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Updated – July 12, 2024

In early June, a 10-year-old autistic and nonverbal student was attacked and severely injured during a drive to Pittsburgh Conroy Education Center.

The student’s parent, Shareena Johnson, told WTAE that the school alerted her about her daughter’s injury and even encouraged her to take the child to the hospital: 

“I put her on the van, and I get a phone call an hour and 15 minutes later saying that I needed to come to the school, that she had been attacked by another child on the van, and that she potentially needed to be taken to a hospital.” 

Upon her arrival at the school, Johnson found her daughter covered in bruises with bite marks on her arms and face. 

Johnson provided KDKA-TV with further details about her daughter’s injuries and her initial reaction:

“They said she had been bit and scratched. When I got there, I was in complete shock. I could not have imagined the severity of the injuries on her body. I had never seen bite marks so deep. The bruising and the swelling were awful. I was told that she was shaking and still actively being attacked when the van pulled into the school. The driver did not pull over. He did not call anyone.”

According to WTAE, after reaching out to both Krise Transportation (the company transporting Johnson’s daughter to school) and the district, Johnson was met with contradictory information about the incident from both parties. She was also told by Krise Transportation that there was no video evidence of the assault available. The transportation company was even doubtful that surveillance systems were equipped in the bus in which the student was assaulted.

However, KDKA-TV reports differently:

“[Johnson] said the company told her it had a video of what happened on the bus. But when she called the district the next day to see the video, she was told there was no recording because it was a new van.”

The other students on the bus were also nonverbal and incapable of commenting on the assault on Johnson’s daughter. Thus, any evidence of the assault is unobtainable, barring the emergence of any potential surveillance video, which is unlikely.

Around the time of the incident, a district spokesperson told KDKA-TV that Krise Transportation would no longer provide driving services for Pittsburgh Conroy Education Center.

Updated – February 5, 2024

The mother of an intellectually disabled student is suing Pittsburgh Public Schools, Starbucks, and Kappa Drive Associates (a property management company) after her daughter was led off campus during school hours by three male students and sexually assaulted.

The lawsuit alleges the three assailants led the then-15-year-old student to a Starbucks off school property in October 2022. Starbucks employees witnessed the male assailants taking turns entering the restroom with the girl. The male students then took her to an empty building where the third boy sexually assaulted her.

The lawsuit says the girl was unable to communicate to her mother what happened to her. A few days later the mother was notified the girl was found crying in the lunchroom due to a rumor that three boys had sex with her. The mother took her daughter for a medical exam where they found positive signs of sexual assault.

Although the assault was reported to police, no arrests were ever made. The Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety said the case was closed and the district attorney’s office had not decided if it would push charges.

Attorney Alec Wright stated:

“Pittsburgh Public Schools failed to create a safe environment for my client to go to and from school when it knew that she needed one. And Starbucks and Kappa failed to protect my client from the violence of others when they knew their businesses were causing criminal activity to occur. The painful result was her sexual assault.” 

Pittsburgh Public Schools provides public bus passes to high schoolers who live within a two mile radius of their school. The mother had notified school officials at Taylor Allderdice High School that her daughter would need help adjusting to taking public transportation to school.

According to the lawsuit, the student’s IQ was in the lowest 1% of students intellectually and, during her first months at the high school, she was left unsupervised and allowed to wander the halls or hide in the bathroom during class. The district’s attendance policies were not enforced because of the girl’s disabilities and she was never provided with any safety monitors during school or to and from the bus stop.

The girl’s mother stated:

“It just makes me feel angry to know that there was such little oversight or protection for my daughter. If she leaves in the morning to go to school, then she should return home from school safe. Taylor Allderdice let her be lured off campus, and Starbucks let her be attacked in its bathrooms. It’s all just so frustrating and disheartening. It’s just very hard to describe.” 

The lawsuit is demanding a jury trial and seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Updated – December 12, 2023

A new report from A+ Schools shows a pattern of chronic absenteeism within Pittsburgh Public Schools. The “Report to the Community on Public School Progress in Pittsburgh” reveals that in the 2022-23 school year, 34% of students were chronically absent. Out of the district’s 18,652 students, 6,161 missed 10% or more of the days they were enrolled for either unexcused or excused reasons.

According to the report, students are more likely to miss school as they get older. Out of all Pittsburgh Public Schools high school students, more than half were considered chronically absent. At Westinghouse Academy, 76% of high school students were chronically absent.

Although elementary schools tended to have far lower rates of absenteeism, some reached into the high forties and low fifties. The report also found that schools with a higher concentration of economically disadvantaged students were more likely to have higher absence rates.

James Fogarty, Executive Director of A+ Schools, told Fox News Digital the pandemic contributed to the high absenteeism rates.

“The pandemic created a lot of lost learning time. While academic achievement is starting to recover, there are a large number of students that need tutoring and other support to catch up.” 

In an August 28, 2023, press conference, Rodney Necciai, the district’s assistant superintendent for student support services, said the district implemented a program by EveryDay Labs and reduced the number of chronically absent students by 17% during the 2022-23 school year. Necciai added:

“We do want to get as close to zero [percent chronic absenteeism] as we can … one of the things I preach to parents is, please have a relationship with a counselor or social worker at your school, so when things are coming up and you need help, you already have that relationship.”

Updated – November 3, 2023

On October 25, 2023, the Pittsburgh Public Schools Board of Education approved a measure to spend $50,000 to hire Quetzal Education Consulting to dismantle racism in math classes. The district says the decision will provide the school with “additional foundational knowledge of antiracist math pedagogy and tangible learning experiences that can be implemented with students.”

Quetzal Education Consulting’s vision statement says they “ally with Black and Brown communities to decolonize education, reclaim our ancestral genius, and reimagine post-abolitionist spaces for families, students, and educators of Color.”

Fox News reports that Quetzal Education Consulting will host introductory workshops for math teachers and a leadership series for administrators.

According to a school board agenda:

“The purpose of the introductory workshop series is to identify, disrupt, and replace ineffective and oppressive practices in math instruction with practices that center the wellness of students of color and to provide opportunities for math departments and math teachers to grow their anti-racist math praxis collaboratively in pedagogy and instruction.” 

The agenda also said:

“The purpose of this series is to equip educators who have completed the Antiracist Math Workshop Series Edition 1 to develop and lead towards a more cohesive and aligned math instruction praxis across classrooms, departments and schools. Participants will learn how to train others in the topic of antiracist math, as well as how to identity issues of equity in math spaces.”

Updated – March 13, 2023

Pittsburgh Public Schools was featured in a report by the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies (DFI) titled, “Pills and Pronouns: School Districts Require Parental Consent for Over-the-Counter Medicine, But Not New Names.”

According to the report, Pittsburgh Public Schools are one of several districts where students “are given free rein to choose their gender identity at school by changing their name and pronouns used by school employees without parental consent, even though their schools require parental permission to dispense over-the-counter medication to those same children.”

Pittsburgh Public Schools has a handbook titled “Gender-Inclusive School Communities” that lays out the policies and procedures surrounding transgender and gender expansive students. The document has “A Note on the Age of Consent” that reads:

“The District does not interpret the age of consent to mean that students of a certain age cannot willingly or independently realize their own feelings of being transgender or gender expansive, or that students of a certain age cannot make decisions about the confidentiality of such information.” 

Further, the district maintains:

“All staff should recognize and affirm the identity of transgender and gender expansive students and, if the student so chooses, keep their transgender status confidential – whether the student is above the age of 14 or not.” 

DFI’s report argues:

“These policies imply that children who are not yet mature enough to decide when they need an aspirin are mature enough to decide whether to go through the school day as male, female, or something else entirely.” 

Angela Morabito, DFI spokesperson and a former U.S. Department of Education press secretary, told Fox News:

“These should be really, really basic things. If a headache or a tummy ache that lasts for an afternoon merits a phone call home, then certainly so should something as significant as a child saying ‘I want to be known as a different gender.’” 

DFI President and Co-Founder Bob Eitel added:

“School districts across the country are failing to respect the rights of parents to make decisions for their minor children.”

Published – September 29, 2021

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, just prior to the Fall 2021 semester announced that children in grades K-12 must be masked in all school facilities across the state of Pennsylvania. Gov. Wolf insisted that the delta variant is highly transmissible and dangerous to the unvaccinated. He claims to be “following the science” by masking children when in reality there is a 99.94% survival rate among 10-19-year-olds in Pennsylvania. 

In a disgusting and “woke” attempt at progressivism, the Pittsburgh Public Schools is mandating that every educator in the district goes through “professional development” to break from the traditions of schooling. On their website, it says, “At PPS, we expect every educator to invest in ongoing professional learning to grow in cultural competence and critical race consciousness. Because school systems across the United States were not designed for racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse populations, but rather reinforce White, middle-class values as the standard, it is important for us to equip educators with essential learning around school leadership for racial equity, culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies and antiracism.”

Pittsburgh Public Schools is the second-largest public school district in Pennsylvania. The district has 56 total schools with an enrollment of roughly 23,000 students.