Last Night's Board Meeting

Last night was the regularly scheduled meeting of the Penn-Trafford School Board.  The meeting was held at 7:00PM in the high school library.  Although the agenda for the meeting was rather routine, there were a few presentations that I think you would find interesting.  First, the Board had an opportunity to meet the students that operate the “coffee house” (Coffee with a Cause) in the library.  The students are life skills students who operate a “café” (think of the coffee shop in a Barnes and Nobles) and they get a chance to practice practical life skills like making money, organizing their work, budgeting etc. The proceeds from the sale of the coffee go to a different charity every month. Some of the students introduced themselves to the Board and explained why they liked the program so much.  The Board then purchased coffee of hot chocolate from the café.  I want to thank the student’s teachers, Mrs. Enick and Mrs. Blank and Mrs. Momeyer the class health technician.  It is truly a wonderful thing to watch students interact with adults that care as deeply about their students as these three do.

The Board also saw a presentation about the school district’s PSSA scores.  The presentation can be found here.  In a nutshell, Penn-Trafford has once again showed its commitment to student learning.  Overall, 90.7% of Penn-Trafford students are proficient in Reading; while 91.5% are proficient in Math.  Also, according to www.schooldigger.com, PT is the 10^th ranked public school district in the State (out of 500) and 15^th overall when you include charter schools.  I know (and agree) that there is a lot more to a school system then just test scores.  In a lot of ways it is unfair to judge a student or a school based solely on a test score.  However, test scores do reflect student learning and student learning has been the focus of the school district for quite some time.  These scores reflect a lot of hard work by the students, parents and teachers.  Congratulations!