📣 VOTE NO — SAVE OUR SCHOOLS

The Board already rejected this plan in November 2025 — and nothing has changed.

• Same school closures and consolidations

• Same unanswered questions

• Same missing details

• Same risks to students

• Same lack of accountability

• Same disproportionate harm to historically underserved students

If this plan was not good enough then, there are #NoExcuses to approve it now.

#NoExcuses

• for closing schools and uprooting 6,000+ students without a real plan

• for overcrowded schools and classrooms

• for destabilizing students with no guaranteed benefits

• for removing Community Schools supports from 1,300+ students

• for repeating past mistakes

• for ignoring community voices

• for harming students with disabilities

The public hearing process failed families

Three of the nine Board members voting on this plan were not even in office when the legally required public hearings were held.

Those hearings happened during the summer, when families are least engaged, and only 91 speakers participated across all nine school closure hearings.

That is not meaningful public engagement for a plan that permanently closes neighborhood schools and impacts thousands of students and families.

“Quarterly updates” are NOT accountability

The proposed amendment requiring quarterly updates from the Superintendent is not real accountability.

There are still:

• No measurable student outcome goals

• No benchmarks for promised programs and services

• No measurable standards for overcrowding or facility conditions

• No equity analysis on the impact to historically underserved students

• No consequences if students are harmed

PPS’s own history shows that school closures can lead to:

• Lower attendance

• Academic declines

• Increased suspensions

• Enrollment loss to charter and private schools

The Superintendent has still not shown the public:

• what programs schools have now

• what inequities exist now

• or how this plan measurably improves student access and outcomes

The Superintendent must be accountable for actual student outcomes, not just quarterly presentations.

Major community concerns are still being ignored

Allegheny @ King Elementary is projected to have 809 students. Students from 4 small schools must move there. For example, students from Manchester will move from a school of 129 students to one more than six times larger.

Instead of addressing concerns about overcrowding and student transitions, the district brought the media into Manchester to highlight empty classrooms.

At the same time, more than 1,300 students have to leave a building that has Community Schools and move to a building that does not. Will the services that the students are getting through Community Schools be provided at their new school?

The Superintendent continues to refuse to acknowledge this loss and answer this question.

With fewer bus routes, many more students will walk long distances to school crossing dangerous intersections. 

PPS hasn’t even asked the City if they have the extra crossing guards needed to get students safely to school. 

“Trust us” is NOT a plan

Board President Gene Walker said:

“Sometimes you don’t build trust through the planning, you build trust through implementation.”

And:

“The proof will be in the execution.”

But trust is built BEFORE disruption happens, not after.

You do not build trust by:

• closing schools first

• moving 6,000+ students first

• cutting staff first

• and hoping implementation works later

Families have spent two years asking for transparency, details, and accountability.

They still do not have them.

Bottom line

Same plan.
Same risks.
Same unanswered questions.

No equity.
No accountability. 

The responsible vote is still NO. #NoExcuses