September 20, 2026 (Around the Block)

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September 20, 2026 (Around the Block)

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Around the Block is a community news program from the Block by Block team at WPPM-LP 106.5 FM. On this program we explore issues in the Philadelphia region with voices from the community – with reports from our team of community journalists and live in-studio interviews. This episode features stories from reporters Milan Parker and Alisha Miranda about how communities are stepping up to fill a gap left by the small number of Philadelphia schools staffed by professional librarians, and a look a the history of Philadelphia's iconic Bellevue hotel. We also speak with Alexa Palma about the Save the Academy Movement that has arisen since Drexel University announced it would close the Academy of Natural Sciences, effective September 27th. Alex Palma is an archivist, lecturer and grants consultant in the Philadelphia area. He is president of the Museum Council of Greater Philadelphia and an ally of the Save The Academy coalition. Campbell Simmons and Koren Martin hosted this episode, and Winter Schneider was our board operator. Brad Linder is Radio News Managing Editor for WPPM. Peta Liu is Radio Operations Manager. And Allison Durham is WPPM’s Radio Program Director. Episode Transcript This transcript was machine-generated and may contain spelling errors or other inaccuracies. Campbell Simmons: Good afternoon. You're listening to Around the Block, a community news program from the Block by Block team at WPPMLP Philadelphia 106.5 FM. On this show, we explore issues in the Philadelphia Region with voices from the community. Through original reports from our team of journalists and live interviews, I'm Campbell Simmons. Koren Martin: And I'm Koren Martin. Coming up, we'll have a conversation with a leader in the movement to save the Academy of Natural Sciences Museum. Drexel University recently announced plans to shut it down before the end of the month. Campbell Simmons: But first, it's back to school season and Many students at Philadelphia Public Schools are back in the classroom interacting with their new teachers and classmates. But if they head down the hall to check out a book from the school library, they might not be able to because years of budget cuts and staffing changes have left most Philly public schools without a certified librarian. Around the Block reporter Milan Parker reports that some community groups are stepping in to fill the gap. Milan Parker: At Laura W. Waring School in Philadelphia's Spring Garden neighborhood, the library is a place where students can choose their own books. They can look for graphic novels, sports stories, or the next book in a series that they've already started. But that was not always the case. Donna Perkins is the chair of Friends of Warring Library, which is a group of volunteers that manages the library. She says that when volunteers first got involved with rebuilding the school's library in 2016, the library did not look like a place where students could borrow books. Donna Perkins: When we saw it that day, it looked like someone's old full of old furniture and old books and dusty. And that was really the impetus to Working closely with the principal and figuring out how and what we needed to do to make a library in that space functional for the students at Waring. Milan Parker: Friends of Waring spent the next several years cleaning out the space, organizing books, building a collection, and working with the school to carve out library time and student schedules. In 2022, the group opened the library as a lending library for students from kindergarten through the eighth grade. But the dust that it collected in Warring's library did not happen by accident. Jenny Lowman is the coordinator of the Philadelphia Alliance to Restore School Librarians. She says Philadelphia once had far more school librarians, 176 of them, in 1991. BaLowman says that number began to fall as the district faced major funding problems in the early 2000s. In Philly, public schools moved to a system known as site-based budgeting. Jenny Lowman: And so, what Philadelphia did was to sort of decentralize much of its budgeting. And so, it would give the building principals a certain pot of money and say, here's your money. You figure out how to use it for your building. Of course, it wasn't enough money. So principals had to prioritize: do I need an assistant principal? Do I need a counselor? Do I need a dean of students or disciplinarian? Do I need a school librarian? And when they only had a small amount of money, the school librarians got deprioritized. Milan Parker: Lowman says, as librarians retired or left their jobs, many were not replaced. Laura W. Waring School is one of many Philadelphia schools where community members have worked to bring the library back into use. Katelin Beck works with WEPAC, a nonprofit that partners with public elementary schools in West and Southwest Philadelphia. She says that many of the schools that reach out still Still have a room built to ...

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