Pottsgrove Gets a Peek at Cities of the Future

Photos by Evan Brandt

The Pottsgrove Middle School Future City Team is comprised of Avery Huber, Jayden Francis, Emelia Schwulst,  Liam Lapic,

Addie Fulmer-Sicher, Jackson Hansberry, Ryan Stoy and their advisor Deb Frasca.

At right, is a closer look at their city.

They say the children are our future, and that's true.

But sometimes, those children also envision that future. And that is the case with the Pottsgrove Middle School Future City Team led by Deb Frasca.

The students build a cyber city in Sim city, and then a scale model of a future city in which they planned, researched and solved some of the problems that today's cities face.

Unfortunately, bad weather prevented them from traveling to the competition for which they had prepared. So they did the next best thing and presented to the school board.

I expertly managed to miss the song they sang to their city at both the beginning and the end.

But I did manage to catch some of it on video. Here it is:



In other news, Pottsgrove School board President reported that the initial preliminary budget had called for a tax hike of 2.1 percent, but recent developments have knocked that down to a more palatable 1.5 percent.

Business Manager Dave Nester has once again asked the school board to set aside a $1 million surplus from the previous year's budget into the capital reserve fund. A vote will likely occur at the next meeting.

He said in the next few coming years, money will be drawn down from the PSERS, pension reserve to cover increases, but that surpluses will be less likely.

The board also voted to give .5 percent raises to the district's three top administrators: Nester, Superintendent William Shirk and Assistant Superintendent Robert Harney.

According to the information posted in the agenda, that works out to an extra $920.37 for Shirk; $859.39 for Nester and $761.25 for Harney.

And with that, here are the Tweets from the meeting:


Cities of the Future