Parents at meeting urge Pittsburgh Public Schools board to vote against closures

One day before the Pittsburgh Public Schools board votes on the future of several schools, parents packed a meeting and urged members to vote against closures. 

On Tuesday, the board is scheduled to vote on closing nine school buildings as part of the district’s Future-Ready Facilities Plan. Almost all the 80 speakers at Monday’s meeting were against the plan, calling it rushed and reckless. They said the children will be the real losers.

“We don’t feel that this plan that they’ve done their homework, research,” parent Vanessa Dagavarian said.

Some of those schools include Allegheny 6-8, Arsenal PreK-5 and Manchester PreK-8. Some of the schools slated to close would reopen as other schools.

“The math for this plan does not add up,” parent Martha Riecks said at the meeting. “The plan, as currently proposed, results in overcrowded classrooms, overcrowded buses. It creates school deserts in densely populated, vibrant urban communities.”

Pittsburgh Public Schools believes its plan aims to address declining enrollment, aging infrastructure and underutilized buildings. The board is set to vote on Tuesday on the consolidations and the closing of the nine school buildings. 

If approved by the board, the closing will take effect next summer. Large-scale facility renovations and changes to the district’s classroom offerings and gifted program would happen over five years. 

Students from closed buildings would be absorbed into consolidated schools throughout the district. The school attendance boundaries would also be redrawn. 

“[Superintendent Wayne] Walters has not demonstrated the capacity to design, let alone implement a transformative restructuring,” parent Michael Cummins said. “This district needs a visionary leader.”

The Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers supports the board, saying something needs to be done in light of declining enrollment. 

“The position that the school district is in that it needs to make cuts, it needs to close some facilities because we have under-enrollment in many of our schools,” union president Billy Hileman said. “We need to do something, and this plan is the one that has taken two years to develop. I think it goes a little too deep, but we have to do something.”

The school board president said it’s split on what to do on Tuesday. The board can make amendments, vote for, against or table the issue.