"I don't think that parents should throw up a white flag and leave the area," she said. "I need to let parents know that there are solutions, and they shouldn't just give up."
She has enlisted some powerful allies.
They include: parents who have done similar work at their own schools; all 12 principals; Lori Shorr, Mayor Nutter's chief education officer; Paul Levy, head of the Center City District, which works to improve the quality of life downtown; and the district itself, which designated assistant superintendent Emmanuel Caulk to help.
The coalition is fighting huge headwinds. It operates in a financially struggling district that has had to lay off school nurses and safety officers. Most of the students are poor. Violence in schools regularly makes headlines.
But there are positive forces at work, too. In the area bounded by Girard, Tasker, and the two rivers, the number of children under 5 has grown 42 percent in the last decade, to 5,287.
Keeping some of those families here could improve property values and boost tax revenue for a cash-strapped city.
Many of the parents in those neighborhoods are highly motivated to help their local public schools. They believe in public education, love living in the city, and know that private school tuition could easily be $20,000 per child.
When William M. Meredith Elementary, one of the 12 coalition schools, faced about $30,000 in budget cuts in 2011, parents collected more than $15,000 in less than a day.
Meredith, at Fifth and Fitzwater Streets, is relatively well off, but the coalition comprises a wide range of schools, from those that are popular with parents to some that don't meet state educational standards.
