May 23, 2002 By Ted Boscia 4 min read

MAPLETOWN – With superintendent James F. Burns retiring in early June, Southeastern Greene School Board expedited the replacement process Wednesday by waiving a policy to conduct a formal search and promoting Dr. Phillip J. Savini Jr. to fill the position. Savini, a 42-year-old Uniontown resident, will become the district’s top administrator July 1, earning a starting salary of $75,000 per year. Savini has served as the district’s assistant to the superintendent since 2000.

“I thank the board for their confidence and support in hiring me,” Savini said. “This district’s been very good to me. We’ve had some healthy discussions with the board, which keeps everybody on their toes.”

Savini, hired to a five-year term, outlined several initiatives for the district.

“We need to look at what’s going on in the elementary school in terms of (state) empowerment,” he said. “We need to wait and see what the state wants us to do, and that will be a major concern for next year.”

The district was placed under state empowerment last year after its elementary students performed below average on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests. However, Savini said that the junior and senior high school students scored above the state average.

“In the elementary, we’re working on improving scores to meet the state standards, and we’ll continue with curriculum development as the scores improve,” he said. “The district already has some plans in place for that, and we’ll continue along that course.”

In addition to freeing the district from state empowerment, Savini listed additional objectives for his tenure as superintendent.

“I’d like to continue with the facility assessment, which should be complete within five months,” Savini said. “I’d like to see the expansion of the school-to-work program as well.”

Savini added that the school-to-work program has been one of his pet projects since joining the district, and SEG instituted one of the state’s first roundtable programs with business and civic leaders in Pittsburgh earlier this year.

As part of the program, the board heard a positive report Wednesday from a group of students and teachers who participated in the program, which is designed to teach students leadership skills and introduce them to various career opportunities.

Savini’s promotion to superintendent coincides with his 20th year in public education and fifth year with Southeastern Greene School District. He joined the district in 1998 as the principal of Mapletown High School. Before that, he worked 15 years in Brownsville Area School District as a teacher and assistant principal.

The board followed Savini’s hiring with a provision to instate him as the district’s substitute superintendent from June 8 to June 30 after Burns’ retirement. As a result, Burns used a portion of the meeting to bid farewell to the district and individual board members.

“I appreciate very much the three years I spent with you, and it will always be held very much in my heart,” Burns said. “There have been a lot of positive moves made by this board. I trust that Dr. Savini and the administration can take the golden bull by the horns and run with it. The groundwork is there.”

Savini lauded Burns for being a mentor and steering the district in the proper direction.

“I thank Dr. Burns and enjoyed working for him,” Savini said. “We made some very nice progress in his few years here. I’d like to continue on with some more initiatives in this district.”

In other personnel matters, directors appointed board member Gary Moser as treasurer for the next fiscal year. Moser chose to give his treasurer’s stipend back to the district to fund next year’s honors banquet.

The board also renewed business manager Leonard Corazzi’s contract, with a 4 percent increase retroactive to June 1, 2001.

In other business, the board approved a $9.2-million budget for the 2002-2003 school year that holds the real estate tax rate at 91 mills. Corazzi said the budget is “about the same as last year’s,” and administrators neither added nor deleted educational programs. He said the board depended on $900,000 of its approximate $2.8-million fund balance to balance next year’s budget.

In a similar matter, the board voted to pay its share of just more than $200,000 to next year’s Greene County Vocational-Technical School budget.