County wide

When Pennsylvania Repealed the County Superintendent

At a convention in June 1854, Huntingdon County elected its first superintendent of schools and fixed the salary at $300. John G. Stewart, by 1876 living at Mount Union, was the only director who voted for $800. Lytle's county history of that year says Stewart "was regarded as somewhat fanatical in his views."

The office was not welcome at first. Lytle wrote that it "met with considerable opposition in this county," with citizens joining others in petitioning the Legislature to abolish it. In time, he wrote, "opposition ceased."

The office stayed. The county's 1937 Sesqui-Centennial book lists twelve people as head of the county school system, from J. S. Barr in 1854 to J. H. Neff, who began in 1930. One of them, M. G. Brumbaugh, served from 1884 to 1890, years before he became governor of Pennsylvania. The same page names six supervising principals in the county's public schools, among them H. W. Slothower at Mount Union.

The Public School Code's sections on county superintendents were repealed on January 14, 1970, by a 1969 act. The repealed sections covered how county superintendents were elected and what they did, down to one headed "Telephone, Typewriter and Stenographer Furnished by County." The code, as amended, told the school board in every district to elect a district superintendent. A supervising principal employed by a district in the 1969 to 1970 school year would be issued a state commission if elected district superintendent for a term beginning July 1, 1970, and would serve until June 30, 1974.

A second law, dated May 4, 1970, set up intermediate units, operative July 1, 1971, and arranged the state's school districts among them. Intermediate Unit No. 11 was written as Southern Fulton, Central Fulton, Forbes Road, Juniata Valley, Huntingdon Area, Mount Union Area, Southern Huntingdon County, Juniata County and Mifflin County. Anyone holding a commission as county superintendent or assistant for the term that began in July 1966 was eligible for election in 1971 as a unit's executive director or assistant executive director. A section added in 1974 required the first yearly report on the units to draw comparisons with "the prior system of county superintendents."

Today Tuscarora Intermediate Unit 11 calls itself a regional educational service agency for schools in Fulton, Huntingdon, Juniata and Mifflin Counties. It also says it "has no direct line authority over local schools."

Checked against the record. We read the law in Pennsylvania's Public School Code as the state publishes it today, with its amendment notes, and the early years in Lytle's 1876 history and the 1937 Sesqui-Centennial book. We looked at the page images for the 1854 date, the $300 and $800 figures and the 1937 list. The two books agree on June 1854 and $300. They spell some early superintendents' names differently, so we left those names out, and the 1937 book spells H. W. Slothower's name two ways, so we used the spelling on its schools page. Some things stay open. We have not seen the 1970 laws as first printed, and the code's notes give each law's date, not the day each change reached this county. The Unit 11 list names districts, not townships, so it does not settle where every corner of the county landed. We found no local newspaper or school board minutes for these years, and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive gave us no Huntingdon County paper for them. So this story does not say who the last county superintendent was, who first led Unit 11, or who led the Mount Union district from 1969 to 1989. If you hold those records, we would like to see them.

Sources

Checked 2026-11-01 · Primary sources and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive

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