Category: News || By Submitted Info and Staff Report

A White Oak-based preschool that has served the McKeesport area since 1962 will close its doors Aug. 15.

Long Run Children's Learning Center has been suffering from financial problems since 2010, when it lost a contract with Allegheny Intermediate Unit to provide early intervention services to about 100 special needs children. The board of directors voted at its July meeting to close the facility, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

"This is perhaps the most difficult decision I've ever had to be part of," said Cindy Popovich, who chairs Long Run's board of directors. She called Long Run "an integral part of the lives and education of hundreds of McKeesport-area families over the years."

"Unfortunately, we have had to face the economics of maintaining a highly specialized school with increasingly dwindling revenue sources," Popovich said.

The school was founded in 1962 by Bertha Mae Chaplin as the McKeesport Pre‑School for Exceptional Children. The school was originally located at the former First Presbyterian Church, Downtown, before moving to Boston, Elizabeth Twp., in the late 1970s.

It moved to a new facility on Long Run Road near Ripple Road in 1993.

For many years, Long Run provided speech, physical and occupational therapy to children with a wide variety of learning needs, but had also broadened its offerings to provide pre-school and daycare services to children without special learning challenges.

The decision to close comes after "more than two years of intense evaluation and creative solution-seeking," a spokeswoman said.

According to a 2012 story by Anne Cloonan in the Post-Gazette, Long Run lost the AIU contract because the AIU felt that children with special learning requirements needed to be more integrated with children who do not have special learning needs, and because the AIU was switching to different models of service --- including home-based education --- for children with mental or physical challenges.

The shift meant the loss of $500,000 in funding to Long Run's programs.

Long Run has been supported financially by the families whose children are served by Long Run's educational programs, as well as by individual donors, corporations and area foundations, said Marjie Foster of InVision Human Services, a Wexford-based agency that took over the school's operations in 2013.

InVision's goal was to assess and support Long Run while program and funding options were considered, Foster said, and while various possibilities were explored, it became clear over time that Long Run's operation could not be sustained.

"Our goal was to support Long Run in every way we could while the future of the organization was assessed," said Ruth Siegfried, founder, president and chief executive officer of InVision. "Long Run has a wonderful history in the McKeesport area. We are proud to have had an opportunity to work with its leadership, staff and the students and their families, and sad to see the program close."

No plans have been announced for the future of the White Oak facility, or for the families currently using Long Run's services.