Merante to Retire, Pursue Other Endeavours

Dr. Anthony Merante keeps three symbolic reminders on his desk, which remind him of his outlook on life and his approach with people he has encountered in his career as an educator.

One is a school bus. Another is an elephant. The third is a cow.

“You never throw anyone under the bus, you never forget to talk about the elephant in the room and there are no sacred cows,” Merante said. “It’s something I’ve always tried to remember.”

Merante will have more than 19 years of service as a Peters school administrator at the end of this school year to enter retirement, and a secondary career of teaching classes at Duquesne University, teaching online at California University of Pennsylvania, among others, and trying to spend time with his grandchild.

“Hopefully my wife will give me a day to babysit in the fall,” Merante quipped.

Merante’s career in the school district began in 1990; he served as principal of  before being named assistant in 2009. Prior to his arrival to Peters, he was a teacher at Canon-McMillan Middle School.

He has also been an assistant principal in Bethel Park, a special education teacher and an elementary guidance counselor in the Canon-McMillan School District. His career in education goes back to 1976. Additionally, he helped create the elementary guidance program in Canon-McMillan.

Among his latest duties in Peters, he oversees the schools' curriculum programs, but he credits the teachers for making the programs among the best in the state.

“I think the high academic standards aren’t based as much on curriculum as they are on teachers,” he said. “It’s not programs that provide the high outcomes for students. It’s the expertise of the teachers. That’s the difference.”

Merante said he has noticed changes in education over the past five to 10 years have required more accountability for all districts, but some of the testing requirements put into effect by the state were not totally realistic.

“Whenever (a district) has a student with special needs, except for a very small percentage, the students have to take the same assessment and have to score on the same level, and that’s not logical,” he said.

“With recent funding cuts from the governor’s office, I don’t know if things have changed in Peters Township, but I think education has changed. The best thing in all of this is that we still have excellent teachers, and that’s where everything happens in the classroom in Peters Township.”

Merante said the goal has been to find the best possible teachers.

“I would say the two most important things that are done in a school system is the hiring of teachers, and the observation and working with those teachers in a building,” he said.

“We want to see how well they are doing, to share knowledge with their colleagues and if there are areas that need to be improved. We all have areas where we can improve.”

Merante’s understanding of teachers and their role in student development comes both from his professional career and also being part of a family of educators.

"I always wanted to be a teacher," Merante said.

Not coincidentally, his brother and sister are teachers, as well as his wife, Mary Pat, who has retired from St. Anne’s in Castle Shannon. His daughter Sarah is a reading specialist in the Pine-Richland schools, and his son Matthew, is a special education teacher in Virginia. Merante’s son-in-law and brother-in-law are also teachers.

Many people compare school districts to a business, Merante said. A comparison which he believes is incorrect.

“Maybe it is a business in certain instances, but a school system doesn’t exist to make money," he said. "Our goal is to educate students academically, and provide social and emotional assistance. We’re not selling widgets. I think everything that needs to be done is based on the teachers in the classroom."

When asked about his proudest achievement as an administrator in Peters, Merante said that creating an ongoing sense of teamwork within the middle school may be his best.

“The program that my assistant Dr. (Mary) Monsour and the teachers at the middle school all instill in that building,” Merante said. ”You don’t do anything alone. It’s a team approach in working with them. I think that we developed a challenging academic-based middle school, connecting (that) with understanding the development of students and addressing their emotional and social needs.”

While ready to retire from Peters at the end of the year, Merante prepares for  the next phase of his career admitting that no decision of that magnitude is ever really certain.

“I don’t know if you’re ever 100 percent sure that the time is right to retire,” he said. “The only two decisions I was totally sure of was the woman I married and that I wanted to have children."

"I don’t know if a lot of the decisions we make are truly black and white. But all things being considered, I think it’s time to be involved in other areas."