The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School

Steubenville Herald-Star
Nov. 21, 2009

STEUBENVILLE, Oh. - Educational innovation pulled the little steel town of Midland, Pa., out of economic depression after Crucible Steel Corp. closed in 1982, and the high school subsequently closed in 1986, Nick Trombetta told the Steubenville Rotary Club Friday.

"We lost people, we lost money, and we lost hope, and that was the worst thing," said Trombetta, founder and CEO of the Midland-based Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School.

The Midland Borough School District started the online public charter school as a backup alternative for Midland's 150 high school students, who were being bused to East Liverpool under a tuition arrangement. Over 10 years, the online school has grown to nearly 9,000 students statewide, has a budget of more than $90 million, and has spawned a performing arts high school, a cyber charter school in Ohio and a foundation which markets online curriculum all over the country, he said.

"I'm happy to tell the story here because you get it," Trombetta told Steubenville Rotarians. "Steel towns like us, we have something left in us."

Part of PA Cyber's success, he said, has been due to its commitment to create and protect local jobs and support area businesses. He cited the example of Steubenville's Tri-State Printing Co., which prints textbooks, storybooks, flash cards and other instructional materials for the innovative Little Lincoln elementary online curriculum used by PA Cyber. Little Lincoln is marketed by National Network of Digital Schools, an entity created share the PA Cyber's success nationally and internationally.

Rotarians Richard S. Pflug, president of Tri-State, and representative Larry Hamilton were in Trombetta's audience Friday at the luncheon meeting, held at the Steubenville YWCA. After the meeting they gave Trombetta a tour of their modern downtown printing plant.

Trombetta complimented Superintendent Michael McVey for the Steubenville City School Board's decisions about where to place Big Red high school and Harding Middle School.

"You got it right when you put these beautiful buildings where people could see them," he said.

Trombetta said Midland has taken similar pride in the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center and Charter School, a $30 million entertainment facility and school across the street from the sprawling plant of the old steel mill. PA Cyber is headquartered in what was once the Crucible Steel administration building, and the Lincoln Park music department is located in the former mill hospital.

"All through the town we have taken these old abandoned buildings and made them into something," he said.

PA Cyber bought the former Local 1212 Steelworkers Union Hall, once a showpiece of the AFL-CIO, and will spend $4 million to restore it for use by online teachers.

When Rotarian Hank Kuzma asked Trombetta about the gymnasium at Midland's Lincoln High School,

Trombetta reminded the audience that Kuzma coached basketball there, including the 1965 team regarded as the best high school team ever to play in Pennsylvania.

"That was the first building slated for demolition when I became superintendent at Midland in 1995," said Trombetta.

The gym was saved, renovated and now serves Lincoln Park students, Midland Elementary-Middle School students and is a community wellness center and classroom building.

Trombetta said he went to school superintendents across the state asking them to partner with him when he started the online school, but none of them could be bothered. When their students started enrolling in his school, however, "I started to hear from them. I heard from them through the newspapers and I heard from them in the courts."

He and the others who worked 10 months for no pay to start PA Cyber had no idea it would be the educational answer sought by so many families, he said.

"When you create something that you didn't know the rest of the world wants and then they show up on your doorstep, it's pretty amazing," said Trombetta.

As East Liverpool High School wrestling coach from 1980-92, Trombetta had 17 individual Ohio Valley Athletic Conference champions and the Potters twice were team champions of the OVAC wrestling tournament.