Abington superintendent to lead national group

The superintendent of Montgomery County's Abington School District has been elected president of the American Association of School Administrators, the first time in the organization's 147-year history that it will be led by a Pennsylvania school chief.

Amy Sichel will serve as president-elect of the 13,000 member group starting in July, president in 2013-14, and past president the year after that. She will be only the fourth woman to hold the post.

Sichel, 59, has worked as an educator in the Abington district, where she lives, for 36 years. She has been superintendent for 12 years and is a past Pennsylvania Superintendent of the Year and past president of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators.

"She embodies the work of superintendents across the country in providing their communities with quality schools," said Daniel Domenech, the national association's executive director. "She will be a great leader. . . . We have a lot of difficult tasks ahead of us and she will be in the thick of it."

Sichel said in an interview Friday she was "up for the challenge."

Public education faces difficulties not seen for generations, with hard economic times and a growing chorus of criticism from those who say it is failing America's children, she said.

Her response: "Public education today is continually bashed, when, in reality, 95 percent of the public schools across the country are doing extremely well."

Referring to the movie Waiting for Superman, which dwells on the situation of children trapped in low-performing schools, Sichel said: "We have to get better at promoting our successes. We don't have to wait for Superman - there are a lot of wonderful things already taking place in public schools."

In the Abington district under her leadership, Sichel said, high expectations were set for all students and supports were established to help those who struggled. The result: college enrollment among district graduates jumped from 80 percent to 90 percent.

The Abington district, like others in Pennsylvania, has had to learn how to do more with less in recent years, as funding cuts and shrinking local revenue took a bite out of budgets. "We deal with our district as if it's a business," Sichel said. "We have had to shrink but still deliver the product - a good education."

Still, she said, much of her job will be talking to state and federal officials "to help them understand that funding is crucial to providing quality education. If we want kids to be ready to function in a global world, we need to provide them with the tools to do that."

Sichel brings many assets to her new position, colleagues said.

"She's a strong leader. She is focused on doing the right thing for students," said Jim Buckheit, executive director of the state school administrators association. And "she is open to hearing new ideas and strategies."

Wendy Royer, superintendent of the Springfield School District, also in Montgomery County, said: "I admire her work and her work ethic; for her, it's all about students and student achievement."

Royer added: "In a field that has been dominated by men . . . she is an excellent role model. I value her input; she is always helpful and collaborative. . . . I'm thrilled for her. I think she is a great leader."