For residents, the battle for shuttered Germantown High School didn’t end with the School Reform Commission’s sale of the building to The Concordia Group. On Oct. 25, the community met to hear about a plan to turn the building into a charter school. Just days after, high school students at Walter Palmer Charter School in Tacony were sent home.

Germantown High School closed because there weren’t enough students. Palmer is closed because there were too many.

Palmer routinely surpassed its agreed cap of 675 students across all campuses. The district sued the underperforming school, won and the State Department has since stopped payment to the school for the 600 additional students. Without the funds, Palmer closed its Tacony high school, sending nearly 300 students home. Palmer is encouraging parents to send some of its students on a commute that could last more than an hour — across the city to West Philadelphia High School, since nearby Northeast High School’s enrollment is full.

Last year, Germantown High School could fill just 30 percent of its seats in the end. GHS was one of the 23 underperforming schools that the SRC voted to close in May 2013 amidst an ongoing funding crisis. Now, residents want to reopen the building as a charter that would prioritize students from the area, enroll 600 sixth through ninth-graders in its first year and eventually educate 1200 middle and high schoolers annually. Applications for new charter schools are due Nov. 15 and must be approved by the School Reform Commission.