CENTRE HALL — At 7:55 a.m. Aug. 29, a school bus rolled down Manor Road into Centre Hall, coming to a stop at James Avenue. The doors opened and eight backpack-toting children from the Grandview Terrace neighborhood climbed aboard for the trip to the Centre Hall-Potter Elementary School. It was the first day of school in the Penns Valley District, and it was early this year, falling just two days after the end of the Grange Fair and a full week before Labor Day.
District Superintendent Brian Griffith is enthusiastic about some new features in the district’s high school and intermediate school curriculum this year.
“We’re expanding our Advanced Placement offerings,” said Griffith. “We have a community member who is a math professor, so we can offer an AP Statistics course this year, and we’re bringing agricultural science down into the intermediate school to grades five and six,” he said.
Griffith noted an increased interest in art classes among high school students. “We’ll have more (art) courses with more students involved,” he said. “And we’ve finally replaced our aged kiln with one that can fire glass.”
Griffith said the district had a professional district-wide audit of curriculum, instruction and assessment last year. “We’re using that information to improve our instruction assessment,” he said.
The district was recognized last year for being in the top 5 percent of all Title I schools in the state, and language arts teacher Jill Geesey is a finalist for the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s teacher of the year award. The district has had finalists for the award in each of the last five years, and Penns Valley teacher Tricia Miller won the award in 2011.
An important topic of discussion for this year is a series of proposed renovations to the high school building. Public input is being sought by the district regarding priorities and funding for these improvements. “Until we commit to build, the options are still on the table do it all at once or in phases,” said Nate Althouse, the district’s athletic and community relations director. “We’re committed to keeping the costs low and avoiding a tax increase for the purpose of building.”
The district is currently acquiring cost estimates from contractors before making any decisions on the timetable to initiate the improvements.
