Duquesne City Schools working to reopen high school
It’s a long road to recovery, but the city of Duquesne is working to continue being first. Duquesne is already the first school district to reopen its middle school after shutting down and now, leaders are working to reopen the high school.
The halls and classrooms are quiet, but soon students will be busting through the doors for the first day back at Duquesne City Schools.
“If they feel safe here it’s a better chance they succeed in life and especially with attending school,” said Andrew Uram, an 8th-grade teacher in the district.
Duquesne City Schools is a small district of less than 500 in a small community working to rebuild what was once broken.
“In 2007 the state Department of Education took our high school students 9-12 due to financial constraints and lack of academic offerings,” said Uram.
Those students were split between West Mifflin and East Allegheny high schools. Five years later, the district lost the middle school, too.
But after more than a decade of investments, the middle school students are back and innovation is at the core of the success.
“Our students build robots and they code them to complete missions, they also do an innovation project in the community that can be implemented and we work on core values,” said Michelle Stowell, a 7th-grade teacher.
For these teachers, it’s more than just educating, but building the students up for future careers with the help of $15 million in grants the district has won.
Just the first steps in reopening the high school, but it doesn’t come without challenges.
“One of the things I was tasked with when I started in 2018 by the stakeholders was restore our school district and that’s what we’ve been working on, as it’s very important for this community to have their kids educated in their home district,” said Superintendent Dr. Sue Mariani. “This building in 2007 before it closed was a K-12 building, there’s no room for 9-12 here, so right now my biggest obstacle is a building and we are working on it, touring a couple sites.”
Dr. Mariani said that once a building for the high school is secured, more pieces will fall into place. She is working on the academics element behind the scenes and will need approval from the state ultimately, but she isn’t counting out next fall as a potential reopening date.
“Seeing the community pride being restored. That means a lot to myself, to the teachers, administration,” said Dr. Mariani. “It means a lot that we are able to show our community that we’ve got their students, their kids best interest at heart and we are doing whatever it takes all hands on deck to make sure we complete our journey and restore our district as a K-12.”
The superintendent said she’s hoping when the high school does reopen they will have about 350 students back in the district learning.
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