Laurels & lances: Teaching and searching

Laurel: To making an effort. Lots of people are talking about the problems in education — especially with the falling numbers of teachers.

It’s an issue that wasn’t necessarily caused by the coronavirus pandemic, but it has definitely been exacerbated by it. Colleges are seeing fewer people pursue degrees in education — ironic as many Pennsylvania universities were founded specifically for the training of teachers.

Point Park University is trying to help in a way that other institutions can’t. Point Park is the only school in the state recognized by the Pennsylvania Department of Education to offer the American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence program.

OK, but how does that help? It allows people who have an undergraduate degree to pursue a teaching certificate through a one-year program without the time and money needed for an additional bachelor’s or master’s degree.

The benefit for the prospective teacher is the money. Less up-front cost or back-end debt is definitely a good thing. But the bonus for the schools — and the students — is the time. With teachers in high demand, the faster someone can obtain a degree and get in the classroom, the better.

Lance: To no answers. Cassandra Gross of Unity is missing. That is not new information. Gross was last seen in April 2018. She was 51. A Westmoreland County judge declared her dead in 2019, but her family still has no information about what happened to her.

Thomas Stanko, 52, of Unity, has been a person of interest in the disappearance. Charges of attempted burglary, forgery and tampering with evidence have been hanging around him for years. They were withdrawn in August, according to court documents, as were three other criminal cases ordered dismissed in 2021 because of prosecutorial misconduct.

The lance here is not to the withdrawal of the charges. Prosecutors do not get to just file charges and not move forward. There should be enough evidence to move when a case is brought, so withdrawing them does seem appropriate.

The lance is to the sad fact that a woman can disappear without a trace. It isn’t that the case hasn’t garnered attention. It has. But it seems incomprehensible that a human being can vanish, leaving nothing to indicate what happened, how it happened or who might be responsible.