The steel mill, shoe store, bowling alley, movie theaters and 14 barbershops are gone. The middle school, high school and Catholic school are, too.

	Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette Jim Richter, left, executive director of Hazelwood Initiative, looks at a new basketball uniform that boys basketball coach and seventh-grade teacher Brandon George, right, holds up in the hallway at Burgwin School. Click photo for larger image.

Residents hoping to reverse Hazelwood's long slide want Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt to spare one of the neighborhood's remaining assets -- Burgwin School.

"We can't afford for it to go," said Kenneth Robinson, president of the residents group at the Glen Hazel public housing development.

Mr. Roosevelt has proposed closing Burgwin, an elementary school, and 19 other schools next fall to save money and boost student achievement. He also wants to open two schools in existing buildings, expand nine elementary schools and reconstitute seven low-performing schools as "accelerated learning academies" with enhanced programs.

Mr. Roosevelt put student interests ahead of adult concerns, including the effect closing a school might have on a neighborhood, his chief of staff, Lisa Fischetti, said. Mr. Roosevelt also has said he'll consider modifying his plan if parents and community groups make compelling arguments for sparing a school.

Dozens of neighborhoods would be affected by the plan, but Hazelwood, still trying to claw back from the steel industry's decline, has emerged as one of the most vocal critics.

Because house-hunters like neighborhood schools, Burgwin's loss could hamper efforts to lure residents to the neighborhood, resident John Tokarski said. Prospective buyers, he noted, could find schools on the South Side, in Greenfield and in other nearby neighborhoods.

Jim Richter, executive director of Hazelwood Initiative, said his group has been planning to build six houses and market them to people outside of the neighborhood. It also plans to rehabilitate other homes and bring in local graduate students to study the neighborhood's housing needs.

Resident Kristina DiPietro said repeated setbacks have bred "paranoia" -- the sense that everyone's against Hazelwood.

LTV Corp.'s steel mill ceased operation in the mid-1980s and the coke works was idled a decade later. Vacant storefronts dot the Second Avenue business district. Population fell from 17,000 in 1960 to 6,139 in 2000.

St. Stephen School closed last year. The city school district closed Gladstone Middle School in 2001. Before that, the building was used as an elementary school and a high school.

Burgwin has 259 students in kindergarten through seventh grade -- but room for 441. That made the school a target as Mr. Roosevelt looked to trim excess capacity and improve the district's financial position.

Mr. Roosevelt's other objective, to close low-performing schools and move students to better ones, also put Burgwin in the cross-hairs. Rand Corp. rated Burgwin a "1," the low score, on its 1-5 scale of school performance.

Yet Mr. Robinson and other supporters said the rating doesn't reflect the progress Burgwin has made since Cindi Muehlbauer became principal in fall 2002. They urged Mr. Roosevelt to let her turnaround play out.

In 2001-02, only 5.9 percent of Burgwin's fifth-graders scored proficient on the math part of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test, and only 7.9 percent scored proficient on the reading part. Fifth-graders' scores have risen since, with 38.4 percent and 23.1 percent scoring proficient in math and reading, respectively, last year.

Mr. Robinson said he wants Burgwin to remain open in some form, even if that means turning it into an accelerated learning academy.

While the South Side, Lawrenceville and other neighborhoods have seen progress in recent years, Hazelwood's resurgence appears years away.

Four foundations and Regional Industrial Development Corp. formed a consortium to turn the 178-acre LTV site into a residential, commercial and office development that would reconnect Hazelwood to the Monongahela River.

Residential development will begin in two or three years, RIDC project coordinator Bill Widdoes said. The school district will have to plan for serving families in the development's 700 to 1,000 apartments and single-family homes, he said.

Mr. Richter said Hazelwood's decline must be arrested now. Like Burgwin, the neighborhood has been striving for improvement.

Hazelwood leaders have developed design standards for the business district and a neighborhood master plan.

Last fall, Hazelwood was named one of 22 "Blueprint Communities" statewide by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh and a group of partners. The program, designed for "places that have been left behind," offers technical assistance and funding to jump-start development projects.

Seeking support for his reorganization plan, Mr. Roosevelt has asked parents and community groups to put neighborhood interests aside and consider the district's needs as a whole. But Mr. Tokarski said the district should consider the health of individual neighborhoods because property and income taxes help fund the district budget.