Pittsburgh Westinghouse 6-12 school regroups after single-gender plan is scrapped
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Pittsburgh Westinghouse 6-12 in Homewood.
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The image of the first day of school at the new Pittsburgh Westinghouse 6-12 in Homewood still sticks in one teacher's mind.
"I think the first day in August was so beautiful. They came in their uniforms. You could see the expectations that things were going to be different. We're really going to focus on our learning," she said.
But on Aug. 22 -- opening day of the new offerings of single-gender classes -- the school wasn't ready. There wasn't a complete master class schedule. The curriculum wasn't ready for the new trimesters and block scheduling, which had 80-minute periods. The school didn't even have a formal name.
Over the next two weeks, some students waited for regular schedules, some assigned for hours to classrooms with teachers who also didn't have a regular schedule.
PG VIDEODiscipline deteriorated, with too many students in hallways during class time and fights.
"They put you in classes you didn't need or took the year before. There were a lot of fights. Nobody hardly was in class. They didn't enforce being in class. You could just hang in the halls," Westinghouse junior Tauttiona Green said.
PG SLIDESHOW"I think the kids were deeply disappointed," the teacher said. "The kids just lost faith."
This academic year, the school was to be transformed from a low-achieving high school to a new school -- called the Academy at Westinghouse during planning -- that would foster high achievement for grades 6-12, offer single-gender classes, provide extra instructional time and operate on a trimester schedule different than the rest of the district.
But after a rocky start, Westinghouse begin to retrench.
In early October, the new trimesters were replaced with the district's standard semesters, and 80-minute periods were replaced with 44-minute periods, necessitating new schedules for all students. The school board later that month passed a resolution that the school's formal name was to be George Westinghouse Academy, which "for communications purposes" is known as Pittsburgh Westinghouse.
First Published February 5, 2012 12:00 am
