Champions and Challenges in Pottsgrove

Photos by Evan Brandt

The Pottsgrove Falcons football team stopped by the Pottsgrove School Board Tuesday night to thank the board for the team jackets purchased after their championship season in District One of division AAAA.

A two-hour school board meeting Tuesday night touched upon many newsworthy subjects, not the least of which was congratulating this year's football Falcons.

Falcons Coach Rick Pennypacker addresses the board.

The team stopped by Tuesday to thank the board for the jackets, awards and monetary support in terms of equipment and uniforms, and to be congratulated on their season.

Also on the docket was a report on enrollment projections for the district, made more urgent in the past year by the approval of one 178-unit development and the consideration of another -- this one with more than 500 housing units -- in Lower Pottsgrove.

The report, delivered at a fast pace by Tracy Healy, owner and president of Ohio-based FutureThink, essentially said that Pottsgrove could expect as few as 25 new students in the next couple of years, 262 or "somewhere in the vicinity of 3,700," which, if I may say so, is quite a range.

Healy said her projections for the students generated by the two  projects, are larger than those made by the developer, based on a number of factors, including their estimates.

The board immediate agreed to authorize Business Manager David Nester to attend the next township commissioners' meeting and share this information with the board.

The district administration figures it has about three years to see how things begin to shake out and hopes to come up with a plan for dealing with possible scenarios -- including new construction or re-districting -- by the start of the next school year, said Nester.

The board also spent some time discussing the perennial shortage of substitute teachers and debated how to address the problem after Superintendent William Shirk provided some further information on the matter as a follow up to a discussion earlier in the month.

Oh, and former technology director Michael Wagman's replacement, Anthony Bickert, was hired at an annual salary of $102,285.

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