Freshman claims title at national Pokémon tournament
Page 4 Conestoga High School, Berwyn PA
Volume 73 No. 1
October 20, 2022
From the Editor: The Best Teachers I Never Had
Keeping up with the currents: Siblings bond over crew
Page 8
Page 10
www.spoke.news
A loop of
enrollment:
Conestoga’s rising
student population Photo Illustration by Maya Shah and George Zhang/The SPOKE
By Rohan Anne, Shreya Vaidhyanathan and George Zhang, Co-Webmaster, Opinion Editor and Photography Editor When psychology teacher David Zimmerman first started teaching at Conestoga in 1992, the school held about 1,200 students. Now, more than 30 years later, Conestoga boasts
a student population of more than 2,300, the highest it has ever been. In the past 20 years, student enrollment has increased by 38% with 7,184 students enrolled in the Tredyffrin/ Easttown School District as of August 2022. Families who live in or move into the district are a driving force in rising enrollment rates. Local realtors have seen that new homeowners who choose to look for housing in this district generally do so because
they prioritize education for their children. This large interest in education fosters a competitive academic culture at ’Stoga and boosts its prestige. In turn, this creates a loop in enrollment, which is when more education-prioritizing families move to TESD, thus further increasing enrollment. The district prides itself on its academic excellence, as both U.S. News and Niche, websites that rank high schools based on the metrics of academic performance and property val-
ue, consistently rank Conestoga as one of the top five high schools in Pennsylvania. Conestoga also boasts a 90% proficiency rate in biology, 82% in literature and 78% in algebra, as measured by the 2019 Keystone Exams. These numbers exceed the state averages of 70%, 60%, and 60%, respectively. Additionally, Conestoga had a 70% Advanced Placement exam participation rate in 2021, which is double the nationwide participation rate of 35%.
T/E School Board Vice President Todd Kantorczyk believes that Conestoga’s high rankings attract enrollment. “We deliver a high-quality public education and I think that’s why we’re a popular destination. When people are looking for places to live, I imagine that being ranked highly on these lists weighs in their thinking,” Kantorczyk said. Over the course of his three-decades-long tenure at Conestoga, Zimmerman has seen the high level of education
to which Kantorczyk referred. He has observed the socioeconomic makeup of residents in the area and believes it to be a contributing factor to this academic success. “You have a relatively wealthy area with a lot of people who are highly educated, and those people — the parents — value education, which is then transmitted to the students. There is a high value put on education by the community, and therefore, students work to try to get the
most out of their education,” Zimmerman said. Junior Leihui “Tony” Tong agrees with Zimmerman and finds that Conestoga fosters a competitive culture when it comes to academics. “Students will definitely want to compete more with each other,” Tong said. “Everyone’s on their guard. Everyone’s racing. (The academic environment is) so goal-oriented; everyone knows that this is the real deal.” Continued on page 3.
Post-Conestoga competition: Alumnae fight for seat in state Congress Ben Shapiro News Editor
When Sarah Marvin and Representative Melissa Shusterman graduated from Conestoga, they headed off to become a pharmaceutical researcher and video producer, respectively. Today, both women face off in a race for the 157th District seat in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives. A 1998 alumna, Marvin decided to run for state Congress as a Republican after being disappointed with the federal government’s COVID-19 re-
covery plans. A 1985 Conestoga alumna, Shusterman ran for and took office in 2018 in reaction to former President Trump’s presidency and desire for women to represent a diversity of ideas. She is District 157’s Democratic incumbent. Both women hope to win the Nov. 8 midterm election to represent the district encompassing Schuylkill, Tredyffrin, Easttown and Willistown Townships. In high school, neither Shusterman nor Marvin expected to run for office when they were older. Shusterman remembers spending her time
packaging lunches for the homeless in Philadelphia, performing with the color guard — called the “kickline” in the ‘80s — and unsuccessfully running for Student Council multiple years in a row. “I ran for something like three times and lost every time,” Shusterman said. “Sometimes it takes until you’re 51 to win an election, but it gave me great experience to get up in front of my peers and give a speech and be nervous. I’m still nervous now when I give a speech, but not as much.”
Ben Shapiro/The SPOKE
Clipboards and canvassing: Representative Melissa Shusterman (left), the Democratic incumbent of Pennsylvania’s 157th District House of Representatives, discusses canvassing strategies. She organized a joint-door-knocking campaign with Chrissy Houlahan, Pennsylvania’s Democratic incumbent in the U.S. Senate, to try to increase voter turnout on Nov. 8.
When thinking back to her time at Conestoga, Marvin remembers spending time practicing with the swim team. Looking back, she is very happy with the academic opportunity her alma mater made available to her. “The fact that Conestoga has high expectations for their students (and) a very high level of academics that you receive helped (me grow) in combination with the fact that I am a very self-driven person. I think that, obviously, the education that I received there prepared me well for college and then to be able to make it in the workplace,” Marvin said. Throughout her campaign, Marvin has been running with the slogan “common sense solutions for an uncommon time” to emphasize her desire for rational judgment in daily activities. “Coming out of a time when there was a lot of fear and uncertainty, a lot of decisions weren’t necessarily based on common sense, but rather that fear of the unknown,” Marvin said. “I think we need to bring some logic and reason back into our decision-making as we move forward.” Similarly, Shusterman’s slogan, “common sense before politics,” which she has used since her 2018 campaign, highlights a similar, yet uniquely different, message. She believes in bipartisanship, something that she continues to work toward as she, in the House, sits in between a Democrat and a Re-
Ben Shapiro/The SPOKE
Alternative education: Sarah Marvin, the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s 157th District House of Representatives seat points to the whiteboard as she teaches a class of upper-elementary school students at Springhouse Education. She founded the business to ensure parents’ voices in their children’s education. publican, not strictly on one side of the aisle. “I’m the first legislator in Pennsylvania that has an office staff that includes Democrats, Republicans and Independents,” Shusterman said. “This is a public service position, so it brings me great joy to be able to serve the community.” Outside of their political lives, both women are small-business owners. Marvin runs Springhouse Education, an “alternative education program” for cyber and homeschooled students, and focuses on co-teaching with parents — although, she calls herself and her coworkers “coaches.”
“As an educator, getting to see how cyber/virtual education was navigated by a lot of schools, I was concerned. I was concerned by some things that were being taught in public schools and certain things that were being shared with young children that I felt (were) kind of inappropriate, or rather, didn’t belong in a public school,” Marvin said. Shusterman has publicly spoken out in support of public education and one of her campaign pillars is ensuring equitable public education for all children. This is just one of the many topics on which the
two do not see eye-to-eye; they have opposing views on many hot-button topics such as abortion rights and mail-in ballots. However, both Marvin and Shusterman agree that their time at Conestoga shaped who they are today. The lessons they learned — both in and out of class — taught them the valuable lessons they would need later on in life as they run for state Congress. “It was a challenging environment and it was a competitive environment,” Shusterman said. “And that allowed me to go on to the next chapter without fear.”