It's All About the Schools

The theme of the week is definitely schools.

Taxing schools? Is it legal to tax college tuitions in the city? Is it legal for college tuitions to have a meteoric rise over the past 2 decades? From 1982 to 2007, college tuition rates rose 439% compared to a 147% rise in family income. What's an extra 1% city tax when tuition rates will inevitably rise faster than inflation for the next 25 years as well? My advice to students? Don't waste your breath whining about that measly 1%. Complain about this year's 6% increase in your tuition. Similarly, health insurance costs have risen by 131% over the last 10 years while the median family income has remained flat. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder.

Low GPAs? Pittsburgh has lowered the bar for kids go to CCAC on the Pittsburgh Promise with as little as a 2.0 GPA (C-average). Previously, they required a 2.25 GPA. Let's be honest, if you have significantly higher than a C-average (and you can afford it and have the family support), you're not choosing to go to a community college. Let's see these kids go to community college for a year or two and give them the chance to turn themselves around.

School dropouts? Pittsburgh has a serious problem. In a 2006 study, Rand Corp. estimated that 35 percent of all Pittsburgh students drop out of high school, with the rate nearly 50 percent for black males. Any effort sent addressing this is a good thing. It's easy to point fingers at Pittsburgh's poor city schools on this one, but to put it into perspective, city schools are failing our students across the country. Cleveland and Baltimore are some of the worst with high school graduation rates of 38% and 41% respectively, but even New York City has an abysmal graduation rate of 54%. These numbers make the our 5-year 64% graduation rate almost acceptable.

Lesson learned? You can still mock Cleveland.

On School Population

Everyone talks about the story of Pittsburgh's population. It's halved since 1950. It's in a continual state of decline. This year marked the lowest population drop in a while and may be signs that the city's population is turning around (as Chris Briem reminds us). Similarly, Pittsburgh City Schools just reported the lowest decline in school students in the past 9 years. This parallels the city's smallest population loss in the decade. There was an increase in Kindergarten enrollment for the first time in 4 years. Pittsburgh schools are crediting programs like the Pittsburgh Promise for this slow in decline. It's easy to try to make a parallel between the city's population and the city's school enrollment. However, you'd be far off. While the city has lost barely 7.5% of its population over the past 9 years, the school district has lost a resounding 30% of its population.

Just last year, the Post-Gazette headline was:

City school enrollment falling fast

Contrast that with this week's Post-Gazette headline:

Pittsburgh schools like enrollment trend

Too early to tell? Yes. Have there been flukes in previous years followed by drastic drops? Yes. Can I have a little optimism? Yes.

Compromising Positions

I'm all for compromise. I understand that oftentimes at the political level it's the only way to get things done and some change is often better than none.

In fact, I back laws to support civil unions for gay couples instead of gay marriage because the important thing to me is the result not the nomenclature. I understood that in order to pass a smoking ban at the state level, there would need to be stupid exceptions involving casinos and mom-and-pop bars.

But everybody draws the line somewhere.

And I draw it here:
If you're passing a non-discrimination bill, you shouldn't let anyone discriminate. Either it's right or it's wrong. Yet Allegheny County council just passed a bill that said you can't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity EXCEPT if you're a charitable, fraternal, or religious organization. What??? If you're a blood-sucking corporation, you better not discriminate but if you're a "charitable" organization, you can?

And as Sarah Rose, an attorney with the ACLU says:
"the problem with the current version of the bill is that it gives certain religious organizations an advantage over other groups, thereby violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."

Luckily for the religious organizations in Allegheny county, the courts take a long time to sort these things out, so they'll be able to discriminate ad nauseum for the next decade or so.

So here's a shout-out to the Pittsburgh city council who managed to pass an anti-discrimination bill back in 1990 without resorting to illegal compromises. I implore you to do the same in regards to smoking.

4 Reasons to Vote for Ravenstahl and 1 Reason Not To

I have a confession. I voted for Lukey last election. I didn't think DeSantis was the person for the job and I'm still not convinced he was. He was different from the status quo, but different isn't always better. I also didn't watch last night's debate - though I hope it's available on youtube sometime in the future, and my excuse for this one is that I'm in Peru. As an aside, I also wrote this post while sitting on a bus in Peru, so please pardon the lack of supporting links.

So why would I consider voting for Ravenstahl again?

1) Publicity. Pittsburgh suffers nationally because of a lack of publicity. Lots of mid-sized cities share this plight. But Ravenstahl seems to appeal with some sort of national boy-wonder charisma - getting lots of media attention with his stunts. Is there anyone else running for mayor who has the ability to launch us onto the national stage? When's the last time a former president fund-raised for a Pittsburgh mayor? Of course, if he were running against John Fetterman he'd be dead in the water on this count. Maybe after John fixes Braddock, he can move on to Pittsburgh?

2) Grand Ideas. Ravenstahl has lots of grand ideas. He says things off-the-cuff like windmills and redd-up, government transparency and sweeping crime-fighting programs. It's good to have these grand ideas. However, our incumbent has failed on follow-through on most of these items, as many will state and I assume brought to light in last night's debate.

3.) Pittsburgh Promise. One particular idea that seems to have been successfully accomplished during Luke's tenure is the Pittsburgh Promise. While it's funding is currently shaky, it is there and it has already assisted hundreds of Pittsburgh high school students with their college education. This is a very worthy goal.

4.) 311. I admit it. I'm lazy. I hate looking up phone numbers and scrolling through lists of archaic city departments. It's so much easier to call 311 and tell them my problem. Unfortunately, as it stands 311 is a one-way system and needs to be improved upon. If a problem is not resolved to your satisfaction, there needs to be potential for feedback. Currently that is not happeneing and there are lots of 311 calls repeated wasting the time ofo ur citizens and city workers and ultimately our tax dollars.

Why I won't vote for Luke (again)

1.) Superficiality. Luke favors the superficial rather than the down-and-dirty. He'd rather pay millions for security cameras or buy $250,000 of trashcans to install on streets littered with relics of old trashcans than deal with major issues the city faces like PWSA bonds, the pension crisis and crime. Instead, we get witty press releases and manicured joint statements with Dan-the-tax-man. Voting for Luke is like voting for the football captain as the home-coming king back in high school.

Carmen Robinson, one of his adversaries, skewers the mayor on his stance on crime. A former police officer and current lawyer, she's someone who knows a thing or two about crime. She thinks security cameras are a waste of money and wants more better-armed beat cops walking our streets. Sounds good to me. Thanks to the Comet for his solid interview of Carmen.

Councilor Patrick Dowd, the mayor's other adversary in the up-coming election, wants to deal with the pension crisis and the PWSA. I could go on about him and why I like ideas, but I've already done that.

Councilor Bill Peduto has grand ideas that are well-researched like commuter rails and energy efficient street lights, but he's decided to stay out of the ring this time around.

I want a mayor and council who work together to create a stronger Pittsburgh. I don't want a mayor who looks good, but fights with council, says rash un-researched ideas, refuses to compromise, refuses to admit his mistakes and certainly doesn't learn from them all the while profiting from his status as mayor while Pittsburgh stays on the same path.

Tread Lightly

Does Michael Lamb want to put the Pittsburgh Promise up for sale? He wants to ask the state assembly to tax non-profits in the city of Pittsburgh. (Why hasn't anyone done this before?) However, this is clearly a fine line to walk. UPMC is to Pittsburgh is like China is to the USA. We're indebted to them and vice-versa, but ultimately at this point, they hold a lot of the cards.

Over the next 10 years, UPMC, the region's uber-employer, has promised to donate a ton of money to the Pittsburgh Promise, but from the beginning they have been threatening to withhold their generous contributions if Pittsburgh pursues taxing non-profits. However, UPMC theoretically has the ability to pull its money out for any reason - the bad economy, sinking profits, a bad night's sleep. US Steel's recent pausing of work on the Clairton coke plant is as harsh a reminder as any that corporations often break promises. Taxes are a lot more reliable. And theoretically, there's nothing stopping the city redirecting tax money towards the Pittsburgh Promise. Of course, as long as Ravenstahl is in office, I expect any extra money to be diverted towards trash cans.