Two new charters hope to open in the city
East Liberty, Hill eyed as school sites
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Two new proposed charter schools have applied to open within the boundaries of Pittsburgh Public Schools starting in the 2019-20 school year.
Catalyst Academy wants to set up in the former Urban League Charter School building in East Liberty, and Career Tech is eyeing the Energy Innovation Center in the Hill District. The brick-andmortar charter school application deadline was Wednesday.
Catalyst has planned a fall 2019 debut serving kindergartners and first-graders and eventually including students up to 8th grade, said its founder and CEO Brian Smith, formerly an administrator in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
“We are excited about Pittsburgh’s emergence as a global innovation center. However, we cannot watch another generation of low-income and African-American students be shut out of opportunity because they don’t have access to a high-quality public school,” he said in a press release.
His pitch calls for “rigorous college preparatory academics,” including daily science and engineering, arts and physical education and “an explicit focus on socialemotional learning, 21st century skill development, and projectbased learning ...”
“Catalyst Academy will accomplish their mission by tripling the professional coaching and development teachers typically receive, prioritizing small group and personalized instruction, and creating a true partnership with families.”
Carey Harris, former executive director of education watchdog group A+ Schools, who’s now leading the Pennsylvania Early Learning Investment Commission, is on the Catalyst board.
Career Tech hopes to open with spots for 100 high-schoolers. While not a vocational school, it will teach students skills for careers in engineering, computer science, machinery, transportation, architecture, building trades and more. In their fourth year, they’ll work toward a certificateor take a fifth year to earn an associate’s degree, in addition to a high school diploma, said Maureen Anderson, who founded the schoolwith Angela Musto.
“It doesn’t look like the standard education model that we’ve been using for the last 100 years,” Ms. Anderson said, emphasizing the “whole child” approach to education that goes beyond academic instruction. At Career Tech “everything is wrapped around real-world problemsand solutions.”
The school eventually hopes to expand to include middle and elementary offerings.
The city school board will hold public hearings before a vote, likely in early 2018, on whether to grant the charters. If rejected, the charters can ask the state’s Charter School Appeal Board for its consideration.
The charter schools currently operating with PPS are City Charter High, Academy Charter, Urban Pathways 6-12, Urban Pathways K5 College Charter, Manchester Academic, Hill House Passport Academy Charter, Propel schools in Hazelwood and the North Side, Environmental Charter School at Frick Park and Provident Charter.
The district has budgeted $74.2 million in its 2018 budget for charter school tuition, up $6.2 million over this year.