More than 300 supporters and sponsors joined A+ Schools staff and volunteers to celebrate the organization’s 10 years of work of trying to improve academic conditions, especially for African-American students, in the Pittsburgh Public School system.
Of course, A+ Schools is best known for issuing an annual report card on achievement levels in all district schools, with breakdowns on race, gender, the achievement gap, and relative dropout rates.
Executive Director Carey Harris reflected on where the organization has been and where it is headed as it enters its second decade.
“But in the beginning I always had a vision of organizing and empowering parents,” said Harris. “And we’ve only really gotten to that in the last 2-3 years. We care about board, about finances (and) student achievement. We’re still monitoring all of that. But organizing parents, especially the Black parents who are under represented in sharing power—though they represent the largest number of kids–is our goal. We’re getting them a place at the table so they can be heard.”
The June 19 event, held at the Lexus Club in the CONSOL Energy Center, featured testimonials, and proclamations from Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and city council, County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and the PA House, courtesy of longtime supporter state Rep. Jake Wheatley, D-Hill, and was ably hosted by emcee Khari Mosley.
And since it was a birthday party, of sorts, there was food drink and cake and balloons. The evening also featured award presentations to some of the organization’s volunteers and parent activists.
A+ Schools was born amid the turmoil created when local foundations withdrew funding from the Pittsburgh Public Schools in 2003 because it did not appear to be improving educational results. Then Mayor Tom Murphy empanelled a commission, which among other things recommended a citizens’ alliance be formed. A+ Schools became that alliance and was launched in 2004.
“Our biggest challenge initially was establishing credibility—with the school board, with teachers and with parents,” Harris said. “And we did that by being careful to focus on facts and research.”
She said some of the group’s successes included getting school buses for children in Sheridan who had an excessive—and in the dark mornings of late fall—potentially dangerous walk to the reconfigured Langley K-8 School. More recently their parent partners have successfully petitioned the school board to have the proper number of teachers assigned to Faison K-8 at the beginning of the year, something that has not been the case in the last two years.
A+ Schools will issue its next district-wide report card in November.
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