Outrage is building in a quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood.

Residents say they were blindsided by a plan to convert the former Fraternal Order of Police lodge on Banksville Road into a reentry center. The building could be turned into housing for up to 100 federal inmates, officials said.

Dismas Charities, an organization that operates federal halfway houses across the country, is behind the proposal. But neighbors say this isn’t the place.

“What will these people be doing when they’re not in the halfway house? Will they be law-abiding citizens and respect our community and its members?” questioned Judi Perry, a Shady Crest resident.

Concerns range from safety to proximity. Some fear the risk of repeat offenses, even though the facility is designed for rehabilitation. Residents point to past incidents tied to similar programs, including a case in Kentucky where an inmate left a facility and killed a police officer.

“We need to be better educated about how this facility would operate, what the parameters are for the people who stay there, and maybe, if we had more information, it would comfort us,” Perry said.

Inside a recent Pittsburgh Planning Commission presentation, Dismas Charities pitched the facility as a second-chance model.

“Over the past five years, we’ve had almost 40,000 residents participate in our programs nationally, and the rate of recidivism is .08 percent,” a Dismas Charities representative said at the meeting.

But that message isn’t landing here. Petitions are already circulating with hundreds of signatures collected. Neighbors say this fight is just beginning.

“We have preconceived notions about these people who were convicted and committed a crime. We don’t know what their crime was, and so maybe our concerns are exaggerated. But in general, you don’t like the idea of that facility being so close to our community,” Perry said.

A decision could come soon, as the commission is set to take this up in the coming days. If approved, it would still need additional sign-off before any inmates move in.

A strongly worded memo raised new questions about how much work Department of Children and Families (DCF) staff were doing from home, and whether that level of teleworking was hurting child protection. 

Telework expanded during the pandemic and later became part of the state’s labor agreement, allowing some DCF employees to work remotely up to 80% of the week.

While social workers continued to handle court appearances, home visits, and foster placements in person, they were allowed to start and end most workdays at home. Staff must reapply for telework permission every six months and face losing that privilege if performance slips. 

Concerns over the workflow quickly followed. The state’s Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) warned that extensive teleworking could be undermining case practice and supervision inside an agency already struggling with high turnover and many inexperienced workers.

In a critical letter sent Thursday, the Child Advocate suggested that telework should be limited unless workers met specific, data‑driven performance standards, citing the loss of in‑office collaboration, supervision, and real‑time support. 

NBC Connecticut Investigates also spoke exclusively with a longtime former DCF employee who remained in the child welfare field. That former worker said telework simply did not function on multiple levels at DCF, describing widespread belief among current staff and those in the judicial system that bringing people back into the office was a necessary step toward restoring the agency. 

Lawmakers from both parties echoed those concerns. House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora (R) said staff working remotely were missing daily interaction, training, and support, instead operating in silos. House Speaker Matt Ritter(D) said the newly formed oversight committee was expected to examine the policy. 

Those warnings were backed up by troubling findings. According to the OCA’s report, a review of in‑home cases in 2024 and 2025 found face‑to‑face interactions did not happen in about 40% of cases—something the OCA called alarming and in need of urgent attention. 

As scrutiny over DCF intensified, teleworking became the latest flashpoint in a broader debate over accountability, supervision, and whether the systems meant to protect vulnerable children were being stretched too thin.

The remote Washington County town of Topsfield voted Thursday to close its five-student school, opting to send a shrinking student population elsewhere.

Residents voted 42 to 18 to shutter the East Range II School after high costs began to drive students from out of town elsewhere, bringing the number of students down from 25 in 2023 to the small total it has today. Turnout was robust in a town with only about 175 residents and 130 registered voters.

School district officials projected that the school, which had once served pre-K through eighth grade but would have been left only with pre-K through early elementary school students, would teach no more than seven students at a time over the next five school years. They also expected it would cost nearly $500,000 per year to keep the school open.

“I had no idea how the vote was going to go,” Eastern Maine Area School System superintendent Amanda Belanger said Friday. “I’m glad that a decision has been made and that we can move forward.”

The school board will finalize the closure plan and weigh what to do about the staff at East Range, at a meeting on May 7. The school would have likely had only one full-time teacher working there next year. That teacher, Paula Johnson, said she wasn’t sure what she would do if the school closed. She has worked there for 11 years.

Students will now likely be bused from Topsfield to schools in Princeton or Baileyville, about 30 minutes south. East Range will close at the end of this school year. After that, the town will take over the property.

It’s not clear what will become of the building. At an April meeting to discuss the future of the school, some residents were already speculating about whether it could turn into a senior center or similar community facility.

The result of Thursday’s vote was not unexpected. Many residents at the April meeting said they could not afford the taxes required to keep the school open. They will still have to pay for maintenance of the building but that cost is expected to be much lower than the cost of maintaining the school.

Taxpayers will also have to continue to pay for students, but the cost of busing kids out of town is also expected to be much lower than maintaining the local school.