Pittsburgh public schools could face closures, consolidations and restructuring, according to a comprehensive facilities plan presented to the school board on Tuesday.
The Facilities Utilization Plan has been in development since April, when the district announced it had hired Education Resources Strategies to develop a plan to economically utilize the district’s sprawling, underutilized building inventory. The board is expected to vote on it in the new year after more public meetings have been held and recommendations have been finalized.
The timeline for implementing all the proposals is expected to be announced once Education Resource Strategies issues its final recommendations next month, but consultants estimate that such a comprehensive plan could take three to five years to implement.
The plan, released on August 13, recommended a complete overhaul of the district’s grade system, with the goal of moving to grades K-5, 6-8 and 9-12. With that, they also announced plans to phase out six magnet programs and create new neighborhood magnet programs, meaning students in that neighborhood are guaranteed a spot in the school.
Consolidations and closures were recommended due to proximity between two buildings, accessibility of spaces and building capacity. The proposal did not take into account the stand-alone Conroy, Pioneer, Clayton and Gifted Center Early Childhood Centers, which consultants said require more attention due to their specialized purposes.
“We are being deliberately bold here,” said Joseph Trawick-Smith of Education Resource Strategies.
Here are the new class configurations and school closures proposed in each region:
Region South/West:
Consolidations:
- Brookline K-8 will become a K-5 school. Students in grades 6 through 8 will go to Carmalt.
- Carmalt K-8 will become a 6-8 school. K-5 students will attend the new Brookline K-5. Carmalt Magnet will be phased out.
- Langley K-8 becomes K-5 and students in grades 6-8 attend Classical 6-8. Classical Magnet is eliminated.
- Arlington K-8 will be a school for grades 6 through 8 and K-5 will attend Grandview K-5, Beechwood K-5 or West Liberty K-5.
Closures:
- Whittier K-5 will be closed and students would attend the new Langley K-5 or Westwood K-5.
- Roosevelt K-5 closes and students go to West Liberty K-5 or Concord K-5.
- South Hills 6-8 will close and its students will move to the new Arlington 6-8.
- South Brook 6-8 will close and students will attend the new Carmalt 6-8. Pioneer students will remain in the South Brook building.
- Carrick 9-12 will close and students will transfer to Brashear 9-12. Carrick will become a designated Career and Technical Education (CTE) center.
Northern Region:
Consolidations:
- King K-8 will become a 6-8 school. Allegheny K-8 will become a K-5 and the 6-8 students will move to the new King 6-8.
- Morrow K-8 will become K-5 and students in grades 6-8 will attend the new King 6-8.
Closures:
- Manchester will close. Students in grades 6-8 will attend the new King 6-8 and students in grades K-5 will attend the new Morrow K-5.
- Schiller 6-8 closes and students move to the new King 6-8.
- Spring Hill closes, students attend Allegheny K-5.
Further considerations:
- King 6-8 and Perry 9-12 will become STEM programs for students from the North Side neighborhood.
- A new CAPA 6-8 will be located in the Manchester building and a CAPA 9-12 will be located downtown. CAPA 9-12 will be expanded with more available space in the Downtown building.
East/Central Region:
Consolidations:
- Sunnyside K-8 will become a K-5 school and students in grades 6-8 will go to Arsenal 6-8.
- Westinghouse 6-12 becomes a 9-12 school and students in grades 6-8 attend Sterrett 6-8.
- Colfax K-8 will become a 6-8 school and K-5 students will go to Greenfield K-5 or Minadeo K-5.
- Mifflin K-8 will become a K-5 school and students in grades 6-8 will go to a new Colfax 6-8.
- Obama 6-12 will become a 9-12 school and students in grades 6-8 will go to Arsenal 6-8. Both schools will become neighborhood magnets and offer International Baccalaureate programs.
- Sci-Tech 6-12 will become a 9-12 school and UPrep Milliones 6-12 will become a 6-8 school. Students will transfer between both schools, which will become neighborhood magnets with a focus on STEM.
Closures:
- Woolslair K-5 closes and students go to Sunnyside K-5 or Liberty K-5.
- Arsenal K-5 closes and students go to Sunnyside K-5 or Liberty K-5.
- Fulton K-5 will be closed and students will transfer to Dilworth K-5.
- Lincoln K-5 closes and students transfer to Faison K-5.
- Because K-5 is closing and students are moving to Miller K-5.
- Montessori K-5 is housed in a vacant Linden building.
- Magnet programs in Linden, Liberty and Dilworth will be phased out over the course of several years. Dilworth and Liberty will become neighborhood schools, while Linden will become the new site of the district’s Montessori building.
The consultants also proposed renovating many of the facilities designed to accommodate larger student populations so that each school has:
- More special education classes
- Air conditioning
- Science laboratories in schools grades 6-8 and 9-12
- Expanded spaces for CTE programming in 9-12
- Own art and music rooms
The proposal includes in particular renovations in:
- Morrow Intermediate
- Westwood
- Phillips
- Grandview
- Banksville
- West Liberty
- Brookline
- Sunny side
According to Trawick-Smith, completing these renovations would significantly reduce the number of buildings across the district that require moderate or major renovations.
At the same time, he said the planned school closures would affect a larger proportion of the district’s black and Latino students than its white and Asian students.
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“We could see some significant changes here, but I want to address this because obviously one of the key factors is, ‘How are we disproportionately impacting a particular group of students?'” Trawick-Smith said. “And I would say we’re at certain points in that scenario.”
In the coming weeks, School Board Chairman Gene Walker and PPS Superintendent Wayne Walters will hold four community engagement meetings at the regional level to discuss the way forward.
These will take place on August 22, September 3, September 4 and September 5. A webinar on the proposal will also be held on August 27, and the district will hold “pop-up days” in several hard-to-reach communities across the city on August 15, August 20 and August 23.
Further information on these events will be available at District website in the next few days.
Board member Devon Taliaferro said because Manchester is between two charter schools serving grades K-8, families may move out of the district rather than go to a new CAPA 6-8 in the building. She emphasized the need to support the community and possibly accommodate a recreational or educational center to meet the needs of the neighborhood.
Board member Dwayne Barker echoed this sentiment, saying that housing CAPA students in the Manchester building creates the impression that Manchester students are not worthy of being in the building and that the focus is instead on creating space for students with special talents.
“This is school gentrification in its purest form,” he said.
Board members, district and consultant representatives have repeatedly expressed the need for significant changes to the district’s service area, in part due to the tightening of the district’s budget. While the district has been able to to reduce the operating deficit ESSER III funds earmarked for the 2024 budget, which helped stabilize the company’s finances, were reduced from nearly $30 million earlier this year to just $2.2 million and will expire next month.
Meanwhile, rising charter school costs and declining property tax revenues continue to contribute to the gap between spending and revenue.
This means that the district has lost 26% of its student population over the last decade, and according to the state Department of Education, PPS is expected to another 5,800 students lose by 2031. The district is also struggling with staff shortages in certain areas such as support staff, STEM and foreign languages.
Superintendent Wayne Walters said there is more work to be done in the process and that the district will now begin a consultation period to hear community input before presenting final recommendations.
“We want families to know that we are still listening to them,” he said. “We have heard them and are trying to do something to improve education in Pittsburgh public schools for all of our children.”
Jillian Forstadt is an education reporter at 90.5 WESA. She can be reached at [email protected].
Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at [email protected].90.5 WESA is a partner of
PublicSource for this report, an independent local news organization for the Pittsburgh region. More at www.publicsource.org.