The Pittsburgh Public Schools has seating capacity for 36k students, but it only utilizing 25k of it, roughly 70%. That means another round of school closures, the first since 2006 when the public school count went from 86 in 2005 to 65 in 2006. In the decade from 2000-09, enrollment fell from 38k to 27k (28%) while the number of schools decreased from 96 to 66 (31%).

Seeing this imbalance, the superintendent noted that "every dollar we spend on underutilized bricks and mortar is one less dollar we have available to spend towards improving the life prospects of our students". Note that the District’s per-pupil cost in 2009 was $19,963, up 11% from where it stood in 2006.

The process in 2011 will use data like student achievement, enrollment, facility condition, racial balance, transportation costs, etc. to decide what to shutter and what to keep open.

Here’s how the overall facility inventory for the District looks: In 2000, the District had 100 buildings (96 schools, 2 administration buildings, 1 operations/maintenance building, and 1 food service building) with 9.5 million square feet (about 247 square feet per student). In 2009, the District had 71 buildings (66 schools, 3 administration buildings, 1 operations/maintenance building and 1 food service building) totaling 7.3 million square feet (263 square feet per student). We have noted the growth in administrative employees (non-teachers) so it is no surprise that more space was needed to house them. Whereas the District carried about 129k of square footage for administration during most of the decade; that amount tripled to 390k in 2008.