The new state budget includes new funding and policies for public schools, primarily, they’re based around increasing oversight of cyber charter schools, increasing the amount of money doled out through the state’s adequacy formula and recruiting and retaining teachers as the commonwealth faces a shortage.
Limitless Cyber Charter School is testing the bounds of Pennsylvania’s cyber charter approval process.
Five Bucks County districts deemed underfunded are receiving the extra money again this year, and other Bucks districts are receiving a flat additional $50,000.
Vaccine exemptions are on the rise. Almost 1,800 students in Allegheny County submitted medical, religious or philosophical vaccination exemptions in 2024, compared to about 1,300 in 2020. In Westmoreland County, 926 students filed for exemptions in these categories and time frame, compared to just under 400 in 2020.
The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma received 16 of its children, exhumed from a Pennsylvania cemetery, and reburied their small wooden coffins last month in a tribal cemetery in Concho, Oklahoma.
If the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) approves the 35-second shot clock for high school varsity and junior varsity games, it will be added in three years.
Groups that advocate for public schools in Pennsylvania warn that steps to downsize and dismantle the U.S. Department of Education will mean less help for students with disabilities.
School districts would be permitted to deduct more from their per-student payments to online schools.
According to the Education Law Center, Adams, Beaver, Bucks, Lancaster, and York counties each have more than two districts with policies that ban books, suppress certain forms of expression, and bar transgender students from bathrooms, locker rooms, or sports teams that match their identities.
Ruth Comley draws on decades of niche expertise to teach Carnegie Mellon students how to design and build haunted houses.
