To almost no one’s surprise, the Pittsburgh School Board rescinded a deal with Teach For America that was approved by the previous board in a November lame-duck session.
The deal that would have spent $750,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to hire new district teachers from Teach For America was killed by the same 6-2 vote that initially approved it.
The contract would have allowed the district to hire up to 30 recruits a year for three years. Proponents of the move, including Superintendent of Schools Linda Lane, argued the New York-based company could provide a more racially diverse pool of candidates to work in schools that get almost no applicants.
Those opposed, including several current teachers who testified at a public hearing prior to the new vote, said the teach for America recruits did not receive enough training. School Board member Regina Holley, herself a former district principal, summed up those sentiments by referring to the recruits as “microwave teachers.”
Mark Brentley Sr. voted for it originally so he could bring it up again to vote against it in the new session.
“They probably would have found a way to do it anyway because it was just bad. The Gates folks have been trying to privatize schools across the country for a while,” he said. “I don’t think there is any leeway to repurpose that funding, but I’ve never gotten a straight answer on that. It would be nice.”
But Brentley and the new board didn’t stop there. It also voted to kill a scheduled public hearing on closing the Woolslair Elementary School in Lawrenceville, something the outgoing board also approved in its last meeting. With no public hearing, there can be no closing.
“I think there was a level of spite from the lame-duck board in ramming that stuff through despite calls to wait. So that was one way to look at,” said Brentley. “But by even putting it out there, there’s no guarantee that the 100 kids in Woolslair would end up at Arsenal as they project. There has to be more in our toolbox than closing schools and cutting staff.”
Brentley also floated the idea that the district should acquire new property—specifically the bankrupt August Wilson Center for African American Culture. He sees it as a perfect adjunct to the CAPA middle school and high school.
Asked how the district with a projected $50 million budget deficit by the end of 2015 can afford to spend another $7 million to buy the building out of receivership, Brentley asked how can they not?
“We have suburban kids paying full freight to attend CAPA and we have waiting lists at both the middle and high schools, it is our highest academically performing school—we can’t afford not look at it,” he said. “We could keep the name alive in a perfectly synergistic way.”
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