NEWS VOICES
Welcome to News Voices, a weekly feature where members of the WVIA News team will talk with each other — and sometimes sources — about key things we've learned in recent stories we have been working on.
Today, Roger DuPuis sits down with Sarah Hofius Hall to talk about how increased state education funding was used to create a new program to give students extra help in math and English language arts.
***
ROGER: I'm Roger DuPuis and you are listening to News Voices. I'm here with WVIA News reporter Sarah Hofius Hall, who's going to talk to us about GAR Memorial Middle School's Learning Academy in Wilkes-Barre.
SARAH: Hi Roger, thanks for having me.
ROGER: Absolutely Sarah, thank you so much for being here. Talk to me about this program and why it's relevant to early education in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District.
SARAH: Yeah, so I've been covering the issue of fair funding for well over a decade and fair funding — two little words — but they really do mean a whole lot to school districts that have been historically underfunded by the state. Wilkes-Barre was one of six school districts across the state that sued Pennsylvania in 2014. These districts argued that Pennsylvania denied students in low income school districts the quality education that the state constitution guarantees. It was almost a decade after that initial court filing, the Commonwealth Court ruled that indeed the state system is unconstitutional. Wilkes-Barre needed $10,470 more per student to offer an adequate education, that was according to the petitioners in the case ... The court didn't give the state a system on how to fix it. So it was up to the state legislature to start funding education more. And we're starting to see that there's still a long way to go to meet those adequacy levels, but we are actually now seeing the impact of some of this additional state funding, including at GAR Middle School in Wilkes-Barre.
ROGER: And so Wilkes-Barre received additional funding under the budgets that were passed following the ruling, correct?
SARAH: Correct. So last year's budget provided the district with an additional $8.4 million in adequacy funding ... the governor has proposed, kind of doubling that for this next year, an additional $8.4 million for 2025-26 budget. And we're actually, you know, we're starting to see the impact of what that money is doing. You know, we can talk about numbers all day. We haven't really seen how they can spend it yet, and now we're seeing that. We're seeing the impact. So at GAR, I got up very early in the morning. I was at the school well before 7 a.m., but what was so impressive is that there were already teachers there. There were students lined up, and they are part of ... what's called the Learning Academy. And these students are chosen at random. But the teachers, they team teach, and they also have what's called WIN Time, What I Need Time, which is first thing in the morning. The sun was barely up when I was there, and they were already in classrooms and getting that extra help they needed in math and English Language Arts.
ROGER: And your story said that the teachers are seeing more engagement from these students.
SARAH: Yes, the superintendent (Brian Costello) told me that when he's in the hallway, he actually hear students talking about what they learned, what they learned in class that day, and that's not always something you hear in a busy middle school hallway. So judging by the success they've had, you know, the district wants to expand, you know, this team model of teaching, but of course, you know this costs money. They're using that as a way to say 'thank you for the state funding, but with more like, look at the impact we could have district wide'. The superintendent is now kind of going statewide and saying 'look at these results that we have. This is the impact of fair funding'.
ROGER: You know, Sarah, to wrap up at the end of your story, you spoke with one of the students, a young man named Hunter, and he had started his day at 7:15 a.m. and you know, that might not be what most of us would enjoy doing, but he seemed pretty enthusiastic about that.
SARAH: Yeah, Hunter Maldonado. I, you know, was in that WIN time with him that morning, ... I was there for a few hours, and so I got to kind of sit in on a couple of the other classes, and he happened to be in a couple of them. And let me just read this quote, because this is not something that you often hear a 12-year-old say: 'I like getting up early, I like coming to school, I like getting here on time. And I think everybody should do that. It gives us a better opportunity to raise our hand, do better things and make our minds brighter.'
ROGER: One couldn't say it better than that. Sarah, thank you for being here.
SARAH: And thank you so much for having me.
ROGER: And to our listeners, you can find Sarah's story on our website, wvia.org.
READ MORE ON WILKES-BARRE AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT'S SUCCESS: Learning Academy successful in Wilkes-Barre school, could expand with more state funding.
