Volume 27 No. 9 September 2011
School closings and realignment proposed By Kelsey Shea
Photo by Kelsey Shea Kids pinned colorful pinwheels to the fence surrounding the construction site of Allegheny Public Square. See the brief on page 3.
Riverview soccer field will not be completed this year By Kelsey Shea When plans were proposed for a soccer field and recreation center in Riverview Park in 2003 as a part of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s city council campaign, the Northside assumed it would see the new stateof-the-art, all-weather turf facility within the following two years. Eight years later, after delays, debates and even an official groundbreaking last October, the completion date for the field is still up in the air, though city officials say it will not be completed at the end of this year, as originally planned. However, the Riverview Park field did hit its first major milestone in the past year this summer with the approval of its NPDES and Act 2 by the Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Protection. “The construction of the field was always contingent upon the finalization, submission and approval of Pa. Department of Environmental Protection permit requirements,” said Duane Ashley, director of operations for the City. “We were not permitted to commence with any site construction, nor were we able to secure our land operations permit via resolution of the Council of the City of Pittsburgh. To this end the field will not be completed this year.” The NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System), which ensures the safety of water discharge, was approved by the DEP on June 22 of this year, and the Act 2, which encourages and supports the reuse of contaminated land, was approved last month on August 10. Both permits were required
A large deficit, state budget cuts and decreasing enrollment at Pittsburgh Public Schools has led to a proposal that could close two Northside public schools in 2012. The Pittsburgh Public School District hopes to transform itself from a system of small schools with varied educational quality to a system with fewer but better schools that operate more cost efficiently. To do this, the school board proposed a plan that would close eight schools, including the Northside’s Oliver High School and Northview PreK-8. The plan proposes that Oliver’s 344 students move to Perry High School. Special education offices and the McNaugher Education Center would move into the Oliver building. Northview PreK-8 students would be divided and reassigned to Morrow PreK-8 and King PreK-8. No plans have been announced for Northview’s building. The plan also proposed that Brighton Heights’ Morrow Elementary split into a PreK-4 in the Morrow building with grades 5 through 8 in the Rooney building, which is currently not being used as a school. The earliest possible board vote on this proposal would be November 22, 2011. If approved, the plan would take effect for the 2012-2013 school year. The proposal is designed to decrease the estimated $41.2 million deficit that the district currently faces and to decrease the number of empty
See Realignment, page 10
See Riverview, page 7
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seats in Pittsburgh Public Schools from 10,191 to 5,902. “I think the thing that we want to emphasize is that, as many people know by now, we have a serious financial situation on our hands,” said Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Linda Lane. “We’re taking a number of steps to address the under-utilization of our schools and classrooms, and if this proposal passes, it will be the first portion of our plan to get our schools to be fiscally stable.” If the proposal passes, Perry High School will go from being a full magnet, where all students have applied and take more challenging classes, to a partial magnet, where the school will house magnetprogram students as well as regular feeder-pattern students. The district hopes that combining Oliver and Perry would give an advantage to kids at Oliver who Lane said are “capable and willing” to take more advanced classes that are not offered at Oliver because of its small enrollment. However, the district addressed that there would be challenges to merging Oliver and Perry. “You don’t lightly go about combining two high schools,” said Lane, who also said that if the proposal passed, measures would be taken to help smooth the transition and to work with the students to help them get to know and accept each other. Though Oliver High School currently has the smallest high school class sizes in the district, averaging 10 to 23 students per class, only 24.2 percent of students
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