Penn Hills charter school plans 2nd floor after district nixes bid to add grades 9-12

Penn Hills Charter School of Entrepreneurship is looking to add a second floor to its building to help increase space and enrollment after its plans to expand to grades 9-12 were not approved by the Penn Hills School District.

The charter is required to seek authorization or approval from the school district on any amendment request or major change in operation.

The expansion was part of the school’s Strategic 5-Year Plan, launched in 2019, in its “Desired Future” section that highlighted four priority areas — focus on race and equality, programmatic coherence and alignment, human capital investment, and external relations and expansion.

The charter school currently holds grades pre-k through 8. The expansion would allow the school to build a second location to teach grades 9-12. PHCSE CEO Wayne Jones said the expansion would not begin until the 2024-2025 school year.

The charter school and the district held four or five meetings about the possible expansion from winter 2019 to Feb. 2020. Jones said that during the meetings that the district expressed concerns about enrollment and financial loss if the expansion was implemented.

To ensure that the district would not face financial impact, the schools agreed to a 330-student enrollment cap for Penn Hills student looking to attend PHCSE after the expansion.

“We thought it was a win-win situation because they could control the variable,” Jones said.

Penn Hills School District Superintendent Nancy Hines said the district paid $13,050.47 for each regular-education student and $33,304.08 for each special-education student enrolled in qualifying charter schools. Those amounts can change from year to year.

In addition to the cap, PHCSE gave a presentation to district officials projecting a $10.2 million savings for the district over a 10-year period if the enrollment cap and a second-building expansion were approved.

Jones said the charter school created an updated version of the presentation that projected how much the school would save if a second floor was added without the enrollment cap, which totaled $39.7 million.

Jones said the charter school sent an application in fall 2020 to renew its charter along with amendments including the expansion plan. The renewal of five years for the charter was considered and approved in June by the school board but the amendments were not considered.

“To our knowledge, the application to amend our charter was not publicly acknowledged or voted on by the school board,” Jones said.

Jones released a statement in July expressing disappointment in the school’s decision to not publicly consider the charter’s amendment request.

“Penn Hills School District should join PHCSE in celebrating the successes of our students rather than block access to an education that will prepare them for career readiness and lifelong success. Our proposed charter amendment would offer another pathway for success and save Penn Hills School District and its taxpayers tens of millions of dollars,” the statement said.

In an email to the Penn Hills Progress, Hines said: “The Penn Hills School District reviewed the school’s application for program renewal and granted approval. The District is under no legal obligation to consider proposed amendments beyond that, and accordingly, we chose to focus on their core charter and renewal instead.”

Hines also added the term of a charter renewal may not exceed 5 years. Renewal is granted (or not) by the governing body of the local school district.

The charter school plans to move forward with building a second floor addition. Jones said construction could begin in Jan 2022, and the second floor would be completed before the start of the 2022-2023 school year. The new floor would help increase enrollment by allowing 200 more students to attend.

“We are trying to offer more seats for students to be able to attend our program,” he said.