Charles “Charlie Mack” Alston is one of the more well-known alumni of the Edwin M. Stanton School in South Philadelphia.
Alston, 59, who was once Will Smith’s bodyguard, is set to participate in a celebrity boxing match with Shaquille O’Neal next month. So when he showed up outside the K-8 elementary school Saturday for its centennial celebration, some of his old classmates were excited.
But here, Alston pointed out, people still just call him “Charles Alston” — that’s how they were taught to address one another at the school a half-century ago.
And as old friends gathered Saturday for hugs and selfies, the conversation quickly turned toward their former teachers and the life lessons they learned in the 100-year-old building at the corner of S. 17th and Christian Streets.
The celebration came as the School District of Philadelphia prepares for another round of closings — with an initial list expected this fall of which schools might be fixed up, which might get new buildings, which will have to co-locate and which could have to close permanently. Final decisions are due by the end of December.
» READ MORE: Philly will ‘surely’ close schools, Watlington says as district releases data that will guide decisions on its 300 buildings
There are currently 70,000 empty seats in district schools; some schools have more than 1,000 unused student spots. Stanton, by contrast, is currently 64% full – it has 316 students in a building that can hold 527. That means it’s “moderately underused,” according to the district.
But with the block shut down Saturday, people got to work celebrating the school and its history. The Eagles Drum Line performed and let current students try the drums. A salsa instructor led dancing. Children gathered in the playground for games and face-painting. Food stands and vendors gave the block a festival atmosphere.
Alston said as a student, he served as a safety when the school took field trips to a local park, posted at intersections to make sure other students could safely cross the road. That gave him a sense of responsibility, and self-worth, at a young age, he said.
“The person you are as an adult is the direct result of your childhood,” said Alston, who graduated from Stanton in 1977.
Fellow alum Velma Smith, 53, agreed. “Stanton is like a community,” Smith said. “It’s like … going to your grandfather’s house.”
As Smith and another alumna, Sabrina Webb, talked about the school, they listed off sons and daughters, sisters and cousins who were all shaped by the same cadre of teachers.
As they talked, one name came up again and again: Mrs. Moser.
“If you was bad, she’d let you know it, and call your parents,” Smith said of her former teacher, Geraldine Moser. “It was almost like [having] a second mother.”
To celebrate Mrs. Moser, who died three years ago, 67-year-old Quaintella Asberry got her former teacher’s face printed on her shirt for the centennial gathering.
“She gave us a great foundation,” said Asberry, recalling that she taught the children a little splash of French, along with a good bit of discipline.
Her teacher was named Miss Wood back then. By the time she taught her son, she was Mrs. Moser.
Jannel Moser-Morris is Geraldine Moser’s daughter. For the 54-year-old, the centennial was a poignant reminder of the impact one teacher can have on hundreds of lives.
“This was her second home,” Moser-Morris said. “Teaching was her passion in life.”
Moser-Morris didn’t go to Stanton. Talking to alums, she learned things she didn’t know about her mother — she could play piano, for one — but ultimately found that their experiences with her mother were similar to her own.
“She was strict, but as I became an adult, and had a child of my own, it all made sense,” Moser-Morris said.
Next to a boxing ring set up on the street, another Stanton alumni, Maleek Jackson, stood next to 10-year-old Kinsley Davenport.
Jackson said Stanton was where he learned how to be creative.. By the time he was 16, he’d lost his brother to gun violence; soon after, Jackson was incarcerated. He would spend 10 years in prison, before emerging as a community leader through his boxing school, Azzim Dukes Initiative.
The 10-year old Davenport is one of Jackson’s boxing students — though a broken arm from dancing put a damper on her training.
“I think that (he) is a very nice man,” Davenport said, “that teaches us to be more polite in life.”
Stanton has “fair” program alignment — the district’s measure of whether a school has adequate space for things like physical education, prekindergarten, courses like world language and algebra classes. Officials have also said they will consider the vulnerability of the neighborhood surrounding a school in deciding the building’s fate – Stanton is judged to be in a “moderately vulnerable” neighborhood.
But its building condition is rated “poor” — a measure of whether the school is safe, accessible and has modern technology.
Dianne Kuczka Scot, who taught at the school from 1972 to 1989, said the district tried to close the school four times while she was there: Twice in the ’70s, and twice in the ’80s. The school faced a closure risk again in 2003, and yet again in 2011.
“I’m worried that this little old school has made it to 100 years, but they’re thinking of closing schools,” she said.