Rita

Dr. Rita Sterner-Hine
Superintendent

Teamwork

Shippensburg Alum

SUPERINTENDENT'S PAGE

Welcome to the 2024-25 school year! We are so excited to continue to achieve great things at the Waynesboro Area School District. #BOROStrong and Teamwork Makes the Dream Work continues to be our theme to collectively work together to make Waynesboro the FIRST CHOICE for learners, teachers, support staff, parents, and the community! Our goal is to continue to be radically learner centered in order to meet all the needs of academics, careers, and the whole child.

#BOROStrong and Teamwork Makes the Dream Work continues to be our theme to collectively work together to make Waynesboro the FIRST CHOICE for learners, teachers, support staff, parents, and the community! This year will bring new challenges as even more learners return to the classrooms. Our goal is to continue to be radically learner centered in order to meet all the needs of academics, careers, and the whole child. 

I may be bias but I truly believe that WASD did an outstanding job at navigating through the challenges of COVID since March 2020.   Where do we go from here?

  • The next three to five years will be challenging as we continue to define learning (in person, synchronous, asynchronous, etc.) and how learning is structured at WASD.  WASD is committed to explore all forms of delivery systems to design customized instruction for all learners and still remain cost effective. 

  • Instructional challenges include mitigating learning gaps, managing social well-being of students, and supporting teachers for the additional need for student engagement.

  • Fiscal needs include escalating instructional costs, managing potential funding cliffs due to ESSER funding streams ending, and reallocating resources to new areas uncovered through COVID-19.

  • One of our greatest concerns is the lack of qualified personnel for teaching positions, especially in special education. We are pleased to be fully staffed for the 2024-25 school year but recognize the teacher shortage will continue to be a challenge.

My 2024-25 goals include the following:

  • Be the steward of the WASD vision of FIRST CHOICE – work to support the FIRST CHOICE Development Team in the following areas:  Academics, Whole Child, Careers, and Innovative Learning

  • Lead WASD and develop a culture that educates and empowers our students

  • Coordinate professional learning plans to achieve WASD FIRST CHOICE goals

  • Focus on teaching and learning at WASD to meet the needs of all students

  • Implement WASD board policies

  • Communicate with all stakeholders

  • Execute the WASD budget with fidelity.

  • Lead the WASD Administrative Team

  • Inspire, motivate, and support the WASD faculty and staff       

  • Connect with learners K-12

'‘Education is the point at which we decide on whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from the ruin which, except for renewal, except from the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable.”

- Hannah Arendt  

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WASD First Choice 1
WASD Top 5 for 2023-24

RECOMMENDED READING 

book 1

“What branch creaks help to produce is what I call the “want-to”- and whenever the want-to is strong enough, the how-to will come.” “It is no longer sufficient to teach students the way we always have. We need to answer the why: connecting them with the rationale for learning a subject and how it will help them reach their desired lifestyle and career goals.”

― Mark Perna,  Answering Why

book 2

“It’s the essence of our humanity—to create, to invent, to make our world better.”      

― Ted Dintersmith, What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers across America

book3

“Madison and her friends were the first generation of “digital natives”—kids who’d never known anything but connectivity. That connection, at its most basic level, meant that instead of calling your parents once a week from the dorm hallway, you could call and text them all day long, even seeking their approval for your most mundane choices, like what to eat at the dining hall. Constant communication may seem reassuring, the closing of physical distance, but it quickly becomes inhibiting. Digital life, and social media at its most complex, is an interweaving of public and private personas, a blending and splintering of identities unlike anything other generations” 

― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

book 4

“When children and young adults are always/mostly told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and then watched closely to make sure they have done it, why should we expect a natural increase in maturity and acceptance of responsibility?”

― Charles Schwahn, Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning

book 5

“I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.”

― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

Creating Standards-Based Integrated Curriculum

This updated edition of Susan Drake’s classic text serves as a road map through the Common Core State Standards, giving you the flexibility to design an integrated curriculum that’s right for your students. Focusing on multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches, Drake provides guidance on:

  • Unpacking the Common Core State Standards

  • Planning assessment tasks

  • Designing instructional strategies

  • Developing daily activities

  • Helping students connect essential questions to enduring understandings

Included are new examples of exemplary programs, discussion questions, a sample completed interdisciplinary curriculum, and activities for building your own standards-based integrated curriculum.

Assessment Playbook


This text is rich with a wide range of examples, strategies, and assessments that can be leveraged with rigor and fidelity regardless of learning environment. This practical playbook empowers teachers with the decision-making tools needed to gauge the impact of instructional strategies in today’s rapidly evolving educational landscape.

Distance Learning Playbook


The Distance Learning Playbook applies the wisdom and evidence of research to understand what works best with distance learning. Spanning topics from teacher-student relationships, teacher credibility and clarity, instructional design, assessments, and grading, this comprehensive playbook details the research- and evidence-based strategies teachers can mobilize to deliver high- impact learning in an online, virtual, and distributed environment.

Well-Being in Schools

This timely resource for teachers, leaders, and policymakers provides breakthrough insights into how to improve students' well-being in schools. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, students' well-being was an increasingly prominent concern among educators, as issues related to mental health, global crises, and social media became impossible to ignore. But what, exactly, is well-being? What does it look like, why is it so important, and what can school systems do to promote it? How does it relate to student achievement and social and emotional learning?

The Ideal Team Player

In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides.

The Advantage


In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides.

Resilience

Resilience, left to individuals, will only ever be built by people in the moments that require them to dig deep and find it. The real power in building resilience before we need it, lies in what we can accomplish when our organizations become resilient. This book presents a simple framework for leaders and organizations to prepare for sustainable results in the face of rapid, disruption.

The Power of a Postive Team

This is a book meant for teams to read together. It’s written in such a way that if you and your team read it together, you will understand the obstacles you will face and what you must do to become a great team. If you read it together, stay positive together, and take action together you will accomplish amazing things TOGETHER.

Innovator's Mindset

In The Innovator’s Mindset, George Couros encourages teachers and administrators toempower their learners to wonder, to explore–and to become forward-thinking leaders. If we want innovative students, we need innovative educators. In other words, innovation begins with you. Ultimately, innovation is not about a skill set: it’s about a mindset.

Because of a Teacher

A teacher's influence doesn't stay in school. It goes into the world and cannot be truly measured. Every student you inspire to do something great goes on to inspire other. There is no limit to your impact.

CFL

"Rodger deeply understands the change process and how difficult it is for people and organizations to manage change. This profound understanding gives him an insightful perspective into how to solve it, i.e., how to engage people’s heads, hearts, and hopes."

- Stephen M.R. Covey,  New York Times bestselling author of The Speed of Trust


EDUCATIONAL AND PERSONAL BACKGROUND:

Dr. Sterner-Hine has worked for the Waynesboro Area School District (WASD) since 1991. Dr. Sterner-Hine taught social studies at the Waynesboro Area Middle School, served as an assistant principal at the Waynesboro Area Senior High School, served as principal of Hooverville Elementary, principal at Summitview Elementary and WASD Assistant Superintendent.

In addition to her WASD work experience, Dr. Sterner-Hine has been actively involved in the Waynesboro Area Business Education and Community Foundation (WABEC) since 2002. Most recently, she served as co-chair for a very successful $1.75 million capital campaign for the Waynesboro Area Business Education and Community Foundation (WABEC). In this role, she actively worked with our community and businesses to reach the goal to finance the cost of a new synthetic turf field and track.

At WASD, Sterner-Hine has cultivated a very positive and high performing school climate. While serving as principal for ten years at Hooverville Elementary, the students consistently outperformed other schools in Franklin County. Summitview Elementary was the recipient of the Governor's Award for Academic Excellence in 2013 and was recognized as one of the top 100 elementary schools in Pennsylvania based on their 93.2% School Performance Profile (SPP) score.

Sterner-Hine has presented various workshops for national and state conferences. Her publications include: “The Antebellum Women’s Movement” - National Center for Teaching History and “Math, Reading and Writing Performance on the PSSA: Examining Gender Differences using PVAAS - Doctoral Dissertation - 2012. She has also worked as an adjunct professor for graduate studies at Wilson College.

Dr. Sterner-Hine is a graduate of Shippensburg University with a BS and a MS in Public Administration and a Comprehensive Social Studies Teacher Certification 6-12. She also received her K-12 Principal Certification from Shippensburg University and her Superintendent’s Letter of Eligibility from Edinboro University. Her doctoral work was completed at Widener University, Chester PA. In July 2022, Dr. Sterner-Hine completed the 2022 Commandant's National Security Program at the US Army War College.

Dr. Sterner-Hine is a graduate of Greencastle-Antrim High School and is married to Derek Hine, a Waynesboro Area Senior High graduate. They are the proud parents of two WASHS graduates. Their daughter, Rachel (Class of 2014), is a graduate of Penn State University and is a Financial Analyst in Charlotte, NC. Their son, Evan (Class of 2017), is a graduate of Mount St. Mary’s and is a Financial Advisor in Rehoboth Beach, DE.

Rita and Family