Joseph Yelich is currently the superintendent of schools for the Oneonta City School District. Before coming to Oneonta, Joe was instrumental in building relationships with the colleges near his town with the local high school by creating a program that enabled students to take college courses while attending high school. This has been what he has been working on since he arrived at Oneonta. It is clear that his mission was to eventually give students the opportunity to graduate high school with either a college degree or credits that are accepted at any SUNY school.
The person’s role in the reform:
Mr. Yelich’s role in in implementing this reform would be using his active role in the community to bring together people in a common goal. Surprisingly, Oneonta has been a college town for over a
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Yelich has seen this program through in a previous district and it has had profound positive effects—students at his old school have graduated high school with not only a high school diploma, but also AAS degrees or as many as 24 credits that are transferable to SUNY schools across the state.
How the implementation is going/problems According to Mr.Yelich, there have been some roadblocks to the implementation. First, the SUNY 4 year University in our city charges tuition. That limits our ability as a district to offer those classes. Not all students can afford the classes and the district cannot pay for them. The smaller community colleges have been offered incentives to offer those classes at little or no cost. So, the challenge is working with schools that have funding but are not in our immediate community and arranging for the educators in both schools to collaborate.
Benefits of the reform so