Today, we began to call witnesses to the stand in our challenge to the Pennsylvania state legislature’s inadequate and inequitable school funding system. First up: David McAndrew, Superintendent of petitioner Panther Valley School District.
Panther Valley serves four small towns in Carbon and Schuylkill County, in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region. McAndrew, who started as superintendent in 2020, knows his community well. He is a lifelong resident; his two children, now in high school, go to school there, and he spent a few years as a high school basketball coach in the district. He has also seen what better-resourced schools can do, working as a kindergarten teacher and principal in nearby Jim Thorpe Area School District.
“I see the opportunities they’re not getting, and it’s not fair,” McAndrew said.
McAndrew reported on conditions in Panther Valley schools. He shared that in his elementary school, 75 kindergarteners share one toilet. His high school locker room doesn’t have working showers. His elementary school has a roof, but it has leaked for years.
Facilities matter, but what Panther Valley is also missing, McAndrew said, is people. The district pays a starting teacher salary of less than $38,000 a year—as much as $23,000 less than some neighboring districts. It is difficult to hire and retain staff, and turnover of experienced teachers is high.
Raising significantly more resources locally to hire and retain teachers is a remote possibility. “We are already the 10th highest taxed school in Pennsylvania, in an area that has a lot of poverty,” McAndrew said. “If we continue to tax these people, one, they’re going to lose their homes, or two, they're not going to pay them. We can't keep doing this to the same people.”
A shortage of teachers means that Panther Valley kindergarteners learn in classrooms with 29 students, one teacher, and no support from paraprofessionals or aides. If one student has an issue that needs to be addressed, everyone else waits.
Students wait to use science equipment—in 7th grade, 37 students in a science class have to share only six or eight microscopes. Students wait for support in reading. The district’s three reading specialists must spend time covering classes, not doing the small-group interventions that they are trained to perform.
Everyone wears multiple hats. McAndrew leads outreach to students experiencing homelessness. An elementary school principal, working with no assistant principal, is also a school psychologist, evaluating students for special education. “There’s no one else to do things,” McAndrew said. “[Our school staff and teachers] are phenomenal.”
Panther Valley students waited for remote learning when schools closed in March 2020. Online instruction wasn’t available to everyone until the 2020-21 school year. The district wasn’t able to provide a Chromebook or other device to every student—something that some districts have been doing for years—until it received federal aid.
The district also used one-time federal aid to cover salaries to keep its paraprofessionals on staff, retain their art and music program, and keep athletic programs going. McAndrew reported that in a few years, without changes, they’ll be back where they started: on the verge of bankruptcy, contemplating deep cuts.
“I think we have fantastic staff that go above and beyond to do everything they can for our students,” McAndrew said. “I think we have students that want to do well, that want to overcome a lot of the adversities that they face on a day-to-day basis.”
Panther Valley went to court to ask our state legislature to step up.
“I'm sitting here and I'm asking the state of Pennsylvania to help us,” McAndrew said. “Who else is there to ask?”