PITTSBURGH PUBLIC SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT DR. WAYNE WALTERS, speaking at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Homewood branch earlier this year. (PHOTO BY ROB TAYLOR JR.)
School is finally back!
Pittsburgh Public Schools begin the upcoming school year on Monday, Aug. 28, and no one is more excited for the start of school than the city’s school superintendent, Dr. Wayne Walters.
And as you’re about to find out, no one is more candid and open about what he wants to see in his school district than Dr. Wayne Walters.
The 2023-24 school year will be Dr. Walters’ second school year as official superintendent. He had been the interim superintendent since October 2021, following the resignation of Dr. Anthony Hamlet. In July 2022, the interim tag was shredded.
Dr. Walters has a lot of people cheering him on. He’s earned the respect of many parents, staff, teachers and administrators. He knows the district inside and out. When PPS’ Board of Directors said they would have a “national” search for its next superintendent a few years ago, most of the board members had an inkling that the right person for the job in their mind was already in-house in Dr. Walters.
As 20,000 students, of which more than half are Black, return to PPS next week, parents, grandparents and education-based watchdogs are keeping two, maybe even three eyes on the district and how it moves.
Over the summer, Dr. Walters was a panelist at a forum sponsored by the United Black Book Clubs of Pittsburgh, held at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Homewood branch. He was joined onstage by Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh President and Director Andrew Medlar and City of Pittsburgh Education Coordinator Alexis Walker. The forum was moderated by Nosakhere Griffin-EL, Ph.D., co-founder of the Young Dreamers’ Bookstore.
The forum focused on how to increase literacy in today’s youth, with an emphasis on Black youth. How can more African American youth start to enjoy the library more? What role does the library play in making the library more engaging? And is the Pittsburgh Public School district doing its part to get Black youth reading at a proficient level or above?
Of the 60 or so people in attendance at the June 3 event, some people felt that Black students should see more Black teachers in Pittsburgh Public Schools. It’s no secret that White teachers greatly outnumber Black teachers in the district. Some of those in attendance felt that Black teachers will take more of a vested interest in the success of Black students. It’s safe to assume that not everyone in attendance felt the same way, however.
“One thing that I’ll be transparent about,” Dr. Walters said, were the recruitment efforts by the district to get more Black teachers. “The way that we get more teachers of color in the space is only when teachers retire. It’s not like we can decide and say, ‘you White folks gotta go because we have some Black folks’” that want to teach. “It doesn’t work that way,” Dr. Walters said. “These are protected positions, so as we lose population (in the city), we lose positions. The other piece is that we do have a lot of recruitment efforts with HBCUs and even people here locally. The challenge is, Pittsburgh is not appealing to Black folks, and so we need to own that. We need to celebrate the ‘Most Livable City’ and then we need to ask, for who?”
By now, the crowd in the Homewood Library’s auditorium was truly all ears.
“We have to interrogate those options of what would make you as a Black person in the, say, D.C. area want to even look at Pittsburgh,” Dr. Walters said, with the New Pittsburgh Courier the only media in attendance. “And then when they get to Pittsburgh, how are they embraced and treated? Not only so much by the system but by the city. I want to offer that as food for thought. We have a recruitment process that is very aggressive, assertive in trying to get educators of color in the door. There are some challenges because in our public school system, you have to be certified to be a teacher…Some African American teachers are challenged by passing the…exam to become an educator, and we have to create support systems for that.”
Some support systems are already in place, Dr. Walters said. He also said that “although we know that we don’t have a lot of educators in the classroom, we do have a lot of educators of color at the leadership arm of the district.”
He said three of the six assistant superintendents are Black, the CFO is Black, the communications team is Black, the executive director in charge of equity is Black.
But Dr. Walters said, “I’ll own that right now,” when it comes to the lack of Black teachers. “What I will say as the superintendent is, I don’t necessarily want Black folks, I want quality Black folks in front of our children.”
Dr. Walters, who has been part of PPS for more than 30 years, including roughly eight years as principal of Pittsburgh Obama (in East Liberty), then added: “In these recruitment efforts, we want high-quality teaching from people who are culturally responsive, have a level of critical conscience and want to impart that to our children, and really dedicated to not being friends but insistent on academic excellence, because that is our history. It is not to be the cool teacher and let them slide, because after they (the students) leave and they really get a sense of what they know and what they don’t know, then they really become angry with that cool teacher and really begin to celebrate the teacher that insisted on high expectations.”
ALEXIS WALKER is the City of Pittsburgh’s Education Coordinator.
The other panelists had commentary, too, even though to the audience, Dr. Walters stole the show. Walker, the city’s education coordinator as of March 2023, said that it was important for youth in Pittsburgh to have “a space to really talk about what’s happening in their community,” and the library or school could be the perfect place for congregation.
Medlar, the library’s president and director, mentioned in his remarks that the Carnegie Library has begun partnerships with HBCUs to start a “library leaders” program. The program aims to create paths to leadership in the field of library work. He said that currently, only one HBCU in the U.S. has a graduate program in library science, North Carolina Central University. Medlar said $250,000 has been allocated for that effort.
But Dr. Walters wasn’t done with his commentary. “I get in trouble a lot because I don’t water (comments) down. I’m unapologetically student-first but I also believe that our students need to understand that they have to be well-disciplined and work hard, because the world is extremely cruel to people who are not well-educated,” he said.
Dr. Valerie Lawrence, a poet, writer and educator, was among those in attendance. “I’m really happy to have heard Dr. Walter’s commitment to our children, and knowing some of the issues that truly confront our children,” she told the Courier.
Dr. Lawrence added about Dr. Walters: “I thought he was very candid and I’d like others to know that our crisis is just that; our children.”