On April 6, former superintendent Dr. Jeffery Fuller took his leave from the district and began working for the Pennsylvania State Department of Education. With the vacancy of former superintendent Fuller, the district was in need of a new superintendent as Fuller’s official last day within the district was March 26. The school board has not yet decided on a new full-time superintendent so they searched for an interim superintendent to fill the gap of time between Fuller’s leave and the end of the school year.

With this in mind, Dr. David Anney, a former superintendent at Riverside School District, stepped up to this new position. Anney will act as the district’s interim superintendent until the end of the school year on June 3. 

Anney first started his education at Penn State University with a degree in math education. It was not until his senior year that he was assigned to be a student teacher with the Freedom Area School District. From there, he got a position teaching math within the Riverside Area School District. 

As well as being a math teacher, Anney also coached basketball. After a few years of teaching, he had the opportunity to become an assistant principal, a principal and then an assistant superintendent before finally becoming a superintendent.

“I really enjoyed teaching. I could have stayed a teacher my whole career. Teaching is very worthwhile,” Anney said.

Although Anney had never thought of being a superintendent, the high school principal at the time had encouraged him to go and get the applications and the papers just in case he would have ever wanted to become a superintendent. From there, he held the superintendent position at Riverside for 11 years before retiring.

While Anney will only be here for a couple of months, his plans are to support the district in any way possible.

“I have many years of experience, so anything I can do to step in and help that transition. As we were just talking, my immediate goal is for the seniors to have an uninterrupted end of the year, which is a great goal. Some of that is probably beyond our control. But recognizing how different the past 13 months have been for everybody, if we can somehow try to do some normalcy these last few months, that’s one goal. But anything I do to support the staff, the administration and the students until a new superintendent is named, that’s what I want to do,” Anney said about his hopes for his time in office. 

As for the students, he plans to find some sense of normalcy for the seniors in their remaining months of high school. 

“I’m still learning, you know, technically, I’ve only been here for a couple of weeks now. So I’m still learning, but everything I see is very positive,” Anney said.