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Plan to start high schools in Pittsburgh earlier is amended
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Pittsburgh Public Schools superintendent Linda Lane announced Friday that she is backing off a plan that would have required some high school students to begin their days an hour earlier next year.
An amended proposal, announced Friday evening, would require students to begin their day a half-hour earlier but would not save the district the $1.2 million the previous plan would have. The district expects to lay off an unprecedented number of teachers while it struggles to plug a multimillion-dollar budget gap.
Ms. Lane said she chose to change the original proposal after receiving numerous complaints from parents.
She said the district might use more shuttles to drive students from their homes to Port Authority bus lines or to their schools. She said the district might also consider using some traditional school buses to make more rounds each day.
Schools that would start at the new time of 7:36 a.m. are Pittsburgh Allderdice, Brashear and Carrick high schools; SciTech 6-12; Milliones (University Prep) 6-12; Westinghouse 6-12 and grades 9-12 at Obama.
Grades 6-8 at Obama would begin at 9:10 a.m. Perry High School would continue to start at 7:11 a.m., as it did this year.
The new plan would also allow more students to continue to receive monthly Port Authority bus passes. A proposal presented last month would have reduced the number of students who received the passes from about 4,100 to about 2,800. The new plan calls for eliminating at least 460 bus passes.
A public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. Monday in the board of education office at 341 S. Bellefield Ave. in Oakland.
First Published May 19, 2012 12:00 am
