Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Cipriani in, Bowden out on school board
KENNETT SQUARE >> The Kennett school board appointed employment consultant Steve Ciprani on Monday night to fill the seat vacated by Mark Bowden.
Bowden is a nationally recognized journalist and a National Correspondent for The Atlantic. He is best known for his book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War about the 1993 U.S. military raid in Mogadishu, Somalia. It was adapted as a motion picture of the same name and received two Academy Awards. He is also known for Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw about the efforts to take Pablo Escobar, a Colombian drug lord.
Bowden resigned effective Sept. 17 after he discovered that buying a new house a short distance from his old one had made him a resident of Kennett Township. This made him ineligible to serve as the representative of the borough of Kennett Square.
Board officials said Bowden had talked to election officials in an effort to straighten out the situation, but there was no way to resolve it and allow him to remain.
But the good news, board members said, was that four solid replacement candidates had come forward and the board felt that Steve Ciprani, a consultant with a background in education, was the best candidate.
Board President Joseph Meola said after the meeting that Ciprani’s educational background as a Latin and social studies teacher in the West Chester district was a factor in choosing him.
Another was the amount of preparation Ciprani had done in his presentation of his qualifications and the reasons he thought he would be a good choice, Meola said.
Meola added that the board members were impressed when Ciprani strongly argued that school board members should consider themselves ambassadors from the school system to the larger community. The board had been discussing this idea themselves as one of their guiding principles, and Ciprani’s having echoed it spontaneously was an argument in his favor, Meola said.
Ciprani will serve until the municipal elections in 2019.
In other business, board Vice President Dominic Perigo was recognized for his 12 years of service on the board by Mila Hayes of the Pennsylvania School Board Association.
“I’ve enjoyed all 12 years working with the community and school board members new and old,” Perigo said. “I hope to have another 12 more if I could be so lucky.”
District Superintendent Barry Tomasetti said Greenwood Elementary School had been recognized as a Title I Distinguished School, and was among the top 5 percent of Title I schools based on English language arts and math growth as measured by state achievement tests.
Tomasetti said the school had met all four of the state education department’s annual measurable objectives. These included test participation in math and reading, attendance, closing the achievement gap for math and reading for all students, and closing the achievement gap for historically underperforming students.
“This is our mission, Tomasetti said, “to provide quality education that moves everybody ahead.”
The board also announced that the Southern Chester County Regional Police Department had received a $60,000 grant for a school resource officer for the 2018–2019 school year from the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Safe Schools Targeted Grant Program.