WHYY24%
How the costly digital age is leaving behind Pa.’s rural, underfunded schools 6%
By Kenny Cooper0%
8/5/2026, 2:30:08 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 5 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Anecdotal, and Framing Effect, with Pessimism Bias as the most egregious example at 8.3% saturation with 54 hits. Analysis detected 165 faulty-reasoning hits from 651 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 14.8% and a BS Rank of 6% (26,448 of 27,909 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 94.80% of the article peer group.
This reporting is part of the newest season of “Schooled,” a WHYY News podcast that examines how technology is reshaping the educational experience in Pennsylvania’s schools.
Find “Schooled: Rewired” on Apple Podcasts , Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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.
The district’s struggles are not isolated.
Otto-Eldred is nestled in the mountains of rural McKean County.
Like other schools in Pennsylvania’s remote areas, this district, too, faces recurrent fiscal challenges, is chronically underfunded and struggles to deliver students a future that promises technological innovation.
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.
“ I found myself having to rewrite it like two or three times because my computer would not save my project at all,” Prince said.
For high school students, access to Bluebook, an online platform from College Board 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.
“ It was like a meltdown with the SATs, because there was 10 [to] 15 students that couldn’t get into the app, and it was just a big struggle,” Sherry said.
Adrianna Woodruff, an eighth-grade English teacher and secondary librarian, said the computer issues are disrupting her students’ ability to participate in learning activities.
“We’re preparing kids for jobs that don’t exist yet, and we’re trying to give them the skills so that they can be successful in the future,” Woodruff said.
“And when you don’t have technology that’s keeping up with this ever-transforming tech landscape, it can be really hard to do that.”
Otto-Eldred teacher and librarian Adrianna Woodruff leads an interactive activity with students.
(Kenny Cooper/WHYY)
Otto-Eldred faces budgetary squeezes
The Otto-Eldred School District serves a little less than 550 students — all of whom are highly dispersed across Eldred Borough, Eldred Township and Otto Township, which spans approximately 86 square miles in northwest Pennsylvania.
“ We do not have a stoplight in our school district,” Splain said.
“There’s not a lot of industry.
We’re kind of a commuter location when it comes to people going other places.
I think by far we’re the largest employer in our entire district.”
Like many rural areas across the United States , 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 .
As of 2020, there were just 765 residents .
A declining population means a shrinking tax base .
“We don’t have the ability to raise taxes and make a significant impact in our budget,” Splain said.
During the 2025-26 school year, the district’s budget was approximately $13.6 million .
According to Splain, Otto-Eldred’s aid ratio is 0.82, meaning it is heavily reliant on state and federal funding just to keep the lights on.
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’s bottom line.
“That’s not going to go very far when you have the cost of everything going up,” Splain said.
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.
“The money left over to buy some better laptops isn’t often there,” Splain said.
Superintendent Matthew Splain says there are no stoplights in the rural Otto-Eldred School District.
(Kenny Cooper/WHYY)
Speakers
4speakers35%attributed speech426writer words
Selected voice
44%flagged-word coverageAdrianna Woodruff
50 attributed words22% of attributed speech23% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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