After serving as the interim assistant superintendent for much of the 2018-2019 school year with Berlin Community School, Joseph Campisi was officially named the incoming superintendent of schools earlier this year.
During his 11 years as an administrator, Campisi says he has grown to most enjoy smaller school districts centered on the K-8 level, making the availability of the interim assistant position last fall very intriguing to him.
After having served as the interim, Campisi says he was confident he wanted to stay at BCS.
“The more I was here, the more I wanted to be here, which led me to want to compete for the position,” said Campisi, having been named the superintendent following a Community Forum where he and two other candidates presented in front of the board of education and parents, teachers and community members about their backgrounds and vision.
In his several months with the district, Campisi says he put a heavy focus on getting involved in the community and attending school events, from presentations to community 5K’s, while also attending Berlin Borough Council meetings to both understand the community’s recent events and concerns, while also creating a line of communication between the school administration and governing body.
“If I’m asking for buy-in from students and potential partnerships, it’s a two-way street,” said Campisi. “I go to those kind of things because I love that kind of stuff, I enjoy it … if the students see me at those events outside of school, I hope it lets them know that I care, the school cares, the administrators care. If that can help get them in the mindset that they want to learn more each day than the day before, that’s the hope.”
At the board’s monthly meeting in August, Campisi presented his goals for the 2019-2020 school year, which include emphasis on character education, cultural proficiency and equity, ELA/literacy and mathematics, in no particular order.
“They’re all equally important … you have to treat everything as your number one goal,” said Campisi. “We’re trying to bring a lot of people together. We want to get the comprehensive stakeholder advisory groups that are as diverse and representative of the entire community as we can, while also getting student input, because they can tell you how they learn.”
Earlier this month, Berlin Borough School District sent out a Comprehensive Stakeholder Advisory Group interest survey, seeking individuals who would be interested in being on one of the four committees that will provide administrators with feedback regarding the four aforementioned goals.
The desired composition of each committee hopes to include at least nine people, as well as the two school principals and Campisi. Additional people each committee hopes to include are at least one elementary school parent, one middle school parent, one parent of a child with special needs, one elementary school teacher, one middle school teacher, one special education teacher, two BCS students and one community member who does not currently have children in the district.
Campisi hopes to have the groups meet at least four times this upcoming school year to develop meaningful conversation that can create positive change around Berlin Community School where it is needed. Furthermore, Campisi hope the committees are recurring groups each and every year to bring constant evaluation and feedback to school administration.
Lastly, Campisi says, upon receiving the full data from state test scores from BCS students, he hopes to do a full evaluation for ELA and math testing “to see where students are performing at a high level, as well as areas where they might need some extra help, and then key in on those areas.”
Already, Campisi says he has met with the other superintendents of the sending districts to Eastern Regional, as well as Eastern’s superintendent, twice in a group setting to discuss multiple topics, with test scores in mathematics being an important issue.
Over time, Campisi says the superintendents plan to work on potentially aligning curriculum to improve test scores, according to data provided.
