(Photo Courtesy of Keystone News Connection)
Keystone State News Connection

Emily Scott

Pennsylvania’s substitute-teacher shortage has put a lot of pressure on educators in the state, but a new law signed by Gov. Tom Wolf last week aims to expand the pool of eligible substitutes.

Under House Bill 412, retired teachers now can fill vacancies on an emergency or short-term basis. Public schools also can use some college students and recent graduates of an education program as substitutes.

Rich Askey, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, said the shortage has a ripple effect on students’ ability to learn. Nearly two years into the pandemic, he emphasized it is critical to ensure they stay on track.

“This law is going to help achieve that by reducing the number of overcrowded classrooms,” Askey explained. “The educators are now telling me they don’t have time in the middle of their day to take a bathroom break. They’re teaching two classes at once. It’s a very stressful situation out there in our public schools.”

The substitute-teacher eligibility allowed in the bill will be a pilot program for the remainder of this school year and the next. The bill also will allow teachers whose certifications have lapsed to substitute for 180 days, up from a 90-day cut-off.

Kerry Mulvihill, a seventh grade science teacher in the Conestoga Valley School District in Lancaster County, has been an educator for more than two decades. She said the last two years have been the most difficult, and with teachers out more frequently, other staff members are expected to cover their class during prep periods, the only time during the day without students.

Mulvihill is thankful to the Legislature for passing the bill, but worries it’s not enough.

“So I’m kind of hopeful that we can get more retirees with the bill and more pre-service teachers,” Mulvihill remarked. “But I wish we could do more to really promote the importance of education to our community and the importance of supporting our substitutes as well as our in-house teachers.”

Mulvihill added she would also like to see an increased wage for teachers in Pennsylvania. The average starting salary for Pennsylvania educators during the 2019-2020 school year was $41,000 a year.

HARRISBURG (AP) — Pennsylvania will no longer impose state income taxes on public sector workers and nurses who receive student loan forgiveness from two major programs. The Wolf administration made the change on Friday. It impacts the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which provides debt relief to teachers, social workers, military members and other public servants. It also affects borrowers in the Pennsylvania Student Loan Relief for Nurses Program, a recent pandemic-era initiative to forgive up to $7,500 in student loan debt incurred by state-licensed nurses.

Adult taken into custody after child, 4, shot in home
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Police say an adult was taken into custody after a 4-year-old child was critically wounded in a shooting in Pennsylvania’s capital over the weekend. Harrisburg police said patrol units were called to a home in the city at about 10:15 a.m. Sunday and found the child with a gunshot. The child was taken to a hospital and was listed in critical condition after emergency surgery. Police said the adult caretaker of the residence was taken into custody and what the department called “appropriate charges” are forthcoming. Anyone with information is being asked to call city police.

(Photos used with permission of St. Barnabas)
Story by Frank Sparks, News/Program Director
Monday, December, 20, 2021 at 7:49 AM
(Brighton Twp., Beaver County, Pa.) Brighton Twp. Police are asking for the publics help in identifying an individual from an incident at Tusca Plaza Shop N Save Gas Station last Thursday Evening, December 16, 2021. He is described as a very skinny white male who was wearing a black and grey jacket, black shorts, and running pants underneath and has a tattoo on his right wrist that looks like a bracelet. The man kept his head and face covered the entire time during the incident. The man left on foot and hasn’t been seen since. In an e-mail statement of the incident St. Barnabas Senior Vice President and CFO J.D. Turco said that “ St Barnabas is grateful to the community for its support of the business and to the outstanding officers of the Brighton Township Police Department who responded that evening. We have every confidence that they will find this individual. We are however most thankful for the safety of our employee.” Anyone with information please contact the Beaver County Dispatch Center at 724-775-0880.

By LISA MASCARO, ALAN FRAM and HOPE YEN Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Joe Manchin has all but delivered a death blow to President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion domestic initiative. Saying he can’t support the package, the West Virginia Democrat has single-handedly thrown his party’s agenda into jeopardy. Furious colleagues are desperate to salvage what’s left of a top priority. Next steps are highly uncertain. Congress has recessed for the holidays but some lawmakers are demanding a vote, though that seems unlikely. Others are at work on changes to win Manchin’s support. Manchin said on “Fox News Sunday” that after months of negotiations, “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation.”

Keystone State News Connection

Emily Scott

Pennsylvania’s Legislative Reapportionment Commission has voted on its proposals for state House and Senate voting-district maps. Good-government advocacy groups say the maps are a step in the right direction to keep communities of interest together.

The biggest changes are seen in the House map, reflecting large population shifts in the Commonwealth over the last decade. As a result, several incumbents, majority Republican, have been drawn into the same district.

Carol Kuniholm, chair of Fair Districts PA, said though it may be frustrating for incumbents, the result is more compact districts, with fewer county splits.

“Rather than try to draw the districts to keep as many incumbents in place as possible, especially with the House map,” said Kuniholm, “it was done to reflect communities better. And to remind everybody that these districts belong to the people of Pennsylvania, and not to the people who are elected to serve the people of Pennsylvania.”

According to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, there’s a near-even party split in both the Senate and House maps, and a slight increase for Democrats compared with the current ones.

The commission is made up of four House and Senate leaders, with one nonpartisan chair – Mark Nordenberg, a former dean at the University of Pittsburgh.

Salewa Ogunmefun, executive director of the group Pennsylvania Voice, said she’s happy to see the creation of seven new districts that would maximize the vote for communities of color.

“Chair Nordenberg and the LRC members,” said Ogunmefun, “were really committed to making sure that the growing populations in the state – which are entirely driven by the Black population, the Latinx population, by the Asian American population – that those communities are getting more opportunity to elect their candidates from this process.”

Pennsylvania’s Asian population grew by 46% between 2010 and 2020, according to U.S. Census data, and its Hispanic and Latino population grew by 45%.

Pennsylvanians will have 30 days from last week’s vote to provide public comment on the proposals.