Two decades after shuttering its high school, the Duquesne City School District faces persistent headwinds and will now merge with a nearby school system.
Whether the merger will be with the West Mifflin Area, East Allegheny, McKeesport Area or Pittsburgh Public school districts could become clear imminently, said John Hansen, the district’s chief recovery officer. He expects the state to issue a report with an announcement about the merger by June 30.
“This has been a journey of supervision, trying to keep Duquesne from defaulting on, for example, [its finances],” said Hansen.
Duquesne has undergone a series of state interventions dating back to 2000. In March, the district initiated a feasibility study to explore a merger, as a new state law requires of districts with closed high schools. The state circulated surveys and made phone calls to get feedback from residents of Duquesne and each of the four districts considered for the merger.
Duquesne City School District in numbers:
- Enrollment: 460
- Economically disadvantaged students: 89%
- Average per-pupil spending: $25,766 (compared to state average of $22,611)
- Revenue from state: 65.5% (compared to state average of 24%)
- Revenue from federal sources: 15% (compared to state average of 4%)
- 8th-grade students scoring proficient in English: 16% (compared to state average of 41%)
- 8th-grade students scoring proficient in Math: 0% (compared to state average of 20%)
In an email response, Casey Smith, communications director for the state department of education, said Duquesne’s underlying structural deficits were long-term, making it necessary to look for potential solutions such as a merger.
Superintendent Sue Mariani said in an email response that a smaller tax base has increased challenges for Duquesne, causing the district to seek grants and other partnerships to continue providing students with comprehensive programming.
Mariani did not respond to additional questions about how the school is navigating the prospect of a merger, and the factors that led to it.
Some community leaders feel any consolidation would leave a gaping hole in the struggling town. More than one-fifth of Duquesne’s 5,000 residents live below the poverty line and less than half are in the workforce, according to 2024 census data. The district spends nearly $9 million on employee salaries and benefits, though it’s unclear how many reside in the city.
“You lose the biggest economic driver in the community. So, economically … it is the largest employer, real estate-wise, it probably is something that [as] an organization takes up the most real estate in our community,” said Pastor Eric Ewell of the Divine Restoration Church.
Earlier this month, Ewell held a “Community Conversation” forum, where about 20 community members expressed their concerns about the feasibility study. He said the state took no effort to gather community input and did not collect enough information to make a meaningful decision.
“For a parent who just hears, ‘We might consolidate your school,’ and no certain terms being expressed on how that looks, [it] is frightening,” he said.
Hansen said apart from the survey, state officials made phone calls to community members to gather additional feedback on the feasibility study. Once a district is identified to merge with Duquesne, advisory committees will work to fill in gaps that the survey did not address, he added.
Smith said the feasibility study will further review academic programming, including class sizes and staffing levels; safety and security; staff contracts; capital plans; local taxes, including property taxes; budget planning and governance once the merger is finalized.
Hansen said finances are a major driver of the consolidation push. A shrunken local tax base forced the district to draw 66% of its revenue from the state and 15% from the federal government in 2023-24, compared to statewide averages of 24% and 4%, respectively. Another factor is poor test scores at the elementary level. Less than 10% of students scored proficient or advanced in state assessments in 2024-25, far below the state average of 50%.
According to its website, the district has benefited from state receivership and has improved its fiscal standing since 2013-14. “There have been no unpaid or contested invoices; and, all payroll, benefit expenditures, debt service obligations and tuition payments have been made in a timely manner,” the website states. According to its latest financial statements, the district maintains a deficit, though it reduced the deficit to $2,448,861 in 2025 from $3,467,868 in 2024.
Duquesne officials declined to answer other questions about the merger and the feasibility study before a decision is made. The school district does not have a say in the consolidation decision, according to district spokesperson Jeremy Tepper.
Once a district is identified for consolidation, officials will work together on how to implement transitions and enact advisory committees where the school staff, parents and community members could be part of the implementation process, Hansen said. Over the next year, both school districts will work together to address questions about taxes, school board, curriculum and staffing.
A history of changes
Duquesne has had a tumultuous financial history.
In 2000, Duquesne was declared a distressed school district and was placed under a Board of Control by the state.
The district remained financially distressed for more than a decade, with the high school closing in 2007. In 2012, the state seized control of Duquesne’s finances and the district cut its seventh and eighth grades. A recovery officer was appointed to oversee a financial improvement plan, and the district was placed under receivership, the most restrictive designation of financial recovery, in 2013.
A school district can be placed under receivership — in which the state takes direct financial control — if the board fails to approve a financial recovery plan, fails to comply with state directives or when a struggling district votes to appoint a receiver.
The district has recovered some stability since hiring Mariani as superintendent in 2018. Under her leadership, grades seven and eight were restored in 2021 and 2022, making Duquesne the first school in the state to reinstate grades after closing them. Duquesne became a designated community school through Pittsburgh Area Community Schools, bringing partnerships and resources to the district’s economically disadvantaged students.
District leaders tried to reintroduce the high school program in 2024, but the state refused its request, saying Duquesne would not be able to support the long-term revenue requirements of the high school.
In 2025, the district’s receivership was extended by three years and district leaders amended the financial recovery plan, focusing on improvements in academic performance, financial management and district operations.
Marguerite Roza, director of Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said one of the bigger challenges for a district like Duquesne is the high per-pupil spending and low student outcomes.
“The school is so low-performing and very expensive, and so continuing doing what it’s doing doesn’t make sense,” she said. “It’s not giving the future to these kids that they deserve. They have no chance at some of the opportunities in life without them being able to learn to read and do some basic math.”
While poverty is often an indicator of low student performance, Roza said the outcomes of students at Duquesne are lower than average even after accounting for poverty.
Community requests more information
Community members acknowledged the partnership between the state and the district over the last couple of decades but asked for more communication from the state about the study.
Ewell, of the Divine Restoration Church, said the state should have set aside more time for deeper engagement with Duquesne residents during the feasibility study. Like others, Ewell was surprised and saddened by the possibility of a consolidation.
It’s not yet clear what would happen to the school building after a consolidation.
While he understands the fiscal and academic challenges the school district is facing, Ewell wants the state to provide families with more information about the expected consolidation and existing gaps before making its decision. He said the state should not repeat the same patterns as when it closed the high school and the impacted school districts had no say in those decisions.
Smith said the survey gathered information about district pride and the needs of the community to ensure the assessment reflected the community’s input. She added that Receiver William Kerr and Hansen held public meetings and open forums for more communication.
Aimee Plowman, chief operating officer at Auberle, a nonprofit that provides programming around mental health, basic needs and workforce development, said any kind of consolidation or transition can be anxiety- and stress-inducing for students, and decision makers will have to thoughtfully oversee those changes.
“I think it’s super important that there’s a thorough plan and evaluation of what those students are currently getting, and making sure that all of that continues in a new school building,” she said. “If they are going to continue to operate the current school, [then] how the new administration would fold them into what’s currently happening with the other schools in that district would also be important.”
La’tresha Dean, director of the Duquesne Boys and Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania, said she’s worried the community did not fully understand the implications of the feasibility study and the state did not grasp the extent to which the district’s challenges impact students.
Fears of repeated patterns
For some community members, the consolidation brings back memories of when Duquesne closed its high school. The decision was met with immense community backlash. Students were sent to neighboring West Mifflin and East Allegheny school districts.
George Tyler, supervisor at CURE Mon Valley, graduated from the last high school class at Duquesne.
“I feel like we lost the community when it came to that part, because [the high school] was a big center for gatherings and football,” he said.
If Duquesne is consolidated, Dean said many families who lack transportation options will choose to reside in other communities closer to their children’s school.
“It’s harder for them to have any further assistance if their students are having difficulties; it presents five more barriers to the 20 they already have,” she said.
Losing the school district would worsen some of the challenges that students face currently because of a lack of a high school, Dean said. In the absence of a high school, parents have fewer opportunities to participate in their child’s education and discuss pathways after graduation, because of transportation issues, language barriers or a lack of understanding.
“When we’re having a conversation with a different district, where there are more people with higher levels of education, they forget that, although the parents may sound frustrated, they’re still making a statement that needs to be addressed instead of them being perceived as uneducated and their students a nuisance,” she said.
Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at Pittsburgh’s Public Source. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Feixu Chen.
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