The year started with a contract that settled one teacher strike and ended with a second teacher strike.

The Seneca Valley School Board and teachers in April agreed to a new labor contract. The teachers had been working without a contract since July 2006, and they went on strike in October 2007 when negotiations reached an impasse.

In October, the 185 teachers in the South Butler School District followed suit and walked out of classrooms for an 18-day strike. The two sides now are in nonbinding arbitration to reach a new contract. The last contract expired at the end of June.

In both strikes, the main sticking points have been salaries and health care.

Butler County Community College had a festive April. The college broke ground on a $6.2 million student service center near the center of the main campus. The next day it inaugurated Nick Neupauer as the college's eighth president.

For the fall semester, the college welcomed students to its newly constructed site in Union Township, Lawrence County.

The Butler School District in August spent $5.7 million to buy itself out of a refinancing contract. The next month the district filed a federal suit against JP Morgan Chase Bank, which was the financier of the deal known as a swaption.

The suit also named JP Morgan's financial adviser, Investment Management Advisory Group.

The parties are now fighting about whether the suit should be argued in Pittsburgh or New York.

At the start of football season, the district opened its renovated stadium, complete with artificial turf. To supplement bond funding for the project, the district sold naming rights to parts of the stadium. That included the new NexTier press box and football booster club pavilion near the concession stand.

Bishop Donald Zubik, the leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, in March announced he would support the move of North Catholic High School fromthe Troy Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh to Cranberry Township.

That school is scheduled to be built and open by 2011.