Black board members criticize school reorganization plan Celeste Taylor, a Point Breeze resident and community activist whose two children attended city schools, said safety concerns were among the reasons some parents view the plan with skepticism.Solutions I'm hoping to inject into the discussion include:
Some parents fear movement of children across neighborhood lines would provoke gang violence or turf disputes, while others worry about younger students encountering drug activity or high school students on walks to new schools. Without addressing safety concerns, these parents say, children won't do better in school and Mr. Roosevelt's goal will be unmet.
-- Re-hire the crossing guards as part of the city's budget, not the school district's budget.
-- Re-tool the crossing guards to make them more repsonsive to enformcement matters.
-- Re-tool the high schools in the east end so that Peabody becomes a city-wide magnet as a single gender school -- as does Westinghouse.
-- Keep Schenley High School at Schenley for the long-term. But, to save money and to insure safe conditions for students and staff in the rehab phase -- move the Schenley campus for one acadmeic year (September 2007 to June 2008) to another location. One possible alternative location, as suggested by the present Schenley High School Principal, is South High School, recently closed.
-- Migrate all the city leage sports teams into the WPIAL, soon. We need to have our city kids face suburban competition day-in-and-day-out so that they raise their expectations and targets for performance in healthy pursuits.
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Black board members criticize school reorganization plan
Final vote tonight on Roosevelt's proposal
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
By Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh city schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt's districtwide reorganization plan, which is likely to be approved tonight, has come under sharp criticism for unfairly burdening minority and poor students .
M. Gayle Moss, president of the Pittsburgh NAACP, has called the plan "racist" because it would occur "on the backs of our children."
Two of the school board's three black members -- Randall Taylor and Mark Brentley Sr. -- have rejected the plan.
Questioning the benefit of expanded elementary schools for black students and concerned the district would be doing too much too fast, Mr. Taylor called the reorganization proposal "remarkably, if not stunningly, a bad plan."
But the criticism at Wednesday's education committee meeting didn't faze Mr. Roosevelt, who developed the plan to cut costs and turn around academic achievement. Mr. Roosevelt argued that maintaining the status quo was a "far, far greater risk" than the uncertainty of change.
"We're already failing the children, Mr. Taylor," he said.
But as the exchange with Mr. Taylor showed, he's had difficulty winning the black community's support for the plan. Black students make up about 67 percent of those who would be affected by the changes.
Parents, black and white, have lamented the potential loss of neighborhood schools, opposed the elimination or disruption of programs and complained about students taking longer walks or bus rides to new schools. In Mr. Roosevelt's view, such concerns rank a distant second to raising test scores.
He believes this goal should win support in the black community because of the district's racial achievement gap. On standardized tests, performance of black students in reading and math lags that of whites at every grade level.
Nearly 65 percent of black fifth-graders missed the proficiency mark on last year's state reading test, and 55 percent did so in reading. About 64 percent and 68 percent of black eighth-graders missed the proficiency standard in reading and math, respectively. About 69 percent and 83 percent of black eleventh-graders missed proficiency in reading and math, respectively.
Overall, 31 schools, many in black neighborhoods, did not meet state and federal achievement standards last year. Mr. Roosevelt wants to close or restructure lower-performing schools and concentrate students in better ones.
Some leaders in the black community -- Esther L. Bush, president and chief executive officer of the Urban League of Pittsburgh, and Tim Stevens, founder of Black Political Empowerment Project, for example -- are standing behind the plan.
Some black parents are reluctant to send children to schools in other neighborhoods and wonder whether change will bring anything but that.
Celeste Taylor, a Point Breeze resident and community activist whose two children attended city schools, said safety concerns were among the reasons some parents view the plan with skepticism.
Some parents fear movement of children across neighborhood lines would provoke gang violence or turf disputes, while others worry about younger students encountering drug activity or high school students on walks to new schools. Without addressing safety concerns, these parents say, children won't do better in school and Mr. Roosevelt's goal will be unmet.
Before implementing the plan, said the Rev. Patricia Mason, pastor of Hazelwood Community Presbyterian Church, Mr. Roosevelt should launch an initiative to unite neighborhoods so students rubbing elbows for the first time will be more likely to get along.
Mr. Taylor said he believes middle schools are better options for black students socially and educationally than expanded elementary schools with sixth, seventh and eighth grades. But Mr. Roosevelt said black communities in other cities have pushed for expanded elementary schools, which are said to promote good behavior because of a family atmosphere.
Mr. Taylor said the plan also raises equity concerns for black and white students: Some students would be left in small schools, he said, while others would be concentrated in large ones. He said he's concerned that older students in expanded elementary schools wouldn't have the same quality computer labs and libraries as peers at the district's remaining middle schools.
Like Ms. Moss, Mr. Brentley complained that minorities and the poor will bear the brunt of the disruptions. But Mr. Roosevelt views the reorganization differently, saying the shakeup will benefit the disadvantaged children most in need of better educational opportunities.
Mr. Brentley said preferential treatment has been given to groups -- Schenley High School supporters, for example -- with political influence that black groups lack.
Mr. Roosevelt initially proposed closing Schenley because of capital costs, not because it had excess capacity or low achievement like other schools he had recommended closing. When supporters questioned whether Schenley's needs were as great as two architects said, Mr. Roosevelt formed a task force to study the issue and later pulled Schenley from the plan.
While denying favoritism to Schenley, Mr. Roosevelt said some students -- those in accelerated learning academies -- would get preferential treatment. He said these students, many from disadvantaged neighborhoods, will have more money spent on them than peers at other schools.
"I don't think the plan is on the backs of anybody, Mr. Brentley," he said at the education committee meeting.
(Joe Smydo can be reached at jsmydo@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1548.)
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