School district superintendents have a lot on their minds as the 2024-25 school year approaches.
Have they built a strong enough talent pipeline to offset Pennsylvania’s acute teacher shortage? Do they have the resources needed to help the increasing number of students struggling with mental health issues? Is their curriculum adequately preparing graduates for a future that is being dramatically reshaped by AI and other emerging technologies?
Districts are innovating constantly to meet those challenges and others, superintendents Ella Musser of the Cocalico School District, Brian Troop of the Ephrata Area School District and Keith Miles of the School District of Lancaster told their audience at Hourglass Lancaster’s First Friday Forum last week.
Pennsylvania’s teacher shortage is a problem that has been building up since the Great Recession, Musser said. Faced with budget cuts, districts didn’t fill positions vacated by retiring teachers; faced with a discouraging job market, college students who might have entered teaching pursued other careers instead.
For Cocalico, the biggest challenge has been finding substitutes, both in instructional and support staff, she said. In response, it has stepped up its recruiting and outreach across the board. Musser’s team put out calls for assistance at school board meetings, and has been gratified at how many parents stepped up. The district has developed a paraprofessional-to-teacher pathway in collaboration with HACC and Millersville University and has introduced service-learning opportunities and electives in education for high school juniors and seniors.
Morale is part of the picture, Troop said, noting that education is the only industry that has 13 years to sell itself to its future workforce. When teachers love their job, it makes an impression on students, he said, just as it does if society constantly subjects educators to criticism and ridicule.
Turning to mental health, Miles said students themselves realize that constant access to news and social media is increasing their stress levels. Limiting smartphone access in schools, as legislation proposed by state Sen. Ryan Aument, R-Lancaster, would do, would be a huge change for the better, he said.
How technology is used “makes all the difference,” Troop said. For districts, it enables better data tracking and communication with parents in ways that weren’t possible before. It also is changing what and how teachers teach.
In a world with Google and ChatGPT, trying to fill students’ heads with facts is misguided, Troop said. They need to develop higher-order skills: Critical thinking, media literacy, the ability to apply concepts to novel situations. That has to be a focus every day, throughout the curriculum.
Employers agree, he said. When Ephrata Area was reviewing its mission and overall approach about a decade ago, they told the school district they want graduates who are creative, who work well in teams, who are lifelong learners and have resilience and integrity. Those elements and others make up Ephrata Area’s “Life Ready Graduate” profile, which outlines the knowledge, skills and dispositions that set up a student for success in adult life.
All three superintendents said they encourage early career exploration and a broad approach to career readiness that embraces pathways other than four-year college. They also warmly endorsed hands-on, project-based learning. The state’s new STEELS standards (Science, Technology & Engineering, Environmental Literacy & Sustainability), which emphasize it, are a big step in the right direction, they said.
The 2024-25 state budget includes an additional $1.1 billion for education, including $490 million in “adequacy” payments intended to begin remedying the state’s unconstitutional funding inequities. That’s a lot of money, to be sure, but financial challenges remain, the superintendents said.
Under Gov. Shapiro’s initial budget proposal, SDL had expected to receive around $10 million in adequacy funding, Miles said. However, the formula legislators ultimately settled on provided significantly less: $6.8 million. As a result, the district is postponing plans to hire more behavioral health specialists and expand middle school electives.
Cocalico received no adequacy funding at all under the formula, Musser said. It has had to make some “hard decisions” financially, she said, and is pursuing sponsorships to bring in extra revenue.
Troop expressed frustration that cyber charter school funding reform did not make it to the finish line.
Pennsylvania ties third-party cyber charters’ funding to the per-student funding of their students’ home districts, not the actual cost of cyber education. Reforming the system would save Ephrata Area more than $1 million a year, Troop said.
Under the present system, cyber charters are “fleecing” taxpayers and using the money to buy up real estate, he said, citing a recent Forbes article.
“It’s not right,” he said.
