Lillie Langlois

Cummings Township

For months, the JS School Board has been promising parents answers about reconfiguration if Salladasburg Elementary is closed. At the Aug. 5 public hearing, Dr. Ulmer spoke for 10-minutes where bits of financial information and HVAC expenses were presented without much context or clarity. He emphasized the main option of closing Salladasburg at the end of the 24/25 school year with the goal of saving money.

Nearly 80% of the public spoke in favor of keeping Salladasburg open. Only two people spoke in favor of closing Salladasburg and both are former School Board Directors (Wayne Kinley voted to close Salladasburg in 2023 and John Shireman voted to close Nippenose in 2013). The last speaker summed it up best; Steve Helm said, “Information is the key to success. We need to know exactly where things are in order for us to support or not support a particular direction or goal. We don’t have anything…More information would allow us to understand more of what the dilemma is that you’re looking at closing a school. There’s no financial picture, there’s no justification, you didn’t talk about enrollment. I know you’ve talked about it before; I know we visited this a year ago, but nothing here in this particular hearing took us down that road today.”

At the Aug. 12 board meeting, Dr. Brian Ulmer revealed a few important details about class sizes. All ~215 students currently enrolled at Salladasburg would be moved to JSE. No space would be added to the building but 30 regular education classrooms would be used, some of which are currently used for storage. Therefore, a total of 700+ K-5 students would be housed at JSE (based on 23/24 school year enrollment). This averages out to 23.4 students per classroom, an increase of four students per class from the previous year.

Ironically, last year’s School Board voted for Scenario C to reduce class sizes across all K-5 schools, yet this might all be reversed. The 23/24 school year moved over 100 students out of JSE because teachers rightfully complained it was overcrowded. Now, we’re going to move 200+ students back in the building two years later? Clearly, this school district is dysfunctional. Teachers, students and parents are asked to withstand all the shuffling and reorganization without being given clear and transparent information.