The Pittsburgh Public School Board will vote Wednesday on whether to renew the contract of Superintendent Anthony Hamlet and retain him for a four-year term.

Hamlet’s contract, which began in 2016, expires June 30, 2021. If passed, his new contract will end at the end of the 2025 school year.

In the days preceding the vote, the board held two public hearings to gather input from community members. The results were divisive.

Hamlet’s time as superintendent has occasionally been shadowed by controversy.

He was appointed amid some scandal, after he was recommended by a search consultant who did not vet him, and a review of his resume later found inaccuracies.

He has often been criticized for high turnover in his administrative staff, and he prompted a school board investigation for an unauthorized trip to Cuba in 2019 during a professional development program.

In June, a coalition of Black, female leaders in Pittsburgh sent a formal letter to the school board to reject Hamlet for another term.

So many comments were submitted for review before the vote that the public hearing had to be broken into two nights Monday and Tuesday. Not all of the comments were related to Hamlet’s contract.

Melissa Donnelly, a Spanish teacher at Allderdice High School, said she was hopeful when Hamlet became superintendent, given his promises to improve the district’s equity practices. She had hoped he would help the district make gains helping Black and brown student communities that she said have been historically underserved in the district.

“Unfortunately Dr. Hamlet’s time here at PPS has been chaotic, underwhelming and marred by controversy,” Donnelly said. “Our kids don’t have five more years to see if it gets better.”

Complaints over racial equality and Hamlet’s perceived failure to address it echoed throughout both nights, criticizing the superintendent for not adequately addressing achievement gaps, arrest rates and other problems that fall on racial lines.

Many also complained of his handling of the the covid-19 crisis: Christina Dixon, a parent of a Colfax K-8 student, asked the district to postpone the decision to allow time to evaluate the district’s performance this fall.

“While neighboring districts were able to make swift transitions to remote learning, my child and every other PPS student lost almost three weeks of instruction, and students with disabilities did not receive the specially designed instruction they needed all spring,” Dixon said.

Some community members defended Hamlet, though, claiming he inherited long-existing problems of the district.

Kipp Dawson, a retired teacher, said Pittsburgh Public Schools is plagued by racial inequity and cultural insensitivity, naming objections with curriculum, school policing and other aspects of school culture.

“Dr. Hamlet is not the source of our problems,” Dawson said.

More residents still questioned why the board should move forward with a decision on Hamlet’s contract now, when the board has until Feb. 1 to give Hamlet a decision, under state law. Some recommended the board extend Hamlet’s contract, but not renew for a full four-year term.

Paul Diegelman, a community member in District 4, said all focus should be on helping the district navigate the pandemic. Diegelman also criticized Hamlet’s track record for scandal and “distraction.”

“It seems inappropriate for the board to early-renew this contract while most of our community is focused on getting their children back to school and parents back to work, in the midst of a 10-year pandemic,” he said. “Let’s see how the next few months play out. We have the time to do that.”

Many of the comments shared were not related to Hamlet at all, but in reference to another impending vote on whether to hold fall sports this year. Several students and district staff wrote comments to the board to plead for the chance to play.

“Not playing is not an option,” said Jerry Haslett, athletic director and head football coach at Allderdice High School.

Sports are an important activity for students, Haslett said, especially those planning to play in college. He worried some students would transfer “in a mass exodus” to neighboring districts that would allow them to participate, weakening the Pittsburgh Public School’s athletic programs in the long term. He and other community members begged for a plan that would assure athletes could play at some point during the school year.

The board’s legislative session is Wednesday afternoon.

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