Pittsburgh Public Schools announced Monday that it is recommending the closure of seven schools and six buildings, along with the creation of two new schools.

The schools that could close are: Miller PreK-5 in the Hill District, Fulton PreK-5 in Highland Park, Woolslair PreK-5 and Arsenal 6-8 in Lawrenceville and Manchester PreK-8 in Manchester, Allegheny 6-8 in the North Side and Sterrrett 6-8 in Point Breeze. All of those schools would close before the 2022-23 school year. Woolslair would close for the 2021-22 school year.

Some of the aforementioned buildings will be repurposed for students from other schools, while others will close. The district is closing six buildings in total: Woolslair, Fulton, Manchester, Miller’s McKelvey Building, the Morrow Primary Building and Montessori’s Friendship Building.

Also under the plan, two new schools, Career Exploration Middle School and Birth to 2nd Grade, will be located on the North Side.

“Our first priority remains opening schools for in-person instruction while assuring all our students are getting the educational support they need,“ said Superintendent Anthony Hamlet. “Even so, the covid-19 pandemic has ripped the band-aid off of the inequities in every school system, including Pittsburgh Public Schools. To succeed as a district and city — we must break from a legacy of inequity. We cannot and should not go back to the way things were.”

Interim Chief Operations Officer Mike McNamara said the moves would reduce excess capacity. As the enrollment has declined over the years to less than 23,000, and buildings have not closed in proportion, the district has been left with excess capacity of over 17,000. These cuts would reduce the figure of “empty seats” by 2,780.

“We understand that these are hard decisions to make,” McNamara said. “We are following the data to bring forward the best recommendations educationally for our students and fiscally for the city.”

McNamara described a complex reconfiguring and shuffling of students around the district in order to eliminate costly old buildings, consolidate programs and start new ones.

In the north region of the district, officials plan to close Allegheny 6-8 and Manchester PreK-5 – as well as the Morrow Primary Building and the Manchester building, while Allegheny PreK-5 will remain open.

The new Birth to 2nd Grade school in Northview will focus on early childhood education programs and building equity among students at an early age.

“The achievement gap starts at birth,” Chief of Staff Errika Fearby Jones said. “This is our way to try to be different and learn and figure out: How does a school district need to change in order to address that?”

McNamara said students from King K-2 and younger students from Northview Heights would be absorbed into the Birth to 2nd Grade school.

The Career Middle School will be located in the Oliver Citywide Academy Building and will take students from Allegheny 6-8, Arsenal 6-8, King 6-8, Manchester 6-8 and Morrow 6-8, McNamara said. Oliver Citywide students, meanwhile, will be moved – but the district is still in talks to decide where.

Additional changes in the north region of the district include feeding Manchester K-5 students to Allegheny K-5 and Morrow K-5 in Brighton Heights to the Rooney Building across the street.

In the south/west region, district officials propose moving middle school students at Brookline 6-8 to the Carmalt PreK-8 building, noting that while Brookline serves middle school students, it has elementary school amenities. This change would be implemented in the 2022-23 school year.

In the central/east region, the district will close Woolslair and its building, moving students to Arsenal K-5. Woolslair is one of the district’s oldest buildings, McNamara explained, has high operating costs and is in need of significant capital investment. Consolidating students in this region would provide “more programming and additional educational supports.”

Officials have also proposed reconfiguring Minadeo PreK-5, in Squirrel Hill, into a middle school that would receive students from Colfax and Sterrett. Both Colfax and Sterrett are small, McNamara said, and making a larger school would allow more programs. Minadeo, currently an elementary school, also recently received HVAC and lighting upgrades. Colfax would be reconfigured into a PreK-5 school. These changes would be implemented in 2022-23.

Once the Sterrett students have moved out of their building, district officials have suggested moving in students from Pittsburgh Montessori PreK-5. Their building, the Friendship Building, would then close. Like Woolslair, the Friendship Building requires significant renovations, as it’s lacking in ADA accessibility and updated HVAC.

The same goes for the Fulton PreK-5 building, which the district has proposed closing by the 2022-23 year. Fulton students will move partially to Sunnyside and partially to Feeder Pattern. Additionally, the district plans to close the McKelvey Building, currently housing Miller PreK-5 students, who will be consolidated with Weil PreK-5 in the same year.

McNamara said decisions about which buildings to close or repurpose were based on data and on the facility’s conditions and costs associated with it, as well as studies on their capacity and utilization. The majority of the buildings have low ratings when it comes to these factors, McNamara said, with an average age of 87 years old.

The district is grappling with a projected deficit of $39.4 million for 2021, and forecasts suggest it will be unable to pass a balanced budget for 2022. Without significantly reducing costs or bringing in new revenue this year, according to Chief Financial Officer Ron Joseph, the district will be unable to pay employees and creditors or pay for goods and services after it runs out of money in 2022.

Pittsburgh schools have also experienced years of enrollment decline, Joseph said, leading district officials to suggest consolidating. The consolidation will lead to the reduction and reconfiguring of school facilities, which could also lead to a reduction in teachers and staff.

The school board will be asked to open the public commentary period Tuesday at a Special Legislative Meeting. The earliest the board could vote on the proposed plan is at its May 26 legislative meeting, official said.

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