Cate Guilfoyle, a senior at Allderdice High School, learned of Pittsburgh Public Schools’ gifted program when she was in second grade at Colfax K-8. Many of her peers attended the district’s Gifted Center at Greenway, once a week, to participate in accelerated hands-on courses. 

Uneven Scales
As PPS contends with a difficult budget season, PublicSource explores the balance of resources and its effects on students’ futures.

“There was a huge stigma around, like, everyone that went there was super smart,” she said. 

Guilfoyle was evaluated and identified as a gifted student a few years later. Like others, she attended the Gifted Center, which she believes offered more resources than Colfax. With that, Guilfoyle said, she also saw immediate disparities in her classroom. 

On the days when she and her classmates bussed off to the Gifted Center, she said, “Greenway would look like all white kids and then all of Colfax would have only African American kids.” 

The district’s Gifted and Talented program offers unique opportunities for students who are identified as “high-achieving.” However, students of color are highly underrepresented among students who are identified for the program. 

As the district works through a strategic planning process with a focus on equity, at least some board members say the time is right to rethink approaches to gifted education. 

Of the 18,650 students enrolled in the district, 1,315 were identified as gifted in 2022-23, according to the district’s enrollment dashboard. Of the students identified as gifted, 16% were Black and 66% were white. Black students make up 51% of the district’s student population. 

Schools with a higher share of economically disadvantaged students also had a lower percentage of students identified as gifted. Of all students with a Gifted Individualized Education Plan [GIEP], only 23% were economically disadvantaged, while districtwide, 70% of students are economically disadvantaged.

Statewide, 3.3% of all students were identified as gifted, according to the 2017-18 data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Less than 1% of Black students were identified. Studies have shown that gifted programs do not necessarily improve student reading and math scores. 

PPS spokesperson Ebony Pugh said the district follows state guidelines when evaluating students for gifted education, but did not substantively address questions about racial disparities in the program.

State laws contribute to disparities

State regulations define gifted education as individualized and specially designed instruction, delivered under a GIEP. 

Per state law, a “mentally gifted” student must demonstrate an IQ of 130 or more or

• Test at a year or more above achievement level 
• Show a high rate of retention in learning new skills 
• Demonstrate early skill development 
• Show expertise in one or more academic areas.

Advocates say, the definition of “gifted” may be a key driver of the inequitable access to the district’s gifted program.

James Fogarty, executive director of A+ Schools, a nonprofit supporting PPS in addressing equity issues, said key measures such as IQ, which is impacted by socioeconomic factors such as poverty and structural racism, skew the pool of gifted students. 

“It seems as if the current system … developed at the state policy level, lends itself towards identifying students as gifted as those who are also not economically disadvantaged,” he said.

Many students from low-income families are underrepresented and excluded from gifted programs because they do not have opportunities for enrichment and learning experiences outside school in early childhood, said Kristen Seward, associate director of Gifted Education Resource Institute [GERI] at Purdue University.

She said if students don’t have access to enrichment opportunities in early childhood, then they will not test high by the time they get to third grade, when kids are usually tested for gifted education.

Accelerated learning for the ‘gifted,’ free day for others

All gifted students in PPS – apart from those at Dilworth and Grandview where gifted instruction is offered on-site – go to the Gifted Center at Greenway every week, where they participate in project-based, accelerated courses. 

Beatrice Kuhn was in fourth grade at Colfax when she was identified as a gifted student. Once every week, she would go to the Gifted Center, where she took classes ranging from forensic science to ceramics.

“I took various art classes and those were really fun,” she said. “It was a very different environment.”

Kuhn’s friend, Alina Weise, also got evaluated in fifth grade but was not identified as gifted. She and others stayed at Colfax while their peers went to the Gifted Center. 

“I just felt down about myself. I started to feel like I wasn’t smart enough or wasn’t as high of a level as my peers were, especially my close friends,” she said. 

On days her classmates went to the Gifted Center, those remaining at Colfax were usually given a “free day,” where they could catch up on any previously assigned work, Weise said. 

PPS did not respond to inquiries about assignments for students not identified as gifted on days their peers are at the Gifted Center.

Kipp Dawson, a retired teacher from Colfax, taught at the school from 2005 to 2018. She said delivery of instruction for students who stayed behind on gifted days varied at every school and with every principal. 

For a part of her tenure at Colfax, those students were provided an enrichment day where they brought in artists to teach classes such as poetry, writing or painting T-shirts. However, most time was dedicated for students to prepare for standardized tests. 

“That was a day in many cases of dull, rote, uninspiring work,” said Dawson. 

Allyce Pinchback-Johnson, a founding member of Black Women for a Better Education, said apart from overidentifying white students as gifted, the district also misidentifies students because of inherent biases and standardized testing. 

“It’s just a very narrow and limited definition of giftedness,” she said. “We already know what the outcomes are going to be, based on just the racial distribution of how students fare on those tests that we know that it’s not a reflection of them as students as much as it’s a reflection of the bias that exists.”

Gene Walker, district board president, said the Gifted Center creates barriers for students by sending some kids there and leaving others behind. “I think we sometimes do ourselves a disservice by creating opportunities to segregate.”

The Gifted-to-AP pipeline

At Allderdice, Guilfoyle noticed the same disparities in her honors and Advanced Placement [AP] classes that she saw between Colfax and the Greenway Center. 

“I feel like Allderdice is very segregated in many ways,” she said. “I walked in my first AP class, and there were no African American students.”

Similar to gifted education, Black students are underrepresented in AP courses. A total of 1,660 students in PPS enrolled in at least one AP class in 2023. Of those, 29% were Black and 54% were white. 

Pinchback-Johnson said the overidentification of white students as gifted sets them up for automatic consideration in high school AP and Centers for Advanced Study classes.

“I view it as just a form of segregation,” she said. 

She added that white families use their social capital to get access to the district’s magnet programs.

The district’s arts magnet, CAPA 6-12, has one of the highest rates of students identified as gifted. This year, 31.5% of the student population at CAPA was identified as gifted. Neighborhood schools, such as UPrep Milliones and Westinghouse, have less than 4% of their students identified as gifted.

Advocates seek systemic changes

Nielsen Pereira, director of the Gifted Education Resource Institute [GERI] at Purdue University, said the district could implement models like total school cluster grouping to reduce inequities that might be caused by sending students to a gifted center. The model involves training teachers to identify students and implement gifted education strategies with all students in a school. 

Under the model, every teacher would be able to provide gifted education, and gifted students would be placed alongside other students instead of visiting a separate classroom or a gifted center. 

Fogarty said the district needs to think about fostering inclusivity and creating in-house gifted education supports, such as those at Dilworth and Grandview. 

“Setting kids aside and not providing support services that allow them to be fully inclusive, is problematic, whether it’s for a student with disabilities or a student with academic gifts,” he said.  

Walker said instead of referrals from parents or teachers, the district should implement universal testing to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to be identified as gifted and eliminate any personal and systemic bias. 

The district rolled out a pilot program in 2018 to screen all second-grade students in six PPS schools for gifted identification. It’s unclear what, if anything, came of that.

Walker said he’s keen to keep the dialogue moving. 

“I think it’s going to take more than policy change,” he said. “It’s going to take attitude change, it’s going to take priority change.”

Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Delaney Adams.

The post Inequitable enrichment: How Black and low-income students are largely left out of Pittsburgh’s gifted program  appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Student enrollment in Pittsburgh Public Schools [PPS] dipped by 270 during 2023  – a slower rate than previous years. And some schools clocked unexpected growth.

Despite this year’s slower decline, though, the district of 18,380 is projected to lose an additional 5,000 students by 2031. 

Resources are split unevenly in the district, leading to some schools with higher concentrations of economically disadvantaged students receiving less money per pupil, disparate student outcomes, uneven academic offerings in high schools, a lack of experienced staff in schools with a majority of Black and low-income students – and magnet schools that may accelerate some of those inequities. 

The latest data suggest, though, that some struggling schools are making progress that’s attracting new students. Of the district’s 54 schools, 18 saw increased student enrollment last year. 

Among those are Perry High and Milliones 6-12, known as UPrep — two schools characterized as under-resourced. 

Ted Dwyer, district chief of data, research, evaluation and assessments, said this is the first time since 2013 that PPS has seen any enrollment increases in K-5 schools.

James Fogarty, executive director of advocacy group A+ Schools, attributed the individual upticks – and the slower overall rate of decline – to expanded programming, community partnerships and building leadership. 

“We're seeing where schools are being responsive to community desires and needs where we're increasing opportunities and access to resources,” Fogarty said. 

Jayla Manison’s daughter, a senior, has been at UPrep since sixth grade. Manison opted to continue her daughter’s high school education at UPrep because of its diverse program offerings, resources and opportunities. Her daughter is now the class president, has completed enriching internships and has a college offer. 

“I would have never been able to find those connections had I not kept [my daughter] at Prep,” Manison said. “And I have friends with children in different schools at PPS and to me, I feel like it's the best as far as opportunities goes because they have so many programs.” 

Fogarty said schools like Perry and UPrep are slowly changing their perceptions as under-resourced schools because teachers and staff are present in the community and not just talking about programs, but delivering. 

Changing the narrative in two under-resourced schools

Perry and UPrep offer the fewest AP courses in the district. Perry enrolls 428 students, with 88% economically disadvantaged. UPrep is the smallest high school in the district, enrolling 315 students, with 87% economically disadvantaged. 

So why are they growing?

At Perry, Forgarty said, partnerships like the University of Pittsburgh’s Justice Scholars Institute [JSI] have attracted families and students to enroll. Through JSI, students can enroll in seven college and university-level preparatory courses in high school aimed at enhancing college readiness and graduation rates. 

Perry, which added about 75 students this year, also has a strong and stable staff that is engaged with the community, he added. 

Molly O’Malley-Argueta, principal at Perry, said the school has focused on creating positive experiences in the classrooms through community partners like the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Science Center. 

The school has also changed its approach toward parent engagement by holding in-person back-to-school and curriculum nights where parents informally meet staff members. The staff does separate outreach for ninth graders by going door-to-door and delivering school supplies. 

Student enrollment at UPrep increased by about 25 students this year. Fogarty said The Pittsburgh Promise coaches are heavily invested in offering academic support at UPrep. The school also has invested in counseling staff to support student academic advancement. 

Eric Graf, principal at UPrep, believes his four-year tenure at the helm has helped him develop strong ties to the community. In the coming years, Graf wants to continue investing in the school’s magnet programs, bring in more STEM and arts programming and set higher academic expectations for students in hopes of further increasing enrollment.

Inequities between schools might be contributing to enrollment dip

Jimena Salas had two children in PPS Montessori K-5. This year, as her daughter, Ada, started sixth grade, she decided to enroll her at the Environmental Charter School [ECS] instead of returning to the district. 

However, ECS was not their first choice. Salas wanted Ada to enroll at PPS arts magnet CAPA, which requires an audition, or STEM magnet Sci-Tech, which involves a lottery. Ada couldn’t get in. Their remaining options were PPS Obama (another magnet), Arsenal 6-8 (their neighborhood school), or ECS. Of the three, Salas believed ECS was a better fit for Ada as she transitioned into middle school. 

CAPA’s and Sci-Tech’s high test scores made Salas want to enroll her daughter in those schools. She said if Obama or Arsenal offered the type of programming and had high student achievement, she would have considered staying in the district. 

Obama and Arsenal were termed low-achieving schools in 2023 by the state Department of Education and did not meet its standards for proficiency levels in standardized tests. CAPA and Sci-Tech, on the other hand, had some of the highest proficiency rates in math, English and science. 

Magnet school enrollment has remained steady over the last five years but the proportion of white students admitted has increased.

In the last two years, Salas said, she knew at least 15 students who moved out of Montessori to go to private schools or ECS. Charter school enrollment has increased by 24% in the last five years. 

“It seems like the students that have the best grades, they all go to a certain school and then the other schools are kind of left at a lower level,” said Jimena. 

Housing and resource gaps are contributing factors

At other high schools, enrollment has dipped despite them offering more programming and community involvement. Westinghouse, Allderdice and Brashear saw enrollment dips of around 70 students this year. 

Westinghouse, one of three schools participating in the JSI program, has seen a high turnover in leadership, with four principals leaving in the last five years, including one at the beginning of this school year.

Dwyer said the number of students in kindergarten and first grade has increased after the dip during COVID-19. Around half of children born in the city end up starting kindergarten in the district. 

“We are a microcosm of what's going on in the city and what's going on in the county. So we're very concerned about it,” Dwyer said.

Fogarty said housing affordability is another major factor that pushes families out of the district. 

“We're not building a lot of new family housing,” he said. “It's just not happening at the pace where a family is looking at, ‘Do I stay here or do I move into Wilkinsburg where there's bigger housing for less money that I can rent or Penn Hills?’”

Dwyer agreed, saying housing is an issue because PPS serves a largely low-income population. 

“If a family doesn't have a stable income, or if someone who's renting a house increases the rent by some astronomical amount, families aren't gonna be able to afford that,” he said.

For families like Salas’, that choose to move out of the district during the transitioning years of sixth or ninth grades, the district needs to change the perception around schools and engage them to retain those students, Fogarty said. 

Fogarty said outside of districtwide marketing and communications, PPS should focus on community presence and experiences within the schools. 

District spokesperson Ebony Pugh said PPS is working to change the negative narratives around certain schools by investing in marketing and telling positive stories. The district has hired a new director charged, in part, with “narrative transformation,” and is working on empowering schools to tell their stories and share strategies for increasing enrollment.

A need for socioeconomic integration

The district is developing a strategic plan to address inequities in different schools and may consider school closures to improve student outcomes and reduce costs. 

PPS is operating at 54% of its building capacity and has an excess of 17,000 classroom seats. Only two schools in PPS, Colfax and Allderdice, are entirely full. Dwyer said this has led to some extremely small schools with less flexibility and higher costs.

“We're going to have to have a conversation about what exactly it is that we need, what the design principles are and design the district around that, based on community input and the board,” he said. 

Fogarty said PPS needs to have bigger and socioeconomically integrated schools instead of smaller, neighborhood schools with high concentrations of Black and economically disadvantaged students and students with disabilities. He added PPS should consider creating schools that, like magnets, can attract families across neighborhood lines. 

“If we keep the current footprint and current funding structure of the system, we know that this system is fundamentally racist at its core,” said Fogarty. “We know that the system is fundamentally broken and the status quo creates disparate outcomes for kids, predominantly based on their socioeconomic status but also based on race.”

Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Elizabeth Szeto.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism helped to fund this project.

The post While Pittsburgh’s district bleeds students, a few schools grow appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Dejsha Demus is a 12th grader at Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts [CAPA 6-12], a Pittsburgh Public Schools [PPS] magnet, studying musical theater. As a student, she loves her school and believes that she receives leadership opportunities and support that she wouldn’t get elsewhere in the district. 

Uneven Scales
As PPS contends with a difficult budget season, PublicSource explores the balance of resources and its effects on students’ futures.

Demus is one of the many students who chose to attend a magnet school, in her case to pursue her passion for singing. Had she not decided to enroll at CAPA, Demus would have been assigned to Perry High School on the Northside, her neighborhood school. 

Demus was concerned about safety issues at Perry and felt the school did not have enough resources or opportunities for her. 

“I think that if they did have those kinds of opportunities, then it would be more appealing to go to my home school,” she said. 

Demus’ decision has been good for her. But the flow of high-performing students to magnets is driving some of the inequities in the district by concentrating students with economic disadvantages and special needs in neighborhood schools, education advocates believe. The process by which the district rescinds magnet admissions, meanwhile, tends to send many more Black students back to neighborhood schools, worsening racial tilts.

How students get into — and can be booted out of — PPS magnets

Students in PPS are assigned to neighborhood schools based on where they live, but those who seek more ambitious programming can apply to magnet schools or magnet programs within schools. 

Magnets, which allow students to pursue special interests or career goals, are not specific to any neighborhood and students who reside anywhere in the district can apply. All magnets, except CAPA, enroll students based on a lottery system. Additional weight is given to students who fulfill criteria based on where they live, family income, attendance and suspensions. 

Currently, there are 13 magnet schools and seven neighborhood schools with magnet programs in PPS. 

To enroll at CAPA, students must undergo an audition process or provide a portfolio. Other high school magnet admissions require students to have at least 90% attendance in the prior year, a 2.5 GPA and score at least basic on their most recent Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams. 

Admission to the district’s magnet program does not guarantee a permanent spot. Students’ magnet admissions can be rescinded if they fail to meet one or more of these criteria:

• Failure to maintain 90% or higher attendance 
• Failure to maintain a 2.0 GPA
• Receiving more than one suspension of four days or longer, or being suspended for a cumulative total of more than six days.

Once a student is determined to be at risk of removal from a magnet program, they are notified and issued a contract with a plan for improvement for the next semester. If the student does not meet the contract goals, their magnet admission is rescinded and they are reassigned to their neighborhood school. A student whose magnet admission has been rescinded cannot reapply to the same magnet school or program. 

Data requested by PublicSource show that PPS rescinded 213 magnet admissions between 2018 and 2023. No admissions were rescinded during the school year 2019-20 because of the pandemic. 

Efforts to change policy have seen little results

Harbin, co-chair of the board’s Policy Committee, said the committee has been trying to change the magnet admission and rescission policy to make it more equitable and inclusive, but the administration has been “actively blocking any efforts to have a meaningful discussion for the last three years.” 

“There are students that are being denied entry into and being kicked out of magnets just based on our current criteria of our magnet policy,” said Harbin.

Jamie Piotrowski, board member and chair of the Policy Committee, said such policies are difficult to change because they come under administrative regulation, which the board does not vote on.  

In September, PPS released its first equity audit that suggested that using attendance as a key weight for magnet admission could entrench cycles of poverty and create a system of inequity. 

The committee has been having conversations about the necessity of rescissions and ways to expand and retain students in magnet programs. 

Christine Cray, director of student services reforms at PPS, said the district’s magnet office has had multiple conversations about changes to the administrative regulations and the policy, through a lens of equity, and made data-based recommendations to the administration. 

How is it discriminatory?

Harbin said the district policy effectively excludes students with limited English proficiency, students in foster care, students experiencing homelessness and students with physical and intellectual disabilities from entering magnet programs.

Among all high schools in PPS, CAPA students are least likely to be Black, come from economically disadvantaged households or have Individualized Education Plans [IEPs]. Of the 845 students enrolled at CAPA, less than 10% have IEPs. By contrast, in schools like UPrep Milliones and Westinghouse Academy, 30% of students have IEPs.

“Magnets are, in effect, existing to provide schools and programs for the most privileged, most advantaged and least disabled,” said Harbin. 

The district’s arts magnet CAPA 6-12 and the STEAM magnet Sci-Tech 6-12 have been criticized for excluding students who do not have access to resources at the elementary level. 

Piotrowski said many elementary schools have lost music and art programs because of a lack of funding. Some students cannot afford private art and music lessons outside of school to make up for that and thus are unable to audition for the arts magnet. 

“It's almost like a two-fold kind of problem — my neighborhood doesn't have the resource or I simply don't have the money and my school also doesn't have that resource,” said Piotrowski.

The rescission process, too, includes “a combination of unlawful practice and practice that is discriminatory,” Harbin said.

She said the policy rescinds student admissions if they have been suspended for more than six days, effectively discriminating against students with disabilities.

Cray said schools identify at-risk students early in the year to ensure parents are not blindsided and that they receive appropriate notifications and meaningful support. 

Students in the district with disabilities who have been suspended for more than eight days get a process called a manifestation hearing to determine whether their behavior is actually a result of their disability or the result of their IEP not being followed. However, according to the magnet school policy, students can be removed if they have been suspended only for six days. This gap means some students have their magnet admissions rescinded without meeting the threshold for a hearing that could vindicate them.

Cray said the administration consults with the English language learners and special education departments to ensure that students get the support they need before being removed. 

She said even when students are identified for removal, most ultimately improve their performance and their general engagement to remain in the magnet program. 

The district has adopted strategies such as attendance programs, family meetings and tutoring programs, along with asking schools to provide additional data to minimize the number of student removals from magnets.

Lower expectations, fewer resources

Means thinks that the district’s magnet policy makes neighborhood schools subservient. He added the system builds a narrative that certain magnet schools have higher expectations, leading the most financially secure parents to enroll their kids there.

“I just think it creates a caste system within our district,” said Means.

When Carrick High School senior Paris Seidner walked into CAPA’s Downtown building for an event in November, she was shocked. “It looks very beautiful. It looks clean, well maintained and there’s care being done,” she said. Compared to that, she said, Carrick’s building appeared neglected.

“There's a lot of things broken …  and a lot of things that need to be fixed. It's a pretty basic kind of depressing-looking high school,” said Seidner. 

Seidner added her school had a reputation for violence and its students don’t focus because they think their school doesn’t offer them opportunities. Students in other neighborhood schools have voiced similar sentiments about a lack of high-quality infrastructure. 

Ironically, the magnet schools that now seem to contribute to inequity were created to desegregate schools by attracting white and affluent students to Black and low-income neighborhoods with offers of special programming. 

CAPA’s first building was in Homewood, a predominantly low-income and Black neighborhood. In 2003, the school moved Downtown as an arts-centric magnet. Today, only 27% of CAPA’s student population is Black, while 51% of the district’s overall student population is Black. 

Rachel Lamb, a research assistant at the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute in Washington D.C., emphasized the need to make changes in both housing and education to make magnet schools more effective. She added the district should eliminate transportation barriers and invest in schools predominantly serving students of color.  

Gregory Kelly, a senior at CAPA, believes that his school gets more resources than any other school in the district. 

“I just think not having the access to resources that magnet schools have can have a detrimental effect on the rest of your life,” he said. 

Seidner thinks the district should support her school in a way that students can be as successful as their peers in magnet programs. 

“We also are going to be growing [into] adults, working,” said Seidner. “Just because we're not in a magnet does not mean that we will not be doing something very important in the community someday.”

Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org. 

This story was fact-checked by Elizabeth Szeto.

The post How magnet schools attract some, repel others, and contribute to Pittsburgh’s polarized education system appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Westinghouse Academy senior Andrea Edwards feels her school is more of a “playground” than a learning environment. 

“It’s like [students] don’t really have that focus,” she said. “I feel like we are more so down there because we don’t have the resources.” 

Pittsburgh Public Schools [PPS] Westinghouse Academy, which enrolled about 660 students last year, has some of the lowest test scores in the district. In 2022-23, about 8% of students scored advanced or proficient in math and 29% scored the same in English in 11th grade. Districtwide, 25% of students scored advanced or proficient in math and 52% scored the same in English.

Uneven Scales
As PPS contends with a difficult budget season, PublicSource explores the balance of resources and its effects on students’ futures.

The school district spent about $30,300 per student in 2022, making its per-pupil expenditure one of the highest in the state. Philadelphia, the state’s largest school district, spent about $21,270 per pupil in 2022, and nearby districts like Woodland Hills and North Allegheny spent $24,095 and $21,450 respectively. 

However, the district’s high investment per student does not reflect in student performance. 

While some schools show test scores well ahead of statewide averages, students in schools with a majority of Black and low-income students are underperforming compared to their peers in other schools. 

Edwards said many students in her school are unable to focus in the classroom because many face economic insecurity and feel unsafe living in Homewood. She added that students at Allderdice in Squirrel Hill or at Sci-Tech in Oakland do not face the same challenges. 

“We know Homewood is more like a ‘hood,’” Edwards said. “So I feel like challenges students face are: Are we gonna get to school OK?”

PPS enrolled about 18,650 students in 2022-23; 65% were economically disadvantaged students and 51% were Black.  

Perry High School, which enrolls about 400 students, has some of the lowest achievement rates in the district, with no student reaching advanced or proficient levels in math and science in 2021-2022. Other 6-12 and 9-12 schools termed as low-achieving by the state were Milliones 6-12, Obama 6-12, Westinghouse 6-12 and Brashear High School. 

The state Department of Education defines low-achieving schools as those that ranked in the lowest 15% for the 2021-22 school year based on the combined math and English scores from the annual PSSA, PASA and Keystone assessments.

Twenty-four of 54 PPS schools were deemed low-achieving in the school year 2023-24.

Jala Olds-Pearson, chief academic officer at PPS, said the pandemic negatively impacted student performance across the district – not just in low-achieving schools – and the district is working on narrowing that gap.

Most low-achieving schools have a majority of economically disadvantaged and Black students. In Perry, Milliones and Westinghouse, about 30% of students have Individualized Education Programs [IEP] for special needs, some of the highest rates in the district.

Most schools across the district did not meet the state’s interim goal and performance standards for proficiency levels in standardized tests in 2023. The district is trying measures including tutoring and curriculum change in an effort to bridge gaps, but faces attendance challenges, low expectations, uneven staff experience and the separating effects of magnet schools.

Keeping children in schools leads to better outcomes

James Fogarty, executive director of advocacy group A+ Schools, said on top of common educational outcome determinants such as housing, health and economic disadvantage, the district is facing a serious issue of chronic absence.

In PPS, the overall rates of chronic absenteeism rose from 27% to 42% in 2021-22. Nearly half of the district’s high school students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 10% or more of school days or two days a month for any reason. 

Research indicates that chronic absence in schools negatively impacts students’ grades and test scores, and leads to an increase in high school drop-out rates. Studies show that students are seven times more likely to drop out of high school if they are chronically absent. 

“If you're not in the building, you're not learning,” said Kathi Elliott, CEO of the advocacy group Gwen’s Girls. “Then, obviously, your achievement and potential achievement will be minimal.” Elliott said the district needs to look at contributing factors to absenteeism and make use of community partners to reduce it.   

At PPS, 6-12 and 9-12 schools saw a direct correlation between chronic absence and low test scores. The results are less clear at the elementary school level. 

At Westinghouse, Edwards said, the school’s poor attendance rate is a more determining factor for students’ low achievement than the curriculum. 

“I feel like students just don't want to be in school anymore,” she said. 

PPS has taken multiple approaches to reducing student absenteeism. Carrie Woodard, director of school counselors, said the district has a Student Assistance Program that can identify barriers to attendance and provide help for students. PPS has also partnered with Everyday Labs to provide intervention support for students who are at risk of being chronically absent. 

Districtwide, 58% of students improved attendance after receiving text nudges from Everyday Labs and 17% of nudged students were no longer considered chronically absent in 2022-23, according to a report by PPS and A+ Schools. 

Amie White, chief of programs at A+ Schools, said Perry is working with organizations that offer project-based learning for students to create challenging classes and make students more excited to come to school. 

Edwards said many students don’t want to attend school because they feel schools are not preparing them for life and they have other means to earn money without having a degree. Other students in her school have to stay at home and provide for the family. 

“School is more so pushed to the back end of your mind because it's not more so a priority anyway,” Edwards said. 

Hetal Dhagat, a senior attorney at the Education Law Center [ELC], said other factors such as unaddressed bullying and failure to provide special education support can keep students away from schools. 

“It's really important for students to be able to attend school and feel like it's a safe place for them to go,” she said. 

ELC, a nonprofit, public-interest law firm, emphasizes underlying systemic barriers such as racism and housing instability as the root of attendance issues. 

Factors impacting test scores vary

While chronic absenteeism could be a major factor impacting student achievement, advocates believe it is not a standalone factor and the district needs to examine underlying systemic issues that disproportionately affect students in low-achieving PPS schools.

Fogarty said selective magnet schools enroll students who are performing well on standardized tests because students are required to score at least basic to get into those schools. 

All magnet programs except CAPA 6-12 require students to have at least a 2.5 GPA and a score of at least basic in their most recent Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exam in English language arts. 

Edwards feels many students in her school don’t perform well because of low expectations set for them. She added that Westinghouse receives fewer resources than other schools because no one has high expectations from the students. 

District spokesperson Ebony Pugh said PPS is working on a strategic plan with community partners to address some of those challenges that affect student outcomes. 

“We've heard that there is a need for creating a space where there's this feeling of hope,” said Pugh, adding that the district will share an update in a board meeting next month. 

Westinghouse is one of the under-resourced schools in PPS, receiving one of the lowest per-pupil funding rates in the district and offering the fewest advanced classes in high school. 

“I feel like because they have that low expectation, they don't think that students at Westinghouse are even capable of just going out and achieving more for themselves in life,” Edwards said. 

Elliott emphasized the experience of teaching staff and stable leadership that contribute to a student’s performance. 

Schools like Westinghouse and Perry have seen a high leadership turnover, with each churning through three school principals in the last five years. Schools including UPrep Milliones have teachers with far less experience than the average for the district. 

Obama senior Korey Lowe said the school did not help students to prepare for Keystone Exams. 

“I feel like people just went into it and then failed the first time they began because it became something they just wanted to get over with,” said Lowe.

Lowe said PPS should offer more support for students to prepare for standardized tests. 

Pugh said while the district does not offer classes geared toward standardized tests, it started administering Classroom Diagnostic Tools exams, thrice a year, in 2022, to monitor student progress in Keystone and PSSA exams, determine academic needs and provide support where needed. 

New curriculum, historical barriers

This year, PPS started providing virtual one-on-one tutoring support through Tutor.com for students who could not attend in-person lessons or after-school programs. 

Fogarty said the district needs to create a system through which teachers can leverage the tutoring service in a way that motivates students who are behind to reduce learning gaps. 

Olds-Pearson said PPS is working on providing targeted professional training for teachers and creating opportunities for accelerated learning for students and parent engagement in all schools. 

In August, PPS adopted a new K-5 curriculum based on research called the “science of reading.” The curriculum puts weight on foundational skills such as decoding, and linguistic and reading comprehension.

“We can't use antiquated strategies for current-day challenges, especially when we have the research that clearly shows that there's certain shifts that we needed to make, such as the science of reading for K-5,” said Olds-Pearson. 

Elliott said apart from changes to curriculums, the district should collaborate more closely with community partners and parents to address the social and cultural barriers for students in historically underperforming schools. 

“A lot of times, we look at the interventions, more so for the student — what could the student do differently? But we have a system that inherently shows this racial disproportionality,” said Elliott. “It's more than just the child's achievement. There are systemic things that have to be addressed.”

Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Elizabeth Szeto.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism helped to fund this project.

The post School locations, demographics and resources tip the scales on academic outcomes in PPS appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Most of Pittsburgh Public Schools’ $676 million budget is allocated toward staffing, yet not all schools in PPS are sufficiently staffed.

At Pittsburgh Morrow K-8 in Brighton Heights, for instance, students did not have a full-time nurse for the whole of last year. A parent of two kids who recently attended the school said her child’s third-grade class was split up at least nine times because of full-time and substitute teacher shortages. The school also lacked enough custodians and paraprofessionals at times. 

PPS identifies hard-to-staff schools based on criteria such as the rate of resignations and retirements, absence rates and rates of teachers who apply to transfer out. Eight PPS schools — Faison, King, Liberty, Manchester, Perry, Sterrett, UPrep and Westinghouse  — were identified as hard-to-staff for school years 2022 to 2024. 

Uneven Scales
As PPS contends with a difficult budget season, PublicSource explores the balance of resources and its effects on students’ futures.

Nina Esposito-Visgitis, president of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers [PFT] said, in her experience, the district consistently sees teacher shortages in areas like math, science, special education, and adjacent areas like physical and occupational therapy, and vision and hearing specialists. 

PPS has relatively well-paid teachers and classrooms with low student-teacher ratios. In 2022, full-time teachers at PPS earned about $83,375 on average. In Pennsylvania, the average teacher’s salary was about $73,070. The district has increased the number of employees even as student enrollment has declined. In 2022, PPS employed about 4,265 people across the district of 18,510 students. 

The district appears to lack a robust strategy for addressing the gaps in staffing, and as it approaches a new budget season, anticipated funding shortfalls might exacerbate the issue. 

Students with higher needs, teachers with less experience

Research suggests that teaching experience is positively associated with increased student achievement throughout a teacher’s career. Although the most noticeable improvements in teaching effectiveness typically occur within the initial five years, continued increases persist into the second and third decades of their careers.

Teacher experience in PPS schools varies in line with other disparities. 

In schools such as Brookline K-8, Roosevelt K-5 in Carrick and Greenfield K-8, the teachers have an average teaching experience of 20 years. In other schools like UPrep Milliones 6-12 in the Hill District, teachers average less than a decade of experience. 

This follows a statewide trend in which Black and Hispanic students and those from low-income families have the least-experienced teachers. 

UPrep 6-12 has a predominantly Black student population and 86% are economically disadvantaged. Compared to that, Brookline K-8 has a predominantly white student population, with 57% being economically disadvantaged. 

Edward Fuller, a professor in the Department of Education Policy Studies at Pennsylvania State University, said inexperienced teachers, in their first three years, are less effective than their seasoned colleagues. 

“When you have schools with a lot of very inexperienced teachers, novice teachers, which is going to happen if you have an average of six years of experience in a school, you're going to have a lot at the low end,” he said. 

Esposito-Visgitis said when teachers are offered options to transfer among schools, they tend to go where they think they will be supported. 

Areas of shortage and its reasons vary

Morrow’s staffing challenges in non-teaching areas in the last year had many consequences. The parent, who requested anonymity to protect her children’s privacy, said the school cut eight staff members this year and made class sizes bigger. 

The parent reported paraprofessional shortages and Morrow’s two buildings sharing one full-time nurse between them, often leading to one building not having a nurse for half a day. Teachers had to stop instruction if a kid was not feeling well, leading to a disruptive classroom environment, she said. 

“It just makes for a very difficult school day,” she said. “I think teachers are more stressed. I think kids are more stressed.”

In an email response, Ebony Pugh, district spokesperson, said the district does not have a nursing shortage for this year and conducted successful hiring events over the summer for paraprofessionals. However, she noted there is a shortage of substitute teachers. 

Some schools in PPS have higher concentrations of students with Individualized Education Plans. Statewide, special education enrollment has increased by 16% in the last 13 years, even as overall enrollment in public schools has declined by 6%. 

A shortage of special education paraprofessionals has been attributed to the district’s residency requirement. Paraprofessionals are among the district staff that must live within the city to work in the district. Esposito-Visgitis said the district needs to change the mandate to ease this shortage. 

“The fact that we're restricted to how many miles in Pittsburgh, just caps it, makes it awful,” she said. Pittsburgh is roughly 55 square miles of land area, with a population of around 300,000.

Emily Sawyer, a parent with five children in the district, noticed that her sixth grader in Manchester K-8 did not have a full-time nurse every day or enough substitute teachers. She said because of the small size of the school, which enrolls about 170 students, they were not able to hire a full-time nurse or offer more courses and hire more teachers for students.

Compared to that, her sixth grader at Schiller 6-8, which enrolls about 245 students, has more offerings such as algebra and a marketing business elective. 

As student enrollment in PPS continues to dwindle, its excess building capacity will increase, leading to additional maintenance costs that could result in smaller schools with fewer resources. 

While most teaching positions are able to retain teachers owing to the high salaries and rewards for seniority, some certification areas remain hard-to-staff. 

James Fogarty, executive director of advocacy group A+ Schools, attributes the teacher shortages in subjects that require certifications such as math and science to gender stereotypes that prevail in higher education. 

“We see more young women not seeing themselves as math people,” he said. “I think when we look at sort of the teaching force, which is predominantly gendered, unfortunately, and predominantly women, you have that dual mismatch.” 

Some education advocates also consider pay differentials in starting salaries to be a factor in teacher shortages in certification areas. 

Sherri Smith, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, said while teacher shortages in math and science have existed for a long time, they were exacerbated by the pandemic. 

“There's many job opportunities for our folks that have math and science backgrounds, outside of education. You're competing because those folks can make better money in those other types of STEM professions than they can in educating.”

At PPS, the starting salary for full-time teachers is about $48,340. Paraprofessionals are paid $150 per day and substitute teachers are paid $120. Substitutes who have worked at least 40 days during each of the preceding two consecutive semesters are paid $136 per day. 

Fewer individuals are opting to receive teacher certifications in the state. Between 2010 and 2021, the number of in-state certifications declined by 67%. Research shows that the decline in people obtaining teacher certifications is at a faster rate than the decline in public school student enrollment. 

Fuller said the teacher shortage is also caused by the high cost of higher education in the state. 

“A lot of people transition into the healthcare professions out of the education field … because they're like, ‘I can pay off my student loans quickly,’” he added. 

Advocates emphasize strong building leadership

Eric Graf, principal at Pittsburgh Milliones UPrep 6-12, said he aims for low student-teacher ratios and smaller class sizes while making hiring decisions. If there are budget constraints, he has had situations in which the school shared social workers, teachers or coaches with another school, he added. 

Education advocates believe that salaries and strong leadership are the most important factors in retaining teachers in a school.

Graf was appointed principal at UPrep in 2020 and is the sixth principal in the school in the last 15 years. 

Fuller said principal turnover in a school can cause teachers to leave because they are critical in creating a supportive working climate around disciplinary issues and course offerings. 

“Every time a principal leaves, it usually takes a year or two for the school to recover, but we know it has a direct negative impact on student achievement,” he said. 

Fogarty said schools that see a significant leadership turnover could also have insufficient resources for the needs of the students, making them hard to staff.

Pugh said the shortage among leadership positions in the district is consistent with the nationwide shortage of principals. In Pennsylvania, 15.4% of principals left schools between 2021 and 2023. 

Schools in PPS are allocated budgets based on enrollment projections. If schools have fewer students, they might not have enough money to bring in additional support for stable leadership. 

“If you're in a school where there's a lot of instability, not a lot of leadership support because it's constantly changing, then you're trying to figure out what's the best trajectory for your own career,” Fogarty said. 

More money, more support

In 2022, PPS implemented a monetary incentive program for newly hired teachers and teachers who transfer to hard-to-staff schools. Teachers who commit to a four-year placement in a hard-to-staff school would be paid a stipend of $3,000 in the final paycheck of each year. PPS was not able to provide the number of teachers who have received the stipend.

Rob Mitchell, a PFT staff representative and a former PPS teacher, said the district should take a multi-pronged approach to retaining teachers in hard-to-staff schools. Other than financial incentives, the district can work on providing more opportunities, promoting positive PR and building a positive school culture among staff and students, he added. 

“What often happens at schools that are hard-to-staff is that a lot of times the narrative around the school comes from the outside,” Mitchell said. A school’s reputation may stem from “people who haven't actually been to the school that are weighing in on what they perceive as what could possibly be going on there, and not so much from the inside out from the people that are there.” 

Esposito-Visgitis said the district needs to support its teachers by trusting them, taking their input on curriculum and providing resources for student needs. 

“We need to listen to them and get the supports in there so teachers want to teach here,” she said. “We want every one of our schools to be somewhere where teachers want to teach, students want to learn and parents want to send their kids.”

Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Elizabeth Szeto.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism helped to fund this project.

The post Higher need, lower experience: Pittsburgh’s tenured teachers cluster in best-supported schools appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Uneven Scales
As PPS contends with a difficult budget season, PublicSource explores the balance of resources and its effects on students’ futures.

Nathan Holmes from Westinghouse Academy is passionate about his high school marching band. It gives the 10th-grader a sense of belonging and a close-knit circle of friends he can trust and depend on. 

However, the band has been struggling ever since it started. Until a few years ago, the band did not have a full-time teacher because of budget constraints. The quality of the instruments is subpar and there aren’t enough students to support a full-fledged marching band. Holmes is the only quad drummer and he wishes there were more people with him.

Westinghouse 6-12 is one of the under-resourced schools in the Pittsburgh Public Schools [PPS] district. The per-pupil funding at Westinghouse was about $25,280 in 2021, the lowest in the school system. As PPS looks toward a growing budget deficit next year, the resource gap between Westinghouse and other high schools will be part of a difficult financial equation.

Roughly three miles away from Westinghouse Academy in Homewood is Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill. Allderdice is the largest school in the district with nearly 1,400 students. It is a predominately white school and 40% of its students are economically disadvantaged. 

In comparison, Westinghouse has about 660 students, of whom 90% are Black and more than 83% are economically disadvantaged. 

Districtwide, PPS enrolled about 18,650 students in 2022-23. 50.7% of students were Black and 64.5% were economically disadvantaged. 

In PPS, students are assigned to schools based on the neighborhood they live in unless they are admitted to a magnet school or program. Segregation in the district’s schools mirrors segregation in the neighborhoods they serve. 

PublicSource analyzed resources at Westinghouse and Allderdice to assess the disparities between two schools close in distance but far apart in student demographics. 

Advanced class options differ vastly

At Westinghouse, Holmes is enrolled in two Advanced Placement [AP] classes. He feels, though, that his choices were limited and the classes are not as rigorous as they should be. Eleventh grader Mekaiah Gee is enrolled in all of the AP classes that the school offers for her grade level. However, some of her classes are poorly attended, limiting student engagement. 

Westinghouse currently offers eight AP classes. These courses, developed by the nonprofit College Board, offer college-level curriculum and examinations. If students score well on the tests, they can earn college credits.

Allderdice offers 28 AP courses — the highest in the district. 

Sean Russell Jr., a 2022 Westinghouse graduate, said the limited offering of advanced classes fails to challenge students, and the district doesn't much emphasize student participation at Westinghouse. Rather than expecting access to AP courses, “it's almost like a privilege to get these college credits,” he said. 

In an email response, district spokesperson Ebony Pugh said AP offerings at Westinghouse grew from two to eight classes over the last five years. The school also increased the number of college and high school classes offered by the University of Pittsburgh. This year, Westinghouse will launch a middle school Bulldogs Academy and some teacher-led clubs for academic enrichment, she added. 

Allyce Pinchback-Johnson of the advocacy group Black Women for a Better Education said the disparity seen in AP class offerings is founded in the district’s feeder pattern and racial segregation in elementary and middle schools. 

“What opportunities do they have to build a strong foundation by the time they get to high school? … Because I think it's an unacceptable thing to say that students just aren't interested” in rigorous classes, said Pinchback-Johnson. 

Sean Means, a sociology teacher at Westinghouse, attributes the disparities in educational offerings to low enrollment in neighborhood schools. 

“It's hard to offer more AP courses if you don't have but a few hundred students,” Means said. 

PPS, which has enough building capacity for an additional 19,000 students, continues seeing an enrollment decline in all of its high schools. 

Disparities start with the gifted-to-AP pipeline 

Disparities in AP class enrollment also play out within schools. Results from the district’s 2023 Racial Equity Audit Report showed that 78% of students eligible for college credits through AP exams were white and 6% were Black. A staff survey response mentioned that Black students were “purposely overlooked” from being referred to the gifted program or placed in AP classes.

Pavel Marin, a senior at Allderdice and a member of the Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council at PPS, said he thinks the district’s largest equity issue lies in the AP and Centers for Advanced Study [CAS] high school classes. He added that many CAS and AP classes do not have Black students and the district should take extra measures to improve diversity in classrooms. 

Allderdice senior Jamie Coles said the pipeline from the gifted or the CAS program to AP classes acts as a barrier for students who are not enrolled in the gifted program. He said most students from CAS go straight to AP classes but students in regular programs rarely take them because they don’t get enough support in the application process. 

Pinchback-Johnson said PPS should rethink its gifted education model or implement universal screening for gifted students in elementary school so all students get an opportunity to be enrolled in advanced classes. Currently, the onus is on parents to opt in their child for consideration.

The district’s gifted program has been criticized for perpetuating racial inequities. According to a 2022 report by advocacy group A+ Schools, only 2% of Black students were identified as gifted, compared to 16% of white students. PPS has a majority Black student population, most of whom attend neighborhood schools.

“To me, it's just as a form of segregation, like, I think my child deserves to go to this special school, where we do project-based learning once a week, and the rest of the kids have to sit behind because they're not good enough,” Pinchback-Johnson said. 

Students want better infrastructure, more staffing

When Gee walks into Pittsburgh Obama 6-12, where her younger brother attends middle school, she notices how different the building looks from Westinghouse. 

The students have a big lounge space, the stairwells are not cracked, and the school seems to have functioning air conditioning. At Allderdice, students have a Writing Center in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University where they can get writing help or conduct research for their AP Research class. 

At Westinghouse, Holmes said, the air conditioning system does not work in all classrooms. Students cannot use the school swimming pool because its heating system has not been fixed, making the water ice cold. Pugh did not respond to inquiries about the state of the school’s cooling and heating systems.

Antawn James, another 2022 Westinghouse graduate, said he would have liked to see more after-school programs or student clubs in the school. While the school puts a strong emphasis on sports, it does not offer other recreational activities such as a school newspaper or arts clubs, he said. 

Students like Holmes and Gee feel a lot of their school’s issues stem from insufficient staffing. 

Westinghouse has a higher concentration of students with Individualized Education Plans [IEPs] and special needs. 30% of students have IEPs. At Allderdice and Obama, the rates have, in recent years, been around 12% and 13% respectively. 

Gee said she feels the school’s social workers and counselors for her class are not always accessible and she does not have enough mental health resources. She added if students have behavior issues, they are less likely to be recommended for advanced classes.

Holmes said Westinghouse has a shortage of science teachers; his current chemistry teacher also has to teach forensic science. The school did not have a full-time Spanish teacher when classes started this year. Russell Jr. recalled his sister’s middle school class did not have a full-time science teacher for an entire year because teachers kept quitting.

Westinghouse is not facing a shortage of science teachers but could use another biology teacher to reduce class size, Pugh said. The school has a larger complement of counselors and social workers for its size and provides in-house mental health services through the Community Empowerment Association, she added. 

Westinghouse teachers, on average, have an experience of nine years teaching in the school. At Allderdice and Obama, teachers have an average teaching experience of 12 and 14 years respectively.

Marin said Allderdice should have more social workers and counselors, but does not face a staffing shortage in teaching positions. “Last year, there were three teachers that were transferred to other schools because they were overstaffed,” he said. 

Allderdice Principal James McCoy said the school had to lose a few teachers last year based on their projected enrollment. 

“The average teacher salary with benefits has gone up and up over the years, which just makes it harder to sometimes keep the same amount of staff even if you have the similar amount of students,” he said. 

Westinghouse Principal Stephan Serada said he prioritizes having three counselors and social workers because of the high needs among students. As a result, sometimes situations arise when the school needs extra teachers to lighten the load but the budgets don’t allow for additional staffing, he added. 

Community partnerships offer hope

PPS School Board member Kevin Carter said the district should ensure high-quality education programs across all geographical regions in the city to avoid students being bussed around, disproportionately affecting enrollment in smaller schools. 

Otherwise, the uneven education offerings create “stigma” that some schools have high-quality academic programs “and schools like Perry, University Prep, Westinghouse don't have these programs available for students,” he said. “The issue is that we continuously do the same thing over and over again, very status quo, very lethargic.”

Coles said the district should improve outreach and communication in elementary and middle schools to make students more aware of the Career and Technical Education programs and academic offerings in neighborhood schools. 

“It's such a disservice that we only see some of these schools like fighting schools or schools just for football when they have such rich programs that actually help people,” he said. 

Holmes said he would like to see more options in advanced classes and creativity in teaching methods so classes are more engaging for all students. Even when he took an English CAS class, he was still learning the same things as other students in regular English classes, he added. 

Students like Russell Jr. and James found a stimulating learning environment through community partnerships such as the Justice Scholars Institute [JSI]. The program is run in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh at Westinghouse, Perry and Milliones to offer rigorous college-level experiences to those high school students who might not have that exposure. 

Gee is on track to get involved with JSI in her senior year. Despite seeing a lack of certain resources, she said, coming to Westinghouse felt good because, for the first time, she was surrounded by people who looked like her. 

“When you go in, you recognize everybody. They don't always say hi, but you know who they are,” she said. “It's like a big community… like a big family at that school.” 

Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by James Bell. 

The Fund for Investigative Journalism helped to fund this project.

Editor's note (10/4/23): Data was updated to reflect newly available information on Individual Education Plans.

The post Allderdice and Westinghouse, 3 miles away, are worlds apart in AP classes, teacher experience, student disadvantage appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

High schools with fewer students in Pittsburgh Public Schools [PPS] cost the district more per child, though they’ve seen less funding increases than their larger counterparts in the last three years. 

Uneven Scales
As PPS contends with a difficult budget season, PublicSource explores the balance of resources and its effects on students’ futures.

For instance, Carrick High School, which enrolled 660 students, clocked in during the 2020-21 school year — the last for which full data is available — at $28,909, in budgeted funds per student, while Brashear High School, with about 1,180 students was allocated $27,367.

Schools with fewer students have higher overhead costs, such as staff salaries and building maintenance, resulting in more investments per student. However, a higher investment per student does not necessarily reflect improved student outcomes or more resources in those schools. 

As student enrollment in PPS keeps dwindling, the district will have to grapple with some difficult financial choices in the next couple of years. 

The district has projected a growing operating deficit when the $100.2 million in federal pandemic relief funding expires next September. The loss of those Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief [ESSER] funds could lead to downsizing of staff or cutting down certain education programming in schools, adversely affecting low-achieving schools in the district. 

Read more: Want to enroll your child in an after-school program? Here’s what you should know.

Currently, PPS has a surplus seating capacity of over 19,000 students in their buildings, more than the number of students in the district. Twenty-seven school buildings in PPS are less than half full. School board candidates have said that any conversations about school closures need to involve the entire community.

In advance of the board’s annual budget discussion, PublicSource analyzed the district’s school-based budgets for the last three years. 

Smaller schools are more expensive but have fewer resources

Larger schools are less expensive on a per-pupil basis. Allderdice High School, which has nearly triple the budget of its smaller counterpart Perry High School, received less money per pupil. 

Data from the state Department of Education show that Perry enrolled about 365 students in 2020-21, with 80% of its student population being low-income and 31% of students having an Individualized Education Plan [IEP]. At Allderdice, student enrollment was 1,430 and 39% of students were economically disadvantaged and 12% had an IEP.

Department of Education data also show that Perry received about $28,840 per pupil in 2021 — nearly $900 more than the per-pupil funding allocated to Allderdice.

District CFO Ron Joseph said that at smaller schools overhead costs such as mandatory staffing of principals or social workers are distributed over fewer students. 

James Fogarty, executive director of advocacy group A+ Schools, said higher budget allocations do not necessarily indicate increased resources or better outcomes for students. 

Read more: ‘We were all blindsided’: Chatham University faces multimillion-dollar budget hole, lays off staff, cuts benefits

“You’re spreading your resources that are costing more due to inflation, due to the cost of pay raises, etc.,” Fogarty said. “But you’re not actually able to deliver more programming because all these resources are split and kind of bifurcated and divided across a big number of buildings.”

What were the changes in budget allocations in the last three years?

Student enrollment declined significantly across the district in 2021-22 and slightly increased in 2022-23 but failed to reach pre-pandemic levels. PPS continues to see an enrollment decline averaging 2% every year. 

Most K-8 schools in PPS saw decreases in budgets mirroring a trend of declining enrollment. Only two elementary schools — Banksville and Westwood — saw enrollment increases from 2020. 

Click here to see budget and enrollment changes for PPS K-8 schools.

Of the seven 6-8 schools in PPS, only Arsenal saw an increase in both enrollment and budget allocation. Other middle schools, which saw their enrollments go down, received less money. 

High schools and 6-12 schools in PPS saw a reverse trend in which nearly all schools saw declines in student enrollment but increased budget allocations. 

However, the rate of increase in budget allocations was not equal for all schools. 

Allderdice saw a 19% increase in its overall budget. Perry, Carrick and Brashear saw increases of 2%, 5% and 6% respectively. 

How does PPS allocate money to the schools?

Each school within PPS is funded through the district’s nearly $676 million general fund budget.  

Individual school budgets are based on student enrollment projections that schools receive in January. If a school has a program that requires extra staffing, such as a magnet or a career and technical education program, then additional money is given after the preliminary allocation. The budgets go into effect in July.

Read more: With ‘affirmative action’ out, Pittsburgh college applicants ask: Does race have a place?

The district’s service delivery model determines the staffing estimates for each school based on the number of students. For instance, high schools can have one assistant principal if they have up to 700 students and two assistant principals if the number of students is between 700-1,100.

Schools can hire additional staff based on their needs but that money is allocated separately and cannot be repurposed. 

Staff salaries and benefits take up the majority of the budget allocation of each school. Schools are responsible for budgeting all personnel costs except those provided by the central office such as special education, English language learners staff, food service, custodial, nursing and early childhood staff and literacy and math coaches. 

Read more: Private loans can be risky. At some Pittsburgh universities, students are borrowing more than others nationwide.

Classroom teachers make up most of the budget allocation in each school. All schools are given a fixed amount per full-time equivalent teacher. Take a look at how much each school spent on classroom teachers in 2022-23.

Even as PPS has seen a gradual decline in student enrollment in high schools, the schools have become more expensive in the last three years. Joseph said adjustments are made every year to accommodate inflation. 

“That’s why even though enrollment goes down, the costs of staff go up because of benefits going up, salaries going up, our retirement contribution that we have to make going up,” Joseph said. 

Enrollment decline and loss of pandemic relief funds bring concerns

PPS is projected to lose nearly 6,000 students by 2031. 

Schools such as Perry are working on family engagement and communication strategies to retain and increase enrollment. Molly O’Malley-Argueta, principal at Perry,  said the school projected about 365 students but saw a hundred more on their rolls. 

Read more: They’re calling it ‘bio valley,’ but Hazelwood residents want to know what it means for them

With the end of ESSER funds looming, PPS schools may need to prioritize staffing and programming needs that have been funded through that federal relief program. 

Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab, a research center at Georgetown University, said the district needs to restructure to better serve all of its students.

“This upcoming end of the ESSER funds is a crisis that the district cannot waste,” she said. 

Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Elizabeth Szeto.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism helped to fund this project.

The post For Pittsburgh schools, per-student budgets can be thousands of dollars apart appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.