Three-term mayors in Pittsburgh are rare, and incumbent Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto is trying to join that club. But this year, he’s garnered some considerable.
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Five of the nine Pittsburgh Public Schools Board of Directors seats are up for election this year, and education advocates say the outcomes could mean a “sea changing” shift for the district one that could result in a board that is more skeptical of the district’s leadership.
Tracey Reed, one of the challengers seeking a board seat, says the district must be held to higher standards. “What are we doing if we’re not able to get kids up to a place where they can read with proficiency and do numeracy with proficiency?” she asks. “We have to think about outcomes not like ‘this is inevitable’ but ‘this is what’s possible. ”
Veteran civil-rights activist Tim Stevens says he didn t authorize his appearance in this attack ad.
The first real attack ad of Pittsburgh’s mayoral campaign aired by the kind of outside-spending group that local politicos have been expecting landed this week. And one of the people feeling stung by it isn’t even a candidate.
“We felt like our credibility was at stake,” said Tim Stevens, a longtime Black civic leader and founder of Black Political Empowerment Project, after seeing himself appear in an ad attacking Bill Peduto.
Stevens appears for about two seconds in the spot, created by a union-backed committee called Pittsburgh Justice for All.” Though he is not named in the spot, he can be seen asking “for whom is [Pittsburgh] most livable?” a statement Stevens says was excerpted from a 2019 press conference on health outcomes for Black women in the city. The ad strings that together with news clips and newspaper headlines to conclude “After eight years
PPS board candidates debate on April 7, 2021.
The first public debate between candidates for the Pittsburgh Public Schools Wednesday evening was a relatively sedate affair, made only mildly contentious by the fact that three of the candidates have children who attended charter schools.
Three incumbents and eight challengers took part in the three-hour-long forum, which was hosted by a coalition of progressive groups and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers. Only District 9 incumbent Veronica Edwards did not participate.
Over the course of the evening, the 11 candidates frequently acknowledged they were echoing each other on many subjects. But a discussion of charters public schools that receive public tax dollars but operate independently of the city district’s administration and board provided a rare moment of contention.
Sarah Schneider / 90.5 WESA
The first public debate between candidates for the Pittsburgh Public Schools Wednesday evening was a relatively sedate affair, made only mildly contentious by the fact that three of the candidates have children who attended charter schools.
Three incumbents and eight challengers took part in the three-hour-long forum, which was hosted by a coalition of progressive groups and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers. Only District 9 incumbent Veronica Edwards did not participate.
Over the course of the evening, the 11 candidates frequently acknowledged they were echoing each other on many subjects. But a discussion of charters public schools that receive public tax dollars but operate independently of the city district’s administration and board provided a rare moment of contention.