Dropout Rates Addressed at Summit

About 200 community leaders, school officials and politicians gathered in downtown Pittsburgh yesterday to talk about the city’s school drop out rate. The Pittsburgh Public school District says 65% percent of their students graduate high school. Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl points out that is better than some large cities but still much higher than it should be. The event was one of 55 dropout prevention meetings held across the country by America's Promise Alliance. At the event several parties signed the “Pittsburgh Pathways Blueprint” that is intended to increase the percentage of students that make it through all 4 years of high school. Ravenstahl says his office will do everything it can to help the effort. He points to several programs sponsored by the city aimed at middle school students and the city’s roll in the Pittsburgh Promise program. The program that provides $5,000 college scholarships to all Pittsburgh Public School graduates with a 2.5 GPA or better was expanded yesterday to include students who choose to take classes at the Community College of Allegheny County. It will also help students that fall below that 2.5 GPA get the basics they need from CCAC.

Pittsburgh Promise Extension

The Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program is partnering with the Community College of Allegheny County to create an extension to potential scholarship recipients. Saleem Ghubril, Promise Executive Director, says “the light turns on later” for some high school students, sometimes around senior year. He says that may not be enough time for students to reach the 2.5 GPA requirement to be eligible for the Promise.

However, Ghubril says they are willing to take a gamble with students who are close to meeting the GPA standard, and also meet all other eligibility requirements. These students, if admitted, will be enrolled at CCAC for a semester to take predetermined classes chosen by the school. If those students maintain a 2.0 GPA, the Promise will pay for a full course load the next semester at CCAC. If they continue to maintain that GPA, they will then qualify for the regular Promise scholarship program that is available at several schools statewide. The extension will be implemented for students that are graduating in the class of 2010.

An Alternative University Tax

A Pittsburgh Councilman says he’ll propose an alternative to the tax bill on university tuition in council next week. Councilman Ricky Burgess says his legislation would take the burden off students’ tuition bills, and instead push universities to help the city by having them willingly pay in lieu of paying taxes. Burgess says universities have other “pots of money” like endowments to use, while students don’t. He says Harvard, MIT and Brown all have similar programs in place with their respective cities.

The councilman also wants the City Finance Department to assess the market value of all land owned by educational institutions, as well as estimate a per-resident cost of delivering city services to the residents of Pittsburgh.

Burgess says there is approximately $26 million in taxes universities don’t pay the city of Pittsburgh and the School Board, and that’s before calculating land value. If universities are not willing to help, he says there is no other choice than to look into putting a tax onto students' tuition.

City Council Debates a Hold on Library Funding Bill

Pittsburgh City Council brought a bill to the floor Thursday that would have sent $600,000 dollars to the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh but there was very little debate on the provisions of the bill. As soon as it was introduced, Council President, and bill sponsor, Doug Shields asked for a one week delay. That set off an hour-long debate on how long the bill should be left on the table. The measure would use money left over in the city’s 2009 fuel budget to shore up the libraries’ flagging 2010 budget. Shields asked that the bill be held for a week but other members called for a four-week hold. Shields says if the bill is put on a four-week hold members will ignore it until December and that is not acceptable. He says he will be more than happy to put another one-week hold on the bill if more time is needed but the issue needs to come before the council every week to make sure council holds the collective feet of all the parties involved to the metaphorical fire. Those feet belong to the State, the Mayor’s Office and the Library Board. Shields was among a group of lawmakers calling on the library board to publish more details of its proposed budget. Councilman Patrick Dowd says the council clearly does not have all of the numbers it needs to debate the bill and the state needs time to take action. He is calling for the longer delay. He says he would also like to see the measure taken up after a city budget is finalized. That budget may include a provision to fill the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh funding gap. He says it is in the council’s best interest to not have the bill at the table every week where it can be passed prematurely. The measure was ultimately put on the table for one week and will be called again Wednesday.

Perzel, 9 Staffers Indicted

Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett is charging former House Speaker John Perzel with spending more than ten million tax dollars on a series of computer programs designed to help House Republicans win elections.
Corbett, a Republican running for governor, says Perzel put publicly-funded legislative staffers to work developing complex databases aimed at boosting Republican turnout during elections.
The Philadelphia Republican also allegedly approved multi-million dollar contracts with private software firms that put together election programs for the caucus.
Nine Republican staffers have also been charged, including former state representative and chief caucus counsel Brett Feese, who Corbett says obstructed justice by forging fake notes and attempting to hide evidence.
This is the second round of indictments in the long-running legislative corruption investigation. Last year, 12 Democrats were charged.
Corbett says the main difference is that Democrats misdirected tax dollars to pay for campaign staff work, while the Republicans illegally spent money on technology.
Perzel has released a statement saying he’s innocent, and that Corbett is engaged in a politically opportunistic effort to boost his gubernatorial campaign.

Listen to a longer version of this story.

Pollution Levels Drop in PA

Carbon dioxide emissions in Pennsylvania declined by point 3 percent from 2004 to 2007. That's according to a new analysis of government data by the group PennEnvironment. Spokeswoman Erika Staaf says the drop is due to a combination of factors including a slowing economy and a shift to cleaner fuels. The report indicates that while emissions from most sectors fell or increased only slightly during that time period, electricity sector emissions continued to rise due primarily to generation from coal-fired plants.
Staaf says despite the decline, Pennsylvania is still ranked 3rd nationwide for the highest levels of global warming pollution. However, she admits that Pennsylvania is a power-producing state and one third of the electricity produced in Pennsylvania is exported to and consumed by other states but "we can drive Pennsylvania's economy without driving up pollution. By moving to clean energy, we can cut pollution, help jump-start the economy and create millions of new clean energy jobs."
Staaf says Pennsylvania has taken some important steps in recent years including adoption of a conservation standard to decrease demand from coal-fired plants, but state leaders should implement a climate action plan to cut pollution levels through a variety of clean energy solutions.
The report indicates that more than one third of the states cut pollution from 2004 to 2007.

Elected Officials Want More Library Data

A group of elected officials are calling on the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh to be more forthcoming with its budget numbers. State Representative Chelsa Wagner was joined by several current and future Pittsburgh City Council members this morning in calling for the library system to detail how much money will be saved by closing each of the four libraries slated to be shuttered in the coming year. Wagner says the library told her that the data she was seeking is not available. She wonders how the board can know that closing the branches will balance the budget if that data is not available. Says she wants her questions answered before more state or local money is allocated to the libraries. All of the elected officials signed a petition asking the board of the library to not only provide that data but to also hold a forum for patrons to give input, a forum for elected official to give input and to holds its December 14th board meeting at the city council chambers. The Carnegie libraries did hold input sessions over the summer but Wagner says there is no evidence that any of the suggestions were implemented. She also notes that when those meetings were held there was no mention of closing the four branches. The petition also calls for the branches to be left open.

Candidate Wants More Time to Decide on Recount

A Republican candidate for Pennsylvania Superior Court has asked the Secretary of the Commonwealth for an extension to decide whether to ask for a recount in the race for the fourth and final open seat on the court in the November 3rd election.
Monica Douglas, campaign spokesman for suburban Pittsburgh attorney Temp Smith, says they would still like to wait for some more numbers to come in particularly from Lackawanna County before deciding whether to forego a recount. Douglas says the official canvass of voting began last week Smith has picked up a net gain of 2,500 votes.
Democrat Anne Lazarus leads Robert Colville by about two thousand votes in the race for the final seat. She’s in front of Smith by about 33-hundred votes, and Democrat Kevin McCarthy is around 12 thousand votes behind him.
Both McCarthy and Colville, a fellow Democrat, have informed the State Department they’ll waive their right to a recount if all the candidates do so.

Pittsburgh Hosts The National ARC of the US Convention

The Arc of Greater Pittsburgh and Achieva are playing host to the National Arc of the US Convention November 12 through the 14th.

The organization helps people with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

About six hundred from around the country will attend the conference, titled, "Inspiring Innovation: With Adversity Comes Opportunity."

Topics to be covered include Civil Rights for People with Disabilities and Practices in Preventive Care for People with Disabilities.

In the organization's fifty-five year history, Pittsburgh has never hosted the convention.

New Study Finds Potential for Combating HIV

Structural biologists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine are releasing findings from a study of the coating that surrounds the HIV genome. They found that the "seams" in the protein coating could be exploited to disrupt the functionality of the HIV infected cell. Department chair, Dr. Angela Gronenborn says potentially new drugs could be developed that could use the patchwork of seams in the coating of the HIV cell-- which they found is necessary for the cell to function--to disrupt the virus and keep it from spreading the infection. Next, the team of researchers plans to study the protein that makes up the "patchwork" coating of the HIV genome to figure out what drugs could best mutate those seams, disrupting the virus.