When Drexel University announced Sept.1 that the Academy of Natural Sciences Museum would shutter at the end of the month, City Council responded to widespread public outcry by announcing a legislative committee hearing to investigate. On Monday, Oct. 26, after a nearly three-week postponement, the long-awaited day had come: more than 120 people — many
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Three turtles are waiting in the garden at the Max Myers Playground. The kids have to find them. As David Crutchfield, garden educator with Farm Philly’s Junior Farmers program, leads the after-school program attendees outside, the children sprint ahead, eager to dive into the kale, squash, beets and other plants to search. The Northeast Philly
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When you were in high school, did you eat everything that got plopped onto your tray in the cafeteria? Some things never change, but W.B. Saul High School, an agriculture-focused high school in Northwest Philadelphia, has taken advantage of funding from the Green Schools program to help compost the leftovers (and the compostable trays). Saul
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It was a muggy morning in mid-August and parents were gathered inside The Academy at Palumbo High School’s cafeteria, chatting animatedly over coffee and biscuits. The occasion was the First-Year Student Breakfast, an annual event the school’s Home and School Association (HSA) hosts to connect new families with school staff and parent volunteers. The meeting
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Two hundred and fifty years ago, as a new nation was being born in Philadelphia, botanist William Bartram was on the Altamaha River in Georgia — the edge of the infant United States — nearing the end of a three-year plant-collecting expedition. In addition to Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, he had traversed the “powerful
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On a June Monday evening, the loudest sound in the South Philadelphia Library was the clicking of computer keyboards. Behind the busy island of computers, another group of people filtered into a classroom filled with green plastic chairs and soft ambient music: a space of quiet resistance. “I’m tired of AI being shoved down my
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There is no one single type of PA Cyber student, and they all have their own personal reasons for choosing to go beyond the standard schooling option. Some start with PA Cyber in kindergarten, and for others, high school is the right time to make the switch. For all grades, the school empowers students to
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When Grid visited the LandHealth Institute (LHI) nursery in May, community nursery operations lead Sara Mae Henke and native plant nursery associate Marcelino Smith were repotting hundreds of tiny bee balm plants from flats into pots to prepare them for sale. Behind them rose the arching end of a high tunnel greenhouse sheathed in plastic
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In 2008, I heard Van Jones speak at the Academy of Natural Sciences about his book “The Green Collar Economy.” He talked about the need to make careers in clean energy accessible to all of our communities, and that without intentional inclusion, the underserved neighborhoods in our region would be sidelined from these opportunities, too.
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The sound of percussion rang out at the Center City headquarters of the School District of Philadelphia as the youth drumline Mad Beatz Philly opened a celebratory press conference in early March. The Black-led, parent-driven organization Lift Every Voice Philly (LEV) was celebrating a major victory: after 18 months of advocacy by parents across the
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