Following the recent approval of Ryan Smith as middle school principal, Mr. Anthony Mendicino came to FHS as interim assistant principal while the application process for the position began.
A Beaver County native, Mendicino attended Beaver Falls High School, where he was active in sports and enjoyed his high school experience.

“I had some great people that I had the opportunity to play for, and it made an impact on my life,” Mendicino said. “I’ve always wanted to get involved in education, teaching and coaching and hopefully have those same opportunities to make an impact on other students. It was just something that I always wanted to do.”

After graduating from Beaver Falls in 1977, Mendicino then attended Geneva College for a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education. While at Geneva, Mendicino played football before graduating in 1982.

Mendicino spent his entire teaching career—nearly two decades—at Beaver Area School District. While working in the district, he coached football, sponsored various clubs and was involved in other extracurricular activities. He obtained a master’s degree in K-12 Administration from Youngstown University in 1999 before becoming the Beaver Falls High School assistant principal.
In 2002, Mendicino became the Center Area High School principal. In fact, Ms. Ruthanne Gudzan, a Spanish teacher at FHS, student taught at Center while Mendicino was principal.

One of the highlights of Mendicino’s administrative career was overseeing the merger of Center Area and Monaca School Districts. The merger, approved in September 2008, was completed in the 2010-2011 school year when, according to Central Valley’s “About Us” page, students in grades six through 12 merged and began to compete as the Central Valley Warriors in sports.
Mendicino claims that the involvement of the student body, and especially the senior class, in the merger was one of the highlights of that process.

“The students were involved in most of the decision-making process, such as the mascot’s name, how we came up with the Warriors [and] the colors. Just about anything that involved the emotional issues, you know, with the kids. We utilized different committees and our students had a say in what the outcome was. So, a lot of those decisions came from our students at the time,” Mendicino said.

Following the merger, Mendicino became the principal of Central Valley High School, where he finished his career as an administrator. After retiring this past summer, Mendicino has worked as a substitute while an administrator from Central Valley was on medical leave. Since leaving Central Valley, he has received calls from other districts to help while an administrative position was open, leading to becoming the FHS interim assistant principal on Sept. 2.

Although he isn’t planning on becoming “unretired” to apply for the FHS assistant principal position, Mendicino felt that the students and staff have been welcoming. He has also enjoyed meeting students and seeing what makes Freedom unique, which includes the staff greeting the students at the door each morning, block scheduling and the student center during lunch periods.
“What I’ve heard about Freedom, I’ve seen firsthand in the first couple days,” Mendicino said.