Southmoreland SHS

Southmoreland SHS is one of the small high schools in Alverton, Pennsylvania, run under Southmoreland SD, with 566 students on its rolls from grades 9 through 12. That puts it 23% smaller than the typical public school in Pennsylvania, which averages around 738 students.

Within Southmoreland SD, which oversees 4 schools and 1,801 students, Southmoreland SHS is one campus in the system.

For racial and ethnic makeup, Southmoreland SHS records that the student body is overwhelmingly White (94%); the rest reads as 4% multiracial. That mix tracks the wider county fairly closely.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, Southmoreland SHS has 38 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 15.1:1. The state averages around 12.8:1, so this campus is higher than the state norm typical. An estimated 53% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Southmoreland SHS performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 54.9%, the actual is 39.7%, a residual of -15.2 points.

In the broader community, ACS estimates for Westmoreland County put the typical household earns roughly $74,109 per year, 33% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 7%. Across Westmoreland County's 85 public schools (combined enrollment of about 41,302 students), Southmoreland SHS is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Southmoreland Primary Center, around 0.2 miles off. Within five miles, there are 7 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Southmoreland SHS comes 8th of 8 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 50.6%.

The campus sits in a countryside setting.

Five-year trend. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Southmoreland SHS has edged up 6%, going from 536 students in 2018 to 566 in 2025. The student-to-teacher ratio loosened from 13.4:1 in 2018 to 15.1:1 today.

Inside the community feed, recent activity here tends to focus on sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.