Hope and John broke up in fall 2022, but he still lived in the Pittsburgh house they rented with another roommate for a few months afterward. During that time, Hope said, he was insistent about getting back together. He repeatedly touched her or kissed her on the head, even though she asked him not to. It was “not overtly sexual, just romantic and controlling and explicitly outside of the boundaries that I’d set,” she explained. 

In an interview with PublicSource and in civil court documents, Hope shared that John eventually persuaded her to go on a date in early February. The two twentysomethings went out to a new bar, where she had two drinks, and a restaurant, where she had a third. The two ended up at another venue and continued drinking. She estimates she had eight drinks that night — much more than her usual intake, especially after eating little during the day. 

By 11 p.m., Hope was dizzy and asked John to drive her home. She told a friend over the phone that she’d be going straight home, but John instead drove to a local park. From there, the alcohol begins to fade Hope’s memory, but she remembers how he parked, pulled her into his lap and forcibly kissed her, grabbing her neck and sides. She remembers how difficult it was to fight him off. Eventually, he drove them home and had to help her into the house.

A road in Pittsburgh’s East End. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

She remembers sitting on the couch, and then being on the floor without her clothes. She remembers him grabbing her roughly, and later reported bruising to her legs in a court petition. The next morning, John told her he was stressed he didn’t use a condom and she said she was upset he had sex with her when she was not in a clear state of mind, Hope related in court documents.

“I slept a lot of that day,” Hope said. “I was really in shock. I kept falling asleep. I didn’t move around very much.”

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PublicSource is withholding the names of the woman and her alleged assailant under standard journalistic practice in situations involving sexual violence, referring to them instead as Hope and John.

Hope reported the attack to city police about a week later. By then, Hope and her roommate had confronted John, told him to leave their shared residence and changed the locks. But John had not stopped texting and trying to contact her, and Hope feared for her safety. Around a week later, she went to family court and got a temporary protection from abuse order. 

By reporting her attack to law enforcement, Hope triggered a process that often ends in disappointment for survivors — but unknowingly, that was also her first step in an effort to hold the system accountable to survivors and answer for why justice is not always sought, let alone served. 

Night falls on a police station in Pittsburgh. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

A typical pattern

Over 50 years spent advocating for rape survivors in Allegheny County, Pittsburgh Action Against Rape [PAAR] has learned to manage people’s expectations.

“A lot of survivors come into this really believing that there will be justice, and that people will believe them, and that their case will move forward. And to find out that the vast majority of the time that’s not true, can be very difficult,” said Megan Schroeder, director of victim response at PAAR. “You don’t want to dampen their sense of hope or their sense of justice, but we also want them to be prepared for what we know is likely going to happen.”

Read more: The Red Zone

According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network [RAINN], 31% of sexual assaults are reported to law enforcement — a low figure attributed in part to survivors assuming they will not be believed or supported by law enforcement. About 5% of all sexual assaults lead to arrests, and fewer still to prosecution. 

Locally, municipal police and the Allegheny County District Attorney have roles in addressing sexual violence.

The Allegheny County Courthouse, which includes the district attorney’s office. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

In Pennsylvania, “detectives build the case, but it is the discretion of the DA’s office which ultimately determines whether charges will be brought,” said Cara Cruz, a spokesperson for Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Safety. 

According to PAAR and the Women’s Law Project, a nonprofit that advocates for women, girls and LGBTQ+ people, survivors assaulted by a current or former partner often hit dead ends in the criminal justice system, even when they have physical evidence. 

Read more: Anti-violence teams surge as $50 million in Allegheny County funding flows

“We don’t know how often it is that a prosecutor will just simply decline to bring a prosecution in a rape case,” said Sue Frietsche, senior staff attorney and interim co-executive director of the Women’s Law Project, which has offices in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. “However, just anecdotally, we are alarmed by the number of people who are coming to the Women’s Law Project, and the fact patterns are typically that they know their assailant, so there’s some prior relationship.” 

Frietsche said she is reluctant to second-guess the prosecutors. “But where there is physical evidence of bodily trauma and you have a willing witness, and there’s no prosecution because they knew each other, that’s really disturbing.”

Low case numbers, high conviction rates

Cruz said city police look into all alleged rapes thoroughly, without concern over whether the report will culminate in a criminal case. 

The city’s Special Victims Unit [SVU] “investigates all crimes that come in, regardless of the final outcome,” Cruz said. “The outcome cannot be determined until an investigation has been initiated and completed.” 

The county does not share publicly any breakdown of the cases prosecutors choose to take on or decline, so it’s impossible to know exactly how often the district attorney’s office declines to file charges for reported rapes after an investigation by local law enforcement. 

A PublicSource analysis of court records shows that 72 cases of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault and/or aggravated indecent assault were filed in Allegheny County between 2017 and 2022, an average of 12 cases per year. (This count does not include cases that PublicSource determined to include rape of a minor under 18.) 

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Of the 61 closed cases, 51 resulted in felony convictions, or 84%.

That conviction rate is much higher than national averages. RAINN estimates that 56% of rape and sexual assault cases that make it to the prosecution stage end in felony convictions.

Schroeder said Allegheny County’s high conviction rate could be driven by prosecutors’ decisions to charge only “the stronger cases with fewer barriers,” especially if “you're seeing the decisions up front weeding out the cases that might come with challenges or barriers."

In response to inquiries about his office’s policies in pursuing rape cases involving current or former intimate partners, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala wrote in a letter to PublicSource that a “large percentage” of sexual assault prosecutions in the county have involved intimate partner violence. 

He said his office makes “every effort … to accept a prosecution and attempt to achieve justice for a survivor.” He cited sufficiency and admissibility of evidence and a survivor’s wishes as reasons that his office may decline to prosecute cases of sexual violence.  

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“That does not negate the reality of a survivor's trauma, and we empathize when a survivor is disappointed with a decision not to prosecute,” Zappala wrote. “These decisions are based solely upon a review of the evidence that would be available at trial and the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”  

Survivor advocates say a major underlying theme is the persistence of rape myths — false ideas about what sexual violence and its survivors look like, from what they wear to what they drink, and whether consent to past sexual encounters makes a difference. 

In reality, rape is largely not committed by random strangers on the street: RAINN has found that 39% of rapes are committed by acquaintances, 33% by current or former partners and 19.5% by strangers, with the remaining committed by multiple people, a person the victim cannot remember or a non-spouse relative.

“All of those kinds of stereotypes and false beliefs contribute to a culture in which it's more difficult, possibly, to get a conviction,” Frietsche said. “I'm not saying that the prosecutors themselves necessarily subscribe to these beliefs. It's just, if it's more difficult to get a conviction, then possibly those cases become less attractive when you're dealing in a world of limited resources.”

Read more: As the legal ground shifts under race-specific programs, Pittsburgh inches toward a long-delayed review of policies

Lack of accountability

Hope said a detective from the Pittsburgh Special Victims Unit came to interview her in her home in March. John’s behavior started to escalate in the weeks following. Hope later reported to police that John stood outside her house in the middle of the night and drove past her job while she was working. 

“I was really scared to be out in public. I felt like I couldn't leave the house safely and I felt like I couldn't be alone in places that he knew where I was. So I had to leave my job and that was really hard,” Hope said. 

In early April, Hope said, the detective came back to her with news: The district attorney’s office would not take her case any further.

Hope immediately wanted to know what she could do to make the county prosecutors reconsider their decision. She turned to the Women’s Law Project. 

When prosecutors decline to file charges for an alleged sexual assault, there are few options available to survivors, according to Frietsche. A survivor may be able to take private civil action against their alleged assailant or request that the prosecutor revisit their decision, but ultimately, it’s within the discretion of the district attorney’s office to decline any case. There is no appeal process for those decisions.

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Hope told PublicSource that she was able to get a meeting with an assistant district attorney, the SVU detective who investigated her case and her PAAR advocate. She left that meeting feeling only more frustrated, with the same answer she had before. 

To her dismay, she felt like it didn’t matter that she was a cooperative witness. It didn’t matter that she was willing to withstand brutal questioning from John’s defense attorneys and understood the possibility that the case could end without a conviction. It didn’t matter that her doctor documented her inflamed labia after the assault.

“Whether charges are filed or not, I was raped and I was hurt and then I was harassed,” Hope said. “I would like there to be some accountability.” 

Read more: A year after Roe’s end, Pittsburgh’s abortion clinics still contend with out-of-state influx

To Hope, accountability doesn’t necessarily have to mean John going to jail — in fact, she doesn’t think incarceration would help him. Instead, she wants him to have to go to therapy, to acknowledge how his abuse hurt her emotionally, physically and sexually. 

This mindset isn’t uncommon, according to Schroeder — especially in cases where survivors have a current or former relationship with their assailant. It’s one of the reasons a significant number of rape and sexual assault cases end in plea deals. 

The Allegheny County Courthouse, which includes the district attorney’s office, in Pittsburgh. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

“A lot of our clients go into the system wanting accountability and wanting the person to understand that what they did was wrong, and they want some assurances that it's not going to continue to happen in the future,” Schroeder said. “You can get mandatory treatment and court supervision and probation for a lot of these cases without incarceration. We do have a good number of adult victims who choose to go that route.” 

Another reason many rape prosecutions end in plea deals is so survivors don’t have to endure a trial. 

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The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that a survivor’s testimony, even if uncorroborated by external evidence, can be enough to secure a conviction if the jury is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. But a survivor whose case goes to trial may be forced to testify about their trauma and have the details of that testimony picked apart by defense attorneys to sow doubt in the jury. 

“It's not an easy process. That being said, some people are willing to go through that process,” said Jayne Lester, an advocacy manager at PAAR. “They're survivors for a reason. They get through it. People will come out on the other side and say, ‘Look, I'm so glad I did that, even if it was a bad outcome.’”  

An infinite ladder

For the past six months, Hope has been working her way through the criminal justice system — from reporting the attack to police to interviewing with detectives to meeting with prosecutors to consulting with advocates.  

Read more: Pittsburgh higher ed steps up sexual assault interventions ahead of annual spike in cases

“It feels like I kept climbing this ladder, and at every rung of the ladder people told me, ‘We believe you, the hardest part is over, and we are going to make this better,’” Hope said. 

“At every step I was climbing this ladder, trusting that at some point we would have reached the top and at the top things would be safe and OK. And I keep climbing, but there's no end to this.”  

Still, she isn’t ready to get off that ladder. While the district attorney’s office hasn’t changed course on its decision to not pursue rape charges, prosecutors have filed a stalking and harassment case against John. 

Hope said she plans to keep asking prosecutors to press rape charges, especially in the event of a new district attorney taking office next year.  

“I feel like giving up would mean making myself smaller and deciding that it's more important that it'd be easy than that it'd be true,” Hope said. “I feel good about what I've done. I did everything that I could have done. I exhausted every option, every avenue, and I took up space and I didn’t just roll over and let this thing happen. And that feels brave. That felt important.”  

Alexandra Ross is an editorial intern with PublicSource and a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. You can reach her at aross@publicsource.org or @AlexandraNRoss on X, formerly known as Twitter.  

This story was fact-checked by Matt Maielli.

The post Her ex left her bruised and in shock. Her attempts at justice illuminate the struggle to prosecute partner rape allegations. appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Immediately, the phones were ringing off the hook. Hundreds of desperate patients left voicemail messages from their homes, their cars, even from clinics in other states where they had just learned they could not receive the care they were promised. Where could they get an abortion now? How would they get there? How would they pay for it? Could they get their money back for the abortion services they’d paid for but wouldn’t receive?

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That was the situation at Allegheny Reproductive Health Center last June, where the wait time just to get a return call was three to four business days as the clinic saw its client load double, and then triple, according to CEO Sheila Ramgopal.

The days immediately following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, were “like a total shit show” for Western Pennsylvania abortion providers, Ramgopal said.

The call volumes have since slowed down, but the number of out-of-state abortion patients in the region remains heightened at Allegheny Reproductive as well as Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania, the only other abortion clinic on this side of the state. Clinics have been forced to adapt, largely by expanding their funding and staffing, to accommodate the demand.

The Dobbs decision struck down half-century-old constitutional abortion protections across the country, allowing state legislatures to restrict abortion access. One year later, 14 states have completely banned elective abortions, with six more banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy or less. 

West Virginia banned abortion with very few exceptions in September. Adult victims of rape or incest can acquire an abortion until eight weeks gestation, while victims under 18 have until 14 weeks, though all such victims must report to law enforcement authorities 48 hours beforehand. The ban also includes exemptions for medical emergencies. 

The ban also requires these abortions to be performed by a physician at a hospital, putting an end to nearly 50 years of abortion services at the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, the state’s only abortion clinic. While the Charleston-based clinic cannot provide abortion services, it continues to refer patients to resources and funds that will help them get an abortion out-of-state — including a lot of patients that end up traveling to Pittsburgh. 

“West Virginians are still calling us asking where they could get abortion care,” said Katie Quinonez, executive director of the Women’s Health Center. “Just because abortion was banned within our state borders does not mean that the need for abortion stops whatsoever.” 

Nine other states have attempted to ban abortion only to have the legislation blocked in court — at least for now. Ohio’s ban on abortion after the sixth week lasted from the day of the Dobbs decision until October, when a preliminary injunction halted the law pending court proceedings. 

In Pennsylvania, abortion rights have remained stable over the past year and are likely to stay that way under Gov. Josh Shapiro. As a result, many seeking the procedure from Ohio and West Virginia — and even farther away — have turned to the state for access. 

Before last June, Allegheny Reproductive averaged around 800 abortion procedures per quarter, but that surged to 1,352 after Dobbs before settling to around 1,000 now, according to quarterly reports to the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Even after the initial wave of patients died down and Ohio’s ban was blocked in court, the proportion of out-of-state patients remained elevated. Before Dobbs, Ramgopal said roughly 15% of patients at Allegheny Reproductive would come from across state lines. After Dobbs, that number surged to 50% in the third quarter of 2022 but has settled at around 20% for the first quarter of 2023. According to Sydney Etheredge, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania, Planned Parenthood has seen growth from roughly 16% to 25% out-of-state patients.

Reproductive care patients are also traveling to Pittsburgh from farther south and west, both Etheredge and Ramgopal said. Prior to Dobbs, Planned Parenthood saw patients from six states, but that number has now grown to 19 — as far west as Texas and as far south as Florida. Ramgopal said Dobbs brought patients to Allegheny Reproductrive from states like Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Alabama and even Virginia, where abortion is still legal. 

“Virginia actually has good access, but I’m assuming that people from other states are coming in,” Ramgopal said. “So it’s actually pushing other people who are in states that are legal to go other places that they still have access. It’s really shifting how people access abortion, and it’s just gonna get worse.”

In Pa., clinics are legal, but scarce

For Etheredge, it’s not just the number of traveling patients that’s concerning — it’s also the number who can’t travel. 

“That’s what keeps us all up. It’s like, what are those patients who couldn’t get a doctor? Like who couldn’t get child care or didn’t have reliable transportation to get to another state or to get 500 miles within their state to the only provider?” Etheredge said. “Because we know that we’re missing a swath of people who just aren’t able to get in or aren’t able to travel.” 

While abortions are available in Pennsylvania, abortion access in the state isn’t strong enough to serve even the needs of in-state patients, let alone patients across state lines, Etheredge said. Decades ago, more than 100 clinics provided abortion care across the state, but today, there are just 18. The state’s laws surrounding the procedure are restrictive, both at the patient level and the provider level. 

Opening a new abortion clinic is an expensive ordeal, thanks to a 2011 state law that requires abortion clinics adhere to the same regulations as ambulatory surgical facilities. Clinics must be equipped with hospital-grade elevators, for example, and meet specific standards for the size of their operating rooms and hallways. 

“An ambulatory surgical facility is like a mini hospital and can accommodate medical procedures of up to four hours, with four hours of recovery time. An abortion takes between seven and 10 minutes,” said Susan Frietsche, senior staff attorney at the Women’s Law Project. “So it is inappropriate to require a procedural abortion to be in an ambulatory surgical facility-level clinic.”

It’s an example of what Frietsche calls a “TRAP law” — targeted restrictions on abortion providers. 

“TRAP laws exist in order to serve two different purposes. One is to perpetuate the myth that abortion is a complex and dangerous procedure — it is not,” she said. “The second is to make it so expensive and difficult and complicated to actually provide abortion care that you drive abortion providers out of the field. And that has been very successful.” 

Maria Gallagher, legislative director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation and a proponent of the regulations, rejected this characterization. Gallagher pointed out that the use of ambulatory surgical facility standards at abortion clinics originated from the “horrible” Kermit Gosnell case, and said they are “for women’s health and safety, period.”

“It just seems to be common sense that if you inspect abortion facilities, it’s more likely that the abortion facilities are going to be maintained at the proper health and safety standard so that women can be protected,” Gallagher said.

While the creation of new abortion clinics is illegal in West Virginia and burdensome in Pennsylvania, the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia has found another way to boost access in the region. It’s set to open a new location in Maryland — less than an hour away from the West Virginia border — this summer. 

The Women’s Health Center of Maryland “will really help to not only reduce the burden on abortion clinics that are in Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia, who are now taking on the care of folks beyond their states’ borders, but it will also serve as a regional abortion access point” for Western Maryland, Quinonez said. 

Staff are stressed, but growing

Remaining abortion clinics have bolstered their operations to keep up with the increase in demand, starting with their personnel. Allegheny Reproductive expanded its staff by 30% between 2019 and 2021 to prepare for the possibility of losing constitutional abortion rights, and again by 20% around the time of the Dobbs decision, Ramgopal said. 

Planned Parenthood brought on new staff including a patient navigator to help patients understand the landscape of Pittsburgh — how to get there, where to park, where to stay — and answer questions about appointments. Not only does this help patients from far away feel more comfortable traveling for an abortion, but it also helps other staff focus on facilitating and providing care. 

“We’re seeing more patients, but we don’t want to burn out the staff that we have,” Etheredge said. “That is so important since they are really our connection to our patients and the community and they’re the ones providing this care.”

Even amid a staffing shortage, both Etheredge and Ramgopal had no problem finding new hires.

“We saw a lot of people interested in wanting to work in the space, which was really exciting,” Etheredge said. “Being able to recruit and staff and bolstering our HR infrastructure to make that a much more seamless process [was] something that was a big focus of mine when I came on board, and we’re seeing the impact of that now.”

Increased staffing has allowed Planned Parenthood to stay open five days per week more consistently. Allegheny Reproductive opens five and a half days weekly — almost twice the availability it had in 2017, when the clinic opened three days per week. 

Heightened levels of fundraising — not only for clinics, but for patients — have also helped keep abortion accessible in Western Pennsylvania. 

In the wake of Dobbs, “there’s been a massive increase in people donating to these various national funds and local funds to actually support people’s direct costs of care as well as covering their costs of travel,” Ramgopal said. “So for a lot of our clients, they’re able to get their abortions low-cost or no-cost, especially if they’re coming from out of state and having to go through these additional barriers.” 

Quinonez said this surge in fundraising and support has allowed the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia to not only keep its doors open, but also to retain a full staff, despite that revenue from abortion services comprised about 40% of its operating budget pre-Dobbs. 

“We’re committed to keeping all staff on because we did not only provide abortion care, we provided a full scope of reproductive health care that our community has come to depend on us for,” Quinonez said. 

As Ohio teeters, Pittsburgh prepares

The future of abortion care across the state and the country is uncertain. Ohio’s six-week ban could be ruled unconstitutional in court or it could be reinstated, pushing more patients across state lines. Federal judges could curb use of the pregnancy-ending drug mifepristone, utilized along with misoprostol in more than half of Pennsylvania abortions. In the years to come, if power dynamics shift in Harrisburg, the state legislature could try to further restrict the procedure through a state constitutional amendment. 

Abortion providers and advocates are preparing to roll with the punches. At Planned Parenthood, informed consent forms and staff training have already been updated to allow for misoprostol-only medication abortions, in case mifepristone is banned. And last year, Mayor Ed Gainey and Pittsburgh City Council enacted several bills aimed at protecting abortion access in Pittsburgh. 

One of the bills prohibits city officials or employees from assisting in any out-of-state investigation of an abortion provider for providing legal reproductive care in Pennsylvania. The law aims to prevent states that have banned abortion from criminalizing providers in the case of travel abortions. At the time of council’s vote, such laws didn’t yet exist, but earlier this year, Idaho’s governor enacted a law against “abortion trafficking,” or helping a minor travel out of state for an abortion. So far, Frietsche said, no one has been prosecuted for traveling to Pennsylvania for abortion care. 

“The threat is real. The threat is not imaginary,” Frietsche said. “I give credit to Mayor Gainey and to Pittsburgh City Council for being forward thinking and taking preventive measures ahead of time so if someone tries that, we have some level of protection at the local level from it.”

“Everybody is in this for the long haul,” she added. “There is plenty of fight in this movement. And, you know, we’re actually feeling somewhat optimistic about the really difficult future that the Supreme Court handed to us.”

Alexandra Ross is an editorial intern with PublicSource and a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. You can reach her at aross@publicsource.org or @AlexandraNRoss on Twitter.  

Elizabeth Szeto is a data storytelling intern at PublicSource and can be reached at elizabeth@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Sean Lord.

The post A year after Roe’s end, Pittsburgh’s abortion clinics still contend with out-of-state influx appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

State Rep. Sara Innamorato, a 37-year-old Lawrenceville Democrat who burst onto the political scene in 2018, won a crowded and contentious Democratic primary for Allegheny County executive, signaling a leftward turn for the county government with longtime Executive Rich Fitzgerald exiting in January after the maximum three terms.

Executive Decision
For the first time in 12 years, Allegheny County voters will elect a new county chief executive.

Her win is a new high water mark for the progressive political movement in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

By 9 p.m., as in-person votes filtered in, Innamorato pulled ahead of John Weinstein, who led the write-in votes by a narrow margin. Her margin only grew as more precincts reported. Her supporters began to declare her the winner shortly before the county showed her handily ahead with more than 90% of precincts counted.

“Tonight I am honored to accept the Democratic nomination for Allegheny County executive,” Innamorato told supporters around 10:30 p.m. “We did this. We did this. This is our seat.”

Innamorato will face Republican Joe Rockey in the General Election. Democrats enjoy a 2-to-1 registration advantage in the county, giving Innamorato a strong position heading into November.

She was introduced by Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, who endorsed Innamorato.

“Good people of Allegheny County: it’s because of you that we just changed county government for the better,” the mayor said. “It’s because of you that we can create a county for all. … We made history tonight.”

The local progressive movement picked up speed in the 2010s and matured in the 2020s, with the election of Gainey and Congresswoman Summer Lee, and now it is poised to take a firm grip on local power.

“The power of the people is always greater than the people in power,” Lee told the crowd at Trace Brewing in Bloomfield. “We’re here today because you loved your neighbor more than they hated our movement.”

“Let me say, it’s looking like a real progressive Allegheny County.”

Innamorato then said that she ran “because I wanted to build a county for us all. And the county executive will chart the direction for the next generation, and our refrain continues to be: Let’s create a region where we can all thrive, and we have shared and sustained prosperity for all.”

Scenes from Sara Innamorato’s election night party on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, at Trace Brewing in Bloomfield. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

She said her campaign brought together organized labor, formerly incarcerated people, Black, Jewish and LGBTQ-led organizations and environmentalists, among others. These are people who have been excluded from the political process and “are ready to build a county government that works for them,” she said. 

She said the county has the opportunity to create significant change, highlighting plans to attract infrastructure investments, build a mass transit system and create a housing-for-all plan, among others.

“That’s a lot of work to do. And I’ll tell you, I’ll be the first to say: I cannot do it alone. … But that’s why we built this coalition. We built this coalition that looks like the county, because that’s how you govern effectively and inclusively,” she said. 

While Innamorato’s own characteristics are revealing of the direction of local politics, a lot can be learned from looking at who she bested on Tuesday. She finished ahead of John Weinstein, a throwback politician who rose to countywide office in the 1990s, enjoyed a network of allies throughout the suburbs and raised well over $1 million for his run. She topped Michael Lamb, a fixture of city politics who laid claim to the progressive mantle long before its recent run of success. 

Innamorato said she entered politics to serve her community, which she largely attributed to her personal story. She spoke about the loss of her father to the opioid epidemic, and addressed her mother, with the two sharing a tearful embrace. She recalled that, when she was 16, her mother told her: “I just wish I gave you a better life than what I had.”

“But you did it,” she said. “In that moment, when she was talking about giving a better life to me and my sister, she expressed what so many people in this county feel. 

“They want to give their kids more opportunity than what they had, make sure our future includes our neighbors and leave the world a little bit better than when we found it.”

Innamorato’s approach matches one taken last year by Lee, who proclaimed that the people “closest to the pain should be the closest to the power.” While Weinstein highlighted crime and safety issues and talked up his experience as county treasurer, Innamorato’s ads showed her interacting with supporters and pledging to make “housing for all” her top priority.

Defeated Allegheny County executive candidate John Weinstein greets supporters after giving a concession speech at the Champions Club at Acrisure Stadium on May 16, 2023. (Photos by Quinn Glabicki/PublicSource)

Her win is also a validation for Service Employees International Union locals, which backed her campaign and have flexed increasing political muscle in recent years. Tuesday their champion came out ahead of the building trades unions’ pick (Weinstein), despite those more traditional power brokers spending more money on the race. 

Weinstein finished second, with Lamb third and attorney Dave Fawcett a distant fourth.

Weinstein conceded shortly after 10:30 p.m., leading with his assessment of why he lost: “There were too many white men running in this race, that’s the reality of it,” he said. He said that he, Lamb and Fawcett effectively defeated each other, allowing Innamorato a path to victory.

He offered Innamorato a brief congratulations and said he will back her in the general election. That was as far as he went in offering kind words to the newly crowned Democratic nominee. 

“She will need to build bridges,” he said of the nominee, specifically to the building trades unions that endorsed his campaign. “She will need to reach out to everybody.”

He did not offer concrete plans for his future, which, come January, will be outside government for the first time since the 1990s. “I have a lot of friends and I’m not going to let that go. I’m going to be a factor in some way, shape or form.”

Shortly before 10 p.m., Lamb conceded.

“We set out to build a better Allegheny County,” he told supporters at the Grandview Social Club in Mount Washington. “We came up short.”

He congratulated Innamorato, and his own deputy Rachel Heisler for her apparent victory as the nominee to replace him as Pittsburgh controller, saying supporters should “celebrate these historic victories. And that’s what we’re going to do tonight.”

Fitzgerald, though, provided a different interpretation, telling WESA that the results as a whole showed “the far left winning Democratic primaries in Allegheny County” and making a comparison to “San Francisco or Seattle or Portland with a far left agenda of our elected officials.”

Innamorato said her primary victory comes at a critical moment for the county, as Pennsylvania will likely serve as a key battleground state in the 2024 election. In the next few months, Innamorato said her campaign is going to register new voters and focus on expanding the electorate. 

She thanked each of the candidates in the Democratic primary and said she looked forward to working with them in the future. 

She referenced the negative ads against her campaign and said that, while she expects them to return, “We must stick to a positive vision on how we can create that county that works for us all.”

If Innamorato ascends to the executive’s office in January, it will herald a new management style after 12 years of Fitzgerald’s leadership. Innamorato would be able to make dozens of appointments to unelected boards and commissions that shape policy in the region, such as the Jail Oversight Board, the Board of Health and the county’s Housing Authority. 

She has pledged to prioritize affordable housing, with proposals for increasing emergency and transitional housing options for unhoused people, a Tenants’ Bill of Rights and a countywide land bank to deal with blight and increase housing stock. 

She also vowed to shake up leadership at the county jail — though this was common among executive candidates. A string of deaths among incarcerated people have alarmed advocates and the public. During an April candidate forum, Innamorato said the county needs to “reinvent the jail” and that new jail leadership “needs to be in concert with the community.”

On air quality and pollution, another major topic on the campaign trail this year, Innamorato has said she would use the county Health Department’s regulatory powers to “crack down on polluters” that have made the county’s air quality dangerous at times, particularly in the Mon Valley.

Innamorato has signaled she is open to conducting a countywide property reassessment, something academics have said is vital to ensuring fair taxation but politicians have shied away from.

Rockey has campaigned as a moderate’s moderate, calling himself “the bipartisan problem-solver we need.” A Republican has not been elected county executive since Jim Roddey in 1999. Former Republican Gov. Tom Corbett narrowly carried the county in 2010.

Other countywide races: Mix of continuity and change

Matt Dugan beat Stephen A. Zappala Jr. in the race for Allegheny County district attorney. Zappala has been the county’s top prosecutor since 1998, while Dugan has been a county public defender since 2007, leading that office since 2019. There was no Republican on the ballot, though party leaders suggested writing in Zappala’s name. That could set up a November rematch if Dugan’s lead holds and if Zappala receives enough write-in votes to claim the GOP nomination.

Corey O’Connor easily brushed aside Darwin Leuba to hold the county controller’s post. O’Connor, previously on Pittsburgh City Council, was appointed in July to replace former controller Chelsa Wagner following her election as a judge in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. Leuba is a computer scientist and activist. No Republican sought the nomination.

Erica Rocchi Brusselars nearly doubled the vote count of Anthony Coghill for county treasurer, taking aim at replacing Weinstein. Coghill serves on Pittsburgh City Council, while Brusselars is a pension actuary and former math teacher. No Republican sought the nomination.

Bethany Hallam defeated Joanna Doven for the at-large seat on Allegheny County Council that is virtually guaranteed to go to the Democratic nominee. Public relations consultant Doven challenged incumbent Hallam for the post. The other at-large seat on the 15-member panel is almost certain to go to the Republican nominee, incumbent Sam DeMarco, who was unopposed.

Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org and on Twitter @chwolfson.

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org. 

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.

Alexandra Ross is an editorial intern and can be reached at aross@publicsource.org.

The post Sara Innamorato the victor in Democratic primary for Allegheny County executive appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Polls for Pennsylvania’s primary election are closed.

Executive Decision
For the first time in 12 years, Allegheny County voters will elect a new county chief executive.

Headlining Tuesday’s contests locally was the crowded and contentious Democratic primary for Allegheny County executive, which has no incumbent in the running for the first time since 2011 with current Executive Rich Fitzgerald hitting a term limit. Six Democrats stepped forward to seek the nomination to replace Fitzgerald, presenting differing governing styles and views on key issues like pollution control, juvenile detention, the Allegheny County Jail, property tax assessments and more. 

Republican voters had one option, former banker Joe Rockey.

Read about all of the county executive candidates in PublicSource’s voter guide. 

Reports from the polls

Kristen Kerns, 42, of Mount Washington, said she has voted at her polling place on Merrimac Street for 20 years, and John Weinstein’s candidacy for county executive motivated her to come out this time.

“He’s the most credible candidate. His work with dogs really made me like him,” she said. “He also helps seniors raise money.” She also cited Weinstein’s experience as county treasurer.

Jameel Bey, 45, of Mount Washington said he voted for John Weinstein for county executive and Stephen A. Zappala Jr. for district attorney because, he said, “I want to see change and bring programming and services for our youth.”

Larissa Russo, a 32-year-old small business owner, showed up to the polls Downtown to support Dave Fawcett’s bid for county executive. She said she values his experience outside of politics — Fawcett is an attorney — and appreciates his focus on environmental issues. She’d like the county to have cleaner, safer and better-connected parks. 

“I'm a regular voter, but because of the county executive seat being open specifically, I made sure I had it on my calendar, ready to go,” Russo said.

Linda King, a 62-year-old lawyer voting in Squirrel Hill, said she votes in every election. It’s crucial, she said, “even if the only person on the ticket is the dog catcher.” This year, King came out to the polls to support her friends Jill Beck and Pat Sweeney in judicial races. Beck is vying for a spot on Superior Court, while Sweeney takes aim at the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. King also came out to cast her vote for Innamorato as the next county executive.

“I vacillated for a while but, you know, it seemed like just the same old white men running,” King said. “I can't imagine that things could get any worse with a bright young woman in the room.”

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey showed up to the Ascension Roman Catholic Church in Windgap to talk with voters. “If you are an elected official, you still need to show up at polls,” he said.

Allegheny County executive candidate Dave Fawcett greeted voters at Burchfield Primary School in Allison Park as the after-work voters filed in. “With all the recent political infighting, people are looking for a change,” Fawcett said. “I think there’s going to be a surprise tonight.” (Photos by Quinn Glabicki/PublicSource)

Jordan Corcoran arrived to vote at Shaler Elementary, pushing a stroller with her two kids, Griffin and Ruby.

The stakes of this election, she said, include “us being more united as a city. We don’t need to agree on everything, but we need to be able to coexist and work together” on important issues. 

She listed education, women’s rights and mental health as priorities. She left having cast a vote for Sara Innamorato for county executive. She said her vote came down to “not only experience in the job, but [the candidate’s] open mindedness and ability to handle intense environments with calmness and open-mindedness.”

She looked down at her kids. “I want to be teaching them: This is what we do,” she said.

“Vote for who makes the rules,” said her young son, Griffin.

Freeman Pamplin voted at New Light Temple Baptist Church on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, in his lifelong neighborhood of the Hill District.

Pamplin, who is a Democratic committeeman and works as a maintenance technician, said coming out to the polls is a social event for him. He said people are concerned about the development of the Hill, displacement and promises that have been made to the neighborhood by business and political leaders that they feel have not been met.

“There’s a lot of money moving but we’re not seeing much development,” he said. “I’d like to get new blood in there, a different spin. That might wake the politicians up so they stop lying to the people.”

Raymond Robinson lost his election for Democratic committeeman by one vote in 2018. He ran again in 2022 and won, hoping to do more to encourage voter participation than his predecessor, who he said was usually absent from the polls. On Tuesday evening, Robinson greeted voters with voter guides and bags of chips at a Brighton Heights polling place.

Robinson voted for Michael Lamb for executive, though he said he was torn between him and Innamorato. He ultimately went with Lamb because he thinks Innamorato is a strong legislator and she could continue in that post.

He wore a shirt and pin for district attorney candidate Matt Dugan, who is challenging Zappala. He said he backed Zappala’s unsuccessful opponent in 2019, too, and he’s hoping a “reinvigorated grassroots” Democratic committee will translate to a win for Dugan tonight.

Emily Kochanski, a 23-year-old nursing student at Pittsburgh Technical College, said some of her friends in Pittsburgh didn’t even know there was an election today — but in her eyes, these local elections aren’t any less impactful than national contests. She said she especially paid attention to issues in the Allegheny County Jail as she headed to the polls. 

“Local politics is the place to start if you actually want change, and especially if you want the place you live to reflect the values you have,” said Kochanski. “You have to actually put effort into that, and that means voting in smaller elections that don't get as much media coverage.”

What else was on the ballot?

County executive candidates have aired the most television ads, but there are other important offices on the ballot today.

Longtime District Attorney Zappala faced the political fight of his life, trying to defend his record against progressive challenger Dugan. Dugan’s campaign has been backed by more than $700,000 in advertising from a political action committee that has funded progressive prosecutor campaigns throughout the country. There is nobody on the Republican ballot running for DA, and some in the GOP have suggested writing in Zappala’s name, which could set up a Dugan-Zappala rematch in the general election if Dugan prevails today.

There’s been a spirited campaign for county controller, an office that will be tasked with holding accountable the next executive. Corey O’Connor, current controller and former Pittsburgh councilman, is trying to win a full term in the position after being appointed to fill a vacancy last year. Challenging him is Darwin Leuba, a first-time candidate who has been involved in local progressive campaigns for several years. 

Voters will also choose city and borough councilors, elections that could impact the trajectory of the rest of Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s first term in office, as well as county council members, who will influence the new county executive’s leadership.

When will we know the winners?

Compared to some statewide or national races, Tuesday’s county results should be known relatively quickly. The count of all mail-in ballot results will be published just after 8 p.m., and precinct results will be added gradually between 8:30 p.m. and midnight. While it could take days to learn the outcome of any exceptionally close race, most outcomes should be known before the calendar turns to Wednesday.

Find results as they are posted by the county here.

Check PublicSource.org for updates as winners are declared, and follow @publicsourcepa and @chwolfson on Twitter for updates throughout the evening. 

More resources

Find out where the millions of dollars funding executive candidates came from.

Read about the county executive debate hosted by PublicSource and NEXTpittsburgh in April, featuring all seven candidates. 

Learn candidates’ views on government transparency and ethics reform. 

See where candidates stand on property tax reassessment. 

Explore the role crime and public safety have taken in this election cycle.

Read about how the next executive will influence the county’s sprawling unelected power structure.

Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org or on Twitter @chwolfson.

The post Primary Election Day: Polls closed after campaign that could redirect Allegheny County appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

When Allegheny County Councilman Tom Duerr wrote to the county’s Accountability, Conduct and Ethics Commission in March asking for an investigation of his colleague Bethany Hallam, he was reaching out to a panel that has not taken publicly known action against anyone for six years.

Duerr’s letter to the commission came after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Hallam reached out to state Rep. Emily Kinkead last year and asked her to resign her seat on the ALCOSAN board, which is appointed by city and county leaders. Hallam’s request came, the newspaper reported, at the behest of former board member and county Treasurer John Weinstein, who sought to replace Kinkead on the board. In return, Weinstein would stop supporting Kinkead’s opponent in the Democratic primary that year. Weinstein and Hallam have denied the report. 

The letter alleged that the proposal violated the county’s Ethics Code by attempting to “cut back room political deals” regarding spots on the board.

The ACE Commission is the county’s primary vehicle for investigating and punishing ethical violations. Its public records, though, show dwindling activity and a struggle to enforce the single recommendation it has made since 2016. 

Hallam said she believes the ACE Commission is the appropriate body to handle serious ethical concerns but finds Duerr’s public letter to the commission inappropriate because it could influence the outcome of a potential investigation. 

“I hope that they will conduct a proper investigation, I hope that no outside people will be influencing their process, and I sure hope that this body that has a very specific and important purpose is not being used for political stunts,” Hallam said. 

No matter the outcome of a potential investigation into the complaint, Duerr said he hopes the process will provide closure to the situation. 

“If an ethical line was crossed, we can as a body decide what to do and to go from there, and if it wasn’t, we can move forward without having this allegation hanging over, well, both Councilwoman Hallam’s head but also the body’s head as well,” he said.

A commission that doesn’t comment

The county created the commission in 2002. Under the Ethics Code, the commission has jurisdiction over all elected and appointed county officials and county officers, including the chief executive and members of county council, as well as all county employees and members of county agencies.  

The commission is made up of five voters of Allegheny County who have not been county officers or employees or been compensated by a county contractor. No more than three of them may be of the same party affiliation. Currently, it is composed of two Democrats, one Republican and two otherwise-affiliated individuals.  

Under the airtight confidentiality that governs the commission, county voters may never know for certain whether the commission investigates the alleged conduct of Hallam or Weinstein. PublicSource reached out to all five members of the commission: Chair William Ward and member Kimberly Dunlevy declined interview requests and the other commissioners — Jesse Torisky, Daryl Reeves and Tonya Johnson — did not respond.

The commission communicates with the public largely through annual reports.

The commission has received 53 complaints during its two decades of existence, reporting roughly half of those complaints since 2016. Complaints dropped off in 2020 and have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Former commission chair Tim Moury said the low complaint numbers in the past few years could reflect a lack of public awareness of the commission. 

“I think it’s just educating the public on, the commission’s out there,” Moury said. “I know we try to do some outreach within county government to explain what we’re there for and make people aware that it is available.”

Duerr said county council hasn’t worked with the commission so far in his tenure, which began in 2020. He argued that low report numbers are a positive because the commission is an entity one would hope not to have to use in the first place. 

“This entity exists for this reason,” Duerr said. “I trust the systems we have in place in our government.”

26 complaints, 1 recommendation

Even in years that saw higher numbers of complaints, the commission dismissed the vast majority of them after — or even without — preliminary inquiry. 

The commission conducted a full investigation of a report it received in March 2016 and issued a findings report in October of that year, but it was never disclosed whether or not county council took any action based on the report. Details of the involved complaint have not been made public.

The commission’s 2016 annual report noted that in November of that year, then-County Council President John DeFazio told the commission that council was “still considering” the commission’s recommendation. By July 2017, public meeting minutes say the commission sent a second letter to council regarding the recommendations of the commission, and that “without a response by either party further action will be taken” by the commission. The group scheduled a conference call for August 2017 to discuss any response or further action to the complaint. 

But according to the commission’s 2017 annual report, it was still “awaiting the disposition of a recommendation” by the end of that year. No other meeting minutes or annual reports have made mention of the complaint since then.

Ward did not respond to a request for updates on whether the county council ever carried out the commission’s recommendation.

The commission doesn’t always provide a reason for dismissing complaints, but when it does, the most common reason is that the complaint did not align with the commission’s jurisdiction. Each time someone filed an ethics complaint during Dan Garcia’s six-year stint on the commission from 2011 to 2016, “​​chances were pretty good,” he said, that it would not meet the scope of the Ethics Code. 

“If one of those complaints was, you know, ‘Somebody at the community dump didn’t treat me right,’ or, ‘They were mean to me on the phone,’ or something, that doesn’t really speak to the corruption,” Garcia said. “Really, it’s more of a customer complaint than an actual ethics violation.”

Moury similarly noted that in many cases, the complaints the commission reviewed in his time contained “personnel issues” rather than Ethics Code violations. 

The commission has also dismissed complaints for being anonymous or unsworn. Before the commission will consider a complaint, the complaint must contain the name and position of the respondent; the name, address and phone number of the complainant; a statement of the allegations that the complainant believes constitutes a violation of the Ethics Code and a sworn verification signed by the complainant. 

In its annual reports and public meeting minutes, the commission has not identified individuals who are the subject of ethics complaints nor who submitted the complaints. 

“The last thing we want is for somebody to get accused of something, it’s a wrongful accusation, that wrongful accusation becomes public and all of a sudden, the public believes the accusation,” Garcia explained. 

Commission can recommend, but not enforce, penalties

If the commission finds that a complaint justifies further review after preliminary inquiry, it can launch a full investigation, after which it either terminates the case or issues a findings report. From there, the respondent may request a hearing.

The Ethics Code lays out actions the commission may take after identifying ethical violations. If a respondent to an ethics complaint is found to have violated federal or state law, the commission is to turn the case over to the proper authorities. Otherwise, the commission can:

• Issue a written admonition that the respondent violated the code
• Censure the respondent expressing strong disapproval of the involved actions
• Suspend a county employee without pay, though this would be subject to personnel practices and union contracts
• Revoke county employment or a county contract, again subject to personnel practices and union contracts
• Recommend removal of an elected official, which would then be governed by the county charter or other laws.

Public records show no such actions after 2016.

Members of the commission are “mainly just fact finders,” Garcia said. If the commission identifies misconduct, Garcia and Moury said it is up to county council and the county executive to implement its ruling. 

“There’s really not much the commission can do to enforce anything,” Garcia said. “I guess it’s not really the scope of that commission.”

The limits of the commission and its jurisdiction make sense to Moury. In his experience, the commission is “effective” and “brings things to light.” 

"Anytime you’re dealing with, you know, the conduct, you don’t want politics to play into it," Moury said. "I think the way the commission is set up, that they have a defined criteria in which they need to evaluate things, you take the personalities out of it."

“I think there’s always room for greater opportunity for government to really be under the oversight of the people they serve,” Garcia said. “At the end of the day, that’s what government used to be or should be — right? — is that it’s supposed to be in the service of the people that employ it. And that would be us, the taxpayer.” 

While Duerr said he places his confidence and trust in the commission, he also said reforming it is not fully off the table. 

“If this entity, you know, potentially isn’t as robust enough or … needs some tweaks after this process is done, maybe I’ll take a look at trying to fix that as well,” Duerr said. “But as of right now, no, I have no reason not to be confident in their ability. I have no reason not to trust the process.”

Alexandra Ross is a student journalist in her senior year at the University of Pittsburgh and can be reached at anr204@pitt.edu or @AlexandraNRoss on Twitter.

This story was fact-checked by Abigail Nemec-Merwede.

The post Call in the ethics commission? Allegheny County panel sees dwindling complaints, takes little public action appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

“We fully intend to make this a flagship school for the district.”

— Mark Roosevelt, quote in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2008

When UPrep opened in fall 2008, it was supposed to be one of the strongest schools in Pittsburgh. 

Higher education was baked into Pittsburgh Milliones 6-12 University Preparatory School’s vision. Banners for Harvard, Pitt, Temple and more would deck the halls. Classes would be smaller and the school day longer. And UPrep would have a formal partner in the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education. 

Over a decade later, when Eric Graf arrived at UPrep to start his second year as principal (and his first in the building, thanks to COVID), he found it haunted. 

“As I went through the closets, you could just see the ghosts of all the other initiatives that had been attempted at the school,” Graf said. “Binders of things.” 

Graf said he doesn’t see UPrep as a university preparatory school, except in name.

“The name University Prep is something that carries over from the initial vision for the school,” Graf said. “In the years since it’s been established, that vision has atrophied and changed. And in many ways, ‘UPrep’ has — the name has kind of become a little bit of an albatross around the school and an irony.”

Graf said he embraces a shift in the school culture. If the focus of UPrep is just higher education, “we are leaving out the majority of our students who may be on a different career path. … Our school should serve our community and students where they actually are.”

UPrep’s struggles don’t have just one cause. Pitt’s involvement in the school has waned significantly since it was founded in 2008. The school has been no exception to decreased enrollment across the Pittsburgh Public Schools district. And turnover in the principal’s office has created instability. 

Last year, UPrep parent Sharhonda Brandon-Walden took her daughter Chloe out of UPrep and enrolled her at Oakland Catholic because she said things were “chaotic” and “rough” at the public school. (Her younger daughter, Mashonie, stayed at UPrep during that time.) But this year, Chloe is back as a senior honors student and Brandon-Walden said she’s already seeing big improvements. 

“I can see their growth, I can see that they’re trying,” Brandon-Walden said. “It has transformed so much in one year. I feel like they need more community support, and more — I feel like Pittsburgh Public, like the district, needs to give them more.” 

Graf hopes to see UPrep continue to grow under more stable, long-term leadership in the coming years.

“One of my core tasks or missions here is to increase enrollment, and I think that that can be accomplished,” he said, by providing “some stability of leadership and really putting forth a clear vision of what the school can be.”  

“The school says it offers a ‘total college-going culture.’”

— The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2009

If standardized tests are a good measure of a student’s education — and some say they aren’t — things do not look good for UPrep. Across the 11th-grade Keystones and the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade PSSA exams, most UPrep students don’t reach proficiency.

Such low proficiency rates may be alarming to some, but Graf takes them with “a real grain of salt.” 

“I think [students] view standardized testing as part of a system that hasn't served them and I can respect their choice to not participate in that fully,” Graf said. “I do push them but ultimately … I can't force a kid to take a test or to take a test seriously.”

Almost 90% of UPrep’s student population is Black, and more than 86% is economically disadvantaged, two groups that typically score lower on standardized tests. Most test-taking UPrep students are part of a “historically underperforming” subgroup, meaning they have a disability, are economically disadvantaged and/or learn English as a second language. In 2022, at least 94% of UPrep students taking each test were designated as historically underperforming. 

The district intended to educate as many as 600 students at UPrep annually, but enrollment has fallen far below that, down to 292 students this year. 

UPrep is below average in graduation rates, particularly since the pandemic, and just 34.5% of students qualify for the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship, versus 55.9% district-wide. 

“Pittsburgh Public Schools and the University of Pittsburgh will be ‘re-examining’ their partnership at the district's University Prep School.”

— The Pittsburgh City Paper, 2011

In June 2008, the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education voted to close Schenley High School because of “deteriorating conditions” in the building, complicated by asbestos. Rising ninth graders set to attend Schenley would be absorbed by other schools, including the brand-new Pittsburgh Milliones 6-12 University Preparatory School. 

Pitt planned to focus its resources provided to UPrep on three pillars: technology, tutoring and teacher quality, according to Erika Kestenberg, director of the Pitt-UPrep partnership at Pitt’s Center for Urban Education from 2011 through 2013. The Heinz Endowments* granted UPrep $500,000 to buy students laptops, an innovative concept in 2008. According to Kestenberg, more than 100 Pitt students signed up to tutor at UPrep in the first year of the program. Pitt’s Center for Urban Education held office space inside UPrep. The university planned to provide professional development for teachers and even to play a role in the teacher hiring process. 

The first problems arose over summer 2008. According to Alan Lesgold, the dean of Pitt’s School of Education from 2000 to 2016, then-Superintendent Mark Roosevelt promised Pitt a say in who would teach at UPrep. However, teacher union contracts did not allow this. (Roosevelt, who left the district in 2010, declined to confirm or deny accounts of decisions, citing fading memory.)

Issues continued as the school year started. UPrep purchased students’ laptops with its Heinz grant, but struggled to utilize them. A lack of teacher training in technology hindered its use in the classroom, according to Kestenberg. And the school required that parents sign a form accepting responsibility for lost or damaged computers before students could take them home. 

“Computers back then [were] super-expensive things,” Lesgold said. “You have a rather low-wealth population demographic. … Needless to say, not every parent signed that.”

After three years, according to a 2014 article in the City Paper, laptops were only available for students to take home on a case-by-case basis. By then, UPrep’s second principal, Derrick Hardy, said the computers were “antiquated.”

Other initiatives lasted for years before they died out. The first principal of UPrep, Sito Narcisse, implemented a uniform requirement at the school as part of an attempt to set high standards for students. Enforcement of the uniform requirement eventually faded out.

Fewer Pitt students signed up for the tutoring program after the first year, and Pitt students no longer tutor in the building today. Lesgold said the program struggled because teachers had to dedicate extra time to keep tutors up-to-date on which students needed help with which material. 

This kind of mentorship is missing at the school today, said Brandon-Walden.

“I think it would be very helpful if Pitt students could go into the school to encourage the students, you know, engage with them so they'll want to be Pitt students themselves,” Brandon-Walden said. “Just that push for, you know, advancement in your education would be helpful.”

Pitt’s physical presence within UPrep started out strong for the first year, but the school took back some space in the second year, and more in the following years. Lesgold said by the time UPrep’s second principal, Hardy, was well-established, he had “basically taken back all but one of the rooms we had.”

Said Roosevelt: “Schools of education do not necessarily fully understand the challenges of an urban school like Milliones, and sometimes they will balk and back away when they realize how tough everything is.”

As various plans and programs at UPrep began to wane, Kestenberg said communication with Hill District community members was lacking in transparency and timeliness.

“The saddest part for me was going into the community and hearing the voices of community members saying, ‘This is what we were promised, and none of it's happening,’” said Kestenberg. 

“People didn’t have anything good to say about us.”

— Former UPrep student quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2017

In nearly 15 years, UPrep has had six principals. The school’s changes in leadership have contributed to “instability” that hindered the school’s opportunities to grow, Graf said.

“What's challenging in a very large school district, especially when you have turnover of administrators, is one administrator may have one vision and be buying or spending resources on one thing, and then the next person comes in” with different priorities for how to use the school’s resources, Graf said.

When Hardy, UPrep’s second principal, left the school in 2015, one of the school’s founding teachers stepped in as principal.

Christopher Horne had left UPrep in 2010 to become an associate principal in Penn Hills, but he returned to UPrep to take on the role of head principal for his first time. He said he doesn’t think the district should have hired him. 

“I thought I was going to be the best principal ever,” said Horne, now a principal in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “But looking back now, and being a seasoned, experienced principal, I mean, there's no way you can bring a new principal into that space with no support and expect for the school to do well.”

Ebony Pugh, PPS spokesperson, said an assistant superintendent provides direct support and supervision to each school administrator, and principals and assistant principals participate in the monthly Leading and Learning Institute for professional learning. Additionally, the district provided contract support to UPrep at times. 

Horne compares Milliones to other Pittsburgh schools with many African American students from low-income communities, such as Westinghouse Academy or Perry High School — schools where the people have lots of passion for helping kids, but not enough resources. Horne said he needed more mental health specialists, social workers, family and community engagement specialists, mentoring, staffing support and behavioral specialists. 

“It is not preparatory for university, as much as it’s preparatory for the penitentiary.”

— Sala Udin, now president of the Pittsburgh Public Schools board, quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2016

Horne said the district decided to bring students from Garfield and the Hill District, two “rivaling neighborhoods,” into the same school. 

“There were fights from the start from those different sides,” Horne said. 

In February 2016, four students started a fight that grew to dozens of students and made national headlines. Police arrested about 30 UPrep students after the incident. The next school year, total enrollment dropped from 548 to 385 students.

A task force on school violence formed after the fight, crafting recommendations for the school and then disbanding by October that year. That fall, Horne said he saw a change in culture. Fewer fights broke out, teachers handled conflict better and a previously strained relationship with Pitt was “emerging” with new mentoring programs. 

Horne said he valued UPrep’s partnership with Pitt, in particular the Heinz Fellows program. The Heinz Fellows, a group of graduates with the Center for Urban Education, worked as mentors and advocates across several Pittsburgh high schools. 

Elon Dancy, director of the Center for Urban Education, said the center saw improvements at UPrep directly linked with the program, including fewer disciplinary actions. He also said he saw students “having a deeper understanding of themselves, a deeper understanding of, kind of, collective responsibility … and connecting freedom and justice to education.”

The Heinz Fellows kept working with UPrep students into the COVID-19 pandemic, but the program ended in 2021. Dancy said funding ran out, but the center is searching for new sources of funding.

High-needs schools suffer from “deeply entrenched” structural problems, Dancy said, and the solutions need to be similarly structural and to address the ways schools acquire resources. 

“When the only possibilities, the most reasonable possibilities, for you are philanthropic ones, well then you're at the mercy of philanthropic priorities and whether or not they’re interested in funding that at that time,” Dancy said.

With the end of the Heinz Fellows and the university’s original tutoring program, Pitt’s Center for Urban Education no longer sends students to UPrep on a regular basis. Nowadays, Graf said the relationship between the university and the school is largely based around dual enrollment courses and Pitt’s Hill District Community Engagement Center. 

Horne said he believes UPrep could have had a stronger relationship with Pitt, if only the district and the university had better communication on what that relationship could look like. 

“The opportunities were limitless,” Horne said, “and we didn't really take advantage.”

“Things are so bad at UPrep that I'm open to almost any proposal that will improve conditions there."

— Sala Udin, quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2019

Virginia Hill, principal of UPrep from 2018 to 2019, called her time at the school “painful” and “traumatic.”

“What's happening at UPrep is a travesty,” Hill said.

Inexperienced staff and high turnover contribute to UPrep’s struggles, Hill said, adding that most teachers at UPrep want to do right by their students but don’t have the tools or don’t know how. In the 2020-21 school year, UPrep teachers had an average of eight years of experience — the least experienced teaching staff of all the schools in the district. 

Hill doesn’t blame Pitt, saying the university (in particular Dean Valerie Kinloch from the School of Education) tried to offer UPrep students courses and support. 

“The problem was on our school district,” Hill said. 

Hill describes friction between herself and district administrators from the start. Hill said she felt administrators wanted her to be “rough and tough,” motivate teachers by fear and suspend more students, but she wanted to create a school culture based in “love, safety, connection and care.”

“If you keep them in school and you educate them, then they can go back and be the type of citizen that you would live next to,” Hill said. “That's what I want to produce out of my students. I want to live next door to you. But that takes time.”

According to Hill, students were supposed to have monthly therapy, but from November 2018 to January 2019, UPrep had no therapist. She had four counselors: a special education counselor, a social worker, a middle school counselor and a high school counselor. However, she said she believes none of those can replace a therapist. 

Some seniors prepared to graduate, only to find they hadn’t completed the credits required to get a diploma. Academically achieving students couldn’t take advanced classes because of a teacher shortage, and Hill said she could not get permission to have them take online classes through other schools. 

Though she had an assistant principal, Hill said she was sometimes the only administrator in the school and at times there were no security guards present. 

In April 2019, Hill said she broke up a fight between two UPrep students at school, tearing her ACL in the process. It took her a year and a half to recover from the injury physically, but the damage it did to her relationship with UPrep was irreparable. 

Pugh was unable to comment on Hill’s assertions about her time at UPrep. 

After a poor performance review in spring 2019, Hill transferred to one of the district’s K-5 schools, but said she never entered the building and officially left the district in April 2020. 

“UPrep in its current form is a ‘patchwork’ of what it was promised to be."

— The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2019

Graf came to UPrep in July 2020, in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic and during more than a year of virtual learning. He couldn’t meet students in the halls, but made home visits to connect with them. 

Even once in-person learning returned, staff shortages due to quarantine guidelines ruled out normalcy for a while. Now, coming back for his third year — the first third-year principal since Horne — Graf hopes to bring a sense of stability to UPrep. 

Graf said his relationship with the district’s administration has been positive and supportive, though he knows that hasn’t always been the case for UPrep principals.

“Many of the previous principals really had a rough ride here, and it was not a positive professional experience for them,” Graf said.

Graf said he believes UPrep is sufficiently funded, as it receives Title I federal funding and state funding as a Comprehensive Support and Improvement school. 

Graf said he needs more mental health resources, but said that reflects more of a societal than a district problem. Growing up in the Hill District, Graf said so many of UPrep’s students have lived through trauma. Last year, two graduates of the class of 2022 were shot and killed. Young people in the Hill District have also been victims of nonfatal gun violence that plagues their community. 

“The beat just goes on,” Graf said. 

According to Graf, UPrep is at a “tipping point” of opportunity. As the city advances development of the Lower Hill and Pitt expands its campus toward the Hill District, he hopes to help students benefit from their neighborhood’s development. 

“You're beginning to see … kind of the seeds of an economic transformation in the neighborhood,” said Graf. He wants to ready his students “to take advantage of it, rather than have it take advantage of them.”

UPrep has finally realized its plan for one-to-one technology and distributes Wi-Fi hotspots to students to take home — “one of the unintended positive benefits of the pandemic,” Graf said. Since 2020, in-school technology has also improved. Instead of “old-school” projectors and a dysfunctional computer lab, Graf said the school now boasts 75-inch touchscreen computers and a maker space with 3D printers, coding kits, VR goggles and more. 

UPrep offers two technical education programs, one in early childhood education and another in entertainment technology. Through the PNC Partner Up program, students learn life and career skills and may receive full-time job offers for when they graduate. And while Graf doesn’t run UPrep as a university preparatory school, he encourages students who want to pursue higher education, for example by coordinating student visits to Carnegie Mellon University and Pitt, as well as field trips as far as Washington, D.C., to see Georgetown, American and Howard universities. 

The D.C. field trip was “amazing” for students, Brandon-Walden said, especially because it was financially accessible. 

“[The students] didn't have to pay for their meals, they didn't have to pay for their hotel room,” Brandon-Walden said. “That's a total difference from the private institution that Chloe had to pay for tuition for — any field trip, anything that they take part in, you have to pay for everything.”

Tia Herring, another UPrep parent, said she sees lots of opportunities offered at the school, including robotics and coding programs that her two sons — Antonio in seventh grade and Malaciah in eighth grade — take part in weekly. 

“I think Mr. Graf is doing a phenomenal job,” Herring said. “I just hope … that they actually extend to the kids things that are up-and-coming in the world, with the change in the world that's happening right now. So technology and nursing and medical technology and maybe even investment … and entrepreneurship.”

But she also said not many other students take part in these programs, which she takes as a sign that UPrep parents need to be more present and involved. 

“It can't be all on just the staff,” Herring said. “It has to be a collaborative thing with the parents as well as you know, the teachers and the counselors and you know, the principal. Like, everyone has to actually work together.”

Pitt’s involvement with UPrep now mainly centers around dual enrollment courses. Three courses — in rhetoric, social justice, and history — are offered as part of Pitt professor Esohe Osai’s Justice Scholars Institute [JSI] program in which students take college courses in high school through a social justice lens. They complete college readiness programming, visit Pitt’s campus and participate in their own research.

“The students tend to be, I think, inspired by this idea that they're Pitt students,” Osai said. “You have a Pitt ID number, you have a Pitt transcript coming at the end of the year, and that's going to be a game changer for some students who maybe have never been told that they were college bound or college material.”

Osai said both the district and Pitt are trying to support underserved high schools, and she is grateful for the support — including funding — her program has already gotten. 

“Could they do more? Yes,” Osai said. “But I can say the effort’s been made to work with us and to make sure this is a collaborative opportunity for the students in the district.”

Besides JSI, Graf said Pitt stays involved with the school in smaller ways: visits from Pitt cheerleaders and band, communication with the university through a community site manager and extracurricular programs hosted at Pitt’s Community Engagement Center. 

Unlike 2008, when Pitt gave UPrep more special attention, much of the university’s involvement at the school now comes from programs open to other schools around Pittsburgh. JSI, the former Heinz Fellows program, the Center for Urban Education’s Summer Educator Forum, the Hill District CEC and the High-Impact Retired Teachers of Black and Brown Children program can all benefit UPrep, but are also open to other schools. No Pitt programs provide special help to UPrep.   

“The Hill District deserves top-flight schools, too.”

— The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Editorial Board, 2019

UPrep’s original vision has not played out as planned, but Graf maintains that he believes in his school. 

Between classes, you can find him fist-bumping and making conversation with his students in the hallways, and they pop in and out of his office to ask him questions throughout the day. Over and over again, he emphasizes school culture and student self-confidence, and he isn’t giving up hope on UPrep. 

“There are pockets of excellence here,” Graf said. “There have been pockets of excellence here even before I arrived, and that's something that I've come to believe in any organization, no matter what the current state of it is: There are people that are doing excellent things.”

Then again, the Hill District has heard this before. In 2014, school director Tony Esoldo said UPrep had “dramatically changed.” In 2016, Horne “[sensed] a culture change,” and in 2017, he said things were “different” and “better.” In 2019, the school board passed a resolution promising “a planning year for success” for UPrep. Now, in 2023, the jury's out yet again on whether UPrep is finally finding its footing. 

*PublicSource receives funding from The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments. 

Alexandra Ross is a student journalist in her senior year at the University of Pittsburgh and can be reached at anr204@pitt.edu or @AlexandraNRoss on Twitter.

This story was fact-checked by Abigail Nemec-Merwede.

The post UPrep’s resets: A school meant to bring Pitt’s resources to Hill students goes back to the drawing board appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

This story was produced and co-published in collaboration with The Pitt News.

Pittsburgh’s ‘eds and meds’ are economic drivers. But their tax status largely passes the bill for government to the rest of us. Explore the series.

When she lived in the University of Pittsburgh’s Litchfield Towers, student resident Emily James witnessed city EMS workers tend to a student who was found by a resident assistant slurring her words and vomiting. 

Former resident Manoj Kuppusamy saw EMS workers carry an unconscious student out of the dorm last fall and city police detain a person in the building’s lobby in the spring.

Gabe Wilson, who has lived in the three-dorm complex often referred to as “Towers” for two years, said city police and paramedics are a familiar presence there, for what often seem like fairly minor reasons.

The City of Pittsburgh, which supplies the services, gets a lot less in return than it would if the same incidents occurred in a typical apartment building.

Pitt and other major nonprofits use city services, but unlike residents, they largely do not pay the property taxes that are crucial to funding them. And 911 calls to the towers, the largest cluster of dorms on Pitt’s main campus, exemplify this dynamic. 

Between May 2021 and the end of April 2022, there were 146 calls to the Allegheny County 911 Center regarding incidents at 3990 Fifth Ave., the location of the towers, according to public records obtained by PublicSource and The Pitt News. The incidents – sometimes more than five a day – were mostly medical issues including those characterized as overdoses, abnormal breathing and unconsciousness, but included fire alarms, welfare checks and elevator rescues.

The towers, which house more than 1,800 students across three buildings, are tax-exempt. The property is currently assessed at about $45 million and would bring about $363,000 to the city each year if the address was taxable.

The city has a responsibility to provide municipal services regardless of a property owner’s tax status. But it has also faced a growing, largely tax-exempt nonprofit presence and has relied on federal pandemic relief to balance its budget. Now, some public safety bureaus – and taxpayers, as local officials would argue – are feeling the effects of the financial constraints.   

"Quite simply, the cost of city government falls too heavily on our residents,” City Controller Lamb said in an Aug. 19 statement calling for greater contributions from the major nonprofits. “While ‘eds & meds’ undoubtedly provide a benefit to the region, they rely heavily on city resources: public safety, infrastructure, and sanitation, among other essential services.”

Jonathan Atkinson, a Pittsburgh paramedic and the leader of the paramedics’ union, said the heavy volume of calls involving university residence halls can stretch EMS thin and impact the entire city’s coverage. He said during some shifts for units covering Oakland and nearby areas, the majority of calls are alcohol-related.

“This has a ripple effect throughout the city because if a unit is taking a drunk kid to the hospital when they get another call, another unit from another district has to come in to take that call,” Atkinson said. “And they’re coming in from farther away, so it’s a longer response time. And then another unit may have to cover for that unit, so there’s a snowball effect.”

The Pitt Police and campus security respond to all 911 calls where authorities notify the university, and though city police, EMS and fire may assist, not all calls result in city services being used, a spokesperson for Pitt wrote in an email. Campus police, residence life staff and security guards monitor and respond to incidents on campus, including at Towers.

“The University works with the city, Oakland residents, and local partners to support a safe environment, and is committed to the safety of the campus community,” the spokesperson said. 

Equipment needs and budget constraints

The fire and EMS bureaus in particular have grappled with equipment needs as the city tries to wrangle funds from its tax-exempt giants. 

Both bureaus have aging emergency vehicle fleets, and as of February, the EMS bureau needed nine new ambulances for 2023, according to a report on city government commissioned by The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments*. The bureau typically receives three new ambulances a year, but none were ordered in 2021 or 2022 due to budget constraints. 

“By not receiving any new [Advanced Life Support] units for two years and no adjunct vehicles, it increases the need and cost into the next year,” EMS Chief Ronald Romano wrote in an email to the report’s consultants. “Frontline fleet continues to age and increase in mileage, and the spare trucks age also, causing breakdowns and prolonged out-of-service time while switching.” 

Fire Chief Darryl Jones said in late 2021 that five of the bureau’s frontline fleet of fire trucks are more than 11 years old, while the bureau prefers to have frontline trucks be 10 years old or newer. Pittsburgh’s 2022 budget set aside funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to pay for two new pumper trucks for the fire bureau.

The city’s fire chief, EMS chief and public safety director all declined to be interviewed for this story. PublicSource asked the Department of Public Safety to allow firefighters at Station 14, near Pitt’s campus, to talk about the types of incidents they respond to at the towers and the needs of their station, but instead the department provided a statement regarding how the fire and EMS bureaus respond to incidents at nonprofits.

"Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire and Pittsburgh EMS respond to all nonprofits such as the University of Pittsburgh, as well as churches and other [tax-exempt] entities in the city in the same manner they respond to all emergencies — without hesitation — when called,” Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt wrote in the emailed statement. 

Legit calls or unneeded ‘snowball effect?’

James, a Pitt student who previously lived in the towers, said the city’s EMS team arrived quickly after the RA found the student vomiting and slurring her words last fall. They were on the scene for about 15 to 20 minutes, she said, and they asked the student questions and determined whether she needed to go to the hospital. In the end, the medical team decided the student did not need further medical attention and did not take her to the hospital. 

While she believes the university needs to rely on emergency services to ensure the health and safety of its students, she thinks it’s only fair for Pitt to pay taxes for the emergency services that it uses from the city. 

“They’re definitely aware that they're going to need to use those resources, so I think they should be paying the taxes that contribute to keeping those resources available for them if they're going to use them,” James said. “When you have as many students and staff as [Pitt] does, I think it's fair to pay taxes.”

Kuppusamy does not consider it unfair for Pitt to avoid paying property taxes despite its use of city services, especially because the university operates its own police force and insurance companies reimburse EMS for transports. (The city receives about $13 million annually for EMS services, but spends double that amount to operate the bureau). 

“As a Pitt student, I think that it's fine,” Kuppusamy said. “I think that the level that we're using the resources isn't a lot, and we do have Pitt Police.” 

The Pitt Police are the third-largest police force in the county, and officers often support city police off campus and serve as first responders to emergency calls in Oakland, the Pitt spokesperson said.

Students differ on whether their peers have overused city services.

Kuppusamy hasn’t seen students recklessly or needlessly bringing emergency services to the building. 

Wilson, though, said he has seen the fire department and EMS respond to multiple incidents that did not appear to be emergencies. 

He recalled that public safety personnel were called after a student forgot to add water to their microwaveable mac and cheese and said firefighters and the police showed up after he smelled smoke in the building and texted his RA.

“I just remember, I was sitting there and studying and then realized it smelled like smoke so I was opening my window, but it didn't seem to be coming from outside and I was very confused," Wilson said. "Later on, the firefighters, the cops, and I'm not sure about EMS, I remember they showed up and had to search the rooms." 

PILOTS or payments for services?

As students settle back into the towers, Pittsburgh’s fiscal watchdog is calling on Pitt and the city’s other major nonprofits to make greater financial contributions through payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements, or PILOTs. If the five largest nonprofits entered a PILOT for 25% of their property tax liability, the city would receive an extra $8.6 million a year. 

“Unfortunately, none of the ‘Big Five’ institutions have adequate PILOT agreements in place.  This is unacceptable,” Lamb said in the statement, calling out UPMC specifically but also referring to Pitt, Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University and Highmark/Allegheny Health Network. “City residents should not be expected to bear the financial burden of city operations when the region’s largest employers pay next to nothing.”

In a May report, Lamb and former Acting County Controller Tracy Royston recommended that the city and county negotiate PILOTs based on the value of city services the nonprofits use. 

Lamb  also noted in an interview that PILOT agreements should discount the services and community benefits that nonprofits like Pitt provide. 

“We talked about how many times police respond to a call in Oakland. The fact of the matter is the University of Pittsburgh has a police force, and they're helping us deal with a lot of those kinds of issues. So those kinds of things have to be discounted,” Lamb said of potential PILOT agreements.

Mayor Ed Gainey, who ran in 2021 on the promise of getting major nonprofits to contribute more to the city, said this year he has conducted private talks with leaders of UPMC and AHN. He and his spokesperson have repeatedly declined to comment on the substance of the talks or how long they will continue, and did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Gainey announced in July that the city will fully remove itself from the OnePGH Fund, which was former Mayor Bill Peduto’s plan to get nonprofits to contribute to city projects through a third-party nonprofit.

In the meantime, a new crop of Pitt students has settled into the towers as the academic year begins, likely bringing with it renewed demand for city services. 

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org. 

Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org and on Twitter @chwolfson.

Alexandra Ross is a student journalist studying at the University of Pittsburgh and a senior staff writer at The Pitt News. She can be reached at anr204@pitt.edu.

Punya Bhasin is a freelance journalist in Pittsburgh and the news editor for The Pitt News. She can be reached at punya13b@gmail.com.

This story was fact-checked by Abigail Nemec-Merwede.

The post Medical emergencies, mac-and-cheese mishaps and elevator rescues: Pitt dorms draw city services, but should the university help fund them?  appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.