Philly school board hears budget pleas and votes to return human remains found at Central HS to a Native American tribe

Members of the public sounded off Thursday night about the Philadelphia School District’s proposed 2025-26 budget, which requires spending $300 million in reserves to prevent layoffs and program losses.

Some parents thanked the board for staving off cuts for now — Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said he wants to use the district’s fund balance to make ends meet this year, and advocate for more money from its city and state funders going forward.

But other speakers said even the district’s proposed hold-steady $4.6 billion budget does not cover the basics.

» READ MORE: Philly schools project a fiscal cliff, plan to spend $306 million in reserves to avoid classroom cuts and layoffs

Two students from Academy at Palumbo, a South Philadelphia magnet high school, decried conditions at their school. Gretta Rogan talked about perpetually broken bathrooms and a rodent infestation stretching back years. My Le had mobility challenges when she started at the school, but because both elevators were broken, she had to painfully haul herself upstairs to the fifth floor, and didn’t want to go to school.

Palumbo has three excellent school counselors, but they serve 1,200 students, and wear multiple hats.

“That is not nearly enough support, and this isn’t just an issue at Palumbo,” Le told the board. “I implore you to please fight for us. Fight for schools that motivate us to wake up in the morning.”

Watlington and the board are scheduled to present their budget to City Council on Tuesday; the board is slated to adopt a budget on May 29.

Multiple parents, students, and community members also underscored the importance of school libraries, and asked the board to prioritize restoring them.

Philadelphia has what is perhaps the nation’s worst big-city ratio for school libraries — there are just three full-time librarians left in the 216-school district, at Central, Masterman, and Penn Alexander. South Philadelphia High and Shawmont Elementary have part-time librarians.

Federal officials recently ended a grant that was designed to help the district build back libraries; the district has not said whether it will continue with that work.

Sirus Nannery, a student at Shawmont, which restored its library just this year, said he has found a refuge there.

“I feel that Shawmont’s library and other schools’ libraries are very important for education,” Sirus said. “We do need them to give students the knowledge they need to pursue a successful career.”

Though Shawmont’s library has proven popular, it was initially on the chopping block — proposed to be eliminated because of budget concerns in the fall. District officials told parents Wednesday that they had found money to keep it going.

The school board voted unanimously to return human remains found at Central High to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes for burial.

District officials in 2021 discovered a skull that had been used in anatomy classes at Central, Watlington said. It’s not clear how the district initially obtained the skull, but it surveyed all other high schools and found no further remains.

Officials worked with local anthropologists to identify the ancestry of the remains, eventually determined to belong to a Native American man.

The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act mandates any institution that receives federal funding to return Native American remains to “lineal descendants” and “culturally affiliated Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.”

The district then tried to find a tribal association, but was never able to. The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, however, agreed to accept and bury the remains, Watlington said.