Students lined up outside G.A.R. Memorial Middle School in Wilkes-Barre shortly after sunrise.
Metal detectors chirped quietly as groggy students climbed the stairs. Instructional coaches stood with their clipboards, cheerfully greeting the children and asking if they wanted a free breakfast that day.
“What I Need” time — called WIN — starts at 7:15 a.m. in the school’s Learning Academy. For 35 minutes before the school day, students receive targeted support in core subjects.
Test results show that the academy, which features a unique, collaborative and comprehensive model for teaching and learning, is working. Additional state funding allows the Luzerne County school district — a plaintiff in the fair funding lawsuit decided two years ago — to offer the program. With more state funding, children in other Wilkes-Barre schools could receive similar support, the district superintendent said.
“We're very thankful for the additional funding that we've been able to get,” Superintendent Brian Costello said during a visit to the Learning Academy. “We're not just asking for the money. We're explaining, ‘This is why we need these resources,’ and then showing that with these resources, we could actually provide results. So it has been working well.”
Funding lawsuit
Wilkes-Barre, Panther Valley, Shenandoah Valley, William Penn, Greater Johnstown and Lancaster school districts sued the state in 2014. They argued Pennsylvania denied students in low-income school districts the quality education that the state constitution guarantees.
At the time, low-wealth Pennsylvania school districts had $4,800 less on average to spend per pupil than wealthy school districts. In 2023, Wilkes-Barre needed $10,470 more per student to offer an adequate education, the petitioners said.
In February 2023, Commonwealth Court ruled that the state’s system to fund education was unconstitutional. The court ordered the state to fix it, but did not provide the framework to do it. The Basic Education Funding Commission provided a report in 2024.
State budget documents show that Wilkes-Barre had a $76.8 million adequacy gap as of last year. The 2024-25 budget provided the district with $8.4 million in adequacy funding, and Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed giving the district another $8.4 million for 2025-26.
In all, Shapiro last month proposed providing $500 million to the state’s most underfunded districts, nearly identical to what those districts received for the current year.
“We now have an unprecedented opportunity to really change the way we fund public education, ensuring that every student, not just in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District, but also across Pennsylvania, has access to the resources they need to thrive. The increased funding from last year's budget truly initiated a transformational change,” Costello said during a press conference last month on the two-year anniversary of the court decision. “For our district, we have been able to see firsthand what is possible when we invest in our students.”
For years, Wilkes-Barre had to subtract — cutting art classes, librarians and family and consumer sciences. Now, the district looks to add.
Learning Academy
G.A.R. — short for Grand Army of the Republic — served as a high school until the district consolidated its three high schools in 2021.
Now, more than 1,000 students in sixth through eighth grades attend the large limestone and granite building, which had its cornerstone placed by Civil War veterans in 1922.
Nearly 90% of students live in low-income households, and 85% of students are a race other than white. The most recent standardized test results show 28.7% of the students tested proficiently in English language arts, and 8.4% in math schoolwide.
Several years ago, Costello began to rethink teaching models, with the hope of improving learning outcomes for students. He looked at models in medical schools and research hospitals — where new medical school graduates have residencies and mentors and collaborate with others.
“We don't let a doctor just go out and begin operations, but yet we let ... teachers just come in, and we hope that they do well,” he said.
He wanted to create a schedule in which teachers could work together and review progress as a team, and he tasked Melissa Myers, the G.A.R. principal at the time, to help develop the Learning Academy.
The school selects the students for the academy at random, Myers said.
Of sixth graders, 130 are in the academy now. The academy has also now expanded to seventh grade, with 120 students in the program.
Each day, teachers in the academy have planning periods at the same time, which they call “developmental studio.” They monitor student progress, prepare lessons and review any issues. With a traditional schedule — and the schedule outside of the Learning Academy — teachers have planning periods at different times.
Academy students complete “exit tickets,” usually on their laptops, after every class. The exit tickets include a question based on that day’s lesson. Teachers look at those results daily as a way to judge mastery — and whether it’s time to move onto the next skill, or whether more review is needed.
“Our students are much more engaged because teachers are doing a lot of more fun and creative activities due to collaboration,” said Myers, now the head of middle level education for the district. “Things just come together in a way that I don't necessarily see happening across the board everywhere else, because again, the schedule doesn't allow for it.”
Instructional coaches “team-teach” with the regular classroom teachers, pull small groups of students out for review and collaborate on lessons. A data coach provides detailed analysis on student progress and needs. A parent outreach coordinator develops connections with families and works with students who have attendance issues.
Results and funding
Mandy Costello taught sixth grade for about 25 years before becoming an English language arts coach for the academy.
“For our students, I think they are supported in ways that we as teachers have never been able to do before, for many reasons,” she said. "Data has proven that, hey, we're on to something this. This is catching on. This is working."
In English language arts, 54 students within the academy were at the below basic level at the start of the school year, compared to 10 at the end. The number of students at the proficient and advanced levels went from 36 to 74.
For math, 30.7% students moved to a higher performance category, compared to 21.3% in the reset of the school.
“To be able to have this type of data to back up what we are doing and what we see has been really uplifting,” Mandy Costello said.
Wilkes-Barre has used part of its additional state funding to pay for the program — including one instructional coach for every three teachers. The teachers also come into school one hour early each day for WIN time, at a cost of $6,500 per year, per teacher.
They’re also eligible for $1,500 stipends per semester based on the proficiency of not only of their students, but of students in other classes, too.
“When we did that, initially, I thought that that incentive would be a driving force,” the superintendent said. “The incentive wasn't necessarily the driving factor … that might have brought them together at first, but it ultimately came to the fact that we just all want to succeed.”
Now the district is looking at ways it can implement the program, or at least parts of it, throughout the district. Wilkes-Barre added coaches and resources to Heights Murray Elementary School this year, at a cost of $795,000.
Mid-year assessments show success, the superintendent said. In the second grade at Heights, 82% of students scored at or above benchmark, compared to only 34% at this time last year.
The superintendent, a vocal proponent of fair funding, has used the success to advocate for additional state money.
“These victories are essentially coming from one elementary school out of five in my district, and when I talk about that sixth-grade class, it's a sixth grade cohort in one of our two middle schools,” Brian Costello said at the press conference. “We know that every year we delay reaching our adequacy target, another class of students move through our schools without the resources they need to reach their full potential and celebrate these types of victories.”
‘Better opportunity’
Paper chains and twinkle lights hung from the ceiling in the sixth grade hallway at G.A.R.
English language arts teachers dressed up in medical scrubs for lessons on dissecting writing prompts and diagnosing the answers.
Math classes headed to the auditorium that morning. Math coach Lindsay Barker played the theme song from “Law and Order.” She and the math teachers wore judge robes. The students acted as the jury for math problems.
Hunter Maldonado, 12, sat with his classmates, working on a math problem. He had started his day at 7:15 a.m.
“I like getting up early. I like coming to school. I like getting here on time. And I think everybody should do that,” he said. “It gives us a better opportunity to raise our hand, do better things and make our minds brighter.”
