City School Reforms to Cost $26 Million (PA)

August 3, 2010

The Pittsburgh Public Schools plan to reorganize the current model of secondary education and to implement a new teacher evaluation and compensation model that will cost about $26 million over the next four years, officials said.

The tab, for the most part, reflects the operational costs at the six schools mostly affected by the district’s plan.

Implementation of the initiatives is largely dependent on how well the city schools will do in securing money under a new system of federal education funding.

"The feds have completely changed how we interact with them," said schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt, who presented the financial projections of his reform agenda to the school board on Monday.

The federal government now requires school districts to show how they plan to improve their persistently low-performing schools as a precondition for federal funding.

That funding is mostly driven through programs like the Race to the To p competition and School Improvement Grants.

In the second round of the Race to the Top competition, Pennsylvania is one of 19 finalists vying for as much as $400 million in education funding.

In Pittsburgh, the district’s application for federal monies– $15.3 million in Race to the Top competition; $39.5 million in the Teacher Incentive Fund and $29.5 million in School Improvement Grants — is supported by its plans to reorganize secondary schools and to change how teachers are hired, trained, evaluated, and paid.

The district in June proposed a sweeping reorganization of some East End schools, including the closure of Pittsburgh Peabody High School, relocation of the International Baccalaureate program to the Peabody building and creation of two single-gender academies at Pittsburgh Westinghouse High School.

The transformation of Westinghouse high school into two single-gender academies will cost about $5.9 million.

The Homewood school building, which underwent a $25 million renovation in 2001, will also require capital improvements of about $1million, officials said. The school will be expanded into a sixth- through 12th-grade building and restructured to house the two academies, with a total capacity of about 1,100 students.

The plan also includes a partnership between Pittsburgh Oliver High School and the Community College of Allegheny County to create four academies offering various career and technical education choices. The partnership will create what will be known as the Gateway Center to the Promise, serving all students in the North Side feeder pattern.

The proposed Gateway Center to the Promise, which will be housed at Pittsburgh Oliver, focusing on an ea rly college entry program and enhanced career and technical education, is budgeted to cost about $4.7 million to implement over the next four years, officials said.

In addition, the district unveiled plans last month to open a teacher training academy at Pittsburgh Brashear High School and Pittsburgh King PreK-8 next year– a key component of the Empowering Effective Teachers Plan, which is part of the $40 million grant the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded to the district last year.

The teacher academy, which would open in the 2011-12 academic year, is projected to cost about $5.9 million over four years at Brashear and about $4.8 million at King. The elementary school would also incur capital improvements totalling about $3.3 million.

To qualify for federal funding under Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants programs, school districts must adopt one of four actions– transformation, turnaround, restart or closure — in schools the state names as among the lowest performing in the state.

Perry and Langley high schools have been placed in the category of schools to be transformed. That will include implementation of aspects of the Empowering Effective Teachers Plan, like a new research-based model for teacher evaluation known as RISE and the creation of a Promise Readiness Corps.

The readiness corps will assist a team of teachers who will shepherd the same group of students in ninth and 10th grades. The implementation of both programs will cost about $2.8 million at Perry and about $1.9 million at Langley over a four-year period.

The school board is expected to vote on approval of the district’s reform agenda later this month.