This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

2025’s National Teacher of the Year is an English instructor at Mifflin County High School, according to the Council of Chief State School Officers, a national organization of K-12 officials. Crosson, who was also named CCSSO’s Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year, is a first-generation college graduate with degrees from Millersville and Penn State. Local though she is, Crosson has brought an international focus to her curricula and was a 2018 Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms fellow.

Who said there were enough podcasts? PennLive proved pod-haters wrong with its six-part podcast series based on a years-long investigation of a series of suspicious deaths at Dauphin County Prison since 2019 by PennLive reporter Josh Vaughn. “Death County, PA” recently claimed the top spot of the Apple ranking for podcast series. Vaughn and the Central Pennsylvania-based outlet get a tip of the reporter’s cap from us.

Nothing cavalier about the latest staffing decision by the board of governors for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. PASSHE announced this week that Philip Cavalier, the provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Tennessee at Martin, will serve as the next president of Kutztown University beginning on July 6. Cavalier helped boost student retention and graduation rates at UTM, while also partnering with regional employers like Ford Motor Co. – a track record that could serve him well at the Berks County institution.

Pennsylvania news consumers are decidedly worse off following the abrupt end of StateImpact Pennsylvania, the energy- and environment-focused outlet that announced this week it will shut down after 13 years. StateImpact PA’s reporting focused on topics ranging from the natural gas boom and buildout of pipeline infrastructure to the impacts of fracking and the lasting legacy of the partial nuclear power plant meltdown at Three Mile Island. Here’s hoping that other outlets will work to fill the large shoes of StateImpact PA reporters. 

Three years after he became the newly formed Commonwealth University’s inaugural president and two months after a resounding faculty no-confidence vote, Bashar Hanna is stepping down in July, making this the third time he was reputedly pushed out of a job after losing the support of colleagues. At Commonwealth, the faculty was upset over declining enrollment, budgetary difficulties and, most recently, a lawsuit finding Hanna had wrongly terminated a dean for blowing the whistle on sexual harassment by the president – who leaves a string of mistreatment accusations by female employees in his wake. Hanna is moving on to the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, where he will be vice chancellor for strategic initiatives.

A Philadelphia judge’s role in a high-end cheesesteak shop owned by his wife has prompted a panel to allege he’s violated state ethics rules. The Associated Press reported that the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board on Tuesday filed a complaint against Common Pleas Judge Scott DiClaudio over Shay's Steaks, with the complaint noting news coverage of the restaurant mentioning his role as a judge, with one story referring to him as “whiz honor.” We’ll have to see if it proceeds ‘wit or witout’ conflict as board chops it up.