Pittsburgh Public Schools To Construct Underground Tunnels to Central Office; Prompts Disunion

These tunnels (like all else here at Allderdice) are very high-tech!

The Board of Directors unveiled a new plan that would allow schools to express their anger directly to district administrators.  They would do so by constructing underground tunnels from every PPS school that would lead to the PPS Central Office Building.  The Board approved this construction project by a vote of 5-4 on the April 1 legislative meeting.  

The district administration released the following statement:

“We are announcing publicly today our opposition to the Board’s vote on underground tunnels.  They say this project will allow school administrators, teachers, and even students to more easily access ways to communicate directly with the Central Office building–for the sole purpose of yelling at us.  Like emails and phone calls don’t make it hard for us, bureaucratics.  The Board should not support this and we’ve made calls for this project to be canceled.”

The Backword reached out for comment from the Superintendent but no one was in the office. Dr. Bow Tie allegedly implied his opposition when he spoke to a student leader at a policy meeting, but this claim is unfounded.

The plan is receiving much support from community leaders and the general public as they say the District is not supporting schools sufficiently and equitably.  

A community member told The Backword that she believed that “School board members voted for this project as a way of pleasing the overwhelming majority of the public for reelection purposes.” She later said that PPS has become Washington D.C., as “nothing is getting done.”

The City of Pittsburgh allegedly informed the Board of Directors that city construction workers would not provide services to the Board. In response, a Board Member proposed that the 5 members who are in favor of the project construct the tunnels themselves.

Allderdice Principal Dr. CoyBoy commented, “The construction project will be useful for us principals as a mechanism to achieve stress reduction. We as principals expressing our concerns to a district official by phone call is not as satisfying as physically seeing them as we relay our stress. I truly wish some of these district leaders could have my job for one day. I would love to see if they could manage these behavioral issues, like I do or could pull off a striped button-up with a striped tie, like I do.”

The Board said that if the administration does not comply with the construction project that they will fire every Central Office employee. 

The Backword will continue to provide relevant developments on Board and administrative disunion in response to this construction project.