Tuesday, September 23, 2003

By Eleanor Chute, Post-Gazette Education Writer

Facing a $40 million budget deficit, city employee layoffs and an uncooperative state Legislature, Mayor Tom Murphy has been presented with a new challenge: fixing the city school system.

The Mayor's Commission on Public Education yesterday released its report on what's wrong with city schools, suggesting changes that include replacing the elected school board with one appointed by the mayor.

The switch would require approval of the Republican-controlled Legislature, which still hasn't passed a basic education budget for 2003-04 and hasn't been willing to help the Democratic mayor.

The mayor's commission also recommended lowering school property taxes and closing schools; and criticized the way the district hires and trains teachers.

The mayor named the commission of 37 civic leaders last year after several foundations yanked their financial support from the schools, saying school officials' bickering had eroded their confidence in the system.

The report -- or, at the very least, the debate surrounding it -- could have a profound impact on the region.

"The truth of the matter is, this region is always suffering in terms of the kinds of business that will start here, jobs that will start here, from not having enough well-educated people coming into the work force.

"If we perpetuate that, it's a going-out-of-business sale," said Alan Lesgold, dean of the school of education at the University of Pittsburgh.

In recent years, mayors have been given more control over appointing school boards in cities including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. But Pittsburgh's proposal differs in some key ways, said Michael Kirst, professor of education at Stanford University.

For instance, many cities that have switched to appointed boards require voters or state lawmakers to renew the arrangement periodically, but the Pittsburgh proposal has no end point.

Pittsburgh City Council also would have a larger role than in some other cities, including confirming the mayor's choices and setting the tax rate for the school district.

Kenneth Wong, a professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, has studied 100 of the largest urban school districts and concludes, in research to be presented soon at Harvard University, that appointed boards are generally more effective. They are more likely to target resources to lower-performing schools and make changes quicker than elected boards.

Wong said board members elected by district are more likely to respond to concerns from their own neighborhoods instead of tackling citywide concerns.

In the Pittsburgh plan, Wong saw the coupling of educational improvements with a tax cut as a winning combination.

But Lesgold said he worried that the tax cut would get the most attention, at the expense of new educational challenges.

Lesgold agreed with those who believe the school district's $82 million budget surplus is "big," but he cautioned, "A combination of tax cuts and attacking some new problems could make that reserve go away very quickly."

Many of the recommendations in the commission report could be carried out by the current elected board -- if it chose to do so.

The board has talked at length about closing schools, for example, but members disagree about which neighborhood schools to close.

The commission didn't have confidence that the elected board would ever be able to address the district's problems. The board, commission members said, is a major part of the problem because they cater to "narrow constituencies."

What the commission report didn't address is that City Council, which would set school tax rates, also is elected by district and has narrow constituencies.

The city also is facing a projected deficit of $40 million this year and $81 million next year.

The report also criticizes the school district for having "high taxes" and calls for a 2-mill property tax reduction, but the school system's property tax rate of 13.92 mills is the lowest among Allegheny County's 43 districts. (The report does not address the city schools' 2 percent earned income tax, which is the highest in the county.)

The mayor's commission report is "a highly political document," said Robert Strauss, professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. The report's recommendations are diluted by the city's own budget mess and "the mayor and council's complete incapacity to deal with the city's own financial, management and labor problems."

And no one's guaranteeing any quick fixes.

"I've heard [it will be] about six months before we could hope to get any legislative action," said Thomas Murrin, distinguished service professor at the business school at Duquesne University. "There will be a period of gestation here."

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