When the Special Olympics announced its National Banner Unified Champion Schools for 2025, Baldwin High School in Pittsburgh stood among only five schools in Pennsylvania to receive the honor. But what set Baldwin apart from the rest was a second distinction — one that no other school in the state could claim. It was the only Pennsylvania school named to the ESPN Honor Roll for inclusion, a recognition that reaches far beyond athletics into the very soul of how a school chooses to treat its students.

For those who walk Baldwin's hallways every day, none of this comes as a surprise. The national recognition is the formal acknowledgment of something that students, families, and educators have quietly known for years: Baldwin Whitehall School District has built a culture where inclusion is not a program to be celebrated in a press release — it is the ordinary texture of the school day.

The programs that have made Baldwin a national model are varied in form but unified in purpose. In Unified Bocce, students with and without disabilities compete on the same team, learning to read each other's strengths and cover each other's gaps — the same dynamics that define any great team in any sport. In Partners Physical Education, students share gym class not as a charity exercise but as genuine peers, building the kind of easy, unremarkable friendship that is the gold standard of inclusion.

Best Buddies pairs students across ability lines for mentorship and friendship that often outlasts the school year. The Innovation Lab brings students together around problem-solving, where different kinds of minds tend to produce better ideas than any single perspective could. And then there is the Baldwin Bean, the student-run coffee shop where students with and without disabilities work the counter, take orders, and learn what it means to be a colleague.

Numbers and program names can only tell so much. The real measure of what Baldwin has built lives in the stories of its students.

Dom McCoy was once a quiet and isolated student — someone who moved through the school largely unseen. Today, he is known by nearly everyone in the building. Staff and students alike refer to him as the mayor of Baldwin High School, a title that captures something real: he is connected, engaged, and present in the life of his school in a way that was once unimaginable. That transformation did not happen by accident. It happened because Baldwin built structures that made belonging possible for him — and then made sure he knew he was welcome in them.

Cultures like this one do not emerge on their own. At the center of Baldwin's inclusion movement are educators Eric Jankoski and Marissa Gallagher, who have done the essential work of building something sustainable — not a single program, but a philosophy that runs through everything the school does. Their approach has attracted enough attention that it is now being replicated across the region and beyond.

On Friday, March 27, Baldwin High School held a pep rally and banner ceremony to mark the national recognition, with remarks from Special Olympics Pennsylvania leadership, Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, district leadership, and Baldwin students themselves. The gymnasium at Baldwin High School filled with the kind of noise that belongs to a school that knows what it has accomplished.

But the banner on the wall is secondary to what it represents. The Special Olympics and ESPN did not honor Baldwin for running a few good programs. They honored it for creating a school where the question of who belongs has been answered — clearly, completely, and for every student who walks through the doors.

Photos by Captured in the Moment Photography unless otherwise noted