On today’s episode of The Confluence:
Data shows how much Pittsburgh Public Schools employees are paid
(0:00 - 8:24)
Maintenance workers make up many of the highest-paid employees at Pittsburgh Public School, according to a recent data analysis by PublicSource. Along with what type of worker is earning the most money, reporting shows that during the 2021-21 academic year, white PPS employees, on average, made $18,000 more than Black employees, and men, on average, earned $7,000 more than women.
“I think the issue that people who think about the equity issue here is not about unequal pay for the same job, it's about getting people of different genders and different ethnicities into higher-paying jobs,” says PublicSource reporter Oliver Morrison.
The highest-paid employee was former superintendent Anthony Hamlet, at $229,473. Many of the top earners included maintenance workers and foremen.
“I think for some people that just raised some questions,” says Morrison. “People that I heard back from said that you would think in a school district, the highest-paid employees would be educators of some sort or another.”
Major companies push for regional hydrogen hub
(8:33 - 17:27)
An alliance of manufacturing and energy companies such as Shell, GE Gas Power, and U.S. Steel want to build a hydrogen hub in Western Pennsylvania.
“As it's envisioned right now, it would basically mean that we would have plans that would make hydrogen from natural gas, and the carbon emissions that result from that process would be captured, and they'd be pumped underground for storage to prevent them from reaching the atmosphere,” says Anya Litvak, energy reporter at the Post-Gazette.
Last week, Pittsburgh hosted the Appalachian Hydrogen and Carbon Capture Conference. This comes as the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act earmarked $8 billion to fund regional hydrogen hubs.
“There's enormous challenges, one is that it hasn't been economic ever,” says Litvak. “The Department of Energy has spent billions of dollars funding carbon capture pilots for the coal industry, for coal power plants that haven’t yielded any commercial successes.”
The environmental impacts of capturing this carbon and then storing it underground still remain to be seen.
“This is, you know, a material that's supposed to stay underground forever, and this is also a material that migrates quite easily,” says Litvak. “So there's going to be all the challenges that we have with whatever we put underground.”
New book explores caregiver-patient relations from both sides
(17:29 - 22:30)
In late 2017, author and registered nurse Theresa Brown was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now Brown has written a book about the experience of being a patient rather than a professional caregiver. WESA’s Bill O’Driscoll spoke with Brown about her book, titled, “Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient.”
“As a nurse, we would label people difficult patients,” says Brown. “And at one point I realized, I am the difficult patient. And I really felt like, ‘Oh, that's not a good thing.’ And then I realized, ‘Well, I don't feel like I really have a lot of choice.’”
Brown currently lives in Pittsburgh and was previously the author of “The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives.”
The Confluence, where the news comes together, is 90.5 WESA’s daily news program. Tune in Monday to Thursday at 9 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. to hear newsmakers and innovators take an in-depth look at stories important to the Pittsburgh region. Find more episodes of The Confluence here or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also ask your smart speaker to play "the Confluence with Kevin Gavin."
