The Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, Downtown, has become the new epicenter of a battle between administrators who want to overhaul the Pittsburgh Public Schools and residents who contend officials are going about it the wrong way.

The school board is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a proposal to merge CAPA and Pittsburgh Rogers 6-8, the middle-grade arts magnet now located in Garfield. Under the district's proposal, Rogers students would move in fall 2009 to the Ninth Street building that houses CAPA.

The merger "coordinating committee" voted Thursday not to support the merger now, citing concerns about space and other issues, said Tracy Del Vecchio, a Squirrel Hill parent of two CAPA students. The group consists of parents, students and district employees, and Derrick Lopez, district chief of high school reform, said some members did not attend the meeting.

CAPA and Rogers are high-performing schools, sources of pride for a district routinely knocked for academic and financial problems. Critics fear the merger would diminish both of them.

"Excellent schools are very fragile," school board member Randall Taylor said at an agenda-review meeting last week.

For the board, the pressure is on once again.

The CAPA controversy is coming to a boil a month after the board voted 5-4 to close the Pittsburgh Schenley High School building in Oakland, ending a protracted debate over a historic structure with popular programs.

Both debates pitted an administration intent on change against school supporters who accused the district of needless tampering with good programs. They also laid bare a suspicion of district leadership, including fears that officials will cut corners to save money.

"Why try to fix something that's not broken? That's what everybody's saying," said Harry D. Clark, CAPA principal from the school's founding in Homewood in 1979 until he retired in 1993.

Dr. Clark called the merger a potential "train wreck."

A debate over the configuration of magnet arts schools is uncommon.

Many districts are slashing basic programs to save money and make more time for reading and math instruction, said Wendy Milne and Heide Sheetz, Hempfield Area School District teachers who co-chair the Pennsylvania Art Education Association's advocacy efforts.

Mr. Lopez said the merger would give middle-grade students access to the top-shelf amenities at CAPA.

To accommodate the merger, the district already purchased three extra floors in the building for $2.2 million. Middle-grade students would be based on the seventh, eighth and ninth floors, through they would share some rooms, including studios and other art spaces, with the high school.

The merger would cost about $7.2 million in all, whereas Superintendent Mark Roosevelt's previous proposal to move Rogers into the Milliones building in the Hill District was estimated at about $16 million. But Mr. Lopez said money isn't fueling the merger.

Critics worry about placing middle-grade and high school students in the same building, arguing that the groups have different developmental needs.

Other concerns include whether the building is big enough to accommodate both schools, whether middle-grade students would be influenced by a nearby strip club and whether high school students would be distracted when middle-schoolers take to the stairs en masse for lunch and recess.

Bryan Persinger, a CAPA junior from Brighton Heights, said the school stairwells already are too narrow for students, backpacks and instruments.

Mr. Lopez insisted the building is big enough for both schools, which would have a combined enrollment of about 915, and he said the strip club poses no risk because yellow buses will drop off and pick up middle-grade students at the school door.

He said remaining logistical challenges shouldn't delay the board's vote to get the merger rolling. Critics disagree.

Lisa Brown, a Lincoln Place resident, parent of three CAPA graduates and former president of the CAPA parent group, said the district has a history of harming schools with "hatchet jobs" and "patch jobs."

She said Schenley fell into the first group and fears a CAPA-Rogers merger would fall into the latter, saying, "I can't trust the district to do it right."

Jerry Meyers, a Squirrel Hill resident with two children at CAPA and one at Rogers, has mixed feelings about the merger. He said administrators have bred suspicion with other improvement plans that have yet to show results.

"I think they could defuse that by doing certain things," such as stepping up parent and faculty involvement in policy-making, he said.