Education category, Page 60
Woodland Hills principal heads home to Aliquippa as superintendent
Woodland Hills High School is losing a principal, and the Aliquippa School District is gaining a new superintendent. On Wednesday, the Aliquippa School Board unanimously voted to hire Phillip K. Woods, who grew up in Aliquippa, as its superintendent. He replaces Superintendent Peter Carbone. Woods has been principal at Woodland...
Penn State trustees vote to raise tuition for 2021-22 school year
HARRISBURG — Penn State will impose its first tuition increase for incoming in-state undergraduate students since the 2017-18 school year, under a plan approved by trustees on Thursday. Incoming Pennsylvania resident students will see a 2.5% tuition increase at all campuses for the 2021-22 school year. At the University Park...
New Cal U interim president to steer consolidation
In their first move toward building a consolidated mega school comprising California, Clarion and Edinboro universities, the board of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education has named Dale-Elizabeth Pehrsson interim president of Cal U. Her appointment Wednesday places Pehrsson, who joined the State System as president of Clarion University...
Plan approved to continue with consolidation of California, Clarion and Edinboro universities
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education will move forward to consolidate California, Clarion and Edinboro universities into a single university in Western Pennsylvania, the state schools’ board of governors decided unanimously Wednesday. Work also is underway to combine Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield universities into a single unit in...
Pennsylvania recruiting new school bus drivers amid shortage
Over 1.5 million Pennsylvania students rely on bus drivers to get to and from school, sporting events and other activities — but the industry is struggling to overcome a driver shortage. The Pennsylvania School Bus Association (PSBA) — which consists of over 300 school bus contractors and industry partners —...
Pitt hikes tuition, room and board costs for fall 2021
The cost of Pitt education is increasing this fall as the university prepares to resume routine operations after more than a year of pandemic restrictions. The increases, adopted Tuesday, call for a 2.5% bump to the lowest base tuition at Pitt’s Oakland campus, taking the cost for Pennsylvania residents from...
Acclaim, fundraising spread unevenly among Black colleges
ATLANTA — Two recent high-profile faculty appointments could be a fundraising and enrollment bonanza for Howard University, one of the nation’s most prestigious Black colleges. Many other Black schools are not so fortunate; in fact, many are struggling. Some, especially smaller private colleges, have been fighting for their survival for...
Tears, politics and money: School boards become battle zones
RAPID CITY, S.D. — Local school boards around the country are increasingly becoming cauldrons of anger and political division, boiling with disputes over such issues as covid-19 mask rules, the treatment of transgender students and how to teach the history of racism and slavery in America. Meetings that were once...
New life sciences building to go up this fall on Pitt-Greensburg campus
Officials at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg are preparing to break ground for a new life sciences building this summer, following official action on the proposal by Pitt’s Properties and Facilities Committee. The project, years in the making, calls for the construction of a $19.3 million, 32,000-square-foot facility at the school’s...
Vaccinated teachers, students don’t need masks, CDC says
NEW YORK — Vaccinated teachers and students don’t need to wear masks inside school buildings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday in relaxing its covid-19 guidelines. The changes come amid a national vaccination campaign in which children as young as 12 are eligible to get shots, as...
Zaila Avant-garde breezes to National Spelling Bee win
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Whether dribbling a basketball or identifying obscure Latin or Greek roots, Zaila Avant-garde doesn’t show much stress. The 14-year-old from Harvey, La., breezed to the championship at the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, becoming the first African American winner and only the second...
Pittsburgh council, teachers’ union leader talk about ’emergency’ in school system
It’s been five months since Pittsburgh City Council declared a state of emergency in the public school system. The legislation was passed to begin a process by which the city’s leaders would work with Pittsburgh Public Schools leaders to address a racial achievement gap between white and Black students and...
Union will defend teachers in ‘critical race theory’ fights
One of the nation’s largest teachers unions on Tuesday vowed to defend members who are punished for teaching an “honest history” of the United States, a measure that’s intended to counter the wave of states seeking to limit classroom discussion on race and discrimination. In prepared remarks obtained by the...
Kids return to Saint Vincent College for Challenge Program, ‘Galactic Mission’
As the world opens back up, students at Saint Vincent College’s Challenge Program are blasting off into the worlds of space and in-person socialization. The Challenge Program, a weeklong science- and math-based summer camp, has been in existence for 40 years. After a year off because of the pandemic, program...
Career and technical schools cope with pandemic, share optimism about future
When the covid-19 pandemic extended into the 2020-21 school year, districts had to find a way to safely accommodate students and still deliver quality education. For career and technical education (CTE) schools, that challenge was multiplied, but as individual schools rose to meet it, they took away plenty of positives...
State’s Level Up funding supplement helps 3 of Westmoreland’s least wealthy school districts
Administrators at three Westmoreland County school districts are glad to accept supplemental state funding approved this year for Pennsylvania’s least wealthy districts. But, it may take a little while to decide how best to spend the extra money, which Gov. Tom Wolf announced Wednesday as part of a $300 million...
Greater Latrobe students create video games, musical instruments in STEM programsVideo
Greater Latrobe elementary students created their own video games and model miniature golf courses while their counterparts at the junior high will fashion homemade musical instruments. Those STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) initiatives are among several programs at the district that received support through teacher grants recently awarded by...
WVU board OKs tuition hike, $1.1B budget for next year
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia University tuition is going up this fall, the school’s Board of Governors decided on Friday as it also approved a budget of about $1.1 billion for the next fiscal year. Tuition will climb 1.87% for resident students, or $84 a semester. Nonresident students’ tuition will...
Pitt recommending but not requiring covid-19 vaccine
The University of Pittsburgh is encouraging students and staff to be vaccinated against covid-19, but the school won’t require vaccination. In a Board of Trustees meeting Friday morning, Chancellor Patrick Gallagher announced the university will not mandate vaccines, also acknowledging having an unvaccinated population on campus “will complicate our responsibility...
Stop the slide: Here’s how to make summer learning fun
Summer is a time for vacations, picnics, fun in the sun and the dreaded educational slide. When students head back into the classrooms after summer break, teachers expect them to have lost some of the knowledge they gained the previous school year. This could be even more true after the...
Pitt project addresses teen mental health through lens of high school studentsVideo
When Ayala Rosenthal first learned that a teenage girl in her Orthodox Jewish community committed suicide, she was devastated. She didn’t know the girl personally but they had mutual friends. “It was really an eye-opener for me,” said Rosenthal. “First of all, my heart ached for her and her family,...
Pa. lawmakers threaten university funding over statute of limitations deadlock
A pair of state lawmakers who sponsored a bill to give adult survivors of child sexual abuse the right to sue their assailants beyond the statute of limitations say they will block state appropriations for Pennsylvania’s public research universities if Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward continues to stall a vote...
Money, power, scandal: The Public School Employees’ Retirement System saga, explained
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. Pennsylvania’s largest pension fund is at the center of an equally large scandal, complete with an FBI investigation, a lawsuit, boardroom...
CMU language technology professor a finalist for $250,000 prize
English-speaking people sometimes take certain things for granted. For example, when they ask a question or give a command to Alexa and Siri, they can expect to get a desired response because those cloud-based voice services work great in English. But what happens when someone who speaks one of the...
Fox Chapel Area High School among 2 in state to earn award for strength and conditioning program
Fox Chapel Area High School is being lauded for its strength and conditioning program, one which leaders said is a foundation for lifelong health and wellness. The high school earned the Strength of America Award to recognize its elite program. The honor comes from the National Strength and Conditioning Association...
