to make to the building includes adding more lighting and alarm systems, Gaittens said. Otherwise, the police would be looking to start operating at the site immediately after its closure.
The police would also look into building an additional road onto the site so that traffic would not come through the Joseph Kelly Terrace neighborhood. Some residents, however, delighted in the prospect of more police traveling their streets.
Several residents said they were prepared to vote in favor of the police training proposal that night, but civic association president John Wisniewski said the civic group would stick to its original plan to vote at next month’s meeting.
In other news from the meeting:
• The civic group heard from Capt. Deborah Kelly, commanding officer of the 8th Police District, who took questions from residents about illegal truck parking, children riding all-terrain vehicles and other issues.
Kelly asks residents to contact her with concerns at police.co_08@phila.gov
• The civic group received an award for outstanding dedication to the community at the 8th district Officer of the Year party. Community relations officer Stephen Carr had nominated the civic group for the honor.
Civic board members attended the event on Sunday, which took place at Glen Foerd, at 5001 Grant Ave. ••
The Normandy Civic Association’s next meeting will be on Tuesday, April 10, at 7 p.m., at the Norcom Community Center, 10980 Norcom Road.
Reporter Lauren Fritsky can be reached at 215-354-3038 or lfritsky@phillynews.com