After months of discussion, State College’s Delta Program will separate from high school

After more than a year of heated community debate, it’s official — the Delta Program is becoming a separate school.

Fourteen months, one steering committee and several board discussions later, the State College Area school board unanimously approved a motion during its Monday meeting to make the program into a middle and high school.

Started in 1974, Delta Program is a democratically run alternative schooling program students can opt into starting in sixth grade. In March 2023, the SCASD administration proposed making Delta into its own middle and high schools but faced heavy opposition from parents and students in the Delta community who feared that Delta becoming a school would radically change its culture.

The motion also included the creation of a transition committee that would help create names for the middle and high school, create a branding plan, evaluate graduation requirements and decide if a separate ceremony would be wanted for future graduates.

One of the major reasons for the administration’s push to make Delta into separate schools is the need for more accurate state testing data. As a program, Delta students’ standardized test scores, demographics and climate studies are essentially a black hole to the district, being stored with the student’s “home schools.”

As two schools, the future Delta middle and high schools’ PSSA, Keystone and state climate studies will be separate, allowing the district to better track scores and growth. Board member Jackie Huff said the transition to a school wouldn’t change the way Delta operates, just help track the data the students already produce.

“I don’t see this as something that’s meant to change the direction of Delta,” Huff said. “This just kinda puts an AirTag on it.”

The focus on data has long been a sticking point between the Delta community and the administration. In previous community discussions, parents and students said they felt becoming a school could lead to an increased pressure on standardized testing. Others felt that becoming a school would be the first step to losing Delta’s character.

In April, the board approved a resolution recognizing the core tenets of Delta, a step to reassure the community that Delta would not fundamentally change if it became a school. Still, some members of the Delta community were unconvinced. Student representative to the board and senior at the Delta Program, Zofia Sullivan, shared the concerns many of her peers voiced during the months of discussion around Delta’s transition to a school.

“I agree that data is important for a variety of reasons; my fear is that reducing Delta’s essence to test scores oversimplifies its impact,” Sullivan said. “And a lot of students fear that the school board and the school district essentially do not understand what Delta is.”

Despite lingering concerns, board members, some whom are Delta parents and alumni, expressed their continued commitment to the community moving forward.

“I really hope that we can let go of fear…” board president Amy Bader said. “As an anxious person, I understand that uncertainty is really difficult. But as I’ve grown up, the biggest thing I’ve tried to learn is how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and that’s not always easy.”