Edgewood Elementary to start late due to ongoing building renovations

Woodland Hills School District students are sharpening their pencils and putting together their backpacks for the first day of school, but not everyone will be back in the classroom as expected.

Edgewood Elementary school students will now have late start to the 2025-26 school year. Building renovations are still underway.

Edgewood Elementary students and faculty are now scheduled to start the year on Sept. 2 — 12 days after they anticipated . All other Woodland Hills schools will return to class on Aug. 21.

”This decision will minimize the disruptions to the school experience for both students and staff and will ensure their safety throughout the school day,” district officials said in a news release.

Despite starting late, Eddie Willson, the assistant superintendent, said the school district was “not going to have to alter the calendar in any way.”

Edgewood Elementary’s new schedule will have just over a thousand instructional hours, which is higher than the 900 hours required by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Willson said.

School district officials were notified on Friday afternoon that it would be “unwise” to open Edgewood’s doors because the fumes from flooring glue would not have dissipated enough to make it safe to breathe.

Teachers will be allowed to enter the building and begin setting up their classrooms on Aug. 25 and pre-K and kindergarten orientation has been pushed back to Aug. 28.

Kindergarten students will have orientation from 10 to 11 a.m. and pre-K students will have orientation from 11 a.m. to noon, according to the school district.

Some parents took to the comment section on Woodland Hills School District’s social media to express their anger about the change.

Willson said that while the district takes the instruction of their students “very seriously,” he believes that safety of faculty and students is “over all else.”

The Woodland Hills School District encompasses 12 municipalities in Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs: Edgewood, Swissvale, Rankin, Braddock, North Braddock, Braddock Hills, Forest Hills, Churchill, Chalfant, East Pittsburgh, Wilkins and Turtle Creek.