On Wednesday and Thursday, Commonwealth Court heard from Superintendent Brian Waite of Shenandoah Valley School District, one of the petitioners in the case. Waite has been superintendent in Shenandoah Valley since 2016. A lifelong educator with 30 years of experience, he has worked in a wide variety of districts.
Waite’s current district, Shenandoah Valley, is a small rural district serving 1,100 students in Schuylkill County, in what was formerly the heart of Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region. Shenandoah Valley ranks 19th in the state in poverty rate; 75% of its students are economically disadvantaged.
Shenandoah Valley, in addition to serving one of the state’s poorest student populations, is also one of the most deeply underfunded districts in Pennsylvania. It ranks 491st out of 499 districts in current spending per student, when weighted to account for student need, and the district is short more than $7,000 per student compared to a state benchmark for adequate funding.
In his testimony, Waite described the ways in which he causes “collateral damage” when he makes decisions as a superintendent. He must often respond to urgent needs by shifting resources around, causing other students to be underserved. For example, Waite said, he recently had to re-assign a Title I specialist — who worked with elementary students who need additional academic help — to assist the 4-year-old kindergarten program, which was facing class sizes of 30 students or more.
The district’s Latino population has grown over the years, and many of these students are English learners (EL). The district ranks 11th in the state in the percentage of its students who are English learners. The district serves twice as many English learners as it did in 2008, currently teaching 143 EL students. Despite this increase, Waite said, the district’s number of English learner teachers has not increased since 2008. It is still four.
It’s a “huge workload,” he said, with each teacher responsible for approximately 35 students on their caseload. “The ability to provide them programming with fidelity is severely impeded,” Waite said. He believes students could move out of the English learner category more quickly with more support.
Shenandoah Valley had to furlough both their elementary art teacher and their elementary music teacher in 2012-13. Since then, the elementary school has not had an art or music teacher.
Shenandoah has at least 10 classes where a teacher must teach two classes simultaneously. “We have a teacher – in her classroom, she is teaching students algebra II and geometry at the same time,” Waite said.
The high school has a single counselor, who has many responsibilities and “very, very limited time directly working with kids.” The district’s school psychologist, responsible for special education evaluations, is half-time, and also serves as the elementary school assistant principal.
Waite testified that the help that his student support staff are able to provide, even in their limited capacity, makes a difference for students. For example, a student in an emotional support classroom who had difficulty relating to his classmates was recently able to gain the social skills needed to participate in the school’s cross-country team. However, Waite said, the district staff member who worked with this student is only able to spend half his time on behavioral intervention, and the district is unable to provide these services to all the students who need them.
The district currently has two boilers to heat its campus, both of which are more than 40 years old and burn anthracite coal, Waite said. One is currently broken. The district explored the option of replacing these boilers with pandemic emergency relief funds but found that using the funds both for new boilers and the HVAC system, as well as other needs, was prohibitively expensive. The district plans to use part of its fund balance to replace its heating system.
Federal pandemic emergency relief funds are providing some relief for the district, which is using funds to attempt to hire a social worker, a sixth grade teacher, and an EL teacher. Waite testified that these positions cannot be supported by the district’s current budget after these funds expire, but that he made the decision based on his students’ unmet needs.
Shenandoah Valley is trying hard to raise money from local taxpayers – its local tax rate ranks 23rd of the state’s 500 school districts — but the low-wealth district remains near the bottom in spending per weighted students.
Shenandoah Valley students’ standardized test scores lag significantly below state averages in math, reading and science, and their results are below the statewide average on the state’s academic growth measures. Only 34% percent of students attain the state’s standard for a rigorous course of study – courses that prepare students well for college – more than 20 percentage points below the statewide average.
Waite was motivated to participate in the lawsuit by seeing the disparities in resources and support available to Shenandoah Valley compared to the other districts he has seen in 30 years as an educator. “It’s important for me to be here to continue this case … so I can provide more services to our students that they are in desperate need of,” Waite said.