PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/author/mary-niederberger/)
Mary Niederberger is a longtime Pittsburgh-area journalist who started her career with a decade at The Pittsburgh Press. After freelancing and teaching at local universities for several years, she joined the staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she spent 18 years covering community news, general assignment and education. Her work has taken her to nearly every community in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area, and her stories in recent years have focused on education issues, specifically under-resourced schools and the students they serve. She received the Golden Quill Award for education coverage from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania in 2014, 2015 and 2016. She is also the recipient of the Robert L. Vann Award of Excellence for investigative/enterprise reporting from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation in 2011 and 2015. Also in 2015, Mary and a colleague from the Post-Gazette received first place in the Pennsylvania Society of of Professional Journalist Spotlight Awards for their coverage of the ghost job held by the state's special adviser on higher education. Mary holds a bachelor's degree from Duquesne University and is a lifelong Pittsburgh-area resident.
Residents of the affluent district are questioning the lack of public deliberation by the school board, leading to concerns about potential violations of state open meeting and ethics laws.
Students see new translation services and quicker transitions to regular classrooms. But they still face challenges.
ESL enrollment has steadily increased in the county’s public school districts.
For the past two years, Pittsburgh Superintendent Anthony Hamlet has not filed forms that disclose gifts, travel or outside income that he may have received. Public officials and employees involved in spending must file the forms annually, a requirement of the State Ethics Commission.
Joey D’Auria is Deaf. He believes the related societal barriers have stalled his professional life.
Now there are three official probes into the propriety of a vendor-paid trip to Cuba taken by Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Anthony Hamlet and four other administrators. On Wednesday, the Pittsburgh Public Schools board unanimously approved a resolution authorizing solicitor Ira Weiss to conduct a review of district policies relating to procurement, contracts, ethics and conflicts of interest. This review compounds another prompted by the district and one launched by the state auditor general. The inquiries come in the wake of media reports about an April trip to Cuba on the tab of an educational technology company called Flying Classrooms.
The company had a one-year $73,000 contract with the district, which had expired at the time of the trip. Board member Sala Udin, City Controller Michael Lamb and state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale have questioned whether the trip violated the state ethics law that prevents district officials from accepting gifts from vendors.
Experts who study the achievement gap between black and white students told PublicSource the disparities are more an issue of equity than ability. They cite such contributing factors as socioeconomics, implicit teacher bias, disparate discipline and lower expectations projected on black students.
See how proficiency rates compare between black and white students at 23 Allegheny County school districts.
Of the 42 Allegheny County school districts outside the City of Pittsburgh, 23 had one or more schools with achievement gaps between black and white students in the 2017-18 school year.
The Pittsburgh Public Schools board voted unanimously on Feb. 27 to deny a charter that would have transformed Imani Christian School in East Hills into the secular Imani Academy charter school.
The vote at the board’s legislative meeting follows a report earlier this month by the district’s charter review committee that found Imani’s charter application did not include all of the information required under Pennsylvania’s Charter School Law.
