Sarah Mueller
Education reporterAn experienced journalist, I joined LehighValleyNews.com as its education reporter. I bring several years of media experience at public radio stations including NPR Illinois, WFSU Public Media and Delaware Public Media. I’ve covered state and local government, interviewing lawmakers, governors and congressional leaders. In my personal life, I’m a passionate animal lover, hiker and documentary enthusiast. A documentary for which I worked as a researcher, Fire in the Meadows, won first place at the 2022 Tallahassee Film Festival for best documentary short film. It explored the effects of an investor buying a local mobile home park, raising rents and forcing tenants out of their homes. Contact me at SarahM@lehighvalleynews.com or and subscribe to my newsletter here.
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The farmers' market almost disappeared in the early 2000s, but community support helped revitalized it. -
A pretrial conference was held Wednesday in federal court stemming from Liberty High School Assistant Principal Antonio Traca's federal civil rights lawsuit against retiring Superintendent Joseph Roy and the Bethlehem Area School District.
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Speakers accuse public school officials, teachers' unions of trying to "sexualize children" or indoctrinating them. Some called for restricting LGBTQ books. Protestors traveled from the Lehigh Valley and beyond to stand against the Moms for Liberty's "extremism" and in support of LGBTQ people.
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Public school advocates worry vouchers will divert money from public education into charters or private schools.
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Maria Shantz was one of a group of Republicans who signed a controversial pledge to create policies around gender and rejecting "wokeness."
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Lehigh Carbon Community College and Northampton Community College received money from the Pennsylvania Department of Education to help adults learn English.
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Moravian University and Lehigh Carbon Community College are working to remove barriers for Black and Latino high school students.
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School board members say a lack of internal controls contributed to the problems. They say the situation is being fixed.
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Benita Draper was the director of equity initiatives for the Bethlehem Area School District and a former elementary school principal.
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Paraprofessionals can get certified for free while continuing to work in their schools.
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Early education advocates say there has been a slow erosion of the number of programs, workers and classroom slots in the Lehigh Valley, and across Pennsylvania, since federal funding expired last year.
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The district said it's owed more than $700,000 in school lunch debt, unpaid tuition by ex-employees, missing or damaged Chromebooks and facility fees.
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The Basic Education Funding Commission failed to produce a bipartisan report. Instead it voted on two reports and only one garnered enough votes.
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About 600 elementary school kids watched the college's women's basketball team play as a reward for attending school regularly.
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The two school buses the district has already purchased are expected to be delivered sometime in April.
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The 20-year-old is a youth director with Promise Neighborhoods of Lehigh Valley. She graduated from William Allen High School in 2021 and won election to the school board in the November general election.
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Executive Education Academy Charter has been waiting to appeal its application denial since 2021. Gov. Josh Shapiro's nominees were just confirmed by the State Senate earlier this month.
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The grant money first approved by the Pennsylvania Legislature in 2018 can go toward making safety infrastructure improvements to facilities.
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The lawsuit alleged retired chief of schools Joe Roy punched an assistant principal during a 2022 high school football game.
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The social studies teacher at William Allen High School was accused of drug crimes following a March raid of her home by the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office. She resigned a few weeks later, citing "personal" reasons.
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Students at Dieruff High School were placed on a brief lockdown Tuesday morning after a teen was taken into custody by law enforcement, authorities said.
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Northampton Area Board of Education said it would have been on the hook for about $9.5 million if construction contracts were cancelled for a new elementary school.
