$4M in aid earmarked for pandemic learning loss

EAST ROCKHILL » Most of the American Rescue Plan federal stimulus funding Pennridge School District got this year will be used to help students who’ve fallen behind catch up under a plan outlined at the Sept. 13 Pennridge School Board Activities Committee meeting.

“We received $5,063,035. By law, you were to spend a minimum of 20 percent on learning loss,” said Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Schools Anthony Rybarczak.

The plan includes spending $4,055,000, which is 80 percent, on the learning loss component of district programs, he said.

The district has three years, until the end of September in 2024, to spend the money.

Adding Beyond the Bell, a two day per week after-school pro

gram for elementary students, will cost $534,000 over the three years, Rybarczyk said. The plan also includes $2,331,000 for summer programs, $200,000 for additional supplies and materials, and $990,000 for additional staff persons over the three years.

The remainder of the ARP funding above the amount allocated for learning loss programs, would go to services for students with disabilities, Rybarczyk said.

Board member Megan Banis-Clemens said when the board previously discussed the funding, they were told the money could go to pay for things the district was already doing.

“I guess I’m a little bit surprised to see this much that’s, ‘hey, let’s buy all this extra stuff, it will hopefully help us,’” she said.

Those costs will continue after the three years that the ARP funding will cover, she said.

“If you think it’s going to go away in three years, that’s a fantasy,” Banis-Clemens said. “I mean, anytime you expand and you add all of these other things, it’s not going to go away.”

The ARP money could be used to provide air conditioning in the elementary schools, which she would like to see happen, she said.

“I see a lot of redundancies

and things that I don’t know are actually going to be worthwhile,” she said of the plan that had been presented.

“Nothing that is up there is just, ‘hey, we need to buy this because we have the money,’” Rybarczyk said. “It was definitely purposeful and meaningful in regards to what do we need to incorporate into our systems to ensure that the learning loss is addressed.”

Superintendent David Bolton said the funding picks up costs of existing summer programs. One of the proposed new positions, a liaison with district students in cyber schools, is needed to provide more support for those students, he said.

A proposed data-based instructional teacher at the high school would not be an administrator, but would work directly with teachers to identify student academic needs and ways to meet those needs, Bolton said. The plan is that teachers will also be taught how to do the same and the position would end after three years, he said.

“When you go in and you target what they’re missing, that’s how they can progress faster,” committee Chair Joan Cullen said.

“You don’t want to spend money on things that are going to be redundant and we are talking about what students have missed,” she said. “If these are things that are going to target

the skills in particular that they’ve lost, and not waste time covering what they already know, then I think it would be worth it.”

The data-based instructional teacher position will include more than putting in data and analyzing the results, said Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools Kathleen Scheid. The person doing the job will work side by side with and support teachers, she said. The teachers will also work in teams, she said.

“We want to have our teachers teaching the student but they need to have the right data to lead them to instructional practices for student achievement,” Scheid said.

She also said that it is understood that the additional positions, if approved, may not be permanent ones.

Bolton suggested that a list of weekly and monthly duties and the goals of the data-based instructional teacher position be written up and forwarded to the board, which Scheid said would be done.

“I think that education should be tailored to students and so maybe if this becomes something that we find that’s useful and really does help students by targeting the skills that they’re missing and getting them to progress faster, I would leave the door open to continuing to do that beyond the three years because it can be very valuable,” Cullen said.