Conewago Valley SD recommends adding middle‑school Spanish to ease oversized specials classes
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Summary
Superintendent recommended creating a fourth middle‑school specials slot — proposed as a Spanish class — to reduce class sizes, address scheduling issues that have placed the media specialist on a rotating 'wheel,' and respond to community feedback about cultural exposure.
The Conewago Valley School District’s personnel and finance committee continued budget planning with a focus on staffing for 2026–27, including a proposal to add a fourth middle‑school specials position. Superintendent Doctor Perry recommended that the district offer Spanish as the additional special, saying it would provide cultural exposure and help reduce oversized classes.
Perry said the recommendation emerged after the district reviewed alternatives including an English‑certified position, a social‑studies option and STEM offerings. "The recommendation would be a Spanish, but to have that fourth offering to reduce all of the class sizes and to equalize the access to those special courses for all students in the middle school," Perry told the board.
The administration framed the change as both instructional and operational. District staff said the media specialist role has historically been combined with gifted education, placing media "on the wheel" as a specials offering and limiting the media specialist’s availability to support curriculum. Separating media and gifted into distinct roles — proposed for the 2027–28 school year — would allow the media specialist to operate more like a librarian, instead of teaching multiple specials classes.
Board members raised alternatives, arguing a forensics/speech and debate offering could teach broadly applicable critical‑thinking and public‑speaking skills to more students. Perry responded that debate and similar skills are addressed within the English/language‑arts curriculum and that Spanish fills a district gap: "We are really good at a lot of things. This is an area that's the vulnerability...this is something that's missing," he said.
District staff noted class‑size and safety concerns in existing specials: gym classes have at times reached more than 40 students, which the administration described as a supervision and safety issue. Adding a fourth special, staff said, redistributes students across offerings and reduces class loads.
The board did not vote on the recommendation at the meeting; members asked for additional information and said they would continue discussion at upcoming budget meetings where revenues, expenses and tax‑rate proposals will be considered.
The committee is scheduled to resume finance work on Feb. 24 and to discuss expenses and proposed tax rates on March 2.