The Urban Academy

The Urban Academy faculty and staff are a family oriented team driven by the school’s twenty year mission to provide a superior education that will develop in our students’ academic excellence, leadership skills, and social values that will enable them to ultimately become positive contributors to the community in which they live, and society as a whole. We work daily to deliver instructional and school-based activities that reinforce our students’ perception of skill, self-esteem, and self-sufficiency. At the Urban Academy, we have high expectations for our students, and as such we make sure that our students have access to the tools, resources, and support needed to succeed in an environment of high expectations, academic standards, and familiar cultural context. When a student leaves the Urban Academy, he or she will have the skills and attitudes necessary for academic success and life-long learning. Moreover, they will be prepared emotionally and psychologically to avoid or withstand, the rigor of the Urban Academy environment as they matriculate through their learning career. The Urban Academy has a rich legacy as the region’s oldest charter school, founded in 1998 by African American community leaders and educators, chief among them being Esther L. Bush of the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh. The school traditions are deeply rooted in our founders’ belief that ALL children, specifically black children, deserved to be immersed in a high-quality, rigorous, and culturally relevant and responsive learning environment. Under the leadership of Dr. Janet Bell, Dr. Gail Edwards, and now K. Chase Patterson and Principal Angelique Drakeford, the school, has become a model of academic excellence for Black students in the greater Pittsburgh region.