A Rust Belt Saga...

Back from an extended vacation... Let's get back to work.

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Today's post pertains to a rust belt saga that is unfolding in Pittsburgh's Mon Valley. A small school district (representing two communities) is running out of money and its schools are suffering.  A charter school wants to open in the district.  The district is fighting the charter school.  The lawyers have been at it for 3 years. The media is following the story, but is focusing on the lawyers, not the students. 

This is what the end game looks like in a public education scenario when towns and families have been destroyed by the loss of jobs; and by a state education system that places huge demands for test results, but provides negligible support for needy school districts. This is what happens in a class based society. Haves and have nots. This is what happens when we turn on each other.

Sto-Rox is a small school district (about 1400 students) that combines two communities: Stowe Township and Mckees Rocks.  They are located west of Pittsburgh on the Ohio River. The school district is high in poverty (around 80%) and low in student achievement (in the lowest 15% in Pennsylvania.) Most everyone would agree that Sto-Rox is struggling.  





Propel Schools is a highly successful non-profit charter school organization in the Pittsburgh area.  They currently manage 9 schools in the Mon Valley, all in poor communities.  The Mon Valley is the area on the Monongahela and Ohio rivers where the steel industry thrived during the 20th century.  In 2011 Propel Schools proposed a charter school to the Sto-Rox school board.

The district turned the charter down (November 2011) stating that accepting the charter "would bankrupt the district." Basically the decision had everything to do with finances and little to do with educational programming.  Jeremy Resnick, the founder and developer of Propel Schools, stepped back and attempted to engage the district in a radical idea.  What if the district worked in partnership with the charter school to run public schools in Sto-Rox.  This would give the district an opportunity to start from scratch, use research based best practices and work with a proven organization that had a successful track record with communities similar to theirs.  And working with a charter school could actually save the district money.  The school board began to discuss this concept with Propel and considered the possibility in the summer of 2012.  

This, of course, got the attention of both the local and national media. The local media published an article entitled Struggling Sto-Rox School District Faces Bleak Choices.   Diane Ravitch wrote about the Sto-Rox/Propel situation in her blog raising the question of a charter school driving a district into bankruptcy. The teachers union was clearly against the Propel alternative. There has always been a strong and active labor union movement in Pittsburgh. Was this an attempt to simply break the union... or was this an attempt to bring better education to these two communities?

The board decided against working with Propel and turned the charter down for a second time in September of 2012. Propel's next move was to appeal the district's charter ruling to Pennsylvania's Charter Appeals Board.  The appeal was filed in the Fall of 2012 and it was hoped that the state would rule quickly.  It was business as usual during the 2012-13 school year.

In May 2013, the Sto-Rox superintendent, who was fighting against the Propel charter proposal, left for a new job in a neighboring district.  The district felt like their were in the middle of the perfect storm - they lost their superintendent, they were in debt, and the charter school appeal was hanging over their head.  Teachers were unsure about their future employment.  And students were left hanging about their future in general.  Ah yes... the students.  There really was not a lot of talk about what was happening to the students.

No one seemed to ask the question of whether Propel could improve the schools in Sto-Rox and raise student achievement. The common measure that we have to compare Sto-Rox schools versus Propel schools is the PSSA Exam.  The chart to the right provides that comparison from the 2012 PSSA. As one can see, Propel has substantially higher test scores in all of its schools and in all grade levels (except for one - Braddock Hills 11th grade.)  In 2013, Sto-Rox School District's ranking was 487th out of 498 Pennsylvania school districts for student academic achievement. It has been that low for the last 7 years.

In July of 2014, nearly two years after the board turned down the charter, the state reversed the district's decision and approved the charter.  This meant that Propel could open a charter school in the Sto-Rox school district for 800 students.  Propel's next hurdle is to build a new school building in the district or reach an agreement to lease an existing school building.  The planned opening for the new school is September, 2015. Or so Propel thought.

This month the Board of Directors of the Sto-Rox School District petitioned the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, to stay the ruling of the Charter Appeal Board.  Sto-Rox lodges another appeal to block Propel-West (9/18/2014).  The suit makes the argument that the charter plan proposed by Propel does not fulfill all of the requirements set out by Pennsylvania's charter school law.  It points out that Propel has yet to demonstrate they have a school building.  And it makes the case that opening this 800 student charter school would bankrupt the district.  The real issue was clearly articulated in the Post-Gazette in the words of the district's solicitor and Propel's founder.

District solicitor Ira Weiss said the charter school could drain too many students from the district. Sto-Rox has about 1,400 students; Propel-West plans to enroll up to 800 students in K-12.

Priority would go to Sto-Rox residents, with any remaining seats filled by students from other districts. Not all of the grades would start at once.

“You’re administering the death blows to this district,” Mr. Weiss said.  “This district cannot lose that many students. If the goal of the charter school law is purportedly to give parents and students a choice, I do not know how this district can survive as we know it with a charter school like this there.”

Jeremy Resnick, executive director/​founder of Propel Schools Foundation, sees the charter school as an opportunity.  “Sto-Rox can be much more than it is,” he said. “It’s time for people that believe that to start working together toward that future. Propel is going to be a part of that future.”  Vowing that Propel isn't going away, Mr. Resnick said, “I would say that you can’t bury your head in the sand forever. It’s time for leadership in the Sto-Rox School District to talk seriously with Propel about what the future is going to be.”

I would suggest the "death blows" to this district were struck 30 years ago by the loss of the steel mills, by the migration of the middle class to the suburbs, by the lack of support from the federal, state and local governments for quality education and by a society that doesn't care about the have nots.   Sto-Rox is dying.  It has been for decades.  It's academic rank is 487th out of 498 school districts in Pennsylvania.  The lawyers will not move Sto-Rox towards a brighter future; nor will the charter school giving up and leaving the district to the status quo.

A brighter future can only be imagined by leaders, visionaries, an empowered staff and a focus solely on the needs of the students.  I would suggest that Propel is what Sto-Rox needs.  It certainly is the only group with a successful track record that wants to help this community. Yet the board keeps up the fight in an attempt to revive a school district that suffered a death blow 30 years ago.

A rust belt saga.