Schoolhouse Rocks

From the P-G-est P-G that ever P-G'd:

The Pittsburgh Public Schools board has approved changes aimed at making the district more financially sustainable, including closing seven schools, opening a new elementary school, eliminating single-gender classes at Pittsburgh Westinghouse 6-12, selling two school buildings and changing some school feeder patterns.

The school assignment changes approved Tuesday night are for the next school year.

Ultimately, the changes are part of a plan that calls for eliminating about 400 school-based and central office positions to stem the district's growing operating deficit...

The two schools which the board agreed to sell are Pittsburgh Reizenstein in Shadyside to Walnut Capital and RCG Longview for $5.4 million, and the Ridge Avenue building on the North Side to the Light of Life Ministries for $1.1 million.

The Reizenstein developers plan to demolish the building and replace it with a $119 million development that includes housing as well as office and retail space.

The board rejected bids on Schenley in Oakland, Belmar in Homewood, Madison in the Hill District, Mann on the North Side and Morningside.

The new K-8 school approved Wednesday will be in the building now housing Pittsburgh Langley High School in Sheraden, which will close at the end of this school year. Langley High students will be reassigned to Pittsburgh Brashear in Beechview...

In addition to Langley High School, schools that will close at the end of June are:

• Pittsburgh Oliver High School on the North Side, with students assigned to nearby Pittsburgh Perry, which will continue its magnet program open to students throughout the city. Some students will travel to the Oliver building for career and technology programs as well as for JROTC.

• Fort Pitt PreK-5 in Garfield, with students assigned to Pittsburgh Arsenal PreK-5 in Lawrenceville, Woolslair K-5 in Lawrenceville and Fulton PreK-5 in Highland Park.

• Pittsburgh Schaeffer K-8 in Crafton Heights, with students assigned to the new K-8 school in the Langley building. Both the Schaeffer and Sheraden buildings that housed Schaeffer K-8 will close.

• Pittsburgh Stevens K-8 in Elliott, with students assigned to the new K-8 in Langley, Westwood K-5 and South Hills 6-8 in Beechview...

So, if you're counting: that's one high school left on the Northside, none left in the Western neighborhoods, and the elimination of 3 grade schools in the West (taking the number down to 3, I believe).

Now, I don't begrudge the BoE for reducing school space; a declining population necessitates fewer capital resources (i.e., you don't need as many school buildings). Further, I don't necessarily want to get into the discussion of whether neighborhood schools are the model that Pittsburgh should be trying to use; I'd say that there are benefits to that and benefits to larger feeder patterns.

What I'm concerned about, however, is the larger amount of real estate that that's under the control of the BoE that now going to be vacant. These are now, like Schenley H.S. before them, going to be large, vacant, money sucking holes in the Schools District's budget; while there may not be students in there, you still have to light them, heat them, secure them, and make sure, in general, they don't fall down.

I guess my complaint here is that the BoE is making its decisions in a vacuum: the closing of these schools will have a long term effect on the economic conditions of several of these neighborhoods. Without a plan to figure out the next highest and best use for these properties, they will continue to sit as vacant, non-tax revenue generating properties. Now, you would hope that they would enter into this with some sort of end game that both divests themselves of these loser properties and helps out their colleagues in the City Government to generate some economic development.

But this is the School District; anything other than education is furthest from their minds.

Well, education is definitely in the top ten, anyway.

Anyway, my point is that as one of the major landowners of non-taxable properties in the City of Pittsburgh, I can only hope that the BoE has some sort of plan as to how they're going to deal with these properties.

My guess is that they don't and our School District taxes are going to go towards unnecessary expenses.

An Open Letter to Luke Ravenstahl

Hon. Luke Ravenstahl
414 Grant Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

Dear Mr. Mayor,

As you are undoubtedly aware, it is your responsibility, with the resignation of Ms. Heather Arnet, to appoint someone to fill the remainder of her School Board term. There are, assuredly, many people in the City that are qualified to fulfill the obligations of sitting on this illustrious public body. Indeed, the responsibilities inherent in this office are vast and... OK, let me cut through the bullshit: appoint me.

Look, you've seen the school board, right? Frankly, I don't think I would trust the lot of them to manage a school of fish, let alone a school of children, much less several dozen schools of children. I am quite literally surprised that cable news broadcasts of their meetings aren't interrupted for drool breaks.

Now, as you may have guessed (or may not have guessed), I am slightly more evolved than the typical drooling school board member and can at least form a cogent argument without flecks of spittle hitting Mark Roosevelt. I have some very interesting ideas regarding the sale of underutilized schools, the development of regionally specific curriculum, and figuring out a way to create school pizza that doesn't taste like cardboard.

But, more importantly, my overarching qualification is that I hate children. Well, not all children, just stupid children. I grew up in a time when playgrounds were made of metal, lawn darts were legal, and teachers thought it would be "fun" to play with mercury. Frankly, I think kids today need less coddling and more pummeling. It's the only way that they'll learn that the world is cold bleakness and not rainbow farting unicorns.

If nothing else, somebody needs to benefit from my sadism.

I hope you'll take me into consideration.

Sincerely

O
The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat.

Schenley pt Deux

And then there was this proposal from Councilman Otis "Am-I-Really-On-The-Stadium-Authority-Or-Not-Or-Should-I-Go-To-Norway?" from Mayberry to use the proceeds from selling off Reizenstein Middle School and using the the proceeds/taxes to fix Schenley, which isn't all it's really cracked up to be:

Back of the envelope:
$37.9 Million in taxes over 20 yrs works out to be about $1.895 million/year. Assuming the School District doesn't raise it's millage rate (13.92), that would logically be about $13.6 million in, apparently, housing sale on the Reizenstein site. As of 2000, over half of the structures in that census tract are valued at between $150,000 and $300,000, so I'm going to assume that everything that's built on the Reizenstein site will be worth $200,000 to be safe, which works out to be about 68 houses.

For comparison purposes Summerset at Frick Park is supposed to have 710 houses/condos/townhouses.

What this doesn't take into consideration is the construction of public roads, utilities, infrastructure, etc. and the cost to other City/County/State departments to provide these items.

And, of course, is this $37.9 million the aggregate amount of yearly payments over 20 years or is in the present value of those series of payments. I'm guessing aggregate value, so I figure that the real value of the series of tax payments is closer to $24 million (at a 5% discount rate) than $37.9 million.

Let us not forget that this all apparently assumes full collection of taxes for 20 years and that contractors have given Billy P. accurate numbers... because no contractor has ever low balled an estimate, ever.

But that's just me, my envelope, and about a six pack of Tröegs talking.

My Schenley Answer

In re: this post from Monsieur Briem.

The long term problem that exists for Schenley HS is summarized as follows: damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The asbestos issues, as Chris points out, is there "whether you tear down Schenley or not." Indeed, there are a whole slew of people over at Air Quality Control at the Health Department that will be closely monitoring any repairs, remediations, or demolitions which occur at the site. This does not come cheap. Renovation of the building itself may be more time consuming and difficult (thereby more costly) than just throwing through a wrecking ball, but in either case its going to be cheap. [I'd said it could easily cost as much to knock the building down (without asbestos) as it would cost to remove the asbestos alone.]

Now, with that in mind, if the School District decides that it wants to sell the building, the value is as follows:

Value without asbestos - Cost of asbestos = Total Value of Schenley HS

... More or less.

Any developer who is looking to rehabilitate the structure, do a quick calculation and figure out exactly the revenue that he expects to get out of the building, what the maximum loan term mortgage he can support, and back into how much he should be willing to purchase the building for.

To give cost comparisons, the South Hills High School renovation is $20 Million... and my guess is that there was plenty of public aid to making that work. I can only assume that Schenley will be at least that much, if down privately... meaning "on the cheap."

Of course, one of the problems for the District is that the longer that Schenley sits vacant, the more likely there will be long term mothballing costs (heating, security, etc.), which will slowly eat away at the BoE's budget anyway. Indeed, let us not forget that apparently many of the problems at Schenley were self inflicted, that is, poorly thought out facilities management which caused moisture, heating, and mold problems.

Given recent fluctuations in the real estate market, there is no guarantee that either a high sales price or a low price for asbestos remediation can be maintained.

Ultimately, the BoE will probably just sell the property for $1 like it has tried to do with so many of its vacant buildings.

And, who knows, it may even suffer the glorious fate of the erstwhile Syria Mosque.

Speshul Edookation

The Post-Gazette is reporting today that the Pittsburgh Public Schools is considering dropping the work "Public" from the name. From the article:

Superintendent Mark Roosevelt's staff unveiled the policy at a school board Education Committee meeting last night.

Under the policy, the district simply will call itself the "Pittsburgh Schools." The district's logo -- a pattern of circles, triangles and squares -- will still be used...

School board members offered little reaction to the policy, which does not require board approval.

By dropping "public" from its name, Randall Taylor said, the district might be able to avoid the negative attitude often associated with public schools.

Ms. Fischetti noted that suburban districts don't have "public" in their names, and a marketing consultant who helped develop the policy...

Personally, I think this is a far better plan the original proposal which would have just dropped the "L".

Still, it doesn't really go far enough. With the recent Act 47 unpleasantness, the mayoral gaffes, and the Pirates not being able to cobble together a friggin' season above .500, it may behoove the Pittsburgh Public Schools to drop the "Pittsburgh" part as well.

Moreover, with the No Child Left Behind debacle, school shootings, and physical collapsing at Schenley High, the word "Schools" ain't looking too positive either.

Might I suggest that the Pittsburgh Public School system just change its name to an unpronounceable symbol: ə.

Still, if they're going to start eliminating words with negative connotations, they should have started with "Board of Education"... reducing the name of that venerable body to "Of".

And there's your "ə".