Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Holman reviewed the Pennsylvania School Board Association ’s 2025 State of Education report at the April 15 Northwestern Lehigh School Board meeting.

“I will highlight a few things which will sound very, very familiar,” she said.

PSBA does a survey of all school districts in the commonwealth and puts the common themes they find in a state of education report.

“Districts across the state are having severe budget strains that should be of no surprise,” she said. “The [more than] $4 billion in mandated costs is certainly putting a strain on budgets across the state.”

She said students mental health needs, mandated charter school tuition expenses and rising special education costs are a concern across the state.

Holman said one of the things PSBA noted is that federal and state reimbursements are not staying on pace with the costs of special education costs.

“Even despite all of the concerns and challenges that school districts in Pennsylvania are facing, they are having upward trends in graduation rates as well as the policy of advocacy and quality of education in schools in Pennsylvania,” she said before started staffing updates for the 2026-2027 school year.

Holman began her PowerPoint presentation with the elementary schools.

She said the one thing that the board would see on the first slide was that kindergarten enrollment this year is very low particularly at Northwestern Elementary School.

“Northwestern historically has not been as low as 32 students at this time of year,” Holman said. “Same thing at Weisenberg right now. Weisenberg has 58 students enrolled.”

She said she would recommend that the board continue to monitor all enrollments but particularly kindergarten.

Holman moved on to middle school enrollment.

“We have had many middle school changes over the last several years. For a long time now, there are no changes recommended at the middle school.”

The class sizes for middle school are down for sixth, seventh and eighth grade and the number of sections for this year remain the same and the number of students has leveled out, Holman said.

“We are not recommending any changes in the core staffing or related art staffing,” she said. “Middle school has about 440 students anticipated for 26-27.”

Holman said she is recommending a change in special education, so both Northwestern Elementary and Weisenberg Elementary have learning support staff.

“The special education staff change that we are asking for is an emotional support behavioral intervention staff member shared across both elementary schools. We do have Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) funds that we have put this staff person in for, so the person would be covered under PCCD funds,” she said.

“Milton is our school-based mental health provider, and we did take out a grant for that as well to be able to have some support at Northwestern Elementary and Weisenberg Elementary.”

She said she a shared behavioral intervention staff member is similar to what middle school and high school currently have.

Holman moved on to the enrollment at the high school.

“This is the first time the school district has gotten the lowest enrollment hitting the high school,” she said, “but there would be no changes in faculty in English, social studies, foreign language, business/tech education/family and consumer science, physical education/health, art and music. There would be a faculty change, however, in math and science,” she said.

Holman closed her presentation with a summary of professional staffing recommendations for 2026-2027 school year.

She said the school district wouldadd one shared behavior interventionist at Northwestern and Weisenberg elementary schools, add 17% [time] to a part time gifted teacher to cover the increased caseload at the middle school, reduce one high school math and science faculty, continue to monitor incoming enrollments and plan to balance sections of students at the elementary level, especially kindergarten and replace all other retirements and resignation at this time.