Panther Valley Middle School Will Cost Way Too Much for the Locals

I started teaching in the Panther Valley Middle School in 1970 - then it was the Panther Valley High School - and before that the Lansford High School. I spent my entire teaching career - 33 years - in that building. Quite frankly - it needed to be replaced in 1970 - before I started there.

The students in the Panther Valley Middle School were great kids - and the teachers were saints to put up with the conditions of that building. The building was a dump. I remember calling the Department of Labor and Industry in one time to condemn that building. I remember walls falling down and roofs leaking - while the kids toiled on their lessons.

Back when the Panther Valley Jointure started - they made one school system out of 4 smaller town systems - the new board of education spent a ton of money on plans for a new K-12 building. When they tried to get money for that school - they could not float the bonds. I am sure those plans are tucked away in some school closet - a reminder of some of the great decisions made by this board of education. So a few years later - they chose to built a new high school - and trap the middle schoolers in pergatory :-)

Now - they have finally started to build a new Middle School - hooray - where have they been all these years. Now we find out that they made a big mistake on financing. Instead of the state picking the tab for 35% of the yearly payments - Harrisburg will only pay 17% of the tab. That is a mistake that rivals going into Iraq because a few terrorists attacked New York City.

Back in the "good old days" in 1970 - the state's share of any building project for a school district like Panther Valley was around 55%. Many of the more savvy school boards lined up at that time and let the state pay a fair share.

Christ West - the present superintendent - and one of my better former students - was not the leader that let this state reimbursement factor fall through the cracks. It is the job of the school directors to make sure that things like this do not happen. The citizens of Panther Valley should consider having the school directors surcharged so that they would have to personally pay for this mistake.

Instead - the school directors are trying to appease some of the citizenry by keeping the old middle school open as their own "personal nostalgic country club" while they consider closing down the school libraries to save a few pennies.