INSIDE THIS WEEK

Upper Darby honors police officers at special night. Page A3

U.D. schools spends $16G to send staff to conferences. Page A16
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EDUCATION

Penn Wood principal leading

school to new academic heights

COUNTY >> PAGE A16

Longtime county
worker honored

BASKETBALL >> PAGE 9

Penn Wood faces

test in state debut

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SPECIAL EVENT

DCNN Arts
& Craft
show at
Penn State
Delco News Network will
host its annual Art and Craft
Show 9 am to 4 pm Sunday,
March 6, at Penn State Brandywine, Rte. 352 and Yearsley
Mill Rd., Media.
Limited spaces are still
available and cost $60 each.
First time vendors will pay
an introductory discounted
fee of $50.
Proceeds will benefit the
Pen n S t at e Br a ndy w i ne
AlumniScholarship Fund.
Candles, handmade jewelry, collectibles, baked goods,
unique gift items and much
more will be available for purchase.
Additionally, Yia Yia Nikkis homemade Greek bread
and cookies, All Washed Up
Germs, Tastefully Simple and
other vendors will be on hand
with their wares.
Town Talk staffers will collect donations of canned and
nonperishable food items for
Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry, located in Prospect Park.
For more information or to
reserve a space, emailtowntalkevents@yahoo.com or call
Rose at610-915-2253.

INDEX

Arts................... B1

ANNE NEBORAK DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA

Penn Wood High School Principal D. Brandon Cooley speaks with senior Freedlee Daye.

D. Brandon Cooley credited with new attitude, increased scores

By Kevin Tustin
ktustin@21st-centurymedia.com
@KevinTustin on Twitter

Penn Wood High School stands

alone as a secondary education
institution in Delaware County.
For one, there are two campuses: The Cypress Street Campus in Yeadon for ninth and 10th
graders, and the Green Avenue

Campus in Lansdowne for juniors

and seniors.
Penn Wood also has the highest population of African-American students of any non-charter
public high school in the county,
at 93 percent, and is the secondpoorest high school in the county
after Chester, with 72 percent of
its students deemed economically
challenged in the 2014-15 school

year, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

In the last year No Child Left
Behind was still the law in Pennsylvania, 2012, the school was
given Corrective Action II- Fifth
Year status, meaning it was not
making its Academic Yearly Progress for a fifth year.
Fast forward a few years and
the school was ranked on the Col-

lege Boards AP District Honor

Roll for academic achievement
on Advanced Placement exams,
sitting side-by-side with two of
the most affluent districts in the
county: Marple Newtown and
Radnor. Only 425 districts across
the U.S. and Canada made the list.
Less than five years ago Penn
Wood was another struggling
PENN WOOD PAGE 4

JUMP ROPE FOR HEART

Hillcrest students
exceed jumping goals
By Anne Neborak
aneborak@21st-centurymedia.com
@AnnieNeborak on Twitter

This year Hillcrests Physical Education teacher

Steve Palis is positive the students donations to the Jump
Rope for Heart event will surpass
last years amount of $8,787.45.
It was only Tuesday and they
have raised over $7,000. The third
graders are jumping, hula hooping and swinging on ropes to the
sounds of pop music as donations
UPPER DARBY >>

Opinion.............A6

Sports...............A9

grow. The youngsters were jumping through Friday.

Jump Rope for Heart is sponsored by the American Heart Association. Not only do the youngsters help build up their heart
muscles, they help those who are
suffering from heart disease.
The American Heart Association Jump Rope for Heart and
Hoops for Heart are national education and fund-raising events
ANNE NEBORAK DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA
sponsored by the American Heart
Association and the American Al- Shalyn Smith, 3rd grader at Hillcrest Elementary School, tries her hand
HILLCREST PAGE 2 at the hula hoop.

Religion...........A12

Trips................ A13

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| NEWS | NEWS OF DELAWARE COUNTY

THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 2016

Penn Wood
FROM PAGE 1

school district. Now, its

making academic strides
and having students learning at a rate higher than
state standards.
How did this happen?
A dedicated staff under the leadership of Dr.
D. Brandon Cooley has
started to turn the tide.
Cooley, the schools University of Pennsylvaniaeducated principal, was
aware of the struggling
scholastics before starting
his tenure in 2010, but that
didnt deter him.
My goal at each place
is to always move the pendulum more and more
students succeeding at the
highest level, said Cooley.
Wherever you are, you
can always make gains.
In 15 years before coming to Penn Wood, Cooley
worked in one of the biggest school districts in the
country (Fairfax County
Public Schools, Virginia),
a sprinkling of other public and alternative schools,
and even interned at a
prison, all providing for a
varied background of students and learning environments.
I was looking around at
openings, studying demographics, studying schools
that may have more challenges, said Cooley, recalling how he found a school
in the area as he went to
pursue a doctorate at Penn.
Im always trying to challenge myself. The more
challenges you put on
yourself, the more opportunity you have to grow as
a person, as a leader.
This was a great place
I knew I could make big
strides and make differences in (students) lives. I
was sold.
Superintendent Joseph
Bruni remembered Cooleys interview process, saying he seemed to be a person who would be successful with the students.
He seemed very supportive of students and
wanting to enrich their
lives, that was a lot of his
conversation, said Bruni,
noting that the students
on the review team to select a new principal were
very encouraged by his
presentation, and his perspective on education and
his energy level, attractive
qualities to them.
It was a team effort of
administrators, teachers,
parents and students to
pick Cooley as their principal, a man who could boost
student achievement as he
did in all of his previous
schools, while encouraging
students and staff to perform at the highest of expectations.
He continues to do
that, said Bruni.

Making strides
Marple Newtown or Radnor Penn Wood is not, but
the districts numbers keep
rising. While the former
schools comfortably score
in the 80s and 90s on stateissued School Performance
Profiles, Penn Wood has
been climbing in the 60s
range.
In the first year SPPs
were released, 2013, Penn
Wood scored a 60.6, a number determined in large
part by student performance on state exams and
growth in three subject areas: Math; literature; and

ANNE NEBORAK DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA

Penn Wood High School seniors Lydia Toby and Memunatu

Sesay study in the library.

ANNE NEBORAK DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA

Dr. D. Brandon Cooley, Ed.D., principal of Penn Wood High

School, poses in his office at the school.

ANNE NEBORAK DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA

ANNE NEBORAK DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA

D. Brandon Cooley, Ed.D.

science, In 2014, the school
jumped to 66.6, and then
to 67.3 in 2015.
Penn Wood is one of four
public high schools in the
county to have its scores
increase every year, but it
has the largest overall gain
since the SPPs inception at
6.7 points.
In regard to growing students, data from the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System says Penn
Wood exhibits significant
evidence the school exceeded the standard for
academic growth in the
three testing areas of the
state-issued Keystone exams in 2015. Haverford,
Garnet Valley, Strath Haven and Penncrest are the
other public county high
schools with the same level
of growth.
At the state level, Penn
Wood had the 18th-highest growth score out of
601 Keystone-testing high
schools on the literature
exam, and the 45th-highest
growth score among 706
high schools in algebra I.
On the biology exam, Penn
Wood was still in the top
quarter of all high schools
with a growth ranking 135
out of 656.
Cooley said theyre gaining on other schools.
Im very competitive,
so I cant tell you that Im
not looking at those things
trying to catch up, or beat
some of these schools. As
long as we continue with
these gains that weve had
that greatly shows that
our students are making
more than one years progress.
Im well aware of what
our scores are compared to
other schools, and I think
if we continue working
harder, working smarter,
we will be in the same
breath as Marple Newtown
or Radnor.

Up to the challenge
Perhaps the schools biggest accomplishment in recent years is being named
to two College Board
honor roll lists: AP District
Honor Roll and the Gaston Caperton Opportunity
Honor Roll. The former is a

catch-all list for school districts that have increased

access to Advanced Placement courses and the rate
at which those students
have earned a score of 3
or higher (out of 5) on the
exams.
The latter is for opportunities created for traditionally underrepresented
students that exhibit
growth in AP courses and
exam scores, college-ready
SAT scores and the number of colleges applied to.
William Penn School
District (via Penn Wood)
was the only district in the
state to rank on both lists.
There are a lot of good
kids in this school ... and as
more kids see their peers
are having success and its
possible, that seems to be
the main factor as to why
more and more kids are
taking it, said AP Calculus AB teacher Matt Lindeman about interest in
his class. The success of
the course has really promoted itself.
In Lindermans third
year teaching the course,
enrollment in AP Calculus
has increased from 18 to
22 from the first to second
year to a high of 26 for the
current school year. Of the
22 last year, 19 passed the
exam with a dozen scoring
a 4 or 5, according to Lindeman. Eight of the first 18
students to take the class
earned passing scores.
Lindeman expects to
teach two sections of the
class next year with early
estimates of enrollment to
grow to 35-40 students.
Calculus is the first AP
class Briana Russell has
taken.
I love a challenge, she
said. I like to be with everyone whos going to push
me up. Thats what Penn
Woods really about, doing bigger and better, and
thats what I decided to
do.
Kyle Quartermus, the
AP Literature and Composition teacher, said only 15
students were in his first
class 10 years ago; now he
has three sections with
about 60 students.
I think we have done

Marissa Susay and Tiguida Konde discuss how things are

going with their work with Principal Dr. Brandon Cooley.
The students are in honors English at Penn Wood High
School.
a good job in recent years
of being more rigorous in
our curriculum in earlier
grades so that when the
students arrive in 12th
grade, they feel more ready
for higher level content,
said Quartermus.
According to Cooley,
the percentage of students
who have received a passing score on AP exams
has jumped from 18 percent when he first started
there, to 52 percent last
year. Overall enrollment in
those courses has jumped
50 percent.
With AP courses only offered at the Green Avenue
Campus, approximately
120 students of 800 in
that building are enrolled
in eight of the course offerings, equaling about 15
percent of the student population.
It has been very rewarding to see that, to see
them have these opportunities that are ultimately
going to make them competitive, he said.
As if multiple sections
of one AP course isnt
enough, there has been
discussion about potentially adding an AP Statistics course in the future.

Working with nothing

... and something
People in education talk
about doing more with less.
At Penn Wood, we do more
without, said Cooley.
Having an abundance
of resources wasnt a problem for the seven years he
served as an assistant principal in two schools Fairfax County, Va. Coming
to Penn Wood, resources
arent as readily available.
Budget constraints have
cost the two high school
buildings 10 teachers and
academic programs.
Athletics are not immune either; award-winning track stars dont even
have a track for practice.
Despite it all, he and his
staff make it work.
Hes done a great job
keeping it positive through
tough times, said Lindeman. Sometimes its easy
to get caught up in what we
dont have here. You never
hear that from him, its
never about what we dont
have.
Superintendent Bruni
said the district as a whole
is not one to use its lack of

resources as an excuse.
We know that we can
provide to our students
the best that we can, and
many cases its deficient to
what other communities
can provide for their students, said Bruni. However, weve learned that in
the limits that we have, we
still can find success with
our kids and weve shown
that it can happen.
I wish we had some of
the resources other districts have, but we dont
use that as an excuse to
get in the way of what we
do we continue to motivate and push forward
even though we feel we
dont have the levels of resources that need.
Quartermus said there
is a confidence growing
among the students and
staff that he didnt see
when he first started, and
that success breeds even
more confidence.
Just as important as resources and opportunities,
Cooley harps on one aspect
used to create success.
The biggest component
in a teacher, administrators success, he says is
relationships.
Its fairly common, at
least at the Lansdowne
campus, to have students
shout out Dr. Cooley! as
he walks down the halls,
almost always with a smile
on his face. The students
know him, and he, them.
Relationships are a big part
of Cooleys leadership style.
We are dealing with
people at a very challenging time in their life just
by being a teenager. The
relationship component is
paramount. Its imperative
to anyones success at any
level, said Cooley. If they
know you care, they will do
whatever they can for you.
Cooley reminds his staff
every day that building relationships with students is
important.
I believe helping students meet rigorous standards starts with making individual connections with those students
and making time to interact with them one-onone, said Quartermus.
When they know that you
care about them, believe in
them, respect them, and
support them, they tend to
give their all. I also try to
work hard but keep a light
tone students achieve

more when they can smile

and laugh in the classroom.
For Lindeman, establishing a connection with
his new calculus students
starts even before the start
of the school year, using a
week in August to do review instead of taking up
class time in the first marking period.
We try to create a team
environment, were all
in it together, said Lindeman. Were this tight
group, so when this test
comes its not just you taking this test, were taking
it together.
In her role of being on
the senior class committee, Russell has developed
a bond with Cooley that
started when she was still
a freshman. The bond grew
into a harmonious one
that allows the two to talk
openly, even when Russell
was dealing with a recent
family tragedy.
Hes always looking out
for me, asking me if theres
anything I need. Hes always there to talk to me,
greets me, asks me how my
day is going. Hes always
there, Russell said, adding that hes a really nice
guy, so sweet.

Penn Wood Proud

Cooleys pride is infectious.
Every day he can be seen
running down the hallway, always smiling as
Russell puts it. Students
and teachers alike are not
immune to his charms.
Hes not here as an administrator, hes here as a
companion, Russell noted.
Lindeman and Quartermus used words like encouraging and supportive to describe Cooley.
I see more of a positive energy among faculty
and students, and I think
thats rubbed off. Hes always talking about what
good the students are doing, Lindeman said.
Quartermus said Penn
Wood has always been
doing good, but Cooleys
strength is letting people
now about it.
Hes brought a focus
on marketing ourselves
so that our achievements
do not go unnoticed. I
think his tenure has definitely helped to improve
our schools public face,
he said.
As Bruni put it, Cooley
is the cheerleader for the
students.
Over the last six years,
Bruni has watched Cooley
grow as an educator who
has really bought into the
districts mission of upholding high expectations
and accountability for all.
He sees them as deserving students who deserve to be respected for
who they are and their accomplishments. Hes out
there doing just that and
thats why hes had his
success there, Bruni said.
He takes pride in what
he does, but its still not
enough. He knows theres
more to accomplish and
wants to see that happen.
At Penn Wood, the whole
could not have been as
great as it has been without the sum of its parts.
From administration support, ambitious students
and dedicated teachers,
Cooley knows its a blend
of everything that has
brought a newfound appreciation of academic respect to the area.
Would I take my students and my teachers
against anyone? Absolutely. Weve got character
and weve got heart. You
do whatever you could for
a kid, its personal, said
Cooley.

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