The Scranton School District’s superintendent recently recommended a pause on any potential school closures or consolidations amid a “dramatic increase” in the population of special education students the district serves, including students with diagnosed autism spectrum disorder.
Superintendent Erin Keating, Ed.D., made the recommendation earlier this month during a meeting of the school board’s operations committee, where she put the increase into context. Scranton maintained 26 full-time autistic support classes in 2020, about average for a district its size, but will have 43 such classes when school starts in the fall, Keating said.
She also noted a major jump in the district’s early intervention numbers — the number of young students transitioning into the district after receiving early intervention services through the Northeastern Educational Intermediate Unit.
“Early intervention is the programming — locally it’s done through NEIU 19 — that services essentially our birth-to-5 population and children who have any kind of exceptionalities in that age group,” Keating explained. “Traditionally over the years we’ve had maybe 60, on a high year 85 or 90, EI transitions. We had over 140 this year.
“Last year on my first day of school here as the superintendent we had 19 students who came to us on the first day with no early intervention services who, within the first two to three weeks of school, were diagnosed as needing either autistic or emotional-support classrooms,” she continued. “And within the first two weeks of school last year we opened four new classrooms.”
All of that comes as the district’s overall student population remains steady at about 9,300, more than the roughly 8,800-student population estimate the firm McKissick Associates projected in a 2023 study informed by birth-rate and other data. Given the higher special education numbers and the lack of decline in enrollment overall, Keating recommended pausing decisions about potential building closures or school consolidations as officials assess capacity needs and examine whether the recent trends are anomalous.
“At this time I really think that we need to take a pause, and we need to see have the last two years been an anomaly?” Keating said. “Are the number of early intervention transitions — the increase we’re seeing in the exceptionality of full-time classrooms — is it an anomaly or is it a trend? If it’s a trend then we need to begin making plans in a direction to support those needs. If it’s an anomaly then we need to take a step back and we need to go: ‘OK, now we have a better picture to be able to take steps forward.’ ”
Officials have discussed potential school closures, consolidations and realignment for years, both before and after the district exited state financial recovery in January 2023. A prior school board voted in June 2023 to hire McKissick Associates to conduct a boundary study and provide recommendations on possible school building closures, an unpopular prospect for some officials, parents and others protective of neighborhood schools.
McKissick had previously worked for the district in 2005, with its earlier report informing the closures of John Marshall and Lincoln-Jackson schools, building Isaac Tripp Elementary, rebuilding Whittier Elementary and expanding Kennedy Elementary.
The consultants presented initial findings of its more recent engagement in October 2023, projecting an enrollment decrease of about 1,000 students over a decade at a time when the district already had excess space available. McKissick also presented a number of ideas to the district’s Building Utilization Task Force that month and later in 2023, including combining high schools, eliminating intermediate schools and reexamining the potential closures of John Adams, William Prescott or Charles Sumner elementary schools.
Potential plans to close or consolidate schools were ultimately put on hold until the board named a superintendent to succeed Melissa McTiernan, who left the district in August 2023 for the superintendent job in the Phoenixville Area School District. The board hired Keating, then the Old Forge School District’s superintendent, in early 2024.
Asked for her thoughts in March 2024 on closing or consolidating buildings, Keating told The Times-Tribune that meeting with McKissick and reviewing the firm’s study were among her first priorities. She’s studied and explored the issue in the intervening time.
But with the overall student population holding steady and special education needs increasing, Keating told the operations committee July 2 that the district should hold off on any closure or consolidation decisions until officials have a better idea where the trend data is going.
“And I think without taking a pause, and without seeing where that data goes, making any kind of decisions or judgments right now aren’t solid,” she said. “And that’s my recommendation right now. We’ve got to hold for a couple seconds, because what we saw over that last year was significant.”
In the context of those remarks, Keating also noted the expansion of a recently restored preschool program, provided through a partnership with the nonprofit Agency for Community EmPOWERment of NEPA, would require additional space.
School Director Sean McAndrew, who chairs the operations committee and is currently running for Scranton City Council, endorsed Keating’s recommendation. He was one of two directors, Tara Yanni being the other, who voted against the permanent closure of George Bancroft Elementary in 2021.
“If you look over the last four years since I’ve been on this board, we’ve increased school safety, we have new programs like the STEMM academy, we’ve brought back preschool and we’ve upgraded a lot of things in our district and (created) more opportunities for our students,” McAndrew said. “This should help us grow and get more students. That’s what we’re trying to do. … So if those numbers are not dropping, there’s no use to even consider closing schools.”
Keating’s recommendation was also well-received by school board Vice President Danielle Chesek, who has advocated against consolidation.
“It shows that we’re looking at the data, we’re listening to the community, something that we really didn’t do five years ago,” she said. “We’re looking to … make sure that the students have the space that they need, but also thinking long term. We’re not just looking at the right now. We’re looking at 10, 20 years down the road, trying to really accommodate the students.”