Aliquippa School District is ranked among 50 districts nationally with the worst socioeconomic disparities with a bordering district.
Aliquippa’s border with Hopewell Area School District ranked No. 42 in an analysis conducted by nonprofit think tank EdBuild. There is a 31 percentage point poverty rate difference between the two districts.
Step from one side of Chapel Road in Aliquippa to the other side in Hopewell Township and the corresponding school district’s poverty rate drops from 39 percent to 8 percent.
In addition, the median household income more than doubles from $31,121 to $63,090. And the percentage of nonwhite students dives from 82 percent to 9 percent, EdBuild reported.
Western Pennsylvania has five such “segregated” borders in the country’s top 50 – the only ones in the state – according to the report “Fault Lines: America’s Most Segregating School District Borders,” which was updated with the most recently available figures and re-released last week.
