The Pittsburgh Public Schools superintendent said Monday that the first day of class will be no later than Sept. 8 regardless of whether the district can provide transportation to all students.
But Superintendent Anthony Hamlet said that if the district cannot ensure all of its students have a ride, the school system may have to resort to some hybrid instruction.
“If we can’t get all of our students transported, we have to look at some hybrid form or fashion to make sure that school starts [Sept. 8],” Mr. Hamlet told the community during an online forum Monday morning.
District administration said last week that it would seek approval from the school board to delay the start of the fall semester by two weeks — moving it from Aug. 25 to Sept. 8 — to allow more time for transportation companies to onboard new bus drivers. The board will vote on the change Wednesday.
School officials said the move was needed to help address issues caused by a school bus driver shortage that worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. The district is also looking at other ways to alleviate the problem, including changing some school start and end times to maximize bus use, placing more students on Port Authority buses and increasing walk zones around schools.
If those measures are not approved, officials said, thousands of students could be left without a ride to school.
“I want to be very clear: If we left our plans the same as they’d been running, we would not be able to get our kids back to school five days a week,” Mr. Hamlet said. “We would have to go back into remote or hybrid mode.”
Still, parents have rallied against pushing back the start date, arguing that the district should have addressed the transportation issues sooner and fearing that there could be further delays to schools reopening.
More than 100 people, mostly parents, provided testimony that was read before school officials and board members at a public hearing Monday afternoon in which they raised concerns and overwhelmingly voiced displeasure with how the district was handling its transportation issues and the return to school.
Many parents said Mr. Hamlet should either resign or be removed by the school board.
“The bus driver shortage has been a problem for years, and we are tired of the excuses,” said Jennifer Bigham, the parent of a student at Colfax K-8. “We are tired of last-minute changes.
“If a student came to you a few days before an exam saying they were unprepared and they need to delay, you wouldn’t accept it — you want to teach them to be prepared or work on problems in advance,” she said. “How can we time and time again accept this behavior from adults in positions of power over our youth? What kind of messages are you sending them?”
Numerous parents mentioned that the possible Sept. 8 start date as well as other proposed modifications — such as increasing the walk zones around schools and the greater use of Port Authority buses — has caused child care difficulties and safety concerns.
“The solutions for the [transportation] crisis has created even more crises,” said Ruth Stetler, the parent of students at Montessori PreK-5 and Obama 6-12. “Families without child care for two weeks because school starts later, middle school children who are now thrust into unsafe situations that involve heavy traffic, unsupervised hour-plus transit, and exposure risks to COVID that are unacceptable and potentially lethal to many families.”
Some of the proposed changes — including pushing back the start date and starting high school days at 7:15 a.m. — would be particularly detrimental to high school students, parents said.
Many parents noted that such an early start time would negatively impact the health of high school students, who according to research require more sleep. The changes would also give high school students less time to prepare for AP exams, which are administered at schools across the country in May.
Mary Eagle, who will be a sophomore at Allderdice High School, suggested that high school students could find their own means of transportation and eliminate the need for the district to provide them with buses. That way, she said, high schools could open on Aug. 25.
“I am 15 and have taken many buses to and from my work at Kennywood. I have had no problems,” she said. “High school students can walk, bike, ride public transportation, get a ride from parents, carpool or get a ride with friends.”
Several parents pointed out that moving the start date to Sept. 8 means the first day of school would occur on the second day of Rosh Hashanah — the Jewish new year. That means students from observant families would likely miss the first day of school.
Meredeth Knight, the parent of students at Fulton PreK-5, said she believed what frustrated her and many other parents was the district’s “lack of coordination, lack of transparency and lack of communication.”
“I think most families in the district would agree that the exact start date of school is not the real issue,” she said. “Most families would have been fine with a Sept. 8 start date for school if there had been clear and transparent communication with us that allowed us to prepare and arrange for care for our children in a timely manner.”
Andrew Goldstein: agoldstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1352.
First Published: August 16, 2021, 4:38 p.m.
