Westinghouse High School -- where two principals have been put on paid leave -- has been "unorganized" and had some leadership challenges since classes started in August, students, community groups and a teachers' union representative said Thursday.
Pittsburgh Public Schools spokeswoman Ebony Pugh refused to say why the district on Wednesday removed co-principals Kellie Abbott and Shawn McNeil. A woman who answered the door yesterday at McNeil's home said he wasn't there. A phone message left for Abbott wasn't returned.
"They didn't get off to a good start," said Annette Werner, a member of Parents United for Responsible Educational Reform. "I think they needed someone with more experience."
The district reopened Westinghouse this year as a school for grades 6-12 with mostly single-gender classes. The district originally intended to make the Homewood school into two single-gender academies, but scrapped the idea due to lack of interest.
"We know it's had well more than its fair share of challenges this year," said Carey Harris, executive director of the watchdog group A+ Schools. "I hope this means that this is a beginning of a plan to get things right now."
Pugh wouldn't comment on whether there have been problems at the school.
"Because it is a personnel matter I really can't address the speculative comments," Pugh said.
Westinghouse senior La'Shaya Searcy, 17, of Homewood said she often saw Abbott "let people slide" on misbehavior that she thought should have been addressed.
"It's unorganized," said Searcy, whose family moved from Wilkinsburg, where she said the schools were more structured.
Taylor Goodie, 18, a University of Pittsburgh student who visits Westinghouse once a week to fulfill a community service requirement for her social work class, said students in the classroom where she works have trouble focusing as a group.
"It seems like if the teacher would push them too hard, they would get up and walk out," she said. "It's a little chaotic."
Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers president Nina Esposito-Visgitis said the union has "been in contact with the district throughout the year about the issues that have been there and hopefully now will be addressed."
"I am really proud of the teachers we have there," she said. "(They) have stood up and faced the challenges and done their best."
Rhonda Taliaferro, an executive director on special assignment, is now in charge. She joined the school about four weeks ago, Pugh said. Taliaferro had been on special assignment at University Prep 6-12 at Milliones in the Hill District.
McNeil, who was principal at Westinghouse in 2009 and 2010, arrived from Charleston, W.Va., where he was an assistant middle school principal and math teacher most of the past decade.
Abbott, 38, of New Kensington was new to the Homewood school when named co-principal in July, but not to the Pittsburgh district. She had been principal since June 2009 at the now-closed Peabody High School at a salary of $8,735 a month, though it is unclear if that's still her salary.
She previously was lead principal of the Pittsburgh Emerging Leadership Academy (PELA), where principals-in-training complete a year-long residency alongside current principals.
Before coming to Pittsburgh, Abbott spent five years as principal at Valley High School in the New Kensington-Arnold School District, where she was so popular that students, faculty and parents once urged the board not to transfer her into a districtwide administrative job.
Pittsburgh schools hired McNeil, who lives in Jefferson Hills, in July 2008 as a PELA Fellow at a then-salary of $8,524 a month. A year later, the board appointed him as principal at Westinghouse.
