{"id":259552,"date":"2026-08-05T10:12:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T10:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/259552\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T10:12:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T10:12:07","slug":"pa-rural-school-students-grappling-with-outdated-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/259552\/","title":{"rendered":"PA rural school students grappling with outdated tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

This episode is part of the newest season of \u201cSchooled,\u201d<\/a> a WHYY News podcast that examines how technology is reshaping the educational experience in Pennsylvania\u2019s schools.\n<\/p>\n

Find \u201cSchooled: Rewired\u201d on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts.\n<\/p>\n

Matthew Splain, superintendent of the Otto-Eldred School District, said schools in his district are struggling to keep aging, refurbished laptops from dying on students.\n<\/p>\n

The district\u2019s struggles are not isolated.\n<\/p>\n

Otto-Eldred is nestled in the mountains of rural McKean County. Like other schools in\u00a0 Pennsylvania\u2019s remote areas, this district, too, faces recurrent fiscal challenges, is chronically underfunded and struggles to deliver students a future that promises technological innovation.\n <\/p>\n

Alexis Prince remembers her computer woes during her senior year. Her device had memory issues, which made completing book reports, essays and research projects nearly impossible.\n<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aI found myself having to rewrite it like two or three times because my computer would not save my project at all,\u201d Prince said.\n<\/p>\n

For high school students, access to Bluebook, an online platform from College Board<\/a> where students can take the SAT, is crucial. During his junior year of high school, Jack Sherry said the laptops were unreliable when students needed them the most.\n<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aIt was like a meltdown with the SATs, because there was 10 [to] 15 students that couldn\u2019t get into the app, and it was just a big struggle,\u201d Sherry said.\n<\/p>\n

Adrianna Woodruff, an eighth-grade English teacher and secondary librarian, said the computer issues are disrupting her students\u2019 ability to participate in learning activities.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re preparing kids for jobs that don\u2019t exist yet, and we\u2019re trying to give them the skills so that they can be successful in the future,\u201d Woodruff said. \u201cAnd when you don\u2019t have technology that\u2019s keeping up with this ever-transforming tech landscape, it can be really hard to do that.\u201d
\n\"Otto-EldredOtto-Eldred teacher and librarian Adrianna Woodruff leads an interactive activity with students. (Kenny Cooper\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

Otto-Eldred faces budgetary squeezes<\/p>\n

The Otto-Eldred School District serves a little less than 550 students<\/a> \u2014 all of whom are highly dispersed across Eldred Borough, Eldred Township and Otto Township, which spans approximately 86 square miles in northwest Pennsylvania.\n<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aWe do not have a stoplight in our school district,\u201d Splain said. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of industry. We\u2019re kind of a commuter location when it comes to people going other places. I think by far we\u2019re the largest employer in our entire district.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Like many rural areas across the United States<\/a>, the cluster of close-knit communities anchored in the Allegheny Plateau has been hemorrhaging population. To put this in perspective, in 1920, 1,235 people were living in Eldred Borough, according to the U.S. Census<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

As of 2020, there were just 765 residents<\/a>. A declining population means a shrinking tax base<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have the ability to raise taxes and make a significant impact in our budget,\u201d Splain said.\n<\/p>\n

During the 2025-26 school year, the district\u2019s budget was approximately $13.6 million<\/a>. According to Splain, Otto-Eldred\u2019s aid ratio is 0.82, meaning it is heavily reliant on state and federal funding just to keep the lights on.\n<\/p>\n

Only about $2 million of revenue comes from local sources. Even a significant property tax increase would not make much of a dent in the district\u2019s bottom line.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not going to go very far when you have the cost of everything going up,\u201d Splain said.\n<\/p>\n

Splain said the district has to ensure it offers competitive wages and health care to retain teachers. On top of that, the district must manage high transportation costs for busing kids near and far, all while maintaining Otto-Eldred Jr.\/Sr. High School and Otto-Eldred Elementary.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe money left over to buy some better laptops isn\u2019t often there,\u201d Splain said.
\n\"SuperintendentSuperintendent Matthew Splain says there are no stoplights in the rural Otto-Eldred School District. (Kenny Cooper\/WHYY)\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This episode is part of the newest season of \u201cSchooled,\u201d a WHYY News podcast that examines how technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,223,30,29,110133],"class_list":["post-259552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-education","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-schooled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}