http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07324/835306-53.stm
Roosevelt details why Schenley may close
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
By Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Saying he wants others "to wrestle with the same facts I'm wrestling with," Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt yesterday released hundreds of pages of documents to support his recommendation to close the Pittsburgh Schenley High School building.
Joining Mr. Roosevelt at a morning news conference were architects, engineers and environmental specialists whose firms had produced some of the reports detailing problems at the Oakland school. Mr. Roosevelt invited them to the microphone to answer questions.
Mr. Roosevelt and the consultants said the building is filled with asbestos, the mechanical systems obsolete and the problems intertwined; the systems can't be repaired without addressing the asbestos, used as a binding agent, insulator and fire retardant. In an Oct. 19 letter to Mr. Roosevelt, the Downtown architectural firm Astorino urged the district to make a speedy decision about what to do with the school, students and 91-year-old historic building.
"These particular issues that we have addressed are causing safety hazards for the students and because of that, we do not recommend that you go beyond this current school year without doing extensive renovations to the building," wrote Dennis L. Astorino, the firm's chief executive officer and one of the consultants who attended the news conference.
A week after Mr. Astorino wrote that letter, Mr. Roosevelt told school board members in closed-door meetings that he wanted to close the building at the end of the school year and send the 1,100 students to three other locations, including two new, themed schools configured for grades six through 12.
He publicly announced the plans Oct. 31, saying the district couldn't afford $64 million -- mid-range of six estimates the district received since 2003 -- to overhaul the school. The news touched off a firestorm.
Critics have questioned Mr. Roosevelt's renovation estimates and the speed with which he's moving, expressed doubt about the district's efforts to find money to repair the building and called the asbestos issue a smokescreen for plans to sell the building to the University of Pittsburgh or UPMC, something the district denies.
By the end of last week, Mr. Roosevelt had proposed moving Schenley's current students to a single location in Shadyside in fall 2008 and letting them stay together until graduation. That would allow him to close Schenley's building at the end of this school year, phase out the school over three more school years and gradually build the new themed schools.
If Mr. Roosevelt hoped to calm the waters by releasing documents to show he's acting on the advice of outside experts and been left with few options, the critics weren't immediately ceding any ground.
Nick Lardas, a Schenley graduate whose Oakland contracting company works on historic buildings, said the building's fate is just one issue. He said Schenley supporters are upset that Mr. Roosevelt has proposed dismantling one of the city's best-performing high schools for an "experiment" in 6-12 schools.
Mr. Roosevelt said the documents would be provided to leaders of the "Save Schenley" movement. Some documents were posted on the district's Web site at
www.pps.k12.pa.us.
One diagram of Schenley's third floor showed dozens of red marks where asbestos was found during a 2002 survey by AGX Inc., an environmental consulting firm in McCandless.
"It's in every wall, in every ceiling, on every floor," and more prevalent in Schenley than other district schools, the district's chief operations officer, Richard Fellers, said yesterday.
As far back as November 2005, Mr. Fellers said in a report that "ceiling and wall plaster (particularly on the upper floors) is falling away from surfaces on a recurring basis" and warned that the problem could worsen.
As officials tell it, that's what happened. After a ceiling collapse in a stairwell last summer, the district spent $750,000 to repair 10,000 worn areas of plaster building-wide.
The district yesterday said the installation of new windows in 2005 has reduced ventilation, contributed to humidity and weakened the plaster. Mr. Fellers said the city's Historic Review Commission insisted on that type of window to preserve Schenley's appearance, a point the commission wasn't able to address yesterday.
Mr. Roosevelt yesterday released six renovation cost estimates, the highest an $86.9 million proposal from L. Robert Kimball & Associates in 2005. That proposal included $500,000 for refurbishing an organ. Ryan M. Pierce, the Downtown firm's vice president and market sector leader, said the proposal was not only a renovation but a "restoration" of the building.
Astorino last year proposed $64.4 million for various work, including new mechanical systems and removal of asbestos. But the firm said it could do a more limited project, encapsulating asbestos rather than removing it, for $42.4 million or $37.8 million, depending on whether air-conditioning was included.
Documents showed the $42.4 million option was endorsed by the Schenley task force Mr. Roosevelt established in 2005. The group said the district could push the bottom line lower by selling the former Reizenstein Middle school building in Shadyside and leveraging $1.5 million in historic tax credits.
In another document, however, the district says it didn't want to sell Reizenstein and found the historic tax credits unfeasible. The document said the district also considered and rejected the idea of letting a developer build offices or residential units atop the school.
Mr. Roosevelt said he fears that a partial renovation merely would mean doing more work down the road. Two Kimball executives said they doubted a partial project would be feasible now anyway because the falling plaster would prevent the asbestos from being encapsulated.
The district is spending $10,000 a month to inspect the building and check the air for asbestos.
So far, Mr. Roosevelt said, the air quality is fine and the building safe for students.
Joe Smydo can be reached at
[email protected] or 412-263-1548.
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