Do more than cheer for Pittsburgh schools at PEP Rally

Before this school year, Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development surveyed East End residents and community leaders about their top neighborhood needs.

The number one answer: “If you don’t have strong public schools, you’re not going to have good neighborhoods for families,” according to Dave Breingan, a community organizer with Lawrenceville United.

So Breingan partnered with the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation and Bloomfield Development Corporation to start a pilot program called PEP Rally in September. It brings parents together to support Pittsburgh Arsenal PreK-5, Pittsburgh Arsenal 6-8 and Pittsburgh Woolslair K-5.

For PEP – Parent Empowerment Project – “part of our work is changing perceptions” and publicizing the good works that are already afoot in these schools, says Breingan. But the group is also building relationships among parents and school staff to create improvements.

PEP has already brought an after-school program to Arsenal 6-8, which has kids from 25 different countries enrolled. There, the kids wrote their autobiographies in a writing club, which they then published together. PEP has also instituted an after-school tennis program at the elementary schools in connection with Citiparks.

At Woolslair, PEP is supporting family fun nights, which has led to the formation of the schools’ PTO. The PTO is now busy fundraising for more such fun nights and recruiting for a classroom volunteer program.

On May 29, kids from Arsenal 6-8 and the 5th graders at Arsenal Pre-K are holding a community service day in Arsenal Park next door, organized by PEP. This park is going through a planning process thanks to a Love Your Block grant from the city, and Breingan says the students will plant there and learn about the park’s environment, its history and the new plans, “plugging into the master planning process.

“Our ultimate goal,” he says, “is to build the best public schools for the kids in our area, so parents have confidence in sending their kids to public schools.”