Many Pittsburgh parents, students and educators are pushing back on a new proposal to close more than a dozen schools citywide — the latest in a series of consolidation plans weighed by leaders at Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Consultants for the district presented school board members with their final recommendations last week for addressing financial and equity concerns across the district. Efforts to rethink the district’s facility footprint come amid declining enrollment, aging infrastructure and disparate access to district resources.
Consultants are now suggesting that the district permanently shutter 10 district buildings and reconfigure grade structures at several others, in addition to phasing out most of the district’s magnet programs. School board members have asked superintendent Wayne Walters to conduct a feasibility study for the plan before deciding to move forward.
But many PPS teachers and families say students need stability, not another change. That’s especially resonant for the district’s immigrant and refugee community.
Each of Asifiwe Annuarite’s five kids has attended Arsenal PreK-5, one of the district’s designated sites for English language learners. The family moved to Pittsburgh as refugees from central Africa five years ago.
“They are now learning. They now know English,” she told board members at a public hearing this week. “They have teachers as friends. They have other children from different countries as friends now.”
“Please do not close Arsenal. I believe that it is possible to make Arsenal more beautiful than it is now.”
Final recommendations come after a year of deliberation
District leaders began discussing the possibility of school closures just over a year ago, when PPS chief financial officer Ron Joseph raised alarms about a mounting budget deficit and significant enrollment declines. At the time, Joseph said the district had lost 25% of its student enrollment since it last closed schools in 2012.
PPS entered into a nearly $250,000 contract with the Boston-based firm Education Resource Strategies (ERS) earlier this spring with the goal of “optimizing the use of educational facilities across the District.” The consultants’ review of district facilities was meant to ensure all buildings “contribute[d] positively to the learning experience” and aligned with the district’s “financial capabilities.”
After several weeks of gathering feedback and about a dozen community town halls, that focus shifted more toward creating a district that provided equitable opportunities for all students. Consultants cited disparities in course offerings and staffing across PPS schools, as well as segregation perpetuated by the district’s selective magnet programs.
Magnet schools, while originally intended to desegregate PPS, serve fewer African American students than the districtwide average.
“I think a critical part of this process was really trying to engage the community in a vision for what they want to see in their schools moving forward,” Angela King Smith, a partner at ERS, told WESA this summer.
In August, King Smith and her colleagues at ERS floated a proposal to close 16 schools. That was followed by another round of student surveys and community feedback sessions, which King Smith said shaped the revised proposal presented last week.
“The community expressed support for changes that provided more support for students, particularly for English learners and students with disabilities,” King Smith said.
The final recommendations reflect that by expanding the number of sites designated for English learners — a population that has grown substantially over the past decade. The number of English learners in the district increased from 557 students during the 2011-2012 school year to 1,427 students last spring.
Students with disabilities represent almost 23% of the total PPS population. Consultants said their recommendations would broadly enhance accessibility and better serve students’ needs.
The final proposal also better mirrors the roads and rivers that divide Pittsburgh. At input sessions across the city, many families expressed concerns about transporting students across major thoroughfares like Saw Mill Run Boulevard. Consultants subsequently retracted their recommendation to close Carrick High School and merge it with Brashear 9-12, located on the other side of that road.
The remaining recommendations, however, still cut deep, reducing the total number of traditional schools from 54 to 39. Consultants also suggested closing three buildings currently serving alternative or special education programs; those programs would be relocated to some of the newly vacant school buildings.
Representatives with the local grassroots advocacy group 412 Justice said the proposal doesn’t provide any evidence of improved student outcomes, and disproportionately impacts Black students, economically disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities.
“The School Board must not advance a plan that will reinforce and sustain systemic inequities and harm our most under-resourced families and communities,” the group wrote in a statement.
Cries for stability from immigrant communities
Aligned with the recommendation to increase the number of schools equipped to serve English learners, consultants are proposing that PPS reopen its building in Northview Heights as an elementary school. The PreK-8 school was closed in 2012 before reopening as an early childhood education center in 2021.
Northview Heights is home to many African immigrants and refugees, with large Somali Bantu, Burundian and Congolese communities. Students there are currently zoned for Arsenal PreK-5 and 6-8 in Lawrenceville — nearly four miles from their home neighborhood.
Consultants said reopening Northview Heights as an elementary school would give families in the neighborhood an option within walking distance, reducing some of the burden on Pittsburgh’s immigrant households. Under the proposal, the Arsenal building would be reconfigured as solely a 6-8 school, and English learners would be relocated to other sites.
But Lusambo Muderhwa, a member of the Northview Heights community who previously worked at Arsenal PreK-5 as an English Second Language (ESL) paraprofessional, said families there are already familiar and comfortable with Arsenal, despite the distance.
“[These families have a] life of poverty, stress, violence, segregation, but when they walk in Arsenal’s doors, they feel like home,” Muderhwa said at Monday’s public hearing. “The ESL teachers that work at Arsenal give them that care and they feel like they have second parents in Arsenal.”
“We have moved from our home to refugee camps, now settled in Pittsburgh, and now we are moving again,” he continued. “We are tired of moving.”
Arsenal PreK-5 students come from 20 countries and speak 18 different languages. This year alone, the school welcomed 60 students who are attending U.S. schools for the first time.
According to ERS’ presentation last week, 35% of English learner students would attend a different school if the plan is fully implemented.
ESL teacher Danielle Keyes was relocated to Arsenal PreK-5 after the district closed her previous school, Fort Pitt Elementary in Garfield. She was one of several ESL teachers who spoke at the public hearing.
“At some point we must look at what's happening across our district. It is not okay to continue to shift Black and brown students around as if transitions will not cause trauma for our children,” Keyes told board members.
“It would be a shame to close a school that is continuously growing.”
Parents urge board to examine loss to charters
Other parents, meanwhile, have rejected the consultants’ recommendations altogether, instead opting to draft a proposal of their own. The group, led by Woolslair PreK-5 parent Sarah Zangle, presented their “community-driven proposal” at the Smithfield United Church of Christ downtown earlier this week.
Zangle suggested the district adopt a “regional choice model,” in which families can attend any elementary school within their section of the city. The alternative plan also recommends closing 10 schools, though half of those buildings would be converted into community hubs dedicated to teacher professional development and after-school activities.
Zangle said the group wanted to offer an option driven by community input rather than reacting to it, though she also stressed the need for additional data on the factors driving the district’s enrollment decline.
“We would prefer to have a survey or a needs assessment go out to really try and understand the needs of the neighborhood, and meet the needs of Pittsburgh,” Zangle said, “and understand why people are making the educational choices that they're making — specifically, why not PPS?”
About one of every five public school students — more than 5,000 students — are opting for local or online public charter schools instead of the district. Parents like Zangle are urging the district to figure out how to get them back as they consider school closures.
“We just want to be thoughtful about the next step so that we stop the pattern of decline and attrition at PPS and instead start this growth mindset of really trying to advocate for our students and provide the best education possible,” she said.
The parent group wasn’t given time to formally present in front of the school board, though board member Sylvia Wilson and board president Gene Walker attended the downtown presentation Tuesday.
Walker said it gave board members more ideas to consider, adding that the regional model has merit.
“This was always the idea — how do we get as many ideas on the table so that we can make the best-informed decision?” Walker said. “Even though we paid a consultant to give us most of it, bringing the community in was always part of the plan.”
The audio for this story was produced by Susan Scott Peterson.
