SUSAN GRUBB | FOR LNP | LANCASTERONLINE and ASHLEY STALNECKER | Staff Writer
The Elizabethtown Area School District board unanimously appointed Tom Strickler to be the district’s next superintendent beginning July 1. Strickler, the district’s chief financial and operations officer, will be doing two jobs at once.
The board did not consider any outside candidates for the role and are not planning to fill the chief financial officer position. Strickler will continue fulfilling those duties as he takes on the superintendent role for a $213,106 annual salary. His contract allows for annual 4.1% salary increases and longevity bonuses. (In the 2025-26 school year, the top-paid Lancaster County superintendent, Keith Miles of School District of Lancaster, was paid $244,593).
Strickler’s salary as CFOO in 2024-25 was $139,725, according to openPAgov.org, a public education transparency project of the Commonwealth Foundation.
Strickler joined the school district as CFOO in 2023, after Columbia Borough School District replaced him as superintendent in 2020. The board voted in May 2020 to conduct a search for a new superintendent rather than renew Strickler’s contract — despite community backlash over the decision — and Columbia’s current superintendent, Ashley Rizzo stepped into the job in January 2021.
Strickler had started as the district’s superintendent in January 2018.
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