PPS alum sends daughter to public school

A Pittsburgh parent who planned to homeschool her five-year-old daughter instead enrolled her in the Pittsburgh Public Schools system. The mother, a PPS graduate and former central office employee, said her child explicitly asked to go to school, a request that overrode her initial preference for a family co-op model.

The district currently enrolls nearly 50 percent of its students from Black families, a demographic that makes up 22 percent of the city’s population. The author noted that many white teaching staff members live outside the city, a pattern often linked to their own children’s educational choices in alternative districts. She argued that outcomes for Black, brown, and disabled students are frequently treated as inevitable rather than as results of systemic factors.

The author worked at PPS central office for five years before leaving in 2017. During that time, she observed wide disparities between schools. She cited specific examples, such as Westinghouse Academy going a full year without a biology teacher while a top-rated biology instructor taught at SciTech Academy nearby. She described a culture of fear and complacency that dimmed the efforts of dedicated educators.

After the pandemic exposed gaps in the district’s remote learning capabilities, the author co-founded Black Women for a Better Education in 2020. She became the group’s inaugural executive director in 2025. The organization called for the nonrenewal of the previous superintendent’s contract and formed a political action committee. That PAC supported 11 school board candidates, and eight of those candidates won election to the PPS board of directors.

Seven of those candidates currently serve on the board. The author supported their election because they pledged to hold district leadership accountable. However, she expressed concern that the board has turned inward and is pursuing a Future-Ready Plan that the district may be unprepared to implement effectively. A PPS spokesperson declined to respond to her specific accounts but stated in a written comment that the district is proud of the educators and administrators working to transform the system.

The author’s own educational path included Whittier Elementary School in Mount Washington and Frick International Studies Academy in Oakland. She attended Schenley High School, where she completed a full International Baccalaureate course load. She described her experience as an exception driven by the social capital of her mother, a PPS teacher for 38 years, and her father, who was among the first students to desegregate high school in Danville, Virginia.

Despite reservations about the current state of the district, the author sent her daughter to Pittsburgh Morrow, which she noted was in the bottom 15 percent of the state. The family had considered the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Program and applied to several magnet and charter schools, but the decision to attend PPS was made after the daughter voiced her preference for traditional schooling.