Despite fierce resistance from parents, Pittsburgh Public Schools remains poised for multiple school closures if the school board approves the final proposal for reconfiguring the district's footprint.
Representatives of Education Resource Strategies (ERS), the Boston-based firm hired to lead a months-long effort to overhaul the district, presented their latest proposal to PPS school board members Tuesday night. The plan would reduce the total number of traditional schools from 54 to 39, along with the closure of three buildings currently serving alternative or special education programs.
“This is about supporting and ensuring equity and ensuring that students have the academic foundations that they need, and having a whole bunch of tiny middle schools is not going to get you there,” said Angela King Smith, a partner at ERS.
Jonathan Travers, president of ERS, and King Smith said these new recommendations reflected feedback the pair received on their initial recommendations presented in August, which proposed grade configurations and 16 school closures.
The final proposal keeps some of ERS’ initial suggestions — including the phasing out of most of the district’s selective magnet elementary schools and restructuring of school grade levels.
Back in August, the consultants had proposed closing Carrick High School and 15 other schools, the majority of which served elementary school students. The revised proposal keeps Carrick open and includes additional changes to the district’s special education centers, transportation and projected financial impacts.
Almost exactly a year ago PPS Chief Financial Officer Ron Joseph began sounding alarms about the state of the district’s finances. “We really need to look at our footprint, the number of buildings we have, feeder pattern — those are things that all need to be considered because we are operating more buildings than we should,” he told the board last October.
The district is expected to close out 2024 with an operating deficit of $834,623 — far lower than the $30 million deficit projected when school board members first adopted the budget. The projected 2025 budget would include a slightly smaller deficit of $23.3 million, but the remaining fund balance, at $28.7 million, would not comply with the board’s fund balance policy, which requires a fund balance equal to at least 5% of projected expenditures.
The proposed changes presented Oct. 15 are not guaranteed. The PPS board will vote on the final recommendations in the coming months and then start a three month public hearing process before voting on any permanent school closures. New geographical boundaries defining the communities each school serves will also need to be determined.
If the proposal moves ahead, some closures would take effect as soon as the spring while others would be phased in over the next two years.
Travers said teachers, counselors and other student-facing employees would be reassigned to the newly consolidated buildings rather than cut, though existing vacancies would be eliminated.
He said closing schools could save more than $50 million over seven years in facilities improvement costs and reduce its utility expenses by $500,000.
“You're reducing the number of schools that are in need of capital investment,” Travers said. “You're therefore able to accelerate the rate at which students are receiving the benefit of that investment.”
The final proposal includes 17 school closures, one new school creation and splitting the remaining schools into traditional K-5, 6-8 and 9-12 models. Several of the closed schools would be reconfigured, though 10 buildings would be vacated.
The new grade configurations and feeder pattern changes in each region include:
North:
- Allegheny 6-8 closes in spring 2025 and Allegheny Pre K-5 would open in the same building in Fall 2025. Middle school students attend Manchester.
- Manchester PreK-8 closes in spring 2025 and becomes a 6-8 school. Adds a neighborhood STEM pathway in fall 2026 after major renovations. K-5 students would attend Allegheny.
- A new PreK-5 Northview opens in fall 2027 after significant renovations.
- Morrow PreK-8 becomes a K-5 in Spring 2025. Middle school students attend Manchester.
South and West:
- Grandview PreK-5 moves to the Carrick High School feeder pattern.
- Carrick High School remains open, becoming a neighborhood magnet school.
- Carmalt PreK-8 becomes a 6-8 neighborhood magnet school in fall 2025. PreK-5 students attend Brookline.
- Brookline PreK-8 becomes a K-5 In fall 2025. Middle school students attend Carmalt.
- Arlington PreK-8 becomes a 6-8 in spring 2026. The school adopts a magnet focus to be determined by the district. Early Childhood students attend Roosevelt. PreK-5 students would attend Phillips, Grandview and Concord.
- Roosevelt PreK-5 closes, but the Early Childhood program stays open in the primary building. PreK-5 students attend Concord or West Liberty.
- Langley PreK-8 becomes a K-5. The 6-8 program closes in spring 2026 and students move to Classical.
- Mifflin PreK-8 becomes a K-5 in spring 2026. Middle school students attend a new Colfax 6-8.
East and Central:
- Colfax K-8 becomes a 6-8 middle school, with a specialized middle school focus, in spring 2026. K-5 students attend Greenfield, Minadeo and Liberty.
- Mifflin PreK-8 becomes a PreK-5. Middle school students relocate to Colfax in spring 2026.
- Greenfield PreK-8 becomes a K-5. Middle school students attend a new Colfax 6-8.
- Westinghouse 6-12 becomes a 9-12 neighborhood magnet high school in spring 2026. Middle school students attend Sterrett, which adopts a specialized middle school focus.
- Obama 6-12 becomes a 9-12 neighborhood magnet school in spring 2026 with IB programming. Students in the feeder zone can choose to attend Sci Tech 6-8 and 9-12 schools. Middle school students attend new Arsenal neighborhood magnet.
- Sci Tech 6-12 becomes a 9-12 neighborhood magnet high school.
- Milliones 6-12 becomes a Sci Tech 6-8 at Milliones in fall 2027 after major renovations. High school students attend Obama or Sci Tech 9-12.
- Arsenal 6-8 opens as an International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program neighborhood magnet in fall 2026. K-5 students attend Sunnyside.
- Sunnyside PreK-8 becomes a PreK-5 school. Middle school students attend new Arsenal neighborhood magnet.
- CAPA 6-12 remains a full magnet 6-12 school.
- Montessori PreK-5 remains a full magnet and moves to a vacated Linden building in fall 2025.
The following schools are listed for proposed closures:
The plan recommends various major and minor renovations in most school buildings to accommodate resources such as designated spaces for special education and English as a Second Language (ESL) students, art and music rooms and Career and Technical Education spaces.
Magnet programs at Dilworth, Liberty, Allegheny, Carmalt, Classical, Phillips and Sterrett would phase out and become neighborhood schools. New regional ESL sites would be added at Manchester 6-8, Northview PreK-5, Carmalt 6-8 and Sunnyside PreK-5 to serve a growing ESL population in the North region.
Upon implementation, the new plan would slightly increase the percentage of students within walk zones, largely driven by the changes in magnet schools. The plan estimates a slight increase in bussing for middle school students.
Renovations and construction in schools would cost an estimated $70.5 million. By closing schools such as Woolslair and Montessori, the plan eliminates their facilities improvement costs by an estimated $129 million.
As next steps, Board President Gene Walker said, the district administration should provide a timeline in the next few days to create a feasibility report with suggestions and recommendations for the proposal. Once the feasibility report is done, the board will decide on a date for a potential vote.
District moves forward while parents call for brakes
The initial proposal received immediate pushback from many community members. Following the ERS presentation in August, the district held five regional input sessions to gather additional feedback on the proposals.
Many community members opposed school closures and raised concerns about their impact on students with disabilities and English language learners, transportation issues, as well as district finances and enrollment.
“This seems like a repeated plan that has already failed our most vulnerable students,
putting them at the highest disadvantage,” said Susan Loskoch, a teacher at Carrick High School at the school’s regional input session. “I'm not sure how what you have proposed fits with anything [Superintendent Wayne Walters] has said. And I'm wondering if any of that guarantees a more culturally relevant, liberating education and stronger communities.”
ERS consultants rolled out online surveys to gather feedback on specific scenarios in each region. However, many participants pointed out that the survey was not accessible to all because it wasn’t translated into multiple languages and the district did not provide interpreters at those regional meetings.
Many parents and community members also argued that the Facilities Condition Index data used by the consultants was in some cases outdated and inaccurate.
“When we think about equity and students getting the supports that they need, we can’t just think about the total number of students in each individual school,” said ESL teacher Kim Daelhousen. “We actually have to look at some of the disaggregated data about the types of supports that these students will need.”
Other parents, meanwhile, have rejected the consultants’ recommendations altogether, instead opting to draft a proposal of their own. The group, led by Woolslair PreK-5 parent Sarah Zangle, suggests the district adopt a “regional choice model” in which families can attend any elementary school within their section of the city.
Their plan doesn’t focus solely on buildings and facilities, though it does suggest some closures to reduce the district’s excess student capacity. Under their plan, schools across the district would teach a standardized base curriculum in addition to a specialized focus that is unique to each building, such as African American studies, environmental sciences or arts and humanities.
“We developed this community-led proposal with an emphasis on getting ideas and input from people in communities most impacted by the potential changes — especially those who historically have been least heard, and most harmed, by school closures and disinvestment,” the group wrote in a letter to the school board.
“We have not been able to reach all of these critical voices yet, due to the short timeline, and without any of the resources afforded to the paid consultants,” the letter continues. “However, we are confident that this draft strongly represents the collective wisdom of our community and a deep commitment to creating an equitable, vibrant, and sustainable PPS.”
School board members are reviewing the community proposal internally, though Walker said the board would not give them a space to present the proposal.
“We hired a consultant for a reason, and they did their job. For other folks who wanted to do a proposal, there was an RFP process that they could have participated in,” he said.
Zangle said her group will hold their own public presentation of the draft plan on Tuesday, Oct. 22 whether or not school board members grant them a place on their agenda.
“The ERS proposal stands to maintain and possibly create inequity by taking away student and family choice. The only two magnets in the ERS proposal that are unchanged are majority-white and majority-economically-advantaged,” Zangle said in an email response to the final recommendations. “The optics on providing equity and leaving those programs untouched does not add up to the stated goals of the district.”
Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org
Jillian Forstadt is the education reporter at 90.5 WESA. She can be reached at jforstadt@wesa.fm.
This story was produced in a partnership between WESA and PublicSource.
