This photo, shown during Superintendent Arcurio’s testimony, shows a mural in Greater Johnstown’s former middle school facility that was closed in 2017 when deteriorating conditions were deemed unsafe for students. The ceiling was damaged by leaky pipes. The center of the mural reads “the doorway to our future.”
Today, the Court heard from the second school leader to testify in the case: Amy Arcurio, Superintendent of Greater Johnstown School District, one of the petitioner districts challenging Pennsylvania’s school funding system.
Attorneys for petitioners finished their direct examination of Arcurio today. She will return for cross-examination from respondents when court resumes on Tuesday, December 7 at 9:00 a.m. We will be able to share more once her testimony has concluded.
Amy Arcurio grew up in rural Cambria County, where Johnstown is the largest city. She has lived in the district for 24 years, and her son is a graduate. She is a career educator, and began to work in Greater Johnstown as a third grade teacher in 2002. Arcurio became superintendent in 2018.
Greater Johnstown School District centers around the city of Johnstown, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh. It serves 2,940 students, of which 86% are economically disadvantaged, according to 2019-20 PA Department of Education Data. It ranks 495th out of 499 districts in current spending per weighted student—a measure of spending used by the PA Department of Education that takes student need into account.
Johnstown is home to 19,000 people—down from a peak population of more than 65,000 in the 1920s—and was a historic center of steel production. The last local Bethlehem Steel plants closed in 1992, and the industry has largely left the area. Read more in our district profiles.
In petitioners’ opening statement in the case, attorney Katrina Robson shared information and photographs describing the learning conditions in Greater Johnstown School District. From our summary of opening statements: “[This is] a case about school leaders like Superintendent Amy Arcurio of Greater Johnstown, who knows that 50 percent of first graders in her district need the highest level of reading intervention. She also knows that she does not have the funding to provide the staff or the space for anything close to that number of students. Instead, she triages. The few students who are able to receive reading interventions are pulled out of class to be taught in a supply closet. Space is at a premium, after the district consolidated its two elementary schools into one building in an effort to avoid bankruptcy.”