Influx of young families stresses Freeport Area elementary classrooms

The Freeport Area School District continues to grapple with an influx of new families into the area and budgetary concerns.

Several parents complained at Thursday’s school board meeting about plans to cut the number of first- and third-grade classes at Buffalo Elementary School from five to four. The school board voted unanimously to add two long-term substitute teachers for the school year at Buffalo Elementary to restore a fifth classroom.

Superintendent Ian Magness said that, during his nine-year tenure with the school district, there have been “double-digit” staff cuts, often with retiring teaches not being replaced.

Resident Carrie Sofko, an educator at Duquesne University, said third grade classes average 28 students, while the optimum is 18 students per classroom.

“Eighteen benefits students and teachers in multiple ways,” Sofko said. “The way it’s worked in the past is not the best way today. The third graders have been screwed up by covid since they were in kindergarten.”

Resident Melissa Toncini said the school board needed to be “more pro-active than re-active” to issues in the school district.

Most of the families with younger children are moving into Buffalo Township. More than 200 new homes have been approved by township supervisors and are either under construction already or planned for the near future.

School director Christine Davies said the school district has been pro-active in matters of safety and mental health.

Magness added that it is “going to be more difficult to be pro-active. The issue is the number of resources. The audience vilified this (school) board in June” when a budget with tax increases was passed.

While the school district enrollment has stayed steady at around 1,850, Magness said many of the families moving into the area indicated they did so because of the quality of education at Freeport Area.

“We outperform other school districts for our size, but we need to be responsible to the taxpayers,” Magness said. “We have to make tough choices.”

School board President Adam Toncini said the biggest problem is the disparity of population growth in Buffalo Township to the more sparsely-populated area served by South Buffalo Elementary School.

Several officials said the school district is working on reconfiguration of attendance areas but the key issue is transportation expenses.