DENNISVILLE –– The Dennis Township Board of Education recently welcomed a new member.
Mary D’Arcy Bittner, a local attorney, was sworn in to a one-year term at the board’s work session meeting on May 29.
Bittner is the municipal prosecutor in this township as well as in Middle Township and Wildwood. She also has a private practice in which she represents clients in land use applications, real estate transactions and general civil litigation.
“Mary will be a great asset to the board,” said board President John Robertson. “As a lawyer, she’ll offer a different point of view.”
Bittner fills a position vacated when board member Mark Rinkus resigned Feb. 27 citing a residency issue as a reason for his departure.
“Mark gave a lot to the board and the children of this district,” Robertson said at the time. “He will be sorely missed.”
When asked what she thought of her first school board meeting, which had 35 items on the agenda including several new policy issues, Bittner told the Herald, “It was very informative.”
“I am proud to be part of such a professional group committed to advancing and improving our community,” she said.
Bittner was chosen for the post over three other interested candidates: Louis Capuano, William Haryslak and Teri Calloway.
Calloway also ran unsuccessfully against incumbents Russell Tozer, Sara Teefy and Christine Ostrander in the April 15 school elections. The votes were cast as follows: Calloway, 195; Ostrander, 269; Teefy, 253; and Tozer, 266.
Voters in that election also passed, 236 to 193, the $7.5 million school budget for the second year in a row after defeating the budget in the previous six elections.
Bittner is joining a board, which Robertson said works well together and has helped turn around the public’s view of the school board and school district resulting in incumbent reelections and budget passage.
The board and district were recently given the highest marks possible in the state monitoring and evaluation system for public schools, the Quality Single Accountability Continuum (QSAC) program.
Under QSAC, districts are evaluated in five general categories: operations management, instruction and program, governance, fiscal management, and personnel.
Boards of education are judged under the governance category in which the Dennis Township board received a perfect score of 100 percent.
“We’re proud of the score,” Robertson said. “We try to do our best for the students as well as the taxpayers of Dennis Township.”
The district did so well in each category the state Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy sent a letter of congratulations to Superintendent George Papp on April 24 honoring the district with a special distinction.
“Your district satisfied at least 80 percent of the weighted indicators in each of the five areas in the QSAC review process,” Davy wrote. “It is therefore my pleasure to designate your district as a “High Performing School District.”
Contact Hart at (609) 886-8600 Ext 35 or at: jhart@cmcherald.com
