State OKs expansion for charter school at Frick Park

City schools solicitor says he will appeal

The Environmental Charter School at Frick Park won its case before the state Charter School Appeal Board on Tuesday for an expansion that includes a high school and a second K-8 school.

But Ira Weiss, solicitor for Pittsburgh Public Schools, called Environmental Charter “fundamentally a private school being run with public dollars,” and said he’ll file an appeal with the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania as early as next month challenging the decision.

The city school board first rejected the charter plan in 2014, and the charter school made changes and resubmitted its request in August 2015. The school board denied it again in December of that year, and Environmental Charter appealed to the state in August and presented an argument to the charter appeal board Jan. 17. That body — which includes state Education Secretary Pedro Rivera — approved the plan 5-1.

Mitchell J. Yanyanin, a former Beaver County school board member and current member of the appeal board, voted against the plan. He said he agreed with Pittsburgh Public’s argument that ECS and its expansions would reflect what he called a “lack of diversity,” noting that siblings of those already enrolled re-ceive preference for admission.

Founded in 2008, Environmental Charter operates a K-8 school in two buildings: a lower school for grades K-3 in the former Park Place School and an upper school for grades 4-8 in the former Regent Square School.

“We’re excited to begin this new phase of growth, which will allow us to extend our unique programming to even more students and families in the city of Pittsburgh. We look forward to partnering with the Pittsburgh Public Schools to continue to bring high quality education to our city,” Jon McCann, CEO of ECS, said in a news release.

Mr. Weiss said the district believes Environmental Charter’s demographics aren’t representative of the city school system as a whole, and that its expansions don’t have the environmental link with Frick Park.

Nikole Scheaffer, a spokeswoman for Environmental Charter, said the school’s population is reflective of the city of Pittsburgh. She also said that

the charter school maintains that the environment includes “the natural, built, and social systems that encompass a place. All systems reflect an environment and regularly intersect as we tackle local and global environmental challenges.”

Under the expansion plan, the new K-8 school likely would begin fall 2018 with 300 students in K-3, growing to 600 in K-8 by 2023, Ms. Sheaffer said. She said the charter school is working to find a building and had previously explored the district’s former Fort Pitt School in Garfield.

The high school would open in fall 2018 with 75 to 100 ninth-graders and grow to no more than 400 students in 9-12 by 2021. It would be housed in the Energy Innovation Center, the former Connelley Technical Institute building.

According to Pennsylvania Department of Education data, 435 non-special education and 75 special education students from Pittsburgh Public attended Environmental Charter in the 2015-16 school year. The district spent $14,430 on each non-special education student and $30,561 on each special education student attending a charter school.

Using that rate, the first year with 300 K-8 students and 75 freshmen in the two new charter schools would cost Pittsburgh Public $5.4 million if all the students were from the city. Both schools fully operating could cost the city school district at least $13 million.

Environmental Charter drew students from 14 school districts in 2015-16, mostly from Pittsburgh Public, which paid $8.5 million alone to the charter school that year. It’s poised to exceed 600 applications this school year, its highest-ever, Ms. Sheaffer said.

Charter schools are public schools that are chartered by local school districts, but have their own board. School districts must pay a fee set by the state for each student who attends. Under state law, school districts cannot reject a charter school application based on cost.