At last night\u2019s meeting, Tyrone Area School board members eliminated two educational programs while approving the establishment of soccer \u201cclub teams\u201d for high school girls and boys.
\nThe board voted by a margin of 8 to 1 to eliminate the high school vocational\/electronic program due to a decrease in program enrollment. Class sizes have been at under 10 during the past three years, while four students were enrolled in the program for the 2004-05 school year.
\n\u201cIf you have fewer than 10 students in a class, you can collapse the class,\u201d said Dr. William N. Miller, superintendent of schools at Tyrone. \u201cThe effect is we have had six, five and now four students in electronics and we made the option available to the students to attend vo-tech or attend other classes here for the upcoming school year.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s no reflection on the teacher. The teacher has done a good job,\u201d said Miller. \u201cWe have both declining enrollments across the entire school population and fewer kids taking electronics.\u201d
\nPeter Dutrow was the lone school board member to vote \u201cno\u201d to the elimination of the electronics program. Rev. Norman Huff voted \u201cyes\u201d but indicated he did so regretfully. He also felt the same in regard to the board\u2019s decision to eliminate the school\u2019s Latin offering.
\nThe board voted 8 to 1 to cut the Latin program.
\n\u201cI think Latin is a basic language. I had three years of Latin and it did me so much good in my English and my Spanish,\u201d said Huff. \u201cI just hated to vote to eliminate it and the electronics program.\u201d
\n Board member Lee Stover voted against the elimination of Latin. He mentioned his daughter had taken the courses and explained his reason for the \u201cno\u201d vote.
\n\u201cI think it\u2019s a very, very valuable background for a student to have, especially if they are going to college,\u201d said Stover. \u201c(It\u2019s a root language that) can help you in a lot of other majors, I hate to see it disappear.\u201d
\nThe elimination of the Latin offering was created by different circumstances according to Miller.
\n\u201cWe were unable to find a certified English and Latin teacher,\u201d said Miller. \u201cDual certification, we don\u2019t have dual certification, and we need to have that combination.
\n\u201cWhat we have done is offer students cyber school for those who want to pursue Latin,\u201d said Miller. We\u2019ve already had students sign up for it. Others have selected Spanish.\u201d
\nThe school board also approved the establishment of high school boys\u2019 and high school girls\u2019 interscholastic soccer \u201cclub teams\u201d for the 2004-05 school year. There is no cost to the district for the upcoming year. The program will be run by volunteer coaches.
\n\u201cThe parents are very enthusiastic in support of it,\u201d said Miller. \u201cLikewise, the school board is (supportive of it), the following year I believe the assumption is the school district will look at financially supporting the effort. Most of it now is on a volunteer basis.\u201d
\nPreviously, athletic director Tony Yaniello had said the estimated cost of the startup of a soccer program would run between $10,000 to $12,000, with the cost afterwards at around $6,000 per year.
\nBoard member Raymond Detwiler expressed some concern about the new \u201csoccer club\u201d program starts with ninth grade while youth soccer programs end at the seventh grade level. He wondered where this would leave eighth grade students interested in soccer.
\nMore than 200 children participated in the Tyrone American Youth Soccer Organization program last year.
\nBoard members indicated this was something to take a look at, but no serious discussion ensued. Miller concurred by saying, \u201cIt\u2019s something the board wants to take a look at in the future, but right now they are interested in the varsity program.\u201d
\nLast month, Yaniello indicated a likely plan would be to schedule scrimmages and games against local junior varsity teams for 2004-05, in preparation for joining the Mountain Athletic Conference in 2005-06.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t want to go into the Mountain Conference without some experience,\u201d said Yaniello.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At last night\u2019s meeting, Tyrone Area School board members eliminated two educational programs while approving the establishment of soccer \u201cclub teams\u201d for high school girls and boys. The board voted by a margin of 8 to 1 to eliminate the high school vocational\/electronic program due to a decrease in program enrollment. Class sizes have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}