News

Kai Bradley-Gutierrez de Teran

Staff Writer

School shootings have been on the rise in the 21st century. A threat that was rarely considered by past generations now has become all too real of a menace. School shootings occur at a much higher rate in the United States compared to the rest of the world.

So, could it happen at SLA?

In our school, four sophomores and they all said that it had passed their mind that they could possibly become victims of a school shooting one day.  

Unfortunately, It is no longer considered strange to fear a school shooting, which leads to the question: what does SLA do to protect their students from such a tragedy?

The information

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 97% of the time the shooter is male and 40% of the time they commit suicide before the police have a chance to arrest them. These statistics may point to the idea that our society’s expectations of males allow them to keep their anger inside until finally, they release it, which often ends up being A violent form as our society teaches men and boys to release emotions this way.

The FBI also has found that “Active-shooter incidents often occur in small and medium-sized communities.” These are places where police forces tend to be at a minimum and are restricted by small budgets. They also found that the average shooting lasts 12 minutes and tends to be over by the time law enforcement arrives, or they end almost immediately after first responders are heard.

Statistically speaking, SLA is less likely to be a school shooting target because it is located in a large community. However, there is still a School District protocol for practicing and preparing for such an event.

Security and prevention

The most basic prevention for school shootings are lockdowns. Lockdowns occur without any necessary evidence of a shooting but just the sheer possibility of a weapon in a school causes a lockdown. These happen with some regularity in Philadelphia. For example, On November 20, 2017, Mastbaum High School in North Philadelphia, was placed on lockdown after reports of a gun.

Though they may seem extreme, lockdowns are proven to help prevent casualties in the case of an active shooter. For example, on November 13, 2017, Kevin Neal went on a shooting rampage at an elementary school in Northern California. As soon as the school officials realized they were gunshots and not firecrackers a lockdown was initiated. Students were immediately rushed into the school building to take cover in the classrooms. The quick reaction by the school officials is credited with saving the lives of countless students and adults that day.

Lockdowns at SLA

School Police Officer Cynthia Byrd says that first a notification of a lockdown would be spread to the school over the intercom system and 911 would be called. In the lockdown, everyone is supposed to go into a classroom or office, lock the doors, silence their phones and stay hidden.  

Officer Byrd said that in a real-life situation her job during a lockdown, specifically for a school shooter, is “To call 911, then call school district police dispatch.”

Engineering teacher and Fire Marshall, John Kamal, confirmed that this past school year, 2016-2017, there was no lockdown drills, which is in violation of School District Protocol. He also stated that every month we have a fire drill at the SLA Center City campus.

Will there be one this school year?

Officer Byrd stated that there is one coming up.

Student Knowledge

Do students literally know the drill?

This is specifically important at SLA because of various students, when asked how they believe they would react in a school shooting, responded that they would just run and ignore any instructions from the school. Maya Kohl, a 10th grader, said: “I would be like,‘all mans [sic] for themselves’ and be gone.”

When asked what could be done to make her feel safer she said “Having a self-defense class or some sort of preparation.”

This attitude is specifically what lockdowns seek to address — to create order and increase safety during a time that can be chaotic.

Autumn Lor, a Junior, participated in an actual lockdown when she was 12 because a man entered her school grounds with a gun and was threatening people. While no one was killed, one person was assaulted, Lor says it was very scary as it put her and other students in a vulnerable position as they could not contact anyone and felt alone.

Lor stated how half of the kids were “Scared to death. Hugging each other and crying.” Meanwhile she says the rest thought it was fake and took it as a joke until they heard the police.  

The level of understanding of lockdown policies from students at SLA is mixed, with some having no understanding what so ever to other knowing all the details. It was noticed that many students who said they would ignore all calls by teachers and try to get out of the school did have a basic understanding of how a lockdown should proceed.

This all could lead to the ignoring of an actual lockdown and an ignorance of how to act leading to possible chaos.

Jeremiah Butler

Staff Writer

 

Now that the School Reform Commission has approved SLA’s move to the Ben Franklin High School building, the process of designing the renovation has begun.

Members of the Ben Franklin and SLA communities, as well as the School District of Philadelphia, have been meeting with an architecture firm to provide input on the new design.

There have

been three meetings so far, on October 12th, October 25th, and November 30th.

Timeline For The Move

The current meetings are reviewing the Schematic Design which is the “what we want” in a building and brainstorming. Feedback will be taken after the final decision is made by The Office of Capital Programs at the district, and the final decision should be done before the end of 2018.

Followed by Schematic Designs and Final Decisions comes to Design Development until mid-January, which is getting the architects and designers involved.  

Then Construction Documents happening until mid-March entails the blueprints of the building and scheduling of the actual construction and other school-related information that needs to be taken care of.

Lastly come the Building and Permits taking place until mid-June, which is the legal and the money aspects of the move to Ben Franklin. Construction for the move is planned to take place from July 2018 to July 2019, so that the building is theoretically ready for SLA to move in before Fall 2019.

The Meetings

With a new building comes, a lot of opportunities for both schools. In the meetings, representatives went over gains such as common areas, CTE programs, expansion of labs and more space. In terms of square footage, there do not seem to be any hard-hitting losses, besides SLA losing its original home. The floor plan has generally 12 classrooms per floor, and 4 medium-sized rooms that are too small to be full classrooms, but could be used for collaborative spaces.

For Ben Franklin, students this change has been a lot to take in as well. The Navy JROTC program of Ben Franklin takes place on the 6th floor, and they will most likely have to move floors or at least location on that floor.

Representatives from each group also went over what could be losses if we go about this the wrong way such as create conflict, miss the opportunity to produce positive change and exclude input.

“There was a Franklin parent who said she notices that sometimes adults project their fears on to kids and that resonated with me,”  said English Teacher Larissa Pahomov, who has been attending the meetings.. “I have a lot of faith in the students both at Franklin and SLA, coming together and building a community together in one building,” said English Teacher Larissa Pahomov.

Options, Options, Options  

In October, the groups were presented with three options that the building design can look like. The first being the “Meet In The Middle” option, where SLA is on one side of the building and Ben Franklin takes another side and in the middle is where common areas would go. The first and sixth floor would be shared Dining and Media Centers as well as a terrace.

The second option, “Common Foundations”, idea consists of Ben Franklin taking the 2nd and 3rd floor and SLA takes the 4th and 5th floors. Leaving the first floor as the “collaboration commons” area. With administrative spaces and the Art and Engineering spaces co-located on the first floor and in the “oddball spaces” of the second and third floor.

The last options, is similar to option one, with school’s on opposite sides. But common areas are mainly on the first floor along with each school’s administrative spaces. Then going farther up the school is common areas in the middle just in smaller sizes. The first floor was described as a “living room” or “front door” in this case.

At the second October meeting, A non-final vote was taken after every option was discussed just to see where everyone’s preference was. Option 3 was the favorite and Option 2 leading behind that as the second favorite. At the meeting on November 30th, an expanded and updated “Living Room” design was presented to the groups.  

SLA Meet Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin Meet SLA   

Plans for the two co-locating schools to meet each other are also in the works. SLA teacher Ms.Martin is working with Spirit Committee and Team Love’em Up: to host a catered day party at Ben Franklin High School, that would invite both school’s class of 2021, aka the current freshmen.

The event is being planned to happen on a Saturday, possibly in February. For that to happen there needs to be an approval to have the event at Ben Franklin and funding from the School District.  

The first hour is being planned to be almost like an icebreaker and get to know you session for the two schools.

“My hope is that the students from both campuses will show up and that they will have an amazing time and that they will be able to show people through their actions, their desires, and energy that this is going to work out well and that they will get to bond that way,” said Ms.Martin.

A smaller version of this exchange happened on November 30, when sixteen students from Franklin came to SLA for a design workshop before the meeting with the architects.

Lehmann thinks that all this effort is paying off.

“I think overall people are really responding well to the change, currently if you look at our interview numbers. Families are still choosing SLA in very high numbers as far as the admissions process is concerned. Families are on board with sticking through this and seeing it through as far as our current student population,” said Lehmann.

Autumn Lor

Staff Writer

Starting in the 2018-2019 school year, Science Leadership Academy at Beeber is expanding to include middle school grades 5 through 8.

Expanding to the middle grades has been a longtime dream of SLA Beeber Principal Chris Johnson. When SLA Beeber started, they were co-occupying the building with the original Beeber middle school, but as each year went on, the high school student body grew, decreasing the number of middle schoolers. Now they want to open the doors back to middle schools letting students being a part of the SLA community.

Their first open house was on Thursday, October 12 where they allowed students and parents to see what SLA Beeber campus looked like. Students got to know about the core values that all of the SLA community uses; inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection. Johnson says that students will have one-on-one laptop time so they can understand the core values a bit more when it comes to research and presentation.

Science Leadership Academy Beeber Middle School will host 60 students per grade. Like the two SLA high schools, this middle school will also be selective admission, so students will be required to attend an interview, which took place on Saturday morning, October 21st and Sunday afternoon, November 5th.

Some requirements Beeber Middle School are looking for are advanced or proficient PSSA scores, good attendance, and their interview.

During the interviews, teachers are looking at students and comparing their process with the core values.

Teaching Process

Along with looking for students to go to this school, Project Coordinator Caitlin Thompson and other faculty members are already accepting resumes and will be doing the teacher hiring process in Spring 2018. They are looking for about 3-4 teachers for the first year. They do not have elective classes as of now, but will soon be created after they knew what the teachers can do.

The teachers are required to go to a Summer Institute to be taught how they should teach in the Project Based Learning (PBL). The event is hosted by Thompson and Former SLA Teacher Diana Laufenberg  

On Wednesday, November 29, 2017, there was also a  design meeting discussing better ideas of how the school will run.

Student Life

In contrast to the busy schedule of a high school student, these middle school students will have about 3-4 classes a day but they will have to process of teaming and looping so that when they would have the same teacher every two years and students will be moving from class to class.

The high school allows the 10th and 11th graders to have ILPs, while freshmen have mini-courses. Johnson plans on having the 5th-grade students to also have mini-courses that will on their Wednesday on after school. The high school students have a chance to doing their ILPs with the middle schoolers.

Applications have already been accepted for the incoming 5th-grade class, and decisions will go out in the spring.  

Tamir Harper

Editor in Chief

 

Rapper Meek Mill was sentenced November 4th by Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Genece Brinkley for a probation violation. Judge Brinkley sentenced Meek Mill 2-4 years in state prison. But many call that sentence a harsh sentence for a simple probation violation even after the District Attorney stated that jail time was necessary and his probation officer reported that Meek Mill was doing well on probation.

Meek Mill and his attorney are officially demanding his release from prison and the people of Philadelphia and around the nation are demanding the reform of the criminal justice system.

Since the rapper’s sentencing, there have been multiple buses with illuminated with a slew of things including; “Stand with Meek Mill,” “#Justice4Meek,” “#FreeMeekMill” driving around Philly. The buses were even seen from the journalism studio in Room 505, which sparked a conversation throughout Science Leadership Academy.

Many students support the movement to reform the criminal justice system, and think it makes sense to use Meek Mill as the poster child. However, many teachers are not on board with the movement to free the Philadelphia rapper.

When SLA students were asked about their take on the situation, it took some people over ten minutes to explain their opinions.

Junior Imani Murray is not on board with the Free Meek Mill movement. She believes Philadelphia has other things to worry about. Murray pointed out that Philadelphia did not protest for the “sugar tax” or “school shut down.” She doesn’t believe that the protests are for the reform of the criminal justice because “they should have been protesting for Kalief Browder.”

But Science Leadership Academy Senior Opoku Kwateng countered Murray’s argument. Kwateng believes that Meek Mill is “ being imprisoned for an action that he has already been cleared for.” He also believes that “those who are educated are protesting for the reform of the criminal justice system.”

Junior Avi Cantor is a fan of the free Meek Mill movement because he likes Mill as an artist and thinks that “the trial was unfair I think there were lots of personal issues.” He continued, “he was given to much time for a petty offense.”

Teachers around the office table are not fans of the Free Meek Mill movement but one of the youngest teachers in the building is on board with the Free Meek Mill movement.

But Jay-Z, millennials, and many Generation Z’ers are in favor of freeing Meek Mill and reforming the criminal justice system including the young Pennsylvania State Representative Black Caucus Chairman Jordan Harris and Rev. Al Sharpton.

Do you stand with Meek Mill? Leave your perspective in the comments!