Pa. education secretary tours Delco district

Pennsylvania Education Secretary Ronald Tomalis visited the Springfield School District on Monday to tour the Delaware County district's award-winning Literacy Center and talk about education funding to a high school government class.

After hearing that the state spends $11.5 billion on education from pre-school to college, one 12th grader wondered why he would still need to borrow tens of thousands of dollars to pay for college.

"For me, personally, I'm looking at $80,000 in debt after four years," Lou Dimichele said.

Tomalis acknowledged the high cost of a college education and said Gov. Corbett had been pressing state university presidents to keep tuition down. But he also said that market forces and students' decisions about what they choose to study play a big part in college costs.

He suggested that students take less expensive online and community college courses to reduce tuition, and should choose majors that will get them jobs that are in high demand.

For example, "a starting job in media is not the highest-paying job in the world," he said. "You have to make that judgment, whether studying what you love is worth the cost."

Tomalis also noted that state colleges reported a 4 percent decrease in applicants while Pennsylvania State University had 9 percent fewer students applying to enter. He didn't say whether that would bring down tuition, but warned that some universities were lowering entrance standards and "we don't want that to happen."

Tomalis, who worked for the U.S. Department of Education before taking the state job two years ago, tours about two dozen school districts annually and has met with about 350 superintendents, Education Department spokesman Tim Eller said. There are 500 public school districts in Pennsylvania.

Springfield used much of the visit to tout its two-year-old Springfield Literacy Center, which houses kindergarten and first-grade students, and was the first new school built in the district in more than 50 years.

The building has won several architectural and environmental awards and is the foundation of Springfield's Literacy First initiative, in which every child is to leave elementary school reading on grade level.

At a meeting that included state and federal legislators, school board members and administrators, Superintendent James P. Capolupo said that in 2000, the school board told him it wanted every child reading at grade level by the end of fourth grade.

"I said, 'I don't know of any district in the country doing this,' " he recalled.

But the district met that goal by focusing on literacy. First-grade classrooms have only 15 to 17 students. Resources were diverted from other areas. The motto is, "We Believe Every Child Can Read."

"We needed to change the culture," Capolupo said, adding that staff receive financial incentives for meeting literacy goals. "We have high morale and low turnover."

He and other top administrators spent time reading with children. Each student was given a computer.

"That's a great story," Tomalis said after the presentation. Then, he got to see the 52,000-square-foot school.

"The pictures don't do it justice," he said in the library, which serves as the lobby.

Glass doors allow teachers to reconfigure classroom space. There are a platform/treehouse outside and an alphabet walkway.

Students sat quietly at small tables reading or listening to stories or using their small computers. Tomalis talked with teachers and students, asking questions and posing for pictures.

"You have a great school here and a great teacher," he said as the students sat at attention, "and I just had to say hello."