welcome

The Kensington High School Community Planning Process is an exciting opportunity for community members to participate in a (7) month planning process for the redesign of Kensington High School into small schools. The Kensington Design Team and the Philadelphia School District have begun a process to break up the existing Kensington High School for September, 2005. Kensington High will be divided to host International Business and Creative and Performing Arts thematic schools and the Annex will become a school for Culinary Arts.

This planning process continues the ongoing efforts of Youth United for Change, the Kensington Design Team and several local organizations who have been working to improve the quality of education at Kensington High School. The work of the Steering Committee for the process will involve identifying and integrating existing resources in the neighborhood and the larger community to create small schools that serves as centers of community.

To create this vision, Concordia was contracted through a grant from the William Penn Foundation awarded to the Philadelphia Education Fund to facilitate a community-wide participatory planning process for Kensington High School’s redesign. Concordia is a national planning and architecture firm that is recognized for its leadership in the small schools and schools as centers of community movements.

On this website, you will have access to project news and updates, printable maps of the Kensington neighborhood and surrounding community, a meeting schedule, further explanation of the Concordia Process, and a Community Resource Card which you can use to enter information about community resources and opportunities. One exciting feature is a page that reports on youth involvement in the Planning Process.

Hopefully, you have already participated in a Concordia meeting. If not, we hope you will join us at the next Kensington High School Community Planning Process meeting. Please review the meeting schedule to learn how to get involved. We look forward to working with you!