A city at risk

In a nice little column Sunday about Pittsburgh's Little Italy, Joseph Mistick declares, "With gas prices through the roof, the time for a return to the great American urban neighborhood may be here."

I certainly hope Miskick is correct. I've written (ranted) ad nauseum on this blog in favor of urban living and policies that promote walkable, sustainable communities. But there's a major obstacle standing in the way of this great urban renaissance, and the events of the past week in Pittsburgh have brought it into relief. Simply put, Pittsburgh -- and other cities which share its woes -- will continue to struggle with population loss and the resulting economic stagnation so long as it has what is perceived to be a failing school system.

That's certainly not an original observation on my part. The link between a community's livability and the quality of its public schools is quite well-established. Schools are a big part of the reason that people move to places like Mt. Lebanon and Upper St. Clair and Fox Chapel.

But absent from the public discourse about Pittsburgh's future is much evidence that people understand that the fate of the city and the fate of the school district are inextricably linked. The school district's troubles may have once been a symptom of Pittsburgh's economic decline. Now, cause and effect are reversing themselves, and the school district is dragging the city down with it. (That is not a comment on the two entities' respective governing bodies. In truth, the school district has been better managed than the city over the past two decades.)

If the numbers aren't enough to convince you, try talking to suburban parents. My wife belongs to a moms' group, and when another member finds out we live in the city, her first question to my wife is, "What are you going to do when it's time for your daughter to go to school?" As far as they are concerned, the city schools aren't even an option.

I don't know what the solution is. The first step is to acknowledge that this a crisis in the life of the city that must be dealt with, and soon. A lot of the people who got involved in the fight over Schenley High School understand this, and regardless of how you feel about the decision to close the school, it does provide what educators call a teachable moment. We have the opportunitiy to push the school system to the top of the public agenda. The energy that was expended to fight for this one school must be turned toward saving the entire system -- which means that some of the people who hurled insults at one another are going to have to work together from here on out.

We owe it to our children. And to our city.

Get off the bus, Gus

Anti-sprawl activist Thomas Hylton makes an argument that he's made before: Pennsylvania needs to stop subsidizing bus transportation for local school districts, a switch that he believes would encourages school districts to renovate, rather than replace, outdated school buildings:

Pennsylvania school buses travel more than 381 million miles annually at a cost of more than $1 billion. That's nearly 75 percent of the cost of the state's urban and rural transit authorities. Although the state provides about half the funding for both systems, school districts are automatically guaranteed a subsidy based on their aid ratio and miles traveled, no further questions asked.

For example, the Blairsville-Saltsburg School District in Indiana County recently announced plans to close its high school in Saltsburg Borough and bus those students an hour away to an enlarged Blairsville High School at an additional cost of $200,000 annually. Thanks to the state subsidy formula, district taxpayers will only pay $62,000 more. The commonwealth will make up the rest.

Generous subsidies for school busing are just one reason the number of students walking to school has plunged from 50 percent in 1970 to less than 15 percent today. In recent decades, hundreds of walkable neighborhood schools have been closed all across Pennsylvania, often to be replaced by sprawling mega-schools on the urban fringe.

These new schools spawn car-dependent development and drain the life from older communities. Statewide, the loss of neighborhood schools has been a major factor in what the Brookings Institution calls the "hollowing out" of Pennsylvania -- disinvestment in older urban areas in favor of developing suburbs. ...

The Mt. Lebanon School District is held up as a model. The district has not built a new school since 1963. Instead, it has renovated its two middle schools and seven elementary schools, most dating to the 1920s and 1930s, and will soon renovate its 1928 high school. The district's architect estimates the renovated schools cost about 70 percent of the price of new construction, not including land acquisition. (link)

On the whole, I agree with Hylton. By subsidizing school bus transit, without any conditions, the state is, in effect, subsidizing sprawl. Undoubtedly some districts would find it more affordable to rehab smaller neighborhood schools rather than build large new ones if they had to bear the entire cost of transportation.

But I think in some cases Hylton may be confusing cause and effect. Some school districts build large, consolidated schools because a decline in the school-age population makes the cost of maintaining several buildings prohibitive. It's not merely a question of whether renovation is cheaper than new construction, but whether the costs of renovation and ongoing maintenance of multiple buildings is offset by savings in transportation.

Mt. Lebanon can maintain its neighborhood schools because it has a relatively stable, dense population -- not to mention a healthy tax base. Those are luxuries that not every community enjoys.