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August 21, 2012

East End/Second District: In emotional meeting, ‘stereotype’ debated

By Mary Spicer Meadville Tribune

VERNON TOWNSHIP — — When her family moved to the area a just couple of years ago, the same piece of advice was offered by two different Meadville real estate agencies. The young family was advised, Julie Panchura told Crawford Central School Board during its monthly work session Monday night, to buy a house anywhere in Meadville except the Second District Elementary School attendance area.

The recommendation, she had been told, was based on the school having the lowest scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests of any school in Crawford Central School District, which serves the greater Meadville area and Cochranton.

According to Tony Stellato, who attended Second District as a student in the 1940s and served as a teacher there and then as the school’s principal from the 1950s into the 1990s, however, a negative image of the school is not a recent development.

Located at the intersection of South Main and Linden Streets, Second District was constructed in the part of Meadville where immigrants settled — and therefore has always been a culturally diversified school, Stellato told the board. While that diversification has given its students skills that have made them better able to function as adults in the real world, he continued, “an unjustified negative stereotype arose because of the cultural diversity of the school — and that stereotype still exists.”

During an emotionally charged evening, school board members heard from five Second District residents — George Trucco, Melissa Burnett, Sabrina Thompson, Stellato and Sam Byrd — voicing objections to a suggestion put forward during the board’s July work session that the name of the school be changed in order to, in the words of East End attendance area resident Patty Fiely, “to avoid labels and get a fresh start.”

Monday, Panchura told the board that “the label is definitely perpetuated by area businesses.” Her family, she added, “decided to pick from the other four schools — but it was all about low test scores.”

After hearing Panchura’s story, “Meadville has got to understand that Second District is no different than any other Meadville school,” Stellato said. “The City of Meadville has to stop this stereotype of Second District School.”



Save the name

Because of a complicated decision by Pennsylvania Department of Education based on Crawford Central’s decision to move almost the entire student body, faculty and staff of Second District to East End Elementary School for the 2011-12 school year and then move everyone back to Second District as of the beginning of the 2012-13 school year, the school at the intersection of South Main and Linden streets will be known as “East End Elementary School at Second District Elementary School” at least until July 1, 2013.

During the July work session, the board gave Fiely permission to form a committee to investigate the possibility of a name change. “The group has been told at every turn they have to work through Charlie’s office with administration’s full knowledge and guidance,” board President Jan VanTuil said after Monday’s session. “They have to involve the students.”

Speakers from the Second District attendance area, however, objected one by one to the use of the word “label” while urging the board to preserve the Second District name. “Stopping labeling would be a fresh start,” Trucco observed.



Mary Spicer can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail  at mspicer@meadvilletribune.com.

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