City school district offers shuttle to board meeting
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The Pittsburgh Public Schools will provide free round-trip shuttle bus service for tonight's all-city meeting on the district's long-term facilities plan.
The buses will depart from Brashear High School, Beechview; Carrick High School; King PreK-8, North Side; Langley High School, Sheraden; Peabody High School, East Liberty; Perry High School, North Side; Westinghouse High School, Homewood; and the Hill House in the Hill District. All buses will depart from those locations at 5:45 p.m.
The meeting will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Circuit Center, 5 Hot Metal St., South Side.
It's the public's first chance to offer input about the study, which will cost as much as $500,000 and help determine the district's best use of buildings for the next decade.
But parents and other community members won't be able to take a microphone and sound off.
Rather, district spokeswoman Pat Kennedy said, participants will receive an overview of the district's improvement efforts, finances and need for the study.
They'll also be asked to fill out a questionnaire on such issues as how long a child's bus ride should be, the criteria that parents use to select a school and how to deal with under-enrolled schools. Discussion of those issues will follow.
"I would say it's a very structured format and it's worked well in other large urban districts," Ms. Kennedy said.
Three regional meetings will be held May 13 and 14, but locations have not been selected. Those meetings will focus on neighborhood needs, Ms. Kennedy said.
The school board retained DeJong Inc. of Dublin, Ohio, and L. Robert Kimball and Associates of Ebensburg, Cambria County, to perform the study. It will include a review of enrollment trends and other demographic data to help determine future needs.
The study comes as the district considers new uses for the Peabody and Westinghouse buildings. Ms. Kennedy said those discussions, which include community groups, should continue while the facilities plan is developed.
"Their work will inform this process, and this process will inform their work," she said.
The study already has drawn criticism from school board member Randall Taylor, who said the work should have been done before the district closed 22 schools in June 2006. At the time, officials said school closings were necessary to help shore up the district's finances.
First Published March 30, 2009 12:00 am
