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Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools

Governance and Membership

Membership

Membership is statewide and is open to second, third, and fourth class public school districts, which can subscribe to the purpose and goals of the Association. The PARSS Board meets four times a year, and one of those meetings is at our annual spring conference.

Governance

Governed by an elected board composed of thirty one (31) directors from across the Commonwealth, our board reviews education-related legislation and recommends what actions we should take to bring about our goal of delivering a quality education to every child in Pennsylvania. Learn more about our officers and who is on our board when you visit Our Board page.

We elect our board from within our membership. We elect one director from each of the PARSS Regions. For purposes of the foregoing sentence, the term "PARSS Regions" means the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Intermediate Units except that IU 2 (Pittsburgh) and IU 26 (Philadelphia) are eliminated as regions; Intermediate Units 20 (Colonial) and 21 (Carbon Lehigh) are combined with IU 19 (Northeastern) to form a single region, and Intermediate Units 22 (Bucks County), 23 (Montgomery County), 24 (Chester County), and 25 (Delaware County) are combined with IU 14 (Berks) to form a single region. The total number of regions is, therefore, determined to be twenty-one (21). The total number of directors, which constitutes the whole board, is equal to the number of PARSS Regional Directors plus ten (10) directors selected at large.