City school board member Randall Taylor told a community meeting last night that he fears Pittsburgh Westinghouse High School is in danger of being closed as part of a plan to overhaul the district's high schools.

Mr. Taylor said that would be another setback for a troubled neighborhood, one that residents said already has been mistreated by the Pittsburgh Public Schools and Superintendent Mark Roosevelt.

"I consider Westinghouse the heart and soul of this community ... I can't give it up without a fight," Mr. Taylor said at a meeting held to discuss the district's plans for high schools. About 50 people attended.

Derrick Lopez, the district's chief of high school reform, said no plan for Westinghouse has been developed. Rather, he said last night's meeting was intended to gain input from Homewood residents.

Still, Mr. Lopez said the district cannot continue to support low-performing high schools with hundreds of extra seats. He noted that two such schools -- Westinghouse and Pittsburgh Peabody High School in East Liberty -- are within two miles of each other.

So far, the district has proposed creating four themed schools for grades six through 12 in the Hill District, Shadyside, Oakland and Downtown. Changes to East End high schools are coming.

While Mr. Lopez visited Westinghouse last night to discuss high schools, parents and residents took time to say they remain angry with the expansion of two neighborhood K-5 schools into K-8 schools under Mr. Roosevelt's district reorganization plan after the 2005-06 year.

Mr. Roosevelt closed Reizenstein Middle School in Shadyside and expanded Pittsburgh Lincoln and Pittsburgh Faison elementary schools to accommodate Reizenstein's sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. Among other complaints, parents said the changes returned middle-grade students to elementary buildings with "kiddie seats" and a lack of athletic amenities.

"Why is Reizenstein too good for our kids to be in?" Lincoln parent Aurelia Carter asked.

Mr. Lopez said the district decided to hold the Reizenstein building open in case Pittsburgh Schenley High School students had to be moved there because of maintenance problems at their building -- action Mr. Roosevelt on Wednesday proposed taking at the end of this school year. Mr. Roosevelt also wants to use Reizenstein for one of the new 6-12 schools, which would have an International Baccalaureate focus.

Mr. Taylor said he fears Westinghouse will be closed and its students dispersed to various high schools or sent en masse to Peabody, with the Westinghouse building then used as a new home for Lincoln school and middle-grade students from Faison.

Westinghouse, a neighborhood school, has 386 students but space for 1,000. Mr. Lopez said only 38 percent of the students in Westinghouse's feeder pattern go to school there; the others go to other district schools, charter schools or private schools.

The low enrollment reflects Homewood's battle with crime and other problems. But Mr. Taylor, who gave a tour of the school's science labs and accompanied visitors along a hall lined with photos of successful alumni, said he believes Westinghouse can play a role in the neighborhood's improvement.

Mr. Taylor said he wants the district to leave Westinghouse as a neighborhood high school and fill excess space with the 6-12 science and technology school Mr. Roosevelt has proposed for a building in Oakland.

He said there's no reason to spend $13.9 million on science labs at the Oakland building -- now home to Pittsburgh Frick 6-8 -- when such facilities exist at Westinghouse. Mr. Taylor said a top-shelf sci-tech school will draw students from across the city.

L. Twila Davis, a Lincoln parent critical of Homewood's treatment under Mr. Roosevelt, said the neighborhood should press the district to do right by neighborhood students this time.

"We need to take ownership of these children," she said.