McKinley's Principal Bids Farewell

Dale Bernardoni, McKinley School's principal for the past six years, is retiring June 30, and parents at the Thompson Street elementary school said she will be sorely missed.

Marie Stalling, a member of McKinley PTA's executive board, said Bernardoni brought a lot of cultural programs into McKinley and started the school's  World's Fair, which is designed to celebrate all of the different cultures of McKinley students. She said Bernardoni understood the needs of McKinley's children and parents and could therefore lead the school "to a place where we are getting the most for our children."

"She's been an excellent principal. She's going to be hard to replace. I don't know anyone as talented and all-encompassing as she is," Stalling said. "She embraces everyone and everything in life and shares her life experiences with us."

Bernardoni said she would miss McKinley's students, parents, teachers and staff and that she was especially proud of the diversity of McKinley's families and the cultural programs at McKinley that celebrate that diversity. "This is a delightful school community," she said.

Bernardoni said she plans to travel in the summer of 2011 to a school in the African country of Zimbabwe, which McKinley School supports, to help students there by developing curriculum and aiding renovation and construction efforts. Bernardoni said she teaches in the graduate program at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven and may continue doing that as well.

McKinley students and students in the Zimbabwe school exchange letters because Zimbabwe is an English-speaking country, Bernardoni said.

"It's because of her true love for children, that's one of the reasons she's leaving," Stalling said. "She's taking on another chapter in her life, going to help more children in more places. She's doing the right thing, even though we'll miss her terribly."

Before she was hired as McKinley's principal, Bernardoni taught for 16 years in Cheshire and was principal at Center School in East Hampton and a founding principal of Wintergreen Interdistrict Magnet School in Hamden.

Bernardoni's success at McKinley can be seen in the reaction by school parents to a state Board of Education mandate that McKinley no longer be racially imbalanced with other elementary schools in Fairfield.

The local Board of Education offered McKinley parents the option of sending their children to another elementary school, but very few did. More parents, from other elementary schools in town, chose an "opt-in" program that allowed them to send their kids to McKinley.

Stalling said many of the cultural programs that Bernardoni brought to McKinley wouldn't otherwise have been available to students at the school. Stalling said few McKinley parents would bring their kids to a ballet, but Bernardoni started several programs that featured ballet and ballet dancers.

"Our kids had never seen a ballet before. It wouldn't be something we would bring our kids to, so the ballet came to us," Stalling said. "There are things where, if she hadn't been interested in them and thought they were good for our students, we would never have experienced them."

She said other programs included an African drummer, a potter, folk musicians, storytellers, hip hop artists and crafts fairs. Julie Chu, a former Fairfield student and member of the U.S. Women's Olympic hockey team, also recently visited McKinley.

Wes Greenop, a member of McKinley's PTA, spoke highly of Bernardoni during the school's annual carnival at Jennings Beach last weekend, at which Bernardoni also volunteered.

Stalling said Bernardoni genuinely cared about McKinley's students and held the front door open for them every morning so she could greet them as they arrived at school. "We hope the next principal will give as much support as Dr. Bernardoni," she said.

Bernardoni's advice to McKinley's new principal was, "Enjoy the students and their families and the staff and build on the positive school community that exists here."