Text Size:
A|
A|
A
Email
Print
The city school district plans to close Pittsburgh Peabody High School, relocate the International Baccalaureate program to the Peabody building and create two single-gender academies at Pittsburgh Westinghouse High in a sweeping reorganization of some East End schools.
Faced with ever-declining student enrollment, Pittsburgh Public Schools officials said the goal is to streamline middle and secondary schools in the East End in light of the district's changing demographics over the years.
Superintendent Mark Roosevelt, who in 2006 put forward a "right-sizing" plan that saw the closure of 22 schools, said the realignment also results from the federal government's desire for "very dramatic action" in school reform and improvement.
"But this is all mostly about creating efficiency and maximizing opportunity," Mr. Roosevelt said.
"Remember, this is something we have been talking about for a while now because our right-sizing plan from a few years ago never really touched high schools."
District administrators are to present this latest plan, known as Excel.9-12, to the city school board today. The board may vote on the plan July 21.
PDFOfficials said an assessment of secondary schools in the East End found that the area cannot sustain three public high schools.
Under the plan, Peabody students will be sent to either Westinghouse in Homewood or Pittsburgh Milliones 6-12, the University Preparatory school in the Hill District, starting in fall 2011.
Students who live west of Negley Avenue will be sent to Milliones and those who live east of Negley to Westinghouse, according to the plan.
Westinghouse, which underwent a $25 million renovation in 2001, will be expanded into a sixth- through 12th-grade building and restructured to house the two single-gender academies, with a total capacity of about 1,100 students.
The sixth- through eighth-graders at Pittsburgh Faison K-8 and Lincoln K-8 will be reassigned to the Westinghouse single-gender academies. Both elementary schools, which have separate primary and intermediate buildings, will convert to K-5 configurations.
The Homewood Early Childhood Center on Hamilton Avenue will then move into the former Faison intermediate campus, known as the Crescent building, on Bennett Street.
The Lincoln intermediate campus, known as the Belmar building, will remain empty, as will the site of the Homewood early childhood center.
East End community activists who have prodded the district for months to move the International Baccalaureate program will get their wish. The program at Pittsburgh Obama 6-12 will move from the Reizenstein building in Shadyside to Peabody in East Liberty, also in fall 2011. The Reizenstein building will close.
The Obama 6-12 academy was created as a replacement of the long-heralded IB program at Pittsburgh Schenley High School.
Another group, the Open East End Panel, opposes the school district's overall plan.
The plan, the group said in April, undercuts the district's goal of revitalizing both Peabody and Westinghouse and will not necessarily draw students back into the East End public schools.
Derrick Lopez, assistant superintendent for secondary schools, who has shepherded the reorganization plan since he was hired in 2007, said it equally reflects community desires and the district's efforts to comply with federal guidelines on how to improve chronically underperforming schools as a pre-requisite for funding.
"We had a lot of input on this because our goal was to transform the landscape of secondary education in Pittsburgh," said Mr. Lopez.
Key aspects of the proposal have to do with federal stipulations under the Race to the Top competition and School Improvement Grants programs, Mr. Lopez said.
Funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, both programs were started by the Obama administration to fund school reform efforts.
Pennsylvania recently was awarded $141 million in School Improvement Grants and is competing for a share of Race to the Top money.
To qualify for funding under both programs, school districts must adopt one of four actions -- transformation, turnaround, restart or closure -- in schools the state names as among the lowest performing in the state.
In Pittsburgh, seven of the city's 12 high schools -- Pittsburgh Brashear, Langley, Oliver, Peabody, Perry, Schenley and Westinghouse -- qualify for funding under the federal programs because they are identified as persistently lowest-achieving schools as judged by their failure to make "adequate yearly progress," known as AYP.
Pittsburgh Allderdice and Carrick high schools have also repeatedly missed AYP over the years, but they are not considered among the lowest performing in the state. Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12 has consistently made AYP.
University Preparatory at Milliones and Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy in Oakland have not been open long enough to be rated.
Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, public schools and districts must make AYP by meeting certain achievement levels each year on state math and reading tests or face sanctions.
District officials said they will rely on three of the four actions available to them -- transformation, turnaround and closure -- to comply with the federal requirements.
• The first piece of the puzzle is the closure of Peabody and Schenley. Schenley was already scheduled to close after its last graduating class next year.
• Pittsburgh Brashear, Langley and Perry high schools have been placed in the category of schools to be transformed. The implementation of the Empowering Effective Teachers Plan, which will begin rolling into all schools this fall, will impact these schools, officials said. The plan, which is part of the $40 million grant awarded to the district by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, seeks to change how teachers are hired, nurtured, evaluated and paid.
Aspects of the plan, like the creation of a Promise Readiness Corps -- a team of teachers who would shepherd the same group of students from ninth grade through 10th grade -- a teacher academy and a new research-based model for teacher evaluation, will be the basis for reform efforts in all schools and those placed in the transformation category.
• Westinghouse and Oliver high schools have been identified as turnaround schools. The turnaround at Pittsburgh Oliver will include a partnership with the Community College of Allegheny County to create four academies offering various career and technical education choices.
The partnership will create what will be known as the Gateway Center to the Promise, serving all students in the North Side feeder pattern. But students throughout the district will also have access to the program offerings during the school day, evening hours, weekends and during the summer.
As part of the restructuring, Oliver will have an extended school day and year to enable students to complete high school within three years and enter CCAC in their fourth year.
Note: Unless otherwise indicated, changes take place fall 2011.
Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
