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Seth Small still remembers, a decade later, feeling that his classmates at Manchester PreK-8 were behind.
Small, 19, moved to Pittsburgh’s North Side with his brother Micah and their grandma Norma Small from the Hill District, where he attended another Pittsburgh public school, A. Leo Weil PreK-5.
“Stuff I was learning at A. Leo Weil, once I transferred to Manchester — I already learned that stuff,” Small said. “I basically had to help the teacher teach the class what I learned already.”
Despite its limitations, the Smalls appreciate many things about their neighborhood public school — not least the ease of walking just a block to get there. But whether Manchester will have a neighborhood school in the future is up for debate. Consultants for Pittsburgh Public Schools have proposed closing Manchester and 15 other schools as part of a plan to reduce spending and create more equitable options for students.
Seth Small, now a second-year electrical engineering student at the Community College of Allegheny County, also remembers arriving at Manchester to find fewer resources and high staff turnover — particularly among principals.
Small's brother Micah, an eighth-grader at Manchester, remembers school principal Mrs. Robinson being on leave.
“We had Mrs. Robinson — she disappeared for like two months,” he said.
Mrs. Robinson was injured and had to go on medical leave.
“Now we got Mrs. Johnson," Micah continued. "We had Mr. Skelton as our principal, and then it just keeps going.”
Another new principal, formerly at Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy, was brought on to lead Manchester this school year. Despite the turnover, Norma Small and her grandsons agree that the teachers are great and the convenience undeniable.
“I forgot my permission slip one time, and they said I could run back home and give it to my grandma so she could sign it, so I did that,” Micah said. “That's kind of the advantage of living so close to a school that’s in your neighborhood.”
About half of the students attending Manchester are designated walkers.
Manchester is a beloved school for many families like the Smalls, and its proposed closure has left many parents and community members concerned and upset.
One of the consultants, Joseph Trawick-Smith of Education Resource Strategies [ERS], told PPS school board members last month that schools like Manchester are too small to give students daily access to a diverse range of courses, such as art, music and foreign languages.
Trawick-Smith said, at the end of the day, schools with fewer students have fewer teachers and support staff to lead those specialized courses and meet students’ needs.
“And this is not just true in PPS,” he added. “It's true in every school district, at least that I've worked in.”
Manchester: Under-resourced and used
With just under 150 students last year, Manchester is one of the smallest schools in the district. That’s why Trawick-Smith and the team at ERS have suggested that Manchester students be split among two other schools on the North Side that are larger.
The consultants will present their final recommendations on Oct. 15, and board members will vote on them in the weeks following.
Manchester has always been a smaller public school, even though the school was designed to accommodate about 540 students when it was built in 1964. During the 2023-2024 school year, some grades enrolled as few as 11 students. For the district and consultants, these small class sizes have been one of the key metrics in determining school closures.
About 86% of the school’s student population is economically disadvantaged and 82% are Black, according to PPS enrollment data. About 35% of its students have disability-related Individualized Education Plans [IEPs] tailored to meet their individual needs.
According to district building data, systems such as electrical lighting, ceilings, floors, air conditioning and fire safety are in poor condition at Manchester, and the building requires major renovations. The school hasn’t been renovated since it was built.
The school also received a failing grade on the Educational Adequacy Index [EAI], meaning it lacks the necessary spaces to provide a fully rounded instructional curriculum for its students. According to the district’s EAI assessment, the school has no dedicated instructional spaces such as science labs, music rooms or technology spaces, as well as no gym, cafeteria, swimming pool or auditorium.
A revitalized building or school gentrification?
While Manchester would be closed as a neighborhood school, the current proposal includes converting the school into an arts middle school, taking grades 6-8 from the current CAPA 6-12 creative and performing arts school.
CAPA, located Downtown, is one of the most sought-after programs in the district. While the rest of Pittsburgh Public’s magnet schools enroll students via a lottery system, students interested in CAPA are required to audition or provide a portfolio. Other high school requirements include maintaining a 90% attendance rate in the prior year, a 2.5 GPA or higher and scoring at least basic on the most recent Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams.
CAPA is a predominately white school — 26% of its student population is Black and 32% are economically disadvantaged. Only 7% of students have an IEP. Districtwide, about 51% of students in PPS are Black, 70% are economically disadvantaged and 23% have an IEP.
CAPA was previously a high school arts magnet located in Homewood and merged with Rogers Middle School in Garfield in 2009, another arts magnet, moving to its current location in Downtown.
According to the proposals presented last month, most magnet programs and schools, except CAPA and Montessori PreK-5, will be phased out. Some schools will be converted into neighborhood magnets, where students living in that neighborhood will have a guaranteed spot in the school. The proposal also recommends changing the current grade configurations and moving to the traditional K-5, 6-8 and 9-12 grade models.
Trawick-Smith said that while CAPA would remain a full magnet, students in the Manchester neighborhood would be allotted more seats if the building were to relocate there. Manchester’s building would be renovated to include dance studios, music labs, performance spaces and a new auditorium.
The idea has drawn a lot of feedback, according to Trawick-Smith.
“There are some folks that I think rightfully pointed out the optics of bringing in a currently predominantly white magnet program into a neighborhood where the students are not predominantly white,” he said.
Board member Dwayne Barker represents the part of the city encompassing both CAPA and Manchester. While he says he isn’t “playing favorites,” Barker isn’t happy with how things unfolded. He went as far as to call the proposal to close Manchester and reopen it as CAPA 6-8 a form of “school gentrification.”
“You're taking folks that probably went to Manchester when they were kids and now the kids are going to Manchester — possibly even their kids' kids — taking that element away from them, like a home school,” he said.
Some Manchester families also question whether their students would have the arts experience needed to get into CAPA.
“How is it right to be like, you now are going to have to, like, go to school outside of your neighborhood, and we're going to put a school in here that you could never qualify to attend?” said Lauren Abt, a Manchester mom.
Abt has a fifth-grader at Manchester, as well as an older son who attended the school before transferring to the district’s North Side STEAM magnet, Schiller 6-8.
She wonders how students like hers could be prepared for a school like CAPA if Manchester doesn’t even have a comprehensive arts program. The school’s music teacher is part-time.
“I know music is not everyone's top priority — it's not even my top priority,” Abt said. “But it just speaks to the value that people place on the school or don't.”
Erica Frankenberg, an education demography professor at Penn State University, said if the district does decide to bring in a CAPA middle school in the Manchester building, it would need to change its high-stakes admission policies to make it equitable for underserved students.
“Are there ways that we can implement arts programming in these elementary schools that are historically underserved by the magnet school to try to even the playing field?”
In Manchester, charter schools loom large
While she doesn’t like the idea of Manchester closing under any circumstances, Abt said she would rather see it become a middle school for CAPA than go empty and unused, or become another charter school.
Some in the community and at Pittsburgh Public have voiced fears that, if Manchester were to close, families would instead enroll in a local charter school. The K-8 building is sandwiched between two charter schools — Manchester Academic Charter School [MACS] and Propel Northside K-8 — located just blocks away.
According to A+ Schools, 72% of students in Manchester’s feeder zone do not attend the school. While not all of those students have left Manchester to attend the local charter schools, enrollment in those schools is much higher than at Manchester. MACS enrolls about 400 students and Propel Northside charter enrolls about 380 students across kindergarten through eighth grade.
Erin Chaney grew up in the neighborhood and graduated from Manchester PreK-8, back when it had a German magnet program.
But when it came time to enroll her three sons in school, she chose MACS. Chaney said the choice had a lot to do with the sense of comfort she found there — her grandparents founded the charter school.
Some research has shown that a higher concentration of charter schools can exacerbate segregation, and enrollment loss to charters is something district leaders are trying to reduce. But to neighborhood parents, MACS and Manchester have a good relationship, Chaney said. It’s not unusual for North Side kids to switch between the local charters and public schools based on their individual child’s needs.
Chaney, for instance, switched her sons to Pittsburgh Schiller 6-8 for middle school — another North Side school that could close under the ERS proposal.
“I think there's always been a good relationship between MACS and Manchester because nobody's ever deterred anybody,” Chaney said. “It's not a competition.”
A generational pillar
On the first day of school, students and parents were excited to be back in Manchester.
Nicole DeMarco drove her son, a third-grader, from Beltzhoover. She says she likes how the school feels familiar to her son, who has been attending Manchester for the past three years.
“I don't want him to have to change schools. Even though we moved areas, I was able to keep him in this school,” she said. “So if we would have to change schools, I just don't want to have to do that to him. … It would just be difficult.”
While no clear timeline exists of when and how closures will be rolled out if the board votes to cement these changes in January, district officials and consultants have said that the plan was created to be implemented during the next few years.
For parents like DeMarco, Manchester’s small class sizes mean teachers can focus on her son individually and help him with his behavioral issues.
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Dann Kendrick’s entire family has attended Manchester, and his son started third grade there last month. Kendrick thinks the school has changed for the better through the years, even if there is a high turnover rate of teachers and principals.
He doesn’t want the potential closure to disrupt his son’s education or the community.
But he’s also not opposed to enrolling his son in the neighborhood charters. Kendrick wanted to send his son to the nearby charter MACS, as many of his cousins do, but the school had a waitlist.
Now, his son loves Manchester.
“It’s like everybody [is] kind of like family,” he said. “The teachers, the principal, everybody, they just love the kids.”
Jillian Forstadt is the education reporter at 90.5 WESA. She can be reached at jforstadt@wesa.fm.
Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Spencer Levering.
This story was produced in a partnership between WESA and PublicSource.
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