Pittsburgh school closure plan raises questions for parents

(The Center Square) – Some Pittsburgh residents may feel déjà vu as the city’s public school system considers yet another plan to close buildings and redistribute many of its 20,000 students.

Though many see the district as overspending and underperforming, the strategy of reconfiguring schools also raises questions among parents who say similar attempts over the last 20 years didn’t pan out.

Faced with declining enrollment and expensive facility upkeep, the district contracted Educational Resource Strategies, a non-profit organization, to reimagine the district’s operations. In the current model, the district’s 60 buildings have a 53% utilization rate.

In October, the group released the details of its plan. President Jonathan Travers said it “represents the best thinking on how PPS can evolve its schools to provide the best educational experience for every student.”

“Our team’s task for the last six months has been to learn as much as we can about this district, its students and families, and put together a proposal to make bold changes to the mix and configuration of PPS schools across the city, in service of the educational needs of all students,” he said.

The new vision includes eliminating the district’s PreK-8 schools in favor of separate buildings for prekindergarten through fifth grades and sixth through eighth grades. This is a direct reversal of strategies implemented in 2012, which created smaller schools with larger age ranges.

Magnet elementary schools and partial magnet schools would close, prioritizing neighborhood magnet schools instead. The latter receives both students who have applied from across the city and students local to the school’s attendance zone.

The organization said a move back to the old model would allow for higher enrollment at individual schools, which could improve the number and variety of classes offered by allowing for full-time teachers in elective subjects like world languages and the arts.

Changes to the current structure of ESL and gifted programming, including new ESL sites in the north region of the city, where the population of foreign language speakers is growing, are also included.

Facility improvements are needed to accommodate larger groups of students. Adding air conditioning to minimize heat-related closures is a priority across the board.

According to the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, the new plans could save the district $3 million annually. In January, the fiscally conservative research nonprofit released a brief that supported the idea of closing buildings and selling the property to private buyers. This could boost school tax revenue, which could help bridge the district’s widening budget gap.

Many parents, however, are yet to be convinced that closing more schools, as was done in 2006 and 2012, makes sense.

Although some of the proposed changes are welcomed, the plans overall met strong opposition from parents who worried about the disproportionate impact of school closures in minority neighborhoods, which account for more than half of the district’s population.

The Education Rights Network — an arm of 412 Justice that advocates against school privatization, such as charters which serve 5,400 students in the city — said the data used for the plan is old, and input from parents was overlooked, paving the way for the district to repeat recent mistakes.

The network released a report in October indicating that Black students, economically disadvantaged students, and special needs students with individualized education plans, are overrepresented in the population that will be required to move to different schools.

There’s also skepticism about meeting busing demands and whether staff reductions will come from eliminating vacant positions or broader layoffs.