SAVVY MAINLINE

With COVID cases falling and kids’ academic and emotional losses piling up, the drumbeat for fully reopening schools is getting louder by the minute.

If nearby districts and private schools can safely bring students back full-time, why can’t Lower Merion, Radnor and T/E? a growing chorus of public school parents wants to know.

Well, that chorus is being heard. Change is in the air.

Two years ago, Leslie Holt had every reason to give up. To curl up in a ball and blot out world. To stop caring.

She’d been fighting for her daughter for 15 years. And that all-consuming war – abruptly, devastatingly – had ended.

Leslie had lost. Lana was gone.

One way to survive the cold COVID winter ahead: drool over DiBruno Bros.’ spring arrival in Wayne.

The gourmet food purveyor just shared its plans with SAVVY.

Wowza.

There’s no way I’m getting this virus, thought Andy Phillips, as he set off on a run near his Chester Springs home in late March. He felt lousy that day, but at age 53, he was in great shape – eating right and exercising like mad.

“If you lined up ten of his friends, Andy was the healthiest,” says his wife Trish McDonough Phillips.

But try as he might, Andy couldn’t outrun COVID. He got the virus.

So did his son.

So did his father.

AnnaMarie Jones was living the suburban dream – happily married to a Rothman orthopedic surgeon, raising three kids in Radnor schools, and active in her church and community.

Life here was good.

The fact that her late father was Black and her mother is a first-generation white Sicilian American just wasn’t that big a deal.

Light-skinned, AnnaMarie has always been “white passing.”

She didn’t hide her biracial heritage; she just didn’t broadcast it.

Well, not anymore.

A five-acre lake tucked away in Newtown Square is going down the drain.

Literally.

Unless something changes pronto, the lake’s dam will be breached within weeks. And waters will flow downstream toward Radnor homes, through oft-soggy Saw Mill Park and into the flood-prone Darby Creek watershed.

Fish and fowl will lose their habitats, a few neighbors will lose their views, and a piece of Main Line history will be washed up forever.

After a long weekend with her mom, Paulette Kules came home Tuesday to a letter from hell.

And the year that began with her daughter’s suicide got unspeakably worse.

FedExed by her landlord’s attorney, the letter demands that Kules close her beloved toy shop, Puns Toys, and turn over her keys immediately for unpaid rent. Her inventory, fixtures, furniture were hers no longer, the letter said.

The Black Main Line is speaking out. And thousands – including a growing list of private schools – are listening.

Marches on Main Line streets have moved over to social media, none more prominent than the red-hot, hair-raising, holy smokes Instagram account, Black Main Line Speaks.

In less than six weeks, the account has posted hundreds of vignettes from Black alumni and students describing specific instances when they were taunted, tokenized, disrespected or otherwise diminished by teachers, administrators and classmates.