Original Research by School Decision on North Star Hs
North Star High School sits in Boswell, a small former coal-company borough in Somerset County where the economic foundation of coal mining and light manufacturing has largely disappeared. Today the town functions as a residential community with a small historic downtown, surrounded by retirees and families rooted to the area. The high school serves grades nine through twelve at a compact enrollment for a rural setting, with an additional handful of students from lower grades, suggesting the school may house a few younger students for administrative or instructional reasons.
The student body is almost entirely white, with only a handful of students from other racial or ethnic backgrounds. Every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which indicates the school draws from families with low household income across its enrollment. Special education and English learner counts were not available in the data provided, so a parent seeking detail on services for students with disabilities or language learners should ask the school directly about those populations.
State assessment results for the school were not available, and no graduation rate was reported. A parent wanting to understand academic proficiency and whether students complete on time would need to reach out to the school or district for that information. The data absence may reflect how the school sits within a district that is in the midst of significant structural change.
North Star School District is consolidating its facilities. The middle school in Kantner is being closed and sold; fifth and sixth graders will move to the elementary school in Boswell following additions and renovations, and seventh and eighth graders will move into the high school building. Eighth graders began transitioning into the high school building starting in the 2025-26 school year as an interim step. This reshaping of the district's building footprint will be felt by families for years as students move between different physical campuses at different grade levels than they did before.
The consolidation is being driven by aging middle school infrastructure and a desire to centralize the district on a single Boswell campus. The project carries a substantial cost, and property tax millage has been rising to support it. The school board moved the millage rate upward in 2022 and again in 2023, with the business manager stating that taxes would need to remain elevated for several years to afford the building work. A family buying into a home in this district should expect the school tax portion of their bill to remain under upward pressure while the project moves forward.
Boswell itself is a declining community. Population has fallen from a much larger historic peak and continues to slide, with no major new residential development visible in the town. Housing values in the area are modest compared to state and national benchmarks, and the median home price sits well below both Pennsylvania and the national average, though monthly mortgage costs remain elevated relative to local income. Most of the housing stock consists of the original brick workers' homes built by the Merchants Coal Company in the early nineteen hundreds, and that character remains largely unchanged.
The area offers the walkability of a planned grid layout with sidewalks and narrow blocks, but street life on the original commercial spine of Main and Center Streets is muted. The historic buildings survive but serve as apartments and small commercial uses rather than the shops and hotels they once were. Civic life centers on the school district campuses and on Orenda Park, a community forest on the former coal tipple site.
Employment in the immediate area is limited. There are no large private employers within the borough; the coal mine and the later garment factory that sustained the town are long closed. Many residents commute to the wider Johnstown area for work. The school district itself is a major institutional employer locally. The regional context is rural, with transit limited to state highways and personal automobiles required for most activity.
North Star High School's comparison to other districts in Somerset County could not be made because state assessment data and graduation rate data were not available for the school. A parent looking for a clear academic picture should ask the district and school for recent state test results and graduation outcomes to place this school in a local context.
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