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Youngstown academic commission appoints supervisor
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
A former Cleveland area school administrator has been appointed the city schools academic distress commission supervisor for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.
The commission on Thursday created the new post and appointed Edward A. Bernetich, who will visit all pre-K through eighth grade district schools unannounced and write reports.
The reports will detail the quality of the school climate, whether classrooms are being instructed at or below grade level, information about suspended and expelled students, monthly grading reports, teacher meetings and interventions designed for students not likely to meet standards.
He will be paid $450 per diem including expenses and will serve at the pleasure and discretion of the commission.
Bernetich, who lives in Brecksville, has been a director of teacher education at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and a principal at Beachwood Middle School in Beachwood.
Adrienne O’Neill, commission chairwoman, said the panel wanted to have an outside opinion about the progress of programs being implemented in the district.
O’Neill also asked Superintendent Connie Hathorn to start looking into opening another Discovery school next year.
She said that students perform better when they have a choice about where they attend school, and diagnostic tests demonstrate that.
Scores of those attending the Discovery School at Kirkmere, a specialty school for third- through eighth-graders, show improvement.
“I would like us to have that worked out by December,” she said.
The Discovery School at Kirkmere has 315 students enrolled, and there’s a waiting list. O’Neill also believes that by offering more choices to students and their families, the district can stem the tide of students leaving the district for other schools and districts.
O’Neill also said James Reinhard, who has been working as the part-time school district treasurer and fiscal monitor for the commission, will become the district’s full-time permanent treasurer.
That action has not been taken by the school board.
Last April, the board appointed Reinhard treasurer, but the position wasn’t full time. The retired Canton City Schools treasurer had been working as the commission-appointed fiscal monitor in the school district since last December. She said that the fiscal monitor was appointed to establish business-like policies in the treasurer’s office that previously hadn’t been implemented. Since those have been implemented, she said she doesn’t think a fiscal monitor is needed any more.