Freeport Middle School honored as ‘School to Watch’
BUFFALO TWP — Students at Freeport Area Middle School were pulled out of their classes for a special 30-minute assembly to honor their school’s designation as one of Pennsylvania’s “Schools to Watch.”
The program, administered by the Pennsylvania Association for Middle Level Education, honors middle schools which excel in four key criteria: academic excellence, developmental responsiveness, social equity, and organizational structures.
Freeport was one of three schools in Pennsylvania so honored this school year, along with New Hope Solebury Middle School in New Hope, and Marshall Middle School in Wexford.
“The ‘Schools to Watch’ designation is not handed out lightly,” said school principal Timothy Walters during the assembly. “It's a recognition that we are doing the right work, the right way, for the right reasons.”
During the assembly, the school’s jazz band demonstrated their talents by playing a cover of “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang.
According to Walters, this school year was the second time that the school applied for the award, with the first coming in 2022. While they came up short the first time, they did not come away completely empty-handed.
“While we didn’t initially receive the recognition, we got the Keystone Award as a recognized middle school in the state of Pennsylvania,” Walters said. “But this is the first time we got the national Schools to Watch recognition.”
The Schools to Watch program is administered in 20 states and is overseen on a national level by The National Forum. In Pennsylvania, the designation is also known as the Don Eichhorn Award, named after Dr. Don Eichorn, a Western Pennsylvania educator who was a pioneer of the middle school education system in the United States.
The process of applying for a Schools to Watch award is a complicated, multistep affair, which involved a physical visit from representatives of the state middle school association this past October, as well as the formation of a 12-member committee to put together the application.
“There’s a pretty comprehensive application that we submitted,” Walters said. “It was close to 25 pages long. Everybody that’s part of the committee helped write a section of it.”
During the site visit in October, a team of inspectors visited the middle school to observe a typical school day, gather information about the school’s culture, and interview students, parents, and staff members. Bruce Vosburgh, director of the Schools to Watch program, was one of the inspectors.
“This is not just about test scores,” Vosburgh said. “Music, sports, athletics, clubs … that’s what makes a great middle school, and that’s not tested.”
When a school is designated as a “school to watch,” it gets to claim the title for three years before it has the opportunity, if it so chooses, to apply for re-designation. If re-designation is granted, the process starts all over again three years later.
“In three years, we will have to resubmit an application demonstrating how we grew,” Walters said. “You’re not necessarily going to get the designation again. You have to prove that you’re continually growing and doing what’s best for kids, and that’s what Freeport Area Middle School is all about.”
Two schools — Pine-Richland Middle School in Gibsonia and DuBois Area Middle School in DuBois — have been re-designated six times after receiving their initial title in 2006-07, the first year of the program in Pennsylvania.
