Not quite the case, I think. Society Hill is not rich with young
families and my sense is the families who live there, still tend to
patronize independent schools rather than the School District during
their K-8 years.
Academic communities are unique in that their highly-educated workforce
tends to choose careers that don't maximize income. Yet it values
education intensely. These people need a way to have schools that are
good enough -- yet not at Main-Line real-estate prices -- if
Philadelphia is ever to capitalize on their talent pool.
The Penn Alexander catchment area is becoming a unique urban
neighborhood, one in which middle-to-upper-middle-class families are
raising urban kids around a shared school that truly represents their
neighborhood, just like other public schools represent their
neighborhoods. Who knows what it may become?
For University City, the best answer would be to see academic changes in
Lea and Wilson that make two more neighborhood schools socially diverse.
(A third, Powel, is in a different School District Region and has a
different campus neighbor, Drexel; but its development too is just as
much a part of the University City story as Penn Alexander is.)
At this point in time, though, numerous families of modest income are
still hanging on in the Spruce Hill 'hood ... and taking advantage of
this good school (there are ways...). It is a community both
achievement-oriented and socially diverse.
All in all, not such a bad thing, perhaps.
-- Tony West
KAREN ALLEN wrote:
Whether or not Penn employees can afford to live in the catchment area
is irrelevant. The bottom line is that no lower income people or the
businesses that cater to them will be moving there in the future. And
over time, those who are there now will eventually move out. The
result: no more of those scary people that lurk west of
Fill-in-the-Blank Street.
The desired effect will still be that upper income (read upper
class) people will be moving there, where ever it may be that their
paychecks are coming from. Instead of Penn being surrounded by the
"industrial wasteland" or whatever it is that they tell outsiders they
magically transformed, Penn will now be surrounded by Society Hill
West.
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