• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

SLA Media

SLAMedia is a publication of the news for the Science Leadership Academy community. Writers come from the student body in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. We work in unison to create a functioning paper with biweekly postings on a variety of events.

  • News
  • Features
  • Sports
  • A&E
  • Op/Ed
  • Multimedia
  • About

Update: SLA Co-locating with Ben Franklin

December 5, 2017 by Tamir Harper Leave a Comment

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

*The favorite design among the options*

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.

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

* Copy This Password *

* Type Or Paste Password Here *

95,344 Spam Comments Blocked so far by Spam Free Wordpress

Primary Sidebar

FacebookInstagramTwitter Snapchat

Features

Wardrobe of SLA

By Harper Leary Staff Writer Philadelphia is a diverse city, and the student population of Science Leadership Academy reflects that fact— not just with their identities, but also with their fashion choices. If you walk down the hallways of SLA, your head will turn every which way to get a glimpse of all the different […]

How the Pandemic has Changed Live Events

By Maya Smelser & Anouk Ghosh-Poulshock Staff Writers Everyone remembers their first concert. But when the pandemic hit, many tours were canceled or rescheduled. There was a hiatus from live music as people adjusted to their new lives– so many teens missed out on their early concert experiences..  In the past few months, however, concerts […]

How Are SLA Students Are Dealing With Their Last Quarter?

Leticia Desouza Staff Writer After a long yet quick year at SLA, students from different grades have experienced many new things they weren’t able to experience during the 2020-2021 online academic year. After almost 10 months of being back in school, students have encountered difficulties and new experiences that further molded how the rest of […]

Philadelphia High Schools Now Starting At 9am

Lia Dunakin Staff Writer The School District of Philadelphia recently announced that all Philly high schools will start their instructional day at 9AM beginning in the 2022-2023 school year.  The reason given for this huge change is simply, sleep. Teenagers tend to get tired later  at night, and starting school at early hours can be […]

Shared Facilities: SLA, and Benjamin Franklin High School Encounters

Andre Doyle, Cameron Booker, & Leticia Desouza Staff Writers SLA and Ben Franklin began their co-location in the Fall of 2019 — but only this year have the two schools started to truly operate in the same space.  Not all of the facilities are used by both schools — most academic spaces are entirely separate. […]

Copyright © 2022 · Metro Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in