The Mission of the Manheim Township School District is to provide an environment where everyone will learn, grow, and succeed.

At the request of parents, Manheim Township School District does adhere to the PA “Twin Law”. Building administrators and staff members work as a team to develop well-balanced classes. Many factors are taken into account when classes are being developed (i.e, male/female ratio, academic needs, etc.). While requests are not always able to be honored (except in the case of the “Twin Law”, we do encourage parents to discuss specific requests with the building administrator.


As of 3.8.12,  the last day of school will be Monday, June 4, 2012.

Dismissal time will be as follows:

High School/Middle School  11:00 a.m.
Neff 6                                               11:30 a.m.
Elementary                                   12:00 Noon
Kindergarten times are              9:00-10:15 a.m. session & 10:45-12:00 p.m. session

The district continues to face a budget deficit, in the millions, for the 2012-2013 school year. Although the district is supportive and would like to offer a district-wide full day kindergarten program next year, due to the budget constraints, the 2012-2013 budget can not support this initiative at this time. The Board and Administration are scrutinizing every program and every expenditure in the budget to see where we can cut expenses. The district’s precarious budget situation does not provide us the funds to hire the new additional staff we would need for a full day kindergarten program.

Full day kindergarten remains an important goal of the district and the school board, and this worthy initiative will be reviewed for the 2013-2014 school year.

To clarify,  Owl Hill Learning Center runs and is the contact for the 4-year old Pre-K program.  If you have specific questions about enrollment for the Pre-K program, please call  Mrs. Mathers,  Educational Director at Owl Hill Learning Center, 717 779-3104.

For the last 5 years, MTSD has partnered with Owl Hill Learning Center to offer a 4 year old Pre-K program. This program is funded through the PA Pre-K Counts Grant. The PA Pre-K Counts Grant has specific requirements that we must fulfill in order to receive continued funding. The state funding for this grant is on a year to year basis. We are hopeful that the funding will continue to be part of the state budget. More information on the proposed state budget will be released in the upcoming months.

As the district administration is in discussions for the 2012-13 school year, and all of the implications of a budget deficit, they are discussing ways to maximize the transportation dollars. One of the discussions explored the impact a change in the high school hours, 7:30 am – 2:30 pm, would have on the overall picture for transportation.
However, we would need to have the answers to the many questions raised in that discussion before a decision could be made.

According to Dr. Williams, our Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education,
“While there have been some cursory discussions about future exam schedules, no changes are currently planned for mid-term exams next year.”

We are working to put a special kindergarten registration section on our website, with information about registration dates and the process. We plan to have that posted by Monday, 1.9.12.
In the meantime, here is the list of dates for the 2012-13 school year:

Kindergarten Registration for 2012-2013

Children who will be five years old on or before August 31 are eligible to register for kindergarten for the 2012-2013 school year. The kindergarten registration paper packet will not be available until early March so please check back to this website for more information. Registration dates for the six elementary schools are listed below.

Nitrauer Tuesday, March 27
Reidenbaugh Wednesday, March 28
Schaeffer Thursday, March 29
Brecht Monday, April 2
Bucher Tuesday, April 3
Neff Wednesday, April 4

District-wide evening registration is available for parents who cannot attend the daytime registration at their neighborhood school, they are:

Nitrauer Thursday, April 12
Bucher Wednesday, April 25

The first day of school will very likely be after Labor Day. The calendar committee meets again this Thursday, 12.15, to hopefully finalize a draft. The draft calendar will then go to the School Board for a first reading in Jan. and the second reading and adoption in Feb. As soon as the calendar is adopted, we will post it on our website.

Our software provider had notified us that they were no longer selling Lunch Box, and attempted to have us switch to a new product they were selling. Also, at that time they informed us that the version of Lunch Box that we were operating would be soon outdated. Lunch Box was coming out with a new version, and our current version was already called a legacy, so they would not even be able to support it within one year. Lunch Box had been sold to Heartland Corporation. So, substantial change was coming to our cafeteria point of sale system no matter what we did.

We took this opportunity to request proposals for new cafeteria point of sale software. Lunch Box was included in this RFP. After reviewing the proposals and having multiple conversations with Lunch Box we decided to select Cafe Enterprise and their payment system, Cafe Prepay. Ironically Heartland Corporation now owns both Lunch Box and Cafe Enterprise. If we had stayed with Lunch Box we would now be using Cafe Prepay anyway.

This was not a process we wanted to go through. But, there are many benefits to our current system. However, one of the detractions is the payment processing compared to E-Funds. We are told by Heartland that in the near future they will be able to accept check routing numbers which will be more economical than using credit cards, and there will not be multiple transaction fees for siblings within the same building.

Thanks for your inquiry,

Gavin

Gavin J. Scalyer
Director, Food Services
Manheim Township School District
Pequea Valley School District

Although we would like to offer full day kindergarten next year, and it continues to be an important goal of the district, we have to wait to see if the 2012-13 budget can support this initiative. We will not know the answer to your questions until we finalize the budget in late spring.
If you want your child in a full day program, our suggestion is to
register your child in a full-day program at one of our local private
schools. You could always decide to withdraw and enroll your child in our district if we are able to offer a full day program.
As always, we will have our half day kindergarten program available.
We wish a more definitive answer could be offered, but the many budget cuts and uncertainties have to be addressed before a decision can be made.

November 2011

The Decision to Establish the International Baccalaureate Organization’s Diploma Programme

The impetus for offering the IB Programme at our high school began with the Strategic Planning Committee in 2007. The committee was comprised of students, parents, community members, teachers, staff members, administrators, and school board members. In 2008, the committee presented its 6-year plan to the school board, who adopted it in September of that year. The Plan called for many action items to address the needs of low-achieving, proficient, and advanced students. Two of those action items related to students who fell into the latter two categories:
• Examine and create global educational opportunities
• International Baccalaureate (IB)

During the strategic planning process, the committee determined that there was a high degree of compatibility between the newly established district mission and vision and the IB program.

After the Board adopted the strategic plan, the district began gathering program and cost information by visiting other school districts with existing IB schools (Lower Merion, Upper St. Clair, and School District of Lancaster.) When visiting those schools, administrators looked at the program itself, as well as, the cost to implement the program. It was decided that the program was a good fit for our students and the district could spread the startup costs over the course of several years. The determination was made that the district would seek out grant monies to defray at least some of those expenses. Once administrators made that determination, the district began the process to apply to be an IB school, which includes preparing staff to teach IB courses through staff development:

During the 2010-11 year, the district received federal stimulus money in the form of a PA-PACT grant. A portion of that grant could only be used for initiatives such as staff development, library materials, and new curriculum initiatives/materials. The district used that money for district-wide non-IB staff development ($46,000), additional library books district-wide ($24,000), non-IB curriculum materials ($39,000), and IB startup costs ($70,000). The PA-PACT money covered 91% of our IB costs in 2010-11. The following table lists the startup costs for the two years prior to the implementation year, 2011-12:

This startup investment will serve our current IB students and all future students in the same way our Project Lead the Way startup costs have served our past, present, and future engineering students.

When conducting site visits at other schools with IB programs, the district learned to expect a low number of students in the first year of the program; however the numbers will grow – sometimes significantly – in the following years. In this first year at MTHS, there are a total of 44 students taking IB classes; 12 students are full-time Diploma Candidate students. The other 32 students are taking IB courses as certificate students. The numbers for next year look promising as 125 sophomores have requested an IB application for next year.

In our experience it is typical to have low numbers in special programs, especially in their infancy. Our established engineering (STEM), Chinese, and some specialized music courses carry low enrollments and higher than typical costs. However, we expect that the growth in IB enrollments will outpace other specialized programs offered at the high school. This also holds true for the increase in enrollments in Advanced Placement (AP) courses. The district is seeing a high level of interest in IB from this year’s sophomores as well as an increase in AP enrollments. This translates into a greater number of students choosing more rigorous courses.

We believe the IB program is a good alternative for many students. There is a set 85% minimum GPA for a student considering IB, thus providing the program to be available to the large number (43%) of students who have a high GPA and would like to take challenging courses. In addition, as Charter/Cybercharter schools gain popularity among many who feel they offer more than public education, the IB program provides our district with an academic advantage. To learn more about the IB program, please visit their website at www.ibo.org or contact Larry Penner, IB Coordinator, at pennerla@mtwp.net.

There are several ways to contact the School Board; you may write a letter and send it to the district address listed below, you may call and leave a message with the Board Secretary, Kathie Arnold, at 560-3110, or you may come to a meeting and speak. Each meeting agenda has at least one section for citizen comments. The meeting dates, and individual Board member contact information, is listed under the School Board on the home page.

Manheim Township School District
Attn: School Board
PO Box 5134
Lancaster, PA 17606-5134