Candidates looking to get on the ballot this May have until Tuesday evening to file their petitions with the Allegheny County Board of Elections.
That includes five candidates for Pittsburgh city school board running together as a slate focused on improving outcomes for Black students. They’re endorsed by Black Women for a Better Education, which has successfully elected several candidates to the school board in the last few years.
The group would maintain a five-seat majority on the school board if each of its candidates wins.
“These folks are focused on transformation, they're focused on transparency, and really putting students first in the work they're going to be doing on the school board,” said Allyce Pinchback-Johnson, BW4BE’s cofounder and political action committee chair.
The slate includes two incumbent board members, Gene Walker and Tracey Reed, as well as three newcomers: Hill District parent Erikka Grayson, library services associate Eva Diodati and retired educator Tawana Cook Purnell.
The five kicked off their candidacy at a launch party inside the Alma Speed Fox Center in the Hill District on Tuesday night.
Grayson, who serves as the director of community engagement for the Early Excellence Project, said she is stepping up to run for school board for the first time to meet the current political moment.
She’s running to represent the Hill District and parts of the East End, a seat currently held by retiring board member and civil rights activist Sala Udin.
“In this climate that we live in right now, there's no time to be idle,” she said. “We should really be in the work, in the conversations, sitting with each other, having collaborative conversations to really make sure that all children have equitable education.”
Grayson also said she wants to ensure all schools recruit and retain diverse and trained educators. While Grayson lives in the Hill District, her two youngest kids attend Pittsburgh Montessori PreK-5 in Friendship.
“Would I have loved to have been able to walk them down the street? Absolutely, but things definitely have to change,” she said. “And my perspective as a parent, a concerned parent, is that we as a board, that is where it lies. That's where it starts.”
For more than a year, the district has been reviewing proposals to make its schools more equitable and “rightsize” its footprint by closing more than a dozen schools.
Vying to represent the city’s South Side and Hilltop neighborhoods, newcomer Diodati said they will work to protect communities from harm amid any future closures. Diodati’s mother attended South Hills High School in Mt. Washington before it closed in 1986.
“I'm going to do my very best to make sure every kid has the best education ever, but I also want to make sure we don't kill a community by shutting down a building,” Diodati said. “I saw what that's like and it was heartbreaking.”
Diodati, who graduated from Brashear High School in 2009 and now runs teen programming at the Carnegie Library’s Hill District branch, said any changes to the district’s structure should ensure every student has the support they need to thrive.
“It's what drove me to end up working with kids in the first place, my desire to want to be there, to be that person who helps them see that they have the potential to do whatever they want to do,” Diodati said. “That's what my passion is, and so it just made logical sense [to run].”
Cook Purnell holds a master’s degree in school leadership from Columbia Teachers College. She previously served as the executive director of Carlow University’s Campus Laboratory School, and spent three years as principal of Environmental Charter School.
“I would just like to be a part of that thinking group of passionate scholars as we make a difference in the lives of Pittsburgh children,” Cook Purnell said. “And it can be done. It's going to happen.”
A full list of school board candidates will be available after the petition filing deadline. The Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers is expected to announce its endorsements in the coming days.
