Hill House rumor called ‘nonsense’

The New Pittsburgh Courier received a call claiming the Hill House Association, one of the oldest and most venerated social service providers in the city, was eliminating all its programming—except WIIC—and firing staff to make way for a charter school.
When a board member and the CEO were called for comment both expressed shock at the allegation.
“Oh God, if that were true I’d be out there with everyone carrying picket signs and torches,” said board director Richard Witherspoon. “Think of Jim Henry, Mrs. Lovette—they’d be rolling over.  We would never eliminate programming for the sake of one. There was no such vote.”
Immediately responding to the Courier’s request for comment, President and CEO Cheryl Hall-Russell said, at first, she wanted to laugh because the idea was so ludicrous.
“It is absolutely not true. There is a charter school coming in, the Hill House Passport Academy, but we didn’t eliminate any programs for it,” she said. “It’s going in the basement of the Hillman Kaufmann Auditorium because that’s where the classrooms are. We are moving our GED program and our Adult Day Care to the Bedford building but they’re not being cut. Maybe the move is what started this.”
Hall-Russell said it had cut its afterschool program because there are so many now available. It no longer operates its own daycare, but it still has one on site—Hug Me Tight, which has doubled the capacity of the old program.
“We’re still doing programming for kids aging out of foster care, still doing GED prep, workforce development, and Welfare to Work,” she said. “We’re just trying to make more efficient use of our facilities.”
The charter school is a dropout recovery school for kids aged 16 to 20 who can come back and get a real diploma, not a GED. It is not a Hill House program; it has its own directors and administration.
“We’re excited about it,” said Hall-Russell. “We’ll have 150 kids starting up after Labor Day.”
(Send comments to cmorrow@newpittsburghcourier.com.)
 
 
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