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The legacy of school board members trying to micromanage should come to an end under Superintendent John Thompson
Wednesday, February 21, 2001
We've tried to fit a square peg in a round hole. That's the reason the Pittsburgh Public Schools system is seeking to raise taxes by 23.3 percent and close small-enrollment schools.
The court-ordered effort since the 1970s to desegregate the schools to obtain diversity has crossed swords with the concept of maintaining neighborhood schools. The dispute perennially has split the school board, often leading the board to ram past its policy functions to micromanage the system. Race and class issues have played a part. It is this conflict that confronts the new superintendent, John Thompson.
Simply put, a system that worked for the 80,000 enrollment in 1970 now has only about 39,000 students. A Pennsylvania Economy League study, using a state formula, concluded there is capacity for 52,000 students. Partly this overcapacity results from demographics - smaller families, people moving to the suburbs. But the biggest drop came in the 1970s when uncertainty surrounding desegregation caused an exodus that dropped the enrollment to 44,000, even before the actual plan was adopted in 1980.
However, the desegregation effort brought many imaginative efforts - first, middle schools and then magnet schools. The latter, in particular, helped keep many middle-class white and African-American families in the system. Proof of that came in 1996 when the neighborhood-school faction on the board fashioned a rollback plan that endangered the magnet system. The resulting uproar caused the plan to be junked.
The best reading I can get is that Richard Wallace, superintendent from 1980 to 1992, kept a tight rein on the situation, including closing too-small schools, until he went on a half-time sabbatical in 1990-91. With his partial absence, the neighborhood-school faction on the board took the bit in its teeth and began a process of reopening or keeping open many of the 11 schools now scheduled to be closed.
When Wallace got back for his last year, it was too late. Board members had had a taste of running things, such as taking a major hand in selecting school principals in their own districts and log-rolling each other for that and other patronage privileges. Black board members got caught up in that practice, weakening the desegregation front. Neither of the succeeding superintendents, Louise Brennen and Dale Frederick, was able to recover the steering wheel.
When Helen Faison was asked to be the interim superintendent, she was savvy enough to demand in her contract the recovery of power. Now Thompson is being tested, as a split board on Jan. 24 put on hold his plan for reorganizing the school safety division.
At present, the schools in the predominantly black neighborhoods are overcrowded, while the thin enrollments are in predominantly white neighborhoods, some of which have resisted magnet schools because they didn't want such deliberately integrated schools in their building.
What's remarkable is that the public schools have held an excellent "market share" of the school-age population, averaging 75 percent but now 77 percent, despite the lessening of support in two previous pillars, the Jewish and black communities. Partly, that's because of the rise of religious schools and also because the easing of discriminatory barriers has opened the option for children in those communities to attend elite private schools. Ironically, on the other hand, the closing of many Catholic schools has helped the public schools maintain that "market share."
Changing attitudes within the African-American community have complicated the picture. The integrationist impetus of the 1960s has collided with the ensuing emphasis on black pride. Some blacks began to resent the implication that "black schools" weren't good enough, and wondered whether test results in integrated schools were all that much better. These doubts have prompted the moves to charter schools, with one sponsored by the Urban League, one of the oldest pro-desegregation organizations. And I've just learned that a prominent white Protestant church in the East End is considering opening a private school, with the mission to "provide a better education for inner-city children."
The financial problems facing the Pittsburgh public schools go beyond the state-mandated charter schools, of course. But the latter are annually costing local taxpayers $4.8 million. True, they are within the public system and help keep pupils in it, but they constitute a duplication. A few pupils plucked from this school and a few from another don't constitute any offset large enough to merit closing a classroom, laying off a teacher, or otherwise saving money.
Special education costs have particularly hit the Pittsburgh schools since 1991 because of a change in the state funding formula. The Legislature, to halt the drain of a blank-check formula of which local schools across the state were taking undue advantage, changed it to a percentage of a district's enrollment, set statewide. The problem has been that an urban district like Pittsburgh has a higher percentage of special-education students, meaning local taxpayers pick up the difference.
But it seems to me that any vision Thompson and the board might have will depend upon getting the financial house in order, namely, cutting overcapacity. The concept of moving the performing arts high school Downtown, with hopes of attracting suburban and even international students, is one vision. The other is the project to computerize schools, something that should benefit all schools.
Surely, a community that is coming to realize the crucial role of the public schools in its hopes for a high-tech future doesn't want to go to the Philadelphia solution of the mayor taking over the schools. Whatever the take on Thompson, citizens on all sides of the square peg/round hole dispute should agree that the answer is not micromanaging by school board members.
Clarke Thomas is a Post-Gazette senior editor.