Good afternoon and welcome to Pittsburgh City Council's Cable Cast Public Hearing for Monday, June 15th.

Runs up to Bill 2026 0481.

Would occur, please read the title of the bill.

Bill 481, resolution approving a conditional use application under the Pittsburgh Code, Title IX Zoning, Article 5, Chapter 911, Section 91104A 64 to Passport Academy Charter School applicant for authorization to operate a school, elementary or secondary general use at 1835 Forbes Avenue, block and lot 11 J 56, zoned uptown public realm district B, first ward council district number six.

Thank you.

Our first order of business will be an introduction of the legislation by representatives of the Department of City Planning.

If you would introduce yourselves, give us your name and title, and then proceed with the presentation.

Christian Johnson, Senior Planner for the Department of City Planning.

Kate Rakis, I'm a senior planning manager with the Department of City Planning.

Good afternoon.

An application was filed by Wildman Chalmers Design on behalf of Passport Academy Charter School for change of use of medical clinic to school elementary or secondary general.

A public posting was conducted via on-site posters, mailed postcards, and email notice 21 days before this council hearing, according to 922.06B of the code.

On April 21st, 2026, the Planning Commission of the City of Pittsburgh made a positive recommendation to City Council with the following conditions.

One, all doming permits will be reviewed and approved prior to issuing the final record of zoning approval, and two, the final construction plans, including site plans and elevations, will be reviewed.

I will now turn it over to the applicant.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Robert Max Yunker.

I'm with the law firm of Babst Callen here with uh Joe Oliphant, who's the principal and CEO of Passport Academy Charter School.

We have a quick presentation.

We have given this uh to the planning commission twice, but we essentially cut it in half, knowing that uh we only had a couple of issues to address here as part of this public hearing process.

Uh as you'll see at the very uh opening here, we have the hashtag uh Watts.

Uh, just ask uh people to keep that in mind as we come to the end of the presentation, see if you can guess what that stands for.

Uh, because it's not hashtag passport or hashtag packs.

Uh so we'll see if you can guess it by the end of the presentation.

The property at issue is located at 1835 Forbes Avenue.

As Mr.

Johnson referenced, this is currently zoned and approved as a medical office.

Our intention is to purchase this property and convert it to exclusively uh a school general for elementary secondary education as defined by the zoning code.

However, we do not have elementary students.

Uh you'll hear a description of our program uh from Mr.

Principal Oliphant as we get to that part of the presentation.

But looking at the property, you can see we are right in the middle of the uptown district, uh, the hill district up to the the north of this picture in the site.

Um we have the Fifth Avenue Lofts, former high school uh right there on the edge of our circle and the property that we are acquiring.

We have signed an agreement of purchase and sale with the uh owners of this property.

We are in the due diligence process.

We do have some final due diligence dates uh at the end of this month, so we appreciate City Council and scheduling our our hearing here on June 15th.

So we are hopeful that we will get a positive recommendation out of the public hearing process and a positive vote, hopefully next month, uh week, I'm sorry, at the city council meeting.

Uh we have just street on the side of our property.

We front Forbes Avenue.

Uh we have Watson to our rear.

Uh we have a parking spot, uh, parking lot that is part of this sale as well.

With our application, we submitted detailed compliance comments and an operation memo showing how we address the specific requirements for this school use under the zoning code, as well as the general criteria for all conditional uses also in the zoning code.

As noted by the Planning commission, as you'll hear, our operations are less of an impact than a traditional elementary or secondary school, and that is why we think it is appropriate for a conditional use approval.

We are not planning any major renovations here.

There's no additions.

This is only a change of use, and that is why we're seeking the conditional use approval through this process.

Zooming in on the site, as we mentioned, the binding street bounding streets, Watson and GIST at the property's borders, in addition to Forbes Avenue.

But we do have two bus stops that are indicated here, and that is key because we do not provide student transportation in the traditional sense of yellow school buses or other types of transportation.

Our students primarily are given PAT bus or Port Authority, Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus passes to get to the location, and we do have those two bus stops and easy walking distance of our location.

Next, I'll turn the slides over to our principal and CEO to explain the operations as well as the history of PACS Charter School.

Sounds good, thank you.

So starting with the school started in 2013, two of our current uh board members were co-founders of the school, working within the Hill House Organization Association and realized that the amount of students that were not completing their graduation requirements was getting higher and higher.

So that was the infancy of our program.

So the board decided that at that time that it was not only just to be a school, but a school to make sure that it has an academic support and career career ready focus.

And so that's one of the things you'll hear about through my presentation.

We are a public charter school.

We're not an approved private placement.

We support students that are 16 to 21 years old.

PPS has our um is our our charter authorizer in the schools at its 12th year.

We just actually just finished and had 84 students that graduated at the end of May.

We have two separate enrollment periods in the fall and in the winter, or fall and then the winter, ending in October and ending in February, so that way students can meet their proper requirements and be on a timeline for graduation.

We don't want to have students that have partial partial credit, so we make sure that we try to give them a good timeline.

And we've graduated more than 700 students since the school is founded.

That number is probably with our graduation.

We're close to 800 right now.

And our typical enrollment ranges from around 125 to 150 students.

It was designed to be small to make sure that students get proper support and they have smaller class sizes.

And as mentioned, you know, 99.9% of our students receive public transportation.

There's a couple that get dropped off, just depending on any students.

We don't have the traditional yellow buses.

And the students have a personalized schedule so they can go to school.

They pick either a morning or the afternoon session, which basically, when you look at that enrollment size, it's cut in half.

So at any time, there's probably 60 to 70 students at the most that are in the building at one time.

So students pick either the morning session, afternoon session, and on their alternative session, they have to do anywhere anytime learning.

So that may be a virtual course, uh career readiness or working on the senior project, but they're only in actually in person for three hours.

We do not provide meals other than healthy snacks for the students that they receive as they enter the building.

Uh, and we do not have athletic facilities.

This next slide here kind of studies uh kind of goes through the purpose of our school.

So we did get funding a few years ago from the RKM Ellen Foundation to really identify and make sure that we are doing the job that we set out to of supporting students with a career-ready pathway and curriculum, and uh they help support a study that really outlined some goals to make sure that we use, you know, the supports in our area in our district, um, which you can kind of see on the right, all the different Pennsylvania career clusters we work to make sure that our students have access and that are staying in the region and then are being supported to make sure that they are prepared for their for jobs within those clusters.

So you can see on the bottom, there's a number of different community partners that we work with.

Not going to go through each and every one of them.

I'll just highlight one or two.

Um, one is AI's vision, which is basically making sure that students have access to get their learner's pyramid and drivers' uh driver's license.

That's an access issue that many ERS students don't have to have jobs in the area and industrial arts workshop, which is a youth program that supports students learning about manufacturing and welding.

So you can see with all those, we have partners, we've partnered with them to make sure that our students have access and that our choosing professions that will give them family sustaining wages.

And I'll mention the one other Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy.

So we're preparing students not to go on and make robots but to make sure that they have enough skills to be able to be able to have access to the jobs of uh in the area of fixing robotics and other um items that need um a technician.

So it's definitely an opportunity with all of the different uh community partners, and that's what our uh Mellon Foundation kind of made sure that we are aware and made sure that that's the mission of our school that we continue to do those things.

So the um as Mr.

Yunker mentioned, the hashtag Watts is kind of our tagline, and what that stands for is uh walking across the stage.

It's one of the goals that we want our students to uh make sure and we tell them on the first day of if you're here and you can dedicate time and show up and and follow our lead, then everything will line up to for you to walk across the stage, which is our eventual goal.

So uh before I close out, I will mention that um probably in a few minutes you're gonna have uh a gentleman come up and speak on uh about the concern.

I did meet with Mr.

Walsh, and uh I'm hoping that some of his concerns can work that we can work together collaboratively as you know the school and the community because some of the concerns I'm concerned about, but I uh just again hopefully we can work collaboratively of finding some solutions.

So that's the end of my presentation.

Thank you very much.

With that, we'll move on to our registered speakers.

Um, after you recall, we restate your name, provide your neighborhood for the record.

You'll be given three minutes to speak.

Our first and only registered speaker is Stefan Walsh.

Stephen Walsh.

Good afternoon, thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak.

My name is Steve Walsh.

I live at uh 1904 Fifth Avenue Pittsburgh, PA, 15219.

My wife and I are homeowners who have uh lived here for 18 years and will be the homeowners most impacted by um the decision to uh place a school in this location.

Um there are two or three neighbors around us, will also be impacted in the same way we will be.

To place a school which caters to 16 to 21 year olds in this part of Pittsburgh, I think lacks a thorough knowledge of the area, and once again finds uptown as the place for people to fill their own social, political, financial and in this case educational goals.

The blocks surrounding the proposed location are rife with drug use and sales, prostitution and homelessness.

The statistics which local community groups often cite and use in relation to the problems I have just mentioned, believe the reality of the streets surrounding where the school is proposed.

We who live there see it every day.

We don't call and report anymore because we found that this is not helping solve the problems that we face in relation to this.

We deal with it ourselves.

Watson Street is pretty much a drug supply line at the moment, and part of what is referred to in Pittsburgh as crack alley.

Drug dealers operate within two blocks of where this proposed school is going to be put.

Walking the streets for 16 to 21-year-olds at three to four times during the day, I see as somewhat careless in relation to looking after these particular students.

They're not catching yellow buses, they're catching public transport, which means some of the things that I've just spoken about, they will encounter every single day that they're attending school.

The number of people wandering these streets has actually increased over the last couple of months for reasons.

If anyone wants to find out, they can ask me afterwards.

I'm happy to explain.

Undoubtedly to uh expose to an element of these children to what's there in uptown right now.

I think parents would not be happy with.

It's just not something I would want my children to be exposed to each day going to and from school and giving the age bracket of sixteen to twenty-one, it's perfect for what relies on and what is in those streets.

As residents, we've watched a a power plant that looks like a prison be built.

We were told that wouldn't happen.

An historic house has been kept, which is since since burnt to beyond its use and is now reinhabited by drug users.

Parking lots have been allowed, which are now an absolute mess.

Things here that we have not asked for and have asked not to happen.

Will this just be another addition to the list of these things which cause problems for residents?

And for us right now, that's what we see happening.

I was in education for 35 years.

They're not all bad, but they tend to find places to go where problems are caused, and uptown right now is not a place where that should happen.

Forget the fact also that we've been in construction for five years, and the place is a mess, understandably, for some good reasons, but also for some not so good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

With that, we've exhausted our list of register of speakers.

If there's anyone else in chambers wishing to speak, please come forward at this time.

Any other speakers?

Seeing none, I do want to you may have said it if you said I missed an I apologize.

This did come over with a positive recommendation from the planning department.

Um you also attended a number of development activities meetings of which you've also received a positive recommendation.

And I know that I didn't say anything, but I was alive.

Um with that being said, we have then exhausted the business of this meeting.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.