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Level with the public on Philadelphia school closings!

This first appeared on the Public School Notebook website, www.thenotebook.org. It was written by Paul Socolar, editor and director of the Notebook, with the Notebook's editorial board.

This first appeared on the Public School Notebook website, www.thenotebook.org.

It was written by Paul Socolar, editor and director of the Notebook, with the Notebook's editorial board.

PHILADELPHIA School District administrators and the School Reform Commission have wisely recognized a problem they can't afford to put off dealing with any longer - too many buildings.

Since the late 1990s, 70 charter schools have been added to the landscape, as well as a number of small high schools - but only a handful of district schools have been closed. With the school-age population declining, many of the system's aging buildings have been largely depopulated. Overall, a third of the city's classroom space is unused, according to the latest study.

Though there may be some quibbles with the new estimate of 70,000 empty seats, the conclusion that the district must move to get rid of its excess capacity is indisputable.

There could be major savings if the district wasn't dealing with the fixed costs of operating so many buildings. The district is overwhelmed by vast and deteriorating infrastructure and needs to right-size in order to have any chance of making its buildings suitable environments for learning.

The district's facilities-planning process - informing the public that downsizing is inevitable - absolutely needs to happen.

The undertaking is massive and politically challenging, but cannot be put off.

Conducting a comprehensive and citywide process also makes sense. When the district has tried to close a single school here or there, those communities feel arbitrarily targeted. But this problem involves the whole city, and the district has recognized that extensive community involvement is needed.

But how they've conducted that engagement process is alarming. A change in course is needed.

Although public input is invited through three rounds of meetings, so far there has been no chance to say which schools should be kept open or closed. Key aspects of the decision-making process have been kept under wraps.

Despite the promise of transparency, the district has released no data about individual schools and given only vague answers to the most basic questions:

How will the district weigh different factors? When will the public hear specific proposals for closings and consolidations? What opportunities will there be to respond to those proposals? By when must decisions be made? Are there any targets for seat reductions or cost savings? What happens to buildings that are closed?

When we tried getting updated capacity numbers for specific schools and information about the costs for renovating them, it was as if we had asked for state secrets.

The district still hasn't said exactly when it will release those numbers. Until recently, they weren't even acknowledging that schools will definitely be closed.

It's time to level with the public. Put all the information out there. Get some preliminary proposals on the table. Don't keep the public guessing.

No community is going to be happy to see its school closed, and there's already a lot of mistrust. But the only way to turn that around is with openness.