Some parents were excited to have students back in schools, despite anxiety about ventilation, transportation challenges and the delta variant.
by TyLisa C. Johnson, PublicSource
Rebecca Poremski left her daycare job on the morning of Sept. 3 to take her three kids to school. This was not the plan.
The family’s plan had been for her kids to ride the bus, but Poremski was disappointed to learn in recent weeks that the district’s bus driver shortage made them ineligible for rides.
The district’s plan — with its new expanded walk zones — was for the kids to walk the 1.5-mile stretch between their Brighton Heights home and Allegheny K-5. The anxiety about that proved too much.
“I will be taking them every day,” until a bus is available for them, Poremski said Friday morning. But, she added, “I don’t think the gap will ever be worked out this year.”
With new tiered start times, also enacted to alleviate the district’s transportation issues, her kids will begin school at 9:25 a.m. — nearly three hours after Poremski begins her daily 6:30 a.m. shift at a daycare. Leaving work each day is a major disruption, but she can’t stand the idea of her children — two heading to second grade and one to third grade — traversing the five unmonitored intersections.
“I would never let them take that walk,” said Poremski, a single mother. “That is way too much for their age.”
Pittsburgh Public Schools [PPS] welcomed thousands of students back to school buildings on Friday, about 12 hours after a heated parent protest called for the school board to hold Superintendent Anthony Hamlet accountable for ethics violations found by a state commission.
About 50 demonstrators gathered at the Board of Education building in Oakland on Thursday evening to demand a vote of no confidence in Hamlet by the board.
The school board broke its silence Friday morning, calling the findings of the commission’s report “concerning” and “a distraction” as school begins. The board said it is addressing issues presented in the report with the district’s solicitor and will consider “any appropriate actions” to be taken in the coming weeks.
Thursday’s protest occurred only three weeks after another in the same location against the changes to school start times and the last-minute changes of the school start date from Aug. 25 to Sept. 8 and then to Sept. 3.
Colfax K-8 third grade teacher Patti Bartolli helps student Dre’Muan Edge, 8, with his mask on the first day of school Friday. (Photo by Ryan Loew/PublicSource)
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