Intermediate units are public entities and serve a given geographic area's educational needs and function as a step of organization above that of a public school district, but below that of the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Annual budgets of the intermediate unit must be approved by a majority of the school boards in the districts it serves.
The Pennsylvania state system of intermediate units (IU) was created in 1970, as part of the public school system of the Commonwealth, replacing the 67 county superintendents of schools offices which had existed since the 1850s.
Act 102 created the boundaries for each IU, assigned every school district to an intermediate unit, established a system of governance and a mechanism for funding IUs, and identified a broad array of services IUs may provide.
[2] There are twenty-nine intermediate units in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, each serving a given region: