Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Public Hearing May 2009

PURE Reform's testimony from yesterday's public hearing has been posted.

Go to the announcements tab at http://www.purereform.com/ and on the description of this May 18 event, click "PURE Reform Report."

In addition to the latest installment of Transparency Watch, PURE Reform discussed population and enrollment. 16,000 school age children are expected next year to either drop out or choose a private or charter school rather than a non-charter PPS. Instead of holding meetings to plan for these students opting out, we need to determine what it will take to make them want to stay.

Other issues discussed were progress on reducing diesel emissions and the need for recycling in PPS (incredibly, it appears that PPS is recycling very little other than some paper), education as a civil right and how there are important differences between Pittsburgh and other cities such as Cleveland that facilities consultant deJong has advised.

1 comment:

Annette Werner said...

It should also be emphasized that PPS enrollment decline does not "mirror the city's" population decline.

City of Pittsburgh population is around 334,000 for 2000 and 319,000 for 2010 (a 4.5% drop).

Non-charter PPS ENROLLMENT is around 38,500 for 2000 and 27,200 for 2010 (a 30% drop).

Graphs that are are described as depicting these trends as mirror images invariably have some sort of distortion.