Staffing changes for the 2025-26 school year were discussed at the Northwestern Lehigh School Board meeting on April 16.

Dr. Jennifer Holman, superintendent, began the discussion on staffing discussing the elementary schools.

“We are recommending 38 sections overall for a total of 778 students in our elementary program,” Holman said.

She said right now 14 students are being transported from Northwestern Elementary geographical boundary to Weisenberg Elementary.

“We took a look at what that cost us on an annual basis. The cost is about $100,000,” Holman stated. “In addition to the teacher savings and the financial savings for faculty you would save about $100,000 by moving those displaced students back to the home elementary school for which they live if whatever reconfiguration you were to look at.”

She said she would be remiss if when the board is looking at programs or looking at removing programs during the budget proposal they didn’t look at financial savings by doing the exact same thing with staff if they didn’t at least know that was possible.

Holman said she is recommending changes to particularly to one part of the eighth-grade team at the middle school.

“Each core teacher in eighth grade will now teach two subject areas or serve in more than one job role. Examples are social studies, English Language Arts, science or gifted in which they are properly certificated to teach,” Holman explained. “This will require changing job responsibilities for six teachers.”

She said all of the teachers that are going to be changing job responsibilities have already been notified.

“We are doing this because we have a need a special education teacher and we are choosing to do so from within, instead of adding that teacher to the budget for next year,” Holman stated.

There will be a little change to six grade as a result of that eighth-grade change but no other changes in sixth or seventh grades, she said.

Holman said there would be some changes to special education for K-12 because she is recommending an additional learning support teacher for Northwestern Elementary so both Northwestern and Weisenberg elementary schools have four learning support teachers and an emotional support teacher.

The ninth through 12 grade has two people, so no change for the 21 gifted students identified as high schoolers, she stated.

“There are no recommended changes to permanent positions at the high school, but you’ll see high school staffing recommendations for student enrollment at the Lehigh Career and Technical Institute,” she said. “We never really know at this point how many LCTI half day students will be accepted. We have 51 applications out for half day LCTI. Sometimes that has an impact on some of our course enrollments but we are not recommending any additions or reductions to the high school faculty at this time.”

Holman said she is recommending implementing all these professional staffing recommendations for 25-26 and she continues to monitor incoming enrollments and tries to balance the sections at both Northwestern and Weisenberg elementary schools to keep them equitable across both buildings.

Willard Dellick comments.

“I really appreciate you bringing this out in the open,” Dellick said. “There’s been a lot of research that was very popular, very welcomed by the staff of the elementary school when we looked at this before we just walked away from it I think because of public pressure. It was the first time that they (public) saw it.”

It has been on everybody’s mind since then and people have wondered when it was going to surface again; I think it’s time to look at it once again, Dellick added.

Dr. Troy Sosnovik, assistant superintendent, also comments.

“We talk a lot about the students and the staff but we also have a responsibility to the entire taxpayer base. When we’re presented with an opportunity that could be a $500,000 a year fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer community in addition to the families that have their kids at the moment in the schools, I tend to agree with Bill (Willard). I do remember all the benefits of it,” Sosnovik said. “While there will be some inconveniences if we get to that point. I do think it’s worth getting an actual recommendation with some firm numbers and some firm educational benefits, so we can make that decision.”

He said the board also has to be prepared to make that decision knowing that they are going to have a dozen families here saying my kids are going to be on the bus for 55 minutes and I’ve got one kid going here and the other kid going over there.

“We have to look each other in the face and say we’re willing to make the hard decision when that time comes because that will happen,” Sosnovik said in closing.